Solar Energy – Informed Comment https://www.juancole.com Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion Fri, 29 Nov 2024 06:49:23 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.10 In Sunny Spain, cheap Solar Power set to overtake Wind Generation, backed by Socialist Government and Co-ops https://www.juancole.com/2024/11/generation-socialist-government.html Fri, 29 Nov 2024 05:15:11 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=221786 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Spain’s photovoltaic electricity production is set to surpass its wind power, according to China’s Xinhua news agency.

Spain is Europe’s champion at producing solar power, because some of its regions are especially sunny — think Seville. The Global Energy Monitor puts it this way: “The country has more utility-scale solar capacity in operation (29.5 GW) than any other European nation, and more capacity under construction (7.8 GW), and in early stages of development (106.1 GW) than the next three European countries combined.” They have 100 gigawatts of solar in development! That is all the solar capacity the US has now, and it is a much bigger and wealthier country.

Germany comes in second in Europe with 24.6 gigawatts of industrial-scale solar.

So far this year, renewables account for 57.5 percent of electricity in Spain, which is remarkable for an industrial democracy. Renewables only make 26% of American electricity, so Spain is doing twice as well as we are. Spain wants to get 74% of its electricity from renewables by 2030.

Wind power provides 22.4 percent of Spain’s electricity, while solar is at 18.3 percent. Solar, however, is rapidly building out.

Spain has already produced more renewable energy by November this year than it did in the full 12 months of 2023, and production is up 13%. And, this is the second year in a row that renewables produced more electricity for Spain than did fossil fuels.

All this is not an accident. The Socialist government of Pedro Sánchez has an industrial policy when it comes to green energy. He credits outgoing Minister for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (MITECO), Teresa Ribera Rodríguez, as having spearheaded the expansion of renewables since 2018, leading to some of Europe’s lowest electricity prices for consumers. Sunlight and wind are free, so once you have built the means to capture them, electricity generation is low-cost. This is especially true at a time when the Ukraine War has caused fossil gas prices to increase substantially, hurting countries dependent on it. Ribera is on her way to Brussels to serve on the European Commission, with portfolios in competitive practices and the environment.

In contrast, when they were in power Spain’s conservatives actually put a punitive tax on rooftop solar to benefit the fossil fuel corporations to which they are close.

All the research demonstrates that Socialist democracies make people happier than other systems, and now it turns out they are better for the health of the earth, as well.

Elections matter. But so do civil society initiatives. People are forming cooperatives to share the output of solar installations. Even football (soccer) teams have done this with solar panels at their stadiums.

Spanish utilities are increasingly creating hybrid solar parks that incorporate wind turbines and batteries, as well, to ensure steady power once the sun goes down. Spain has about 1 gigawatt worth of battery storage projects under review, and has a goal of 22.4 gigawatts of battery capacity by 2030 — a deadline that some experts believe the country will easily beat.

—-

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

TRT World: “60% of electricity in Spain comes from renewable energy”

]]>
Consumer Solar Surge: Pakistan Shows you Don’t Need Government Programs to Green the Grid https://www.juancole.com/2024/11/consumer-pakistan-government.html Thu, 28 Nov 2024 05:15:22 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=221767 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – While no one was looking, the Pakistani public took matters into their own hands, adding 17 gigawatts of solar power this year. These installations are mostly in the form of Chinese panels for rooftop or ground level solar in towns and villages.

Pakistan has abruptly become the world’s sixth-largest consumer of solar panels.

Here’s the thing. Pakistan has less than 50 gigawatts of electricity capacity in total! So they are putting in over a third of that in the form of solar just in one year. And this is not being spear-headed by the government, which is in disarray.

What we have to underline is that this remarkable solar gold rush is the work of ordinary consumers and private businesses and not government industrial policy. It shows that governmental inaction, of the sort so starkly on display at COP 29 in Baku and of the sort we may expect from the incoming president, Donald Trump, may not be a fatal obstacle to our saving the earth from a chaotic, torrid climate. The world’s people may demand clean solar, not because they understand climate change or are primarily driven by that consideration but because the cost of solar goes on plunging much faster than most analysts can now imagine. China’s government put $130 billion into its solar industry in 2023, and the technology responds to that kind of R&D money with big strides in efficiency and cost savings. And we are only at the beginning of this transformation.

