Mario Giampietro, limits to future energy needs

Squaring the energy circle: will we be able to satisfy our energy needs?

Mario Giampietro ICREA Research Professor, ICTA - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Presentation at the Post-Growth 2018 Conference, 18-19 September 2018, European Parliament, Brussels

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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 689669.

CONTENT OF THE PRESENTATION 1. What went wrong with the Energiewende?

2. What if “batteries are not included” in the EU energy package?

3. Biofuels: “If they do not have bread, let them eat cake” 4. The circular bioeconomy and the elephant in the room 5. “Socially constructed ignorance”: The economics of technological promises is an implausible, irresponsible and, above all, ungovernable narrative!

1. What went wrong with the Energiewende?

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-germany-emissions/

f cs o es i m ono romis c e lp he #1 t ologica n tech https://www.politico.eu/article/report-german-parties-agree-to-drop-2020-climate-goal/

Intermittent 200

Peaker

Extra supply

“Surprise� supply Baseloader 400

200

Baseload supply

100

100 100 100 100

100

The metaphor of the water distribution grid

Comparing different sources of electricity Power capacity

Utilization factor

Hours of production

Electricity produced

Percentage of electricity used by grid

GWh MW

Baseloaders

1 MW

0.80

7,000 h/year

7 GWh

100%

7/1

Peakers

1 MW

0.34

3,000 h/year

3 GWh

100%

3/1

Intermittents* 1 MW

0.10 0.30

900 h/year 2,600 h/year

0.9 GWh 2.6 GWh

It20-30% depends* ?

0.2/1 ?

0.8/1

* May be produced when not needed, or not be produced when needed!

• Why should an increase in power capacity of intermittents be good news?

• Why should a lower production cost of 1 kWh with intermittents be attractive for users seeking “supply security” (24/7/365)?

• Without an effective system of storage intermittents not necessarily reduce costs and solve problems . . .

The need for ‘taming’ intermittent sources . . .

Requirement and supply

Intermittents

Peakers

Time scale

2. What if batteries are not included in the EU energy package?

Functional elements of a modern electric grid cannot be powered by unreliable sources (intermittent).

To tame the intermittency, we need storage!

+ f cs o es i m ono romis c e lp he #2 t ologica n tech

+

Checking the scale of operations

Tokyo at 25 GW of electricity consumption would require for just one day under typhoon

600 GWh

600 GWh/400 MWh It would be 1,500 times short of buffer capacity . . .

Vaclav Smil By 2021 the largest announced storage system (more than 18,000 Li-ion batteries) will be in Long Beach for Southern California Edison: it will be capable of running at 100 MW for 4 hours

400 MWh

24,000 GWh?

2 million cars

165 GWh

In EU we have about 290 million cars 105 GWh

?!

20 GWh

Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Avicenne https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-04/tesla-flips-the-switch-on-the-gigafactory

The world's largest battery storage substations . . .

Southern California Edison (SCE)

20 MW peak/80 MWh storage (it can buffer 20 MW for 4 hours)

3. Biofuels: “if they do not have bread, let them eat cake�

f cs o es i m ono romis c e lp he #3 t ologica n tech

Marie Antoinette

nutrients

nutrients

W/m2 nutrients W/m2 nutrients W/m2

W/m2

% W/m 0 1 < 2

s a Useful Energy FUNDw n o i t W/m2

d l nutrients r o w f o W/m2

o p

a l pu

n a b r u

W/m2

nutrients

nutrients

W/m2

nutrients

nutrients

W/m2

n o i t a l u p o p

leakage

CITIES W/m2

n a b

ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES Useful Energy FLOW (fossil energy)

FARMS

d l r o w f o

is

nutrients

% 0 5 FARMS

W/m2

leakage

r u

W/m2 nutrients

W/m2 FARMS

leakage

Power density in end-uses

Power density in supply

after Vaclav Smil 2015 Power Density (data from Fig. 7.5)

4. The circular bioeconomy and the elephant in the room

of s c i om mises n o c l pro he e #4 t ologica n tech

Q5

harvested biomass

Q4 Q3 Q2

SUN

Expected relations over the components of terrestrial ecosystems respecting ecological regulation

Q1

human control

Detritus Q6

Low External Input Agriculture

Biomass production based on circular flows of nutrients

niches

populations

harvested harvestedbiomass biomass

Q5 Q4 Q3

Eliminating ecological regulation in biomass production

Q2

SUN Q1

Detritus Q6 fertilizers fertilizers humancontrol control human

High External Input Agriculture

pollution pollution

Biomass production based on linear flows of nutrients

Post-industrial economies based on linear flows

Pre-industrial economies based on circular flows

5. “Socially constructed ignorance” the economics of technological promises is a narrative that is implausible, irresponsible and above all ungovernable “To make sense of the complexity of the world so that they can act, individuals and institutions need to develop simplified, self-consistent versions of that world.

The process of doing so means that much of what is known about the world needs to be excluded from those versions, and in particular that knowledge which is in tension or outright contradiction with those versions must be expunged. […]

But how do we deal with […] dysfunctional cases of uncomfortable knowledge […]?”

S. Rayner

The ‘ancien régime’ syndrome “a state of affairs in which the ruling elite becomes unable to cope with stressors and adopts instead a strategy of denial, refusing to process either internal or external signals, including those of danger” After Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1994 (i) Citizens want to preserve their fabulously high standards of living; (ii) Governments want to preserve their majority at the next elections; (iii) Banks and powerful industrial complexes want to preserve their control on the economy; (iv) Scientists providing inputs to the sustainability discussion want to preserve their position and research funds.

This project has received funding from the European Unionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 689669.

Thank you for your attention!

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