Electric Supply and Demand
There are two flavors of electricity. Power plants generate alternating current (AC) electricity and feed it into the grid. AC is impossible to store — use it or lose it.
But if AC is converted to direct current (DC) electricity, it can be stored in battery systems. Then, when demand increases, the stored DC power can be converted to AC, and fed back into the grid.
In a conventional power system, centralized plants generate the electricity and feed it into the grid for distribution — a hub and spoke design. Throughout every day, demand for power rises and falls. When demand rises, more power must quickly be fed to the grid. To do this, secondary generators are kept running on standby, providing a “spinning reserve.”
Renewable energy systems are quite different. There is no central production plant with a spinning reserve backup. Generation is provided by a scattered network of solar panels and/or wind turbines. They are installed at sites likely to generate the most power, and these are often not located close to existing grids and energy consumers.
In addition to the normal daily ups and downs of end-user demand, power generation cannot be carefully managed. The challenge here is intermittency. Solar panels do nothing at night, or when heavy clouds move in, or when their collectors are covered with snow, dust, bird droppings, etc. Wind turbines take a nap when the breeze fades away, or when their blades are coated with ice. The strength of sunbeams and breezes is variable, uncontrollable, and often unpredictable.
Mitch Rolling noted, “In Minnesota, wind farms produced electricity only 34.67 percent of the time in 2016.” Vaclav Smil wrote, “The best offshore wind turbines produce electricity 45% of the time, and photovoltaic panels 25% in ideal locations — while Germany’s solar panels produce electricity only 12% of the time.”
Wind and solar systems don’t have a spinning reserve generator for backup. So, to reliably respond to shifts in demand, surplus generation can be stored in batteries. When demand increases, stored power can be released to the grid.
Imagine living on the 60th floor of a skyscraper when the region’s renewable energy production has been hobbled by intermittency for days or weeks, and the batteries are drained. No power, water, lights, elevators, etc. This challenge will increase as the grid transitions from fossil energy to renewable.
Vaclav Smil noted that existing energy storage systems have far less capacity than needed to maintain reliable power delivery. “It is still impossible to store electricity affordably in quantities sufficient to meet the demand of a medium-sized city (500,000) for only a week or two, or to supply a megacity (more than 10 million people) for just half a day.”
Opposition
As mentioned earlier, many fundamental components of industrial civilization can only be produced with the high temperatures made possible by fossil energy (steel, concrete, solar panels, wind turbines etc.). Thus, current technology does not allow us to actually decarbonize the global economy, or even come close.
A number of U.S. counties and localities are creating rules to prohibit the construction of wind and/or solar installations. In 2023, 411 U.S. counties had established some restrictions on renewable energy installations. Rural folks don’t want their countrysides blemished with unsightly power towers and access roads. Leave us alone!
In 2024, USA Today reported, “Local governments are banning new utility-scale wind and solar power faster than they’re building it.” New wind turbine projects have been banned in 23 counties of North Carolina, in all 120 counties of Kentucky, in all 8 counties of Connecticut, in all 14 counties of Vermont, and in 91 of Tennessee’s 95 counties.
Poor nations can’t afford to make costly investments in renewable energy, and wealthy nations are not eager to generously provide them with enormous financial assistance. Folks in wealthy nations aren’t interested in radically simplifying their lives.
There are 193 nations in the world. At international meetings, they proudly announce their optimistic goals for transitioning to renewable energy within several decades. Given that extended timeframe, it’s tempting to assume that technological miracles, yet to be invented, will somehow save the day. Optimistic goals are easy to announce. Fulfilling them is another story.
Vaclav Smil noted that China and India are still expanding coal extraction and coal-fired power generation plants. In other regions, there is strong opposition to new rules that restrict the expansion of natural gas infrastructure. Coal mining communities don’t want to shut down the mines. The petroleum industry remains hard at work.
In Iowa, the term “climate change” can sound like an obscene demonic hoax. Chris Gloninger, a TV weather forecaster, foolishly spoke those two words during a live broadcast. Viewers exploded with rage. He got death threats, quit his job, and moved out of the state.
Overshoot
And now, dear reader, the plot of this word dance makes a sudden swerve into a dangerous lane. The soundtrack gets speedy screechy loud and scary. A vicious monster steps out of the shadows and into the spotlight. The audience screams. Alas, the actual planet smashing boogeyman is far more horrifying and powerful than climate change. Its name is overshoot, and it cannot be easily swept away with clever gizmos, delusional optimism, or clueless indifference.
In an earlier chapter, I mentioned William Catton, the author of Overshoot. He defined carrying capacity as “the maximum population of a given species which a particular habitat can support indefinitely.” Overshoot is “the condition of having exceeded for the time being the permanent carrying capacity of the habitat.” Today, humankind’s tremendous impacts on the entire planet far exceed the limits. Way too many critters are living way too hard, we don’t understand what we’re doing, and we have no interest in stopping.
In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond wrote about the Viking colonization of Iceland, which is now “the most heavily damaged country in Europe.” Since settlement in A.D. 870, most of the original trees and vegetation have been destroyed. Half of its soil has been moved into the ocean. Large areas that were green when the Vikings first landed are now “a lifeless brown desert without buildings, roads, or any current signs of people.” The Vikings were low-tech amateurs, and climate was not a primary factor in this disaster.
Today, the rapidly growing mob of 8+ billion hungry horny primates is mindlessly beating the living crap out of the planet in countless ways. It’s very important to understand that climate change is merely one component of overshoot, the huge whoop-ass monster we have conjured into existence.
William Rees explained that the impacts of overshoot include climate change, ocean acidification, freshwater depletion, mass extinctions, deforestation, plunging biodiversity, soil/land degradation, falling sperm counts, pollution of everything, etc. “Climate change is the best-known symptom of overshoot, but mainstream ‘solutions’ will actually accelerate climate disruption and worsen overshoot. The global economy will inevitably contract, and humanity will suffer a major population ‘correction’ in this century.”
Seibert & Rees wrote, “Overshoot is a genuine existential threat. Climate change alone is capable of making large patches of Earth irreversibly uninhabitable for humans in this century and ultimately jeopardizing global civilization.”
The safe and effective cure for overshoot is obvious, but the medicine is bitter. “We argue that the only viable response to overshoot is a managed contraction of the human enterprise until we arrive within the safely stable territory defined by ecological limits. This will entail many fewer people consuming far less energy and material resources than at present.”
Meanwhile, many talking heads are telling us exactly what we want to hear. We can relax and comfortably continue working and shopping. We just need to buy an electric car, become vegans, have one child or none, and enjoy a wonderful life. The magic verb that speeds our pilgrimage to eco-utopia is “decarbonize.” Clean green renewable energy will save the Earth.
William Rees disagrees. The last thing we need to do is shift the mining industry into high gear, and produce 1.39 billion batteries for the world’s transport fleet. We’ll also need a huge number of batteries to provide backup power for the electric grids around the world. Producing huge numbers of solar panels and wind turbines will require even more mining, smelting, and manufacturing.
Author
Richard Reese lives in Eugene, Oregon. His primary interest is ecological sustainability, and helping others learn about it. He is the author of What Is Sustainable, Sustainable or Bust, and Understanding Sustainability and is currently working on a new book titled Wild, Free & Happy. Reese' blog wildancestors.blogspot.com includes free access to reviews of more than 196 sustainability-related books by a variety of authors both contemporary and historical, plus a few dozen of his own rants.