DW’s Charli Shield tells the story of Shafqat Hussain, whose mother almost died during a summer heat wave — and what else is summer in South Asia? — when their government-supplied power went out. Such outages, called “load shedding” in Pakistan, are common. His mother had to go to hospital with heat stroke.

So the Hussain family put in solar. She quotes Shafqat Hussain as saying, “When you don’t have any electricity, forget about the air conditioning. Your fans are not working. You don’t have refrigerators on. You don’t even have any cold water to drink.”

The family’s energy bill has nose-dived by 80% and they no longer suffer from brown-outs or black-outs of electricity, gaining what she says Hussain called a “sense of safety.”

Pakistan’s politics is messy, dominated by two great political dynasties that are often at daggers drawn, and by a populist insurgent, former cricket star Imran Khan, who was jailed by the corrupt dynasties, throwing the country into turmoil. People have been in the streets this week in large numbers demanding Imran Khan’s release, and the army shot some down, raising the specter of further instability.

Americans don’t hear much about Pakistan, but it is a major player. At 240 million, it is the world’s fifth most populous country. It is the world’s 24th biggest economy by purchasing power GDP, though only the 46th nominally. In nominal terms, its economy is in the same ballpark as Egypt’s and South Africa’s. Its military is ranked 9th in the world, and it is a nuclear power.

In 2020, Chinese solar modules cost $240 per kilowatt, but they plummeted to $110 per kilowatt this year, as the post-COVID polysilicon shortages eased and the industry was hit with overproduction. That translates into about 11 cents per watt. China put out 310 gigawatts of cells in the first half of this year, representing an increase of over a third from the previous year. At the beginning of 2024, China already had 4/5ths of the world’s solar module manufacturing capacity. In general, the cost of solar pv modules has fallen 90% since 2010.

In fact, China is betting the farm on green energy. Wood McKenzie notes, “The government has identified the “new three” export industries – solar, EVs and batteries – as critical for its strategy of strengthening economic growth in the face of headwinds from past over-investment in property and high levels of debt.”

Although tariffs keep Chinese panels out of the US even under Biden, it is a big world out there. If Trump, knee-caps the US solar panel industry and hurts the value of the Chinese yuan, it would have the effect of making China’s panels cheaper and of removing a great deal of competition, cementing Beijing’s continued dominance in this field.

Pakistan imports most of the fuel it uses to generate electricity and after rate hikes this summer it has some of the higher electricity costs in Asia, far more than in neighboring India or in Bangladesh. Costs of electricity to businesses in Pakistan are especially high, giving them an impetus to install solar panels.

There are lots of potential problems with Pakistan’s solar boom. As customers desert the big utilities, they have to raise prices for everyone else, and many installations depend on steady energy generation to work — but some of them are having to shut down and then slowly come on line when needed. The government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif could become sufficiently alarmed to put obstacles in the way of further panel imports. But what the Pakistani public is demonstrating is that people want and need electricity and will find a way to get it cheaply. Coal and fossil gas can no longer provide it. Coal is 9.5 cents a kilowatt hour in a lot of places, and gas is 6.5 cents per KWh. But in Pakistan solar can be 3.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Ironically, these fossil fuels are heating up the earth so fast that people absolutely need air conditioning, as Shafqat Hussain discovered. And it is increasingly solar and wind that can provide cheap air conditioning that doesn’t just make things worse. I wouldn’t advise governments to stand in the way of families rescuing their grandmas from heat stroke.

