Renewable Energy Comes at You Fast

Dresden 1, the first commercial nuclear-power plant in the U.S., was switched on in 1960. It took three years and, in today’s money, about $250 million to build.

You may have noticed that nuclear-power projects require a little more time and money these days: Last week, the Trump administration offered $3.7 billion of loan guarantees to Southern Co.’s Vogtle project in Georgia. The budget for that has spiraled past $25 billion; and while construction began in 2009, it isn’t expected to start generating power until we are well into President Donald Trump’s second term (or his successor’s first).

Phil Verleger, an energy economist, cited the contrast between Dresden 1 and Vogtle in a report this summer as an example of how the costs and lead-times of energy mega-projects have spiraled. I similarly compared the travails of the U.K.’s Hinkley C nuclear project to the development of big oil and gas fields here.

Rising costs are an obvious impediment to any industrial project, while falling costs provide an obvious edge. But don’t overlook the importance of time.

On Wednesday, the International Energy Agency released its latest outlook for renewable energy and made this observation:

We see renewables growing by about 1,000 gigawatts by 2022, which equals about half of the current global capacity in coal power, which took 80 years to build.

Let’s adjust those numbers for utilization and say, very roughly, that coal plants produce at just 60 percent of their capacity and renewable sources at just 30 percent. Even then, we are talking about renewable energy with the equivalent of a quarter of the effective capacity of the world’s coal power, which took eight decades to build, switching on within half a decade.

King Coal
Coal-fired power output has flat-lined for several years but still leads by a wide margin

The message there is that coal’s share of the global power mix slipped slightly from about 41 percent in 2001 to 39 percent last year. Renewables, meanwhile, climbed from about a fifth to one-quarter (the vast majority of that growth involving solar and wind power rather than hydroelectricity).

It is, of course, tough to have your interest piqued by a move of a few percentage points spread over 15 years. What is quite notable, however, is the picture that emerges when you look at the annual change by source:

Sinking Coal
In terms of marginal growth, coal is losing out mostly to natural gas and, increasingly, renewable power sources

Read full article at Bloomberg GadflyRegular readers (indulge me) will know that I tend to harp on about the importance of marginal change in energy trends. This time is no different.