—-

Bonus video:

Bloomberg TV: “Pakistan’s Solar Boom Helps Millions, But Harms Grid”

]]>
China opens World’s Largest offshore Solar Power Facility, as U.S. Falls Farther Behind https://www.juancole.com/2024/11/largest-offshore-facility.html Fri, 15 Nov 2024 05:15:22 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=221513 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Solar panels are great sources of energy. We have them on our roof and they have saved us a lot of money, especially in spring-summer-fall. Some observers complain about their bulk compared to the energy they put out, though. I’ve had engineers argue to me that there just isn’t space for all the solar panels that would be needed to green the American energy grid.

Since I study the Middle East, I’ve had to learn about energy markets and security. One time about a decade ago I was doing some energy consulting with the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). Japan had had to deal with the closure of many of its nuclear plants after the Fukishima disaster by importing Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from the Middle East. They were nervous about the security of the region, though. I told my Japanese colleagues that they would be better off going in for wind and solar. One replied that Japan had very little land available for solar farms. I don’t know how sincere this reply was. I think those bureaucrats were just wedded to nuclear power. In fact, Japan now has over 87 gigawatts of solar power. It has been adding about 6 gigs of solar a year recently.

One solution to this problem that is increasingly being tried out is agrovoltaics, putting solar panels on farms but in such a way that they help crops grow. So far in the US, most agrovoltaic set-ups are for sheep raising, since grass can grow under the panels. In fact, the panels help the grass thrive in hot, sunny environments by providing shade and allowing retention of moisture, which is also good for “tomatoes, turnips, carrots, squash, beets, lettuce, kale, chard, and peppers.”

Solar panels are rapidly becoming more efficient, which will allow this form of energy to produce electricity while taking up less space.

In the meantime, another possible solution is to put the solar panels on floating platforms. Japan has put them on lakes, for instance.

The panel arrays can also be placed offshore. Fish and other marine life like structures such as the steel truss platform piling used for China’s offshore solar farms. It gives them places to hide from predators, e.g.

China is the most advanced solar society in the world with over 600 gigawatts of installed solar capacity, which saves the country billions of dollars a year over paying for imported fossil gas. The US is in comparison backward, only having about 130 GW of solar.

It is therefore no surprise that Beijing has, as Aman Tripathi reports, just connected to high capacity transmission wires the world’s large offshore solar plant off the coast of Shandong Province, a 1-gigawatt facility. The facility also does fish farming.

The nearly 3,000 photovoltaic platforms are attached to fixed pilings in the sea floor and are spread over an area of some 4 square miles. It will generate enough power to provide electricity to 2.6 million people.

And this installation is only the beginning. China is aiming to have 60 gigawatts of offshore solar in only 3 years from now — an incredible build-out if it happens.

China also already has 61 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity.

Wind, water, solar and battery are clearly the way forward on meeting the world’s power needs while avoiding massive carbon pollution. Solar plus battery in my view has the greatest potential over the medium to long term. The issue of where to put the PV panels is not in my view a very serious problem. If there is a will to use them to cut carbon dioxide production, as there is in China, then places will be found to put them — as China is demonstrating.

And by the way, if the US government under the incoming Trump administration puts roadblocks in the way of solar power, it will just accelerate American decline and help propel China further toward great power status. The future is solar panels and electric vehicles, and China is already eating our lunch on those two. If that goes on for a while, we’ll be poor, breathing dirty air, and paying trillions for climate catastrophes, while China replaces us as the world’s leading superpower.

—-

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

News.Com.Au : “China’s Massive 1-gigawatt Offshore Solar Cell Platform Now Connected To The Grid”

]]>
Germany: For First time, Wind and Solar Power Generation exceeds Fossil Fuels https://www.juancole.com/2024/11/germany-generation-exceeds.html Thu, 07 Nov 2024 05:15:06 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=221397 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Ember energy analysis firm reports that for the first nine months of 2024, Germany generated more electricity from wind and solar than from fossil fuels for the first time in history. Wind and solar combined accounted for 45 percent of electricity.

All in all, 59% of German electricity, almost six tenths, has come from renewables this year, with hydro the main source aside from wind and solar. In 2023, renewables only accounted for 52% of Germany electricity, so there has been a substantial advance. Half of that advance came from new solar installations, Ember says.

An amazing 11 gigawatts of new solar capacity has been added this year. As of mid-summer, Germany had 92 gigawatts of installed solar capacity, exceeding its 2024 goal of 88 GW.

Through the end of July, fossil fuel electricity generation plummeted 14.5% from the same period in 2024, reaching the lowest levels on record. The consumption of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, fell by 39% through September of this year compared to the same months in 2023.

Germany’s carbon emissions dropped by 10% in 2023 compared to the previous year, and are expected to fall again this year. If all industrialized countries met Germany’s performance, the climate crisis would be less severe. Energy-related carbon emissions in the US. fell last year, but only by 3%.

The rapid advance of solar, Ember explains, is the result of government policy changes, including the reduction in bureaucracy and easier permitting and “simplified grid connection for small PV systems,” as well as better remuneration for consumers who sell their electricity back into the grid.


“German Solar,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Wind installations kept pace with those of the previous year, at 2.3 gigawatts. Wind-generated electricity was up 7% this year. Although wind’s progress was not as spectacular as that of solar, it still did make impressive advances, and there is a lot of capacity in the pipeline. Germany won’t quite meet its goals for total wind installations of 80 gigawatts this year, but those goals are the most ambitious in the European Union.

Winds have been anemic in the summer and fall, but are expected to pick up in the last two months of the year. Wind has had to be replaced with expensive fossil gas for the moment. Emissions will likely still fall, since electricity demand is lower. Wind plus battery will smooth out some of these fluctuations in the future.

There are also legal reasons for which wind will advance even more in future. Ember writes, “The German government has declared renewables to be in the overriding public interest, a privileged legal status which unlocks faster permitting and simplified procedures. Furthermore, German states are now required to allocate around 2% of their land for wind turbines.”

Ember doesn’t say so, but battery capacity is also rapidly increasing in Germany, where battery storage reached 9.9 gigawatts so far in 2024. Reuters reports that grid battery capacity in the country is up by 1/3 in 2024, an incredible advance. In the next two years, through the end of 2026, battery storage in Germany is set to increase five-fold, according to Clean Energy Wire. Battery storage allows solar energy to be captured during daylight and released at night.

CEW adds that “more than 80 percent of smaller photovoltaic rooftop systems are already being installed in combination with battery storage systems.” That combination is not nearly as common in the United States, but it should be.

Two big issues loom over Germany’s energy situation. One is the closure of the country’s nuclear plants at the insistence of the Green Party, which has been in government off and on (it is part of the present shaky coalition). Despite predictions of gloom and doom, the transition to wind, solar and battery has gone well.

Clean Energy Wire observes, “Decades of debates came to an end in April 2023, when Germany finally shuttered its last nuclear power plants after the energy crisis. One year on, predictions of supply risks, price hikes and dirty coal replacing carbon-free nuclear power have not materialised. Instead, Germany saw a record output of renewable power, the lowest use of coal in 60 years, falling energy prices across the board and a major drop in emissions.”

The other issue is the Ukraine War and Germany’s attempt to wean itself off Russian fossil gas. Germany cut its natural gas imports by nearly a third last year, and is pressing the EU to end imports of gas from Russia, still 20% of Europe’s usage. There isn’t any doubt that replacing both nuclear and fossil gas with wind, water, solar and battery is saving Germany money and allowing it energy independence from Russia.

In 2025, as Trump comes back into office, Americans should remember the cost savings offered by renewables, the environmental benefits of reducing carbon emissions and avoiding climate catastrophes, and the significance of energy independence for the US and its allies. Germany has overtaken Japan to become the world’s third largest economy.

]]>
In Six Years, Australia has doubled its Renewable Energy, and 36% of Households have Rooftop Solar https://www.juancole.com/2024/09/australia-renewable-households.html Fri, 06 Sep 2024 04:15:26 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=220423 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Australia’s Climate Council has issued a new report on clean energy in the country’s states.

Winter is ending in Australia, but it is worrisome that their August was among the hottest on record this year, presaging a hot dry summer to come, and raising the real risk of further massive bush fires of the sort that scorched the countryside and killed billions of animals in 2019-2020. The continent-country is highly vulnerable to climate change, with its two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, right on the sea and facing coastal erosion from sea level rise. It is unfortunate that so many Australian politicians and firms have found it so difficult to let go of coal and fossil gas. Although Australia is a relatively small country, the emissions of which are not all that consequential, it just sets a poor example for the rest of the world, especially for developing countries, if a very vulnerable country like Australia is a big coal user. How can it scold China and India for using so much coal, which really is consequential for the fate of the world, if Canberra is itself so irresponsible?

Although Australia has had a love affair with coal, the dirtiest and unhealthiest of the fossil fuels, even that addiction is beginning to subside. Less that 50% of the country’s electricity now comes from coal, an unprecedented development. Obviously, not all the states are as environmentally conscious and ambitious as South Australia.

Western Australia and the Northern Territory are particularly bad actors, actually expanding their use of coal and fossil gas.

Some other states have made great strides and have ambitious goals. South Australia has gone in big on solar energy and has largely dumped coal, and is employing batteries to store and use the solar energy when it is needed at night and at usage peaks during the day. The state wants to have all its electricity come from renewables by 2027, in only three years. And it is a highly plausible plan. Already, 70% of the electricity in South Australia comes from renewables, the best record of any large state by far, though the small Australian Capital Territory in which the capital of Canberra nestles has reached 100% renewable electricity generation and in Tasmania it is 98.2%. South Australia is lightly populated, but some of the more populous states are beginning to make strides as well.

In the country as a whole, there is good news. Since 2018, Australia has doubled the share of renewables in its electricity grid, and much of this increase in clean electricity has been spearheaded by states and territories rather than the federal government.

With a population of 26 million (a little bigger than Florida, a little smaller than Texas), Australia has about 10 million households. A full 3.6 million of them, about 36 percent, have rooftop solar installations. Half of all households in Queensland now have panels on their roofs.


“Outback Solar,” Digital, Dream /Dreamworld v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024.

In the US, a country 13 times the size of Australia, only 4.5 million households have rooftop solar. To be at the same level as Australia, we’d need 47 million households with rooftop solar. Given how sunny it is in the US south and southwest, it is crazy that we don’t have more, but conservative state legislatures in the back pocket of Big Carbon have often legislated obstacles. Australia’s homeowners clearly have managed to outmaneuver the Coal Lobby there. (We have solar panels and even in Michigan they much reduce our bill most of the year.)

The most populous Australia state, New South Wales, with over 8 million people, has made some strides in renewables. Some 35.6% of its electricity is from renewables, and 34% of its households have rooftop solar. 13% of its travel uses shared transportation, and there is an uptick in purchases of electric vehicles, though the absolute numbers remain small. NSW has banned offshore drilling and mining for fossil fuels.

South Australia, despite its thin population, is a technological leader in renewables. Not only do renewables supply 74.4% of electricity, but it has large battery projects that allow sunshine to be captured and used at night and at peak hours. The state hopes to phase out gas electricity plants in only a few years.

Batteries have also been key to California’s remarkable uptake of renewables.

Now Australia as a whole has six enormous battery projects in the pipeline.

At $1.7 trillion, Australia has the 13th largest GDP in the world. If the G20 states can get to carbon zero by 2050, that will solve the bulk of our climate worries, since all the carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution will be absorbed by the oceans over time. The temperature will immediately stop rising and will decline over time. If we go on spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere after 2050, however, we will outrun the capacity of the oceans to absorb them, and the world will get very hot, and the climate could go chaotic.

]]>
India outstrips Japan in Solar Energy https://www.juancole.com/2024/09/india-outstrips-energy.html Sun, 01 Sep 2024 04:15:22 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=220350 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The energy consultancy Ember reports that the growth in solar production in India was 5.9% in 2023, which outstripped the growth in solar in Japan last year. Japan is the fourth-largest economy in the world, and India is the fifth.

India was the world’s fastest-growing economy last year at 7.8%, and is expected to be the world’s third largest economy by 2030, behind the US and China.

As of June 2024, India’s total installed solar capacity was 87.2 gigawatts, and it added 15 gigawatts of solar in the first half of 2024, more than ever before in absolute terms in any 6-month period. But remember that the economy is growing quickly and electricity demand is also growing, so in relative terms solar’s growth this year isn’t that impressive.

Solar accounts for 57.7% of India’s renewable electricity generation, ahead of wind and hydro.

Japan’s solar installations are now slightly behind those of India. The proportion of electricity in Japan coming from wind and solar is 12%, however, whereas in India it is only 10%. The global average is 13%. As a hilly, densely populated country, Japan at least perceives itself to lack places to put big solar farms, and so it is turning to wind energy as its major renewable investment, including offshore wind.

India invested $68 billion in clean energy in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency, an increase of 40% over the average in the teens of this century.


“Brighter than a Thousand Suns,” Digital, Dream / Dreamworld v3/ Clip2Comic, 2024.

Although the spike in solar in India last year was welcome, however, it wasn’t nearly enough. Annual investment in green energy will need to rise by 120% by 2030 if India is to meet its own climate goals, which it is not on track to do. At the moment, the investment is on track only to double, i.e. to increase by 100%.

India is still investing in fossil fuels, including the deadly coal, in a big way, and its carbon dioxide emissions were up. Fossil fuels actually rose from 76% to 77% of India’s electricity last year, going in entirely the wrong direction.

As solar power rapidly falls in price, however, it may prove difficult for coal to compete with it, especially in a sunny country like India, so that renewables may take off in an unexpected way. That development will require India’s government, however, to stop backing coal (India is kind of like a big West Virginia when it comes to coal). Given India’s vulnerability to climate change, it would be better advised to be more ambitious in its renewables goals and to back them with a more robust industrial policy.

]]>
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s War on Rooftop Solar is a Bad Omen for the Country https://www.juancole.com/2024/08/california-newsoms-rooftop.html Wed, 14 Aug 2024 04:02:31 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=219971 ( Tomdispatch.com ) – California Governor Gavin Newsom appears to be taking climate change seriously, at least when he’s in front of a microphone and flashing cameras. His talk then is direct and tough. He repeatedly points out that the planet is in danger and appears ready to act. He’s been called a “climate-change crusader” and a leader of America’s clean energy revolution.

“[California is] meeting the moment head-on as the hots get hotter, the dries get drier, the wets get wetter, simultaneous droughts and rain bombs,” Newsom typically asserted in April 2024 during an event at Central Valley Farm, which is powered by solar panels and batteries. “We have to address these issues with a ferocity that is required of us.”

These are exactly the types of remarks many of us wish we had heard from so many other elected officials addressing the climate disaster this planet’s becoming, the culprits behind it, and how we might begin to fix it. True, Big Oil long covered up internal research about how devastating climate change would be while lying through its teeth as its officials and lobbyists worked fiercely against any kind of global-warming-directed fossil-fuel legislation. It’s also correct that the issue must be addressed immediately and forcefully. Yet, whatever Governor Newsom might say, he’s also played a role in launching a war on rooftop solar power and so kneecapping California just when it was making remarkable strides in that very area of development.

Consider California’s residential solar program (its “net-metering“), which the governor has all but dismantled. Believe it or not, in December 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted 5-0 to slash incentives for residents to place more solar power on their homes. Part of the boilerplate justification offered by the CPUC, Newsom, and the state’s utility companies was that payments to individuals whose houses produce such power were simply too high and badly impacted poor communities that had to deal with those rate increases. They’ve called this alleged problem a “cost-shift” from the wealthy to the poor. It matters not at all that the CPUC, which oversees consumer electric rates, has continually approved rate increases over the years. Solar was now to blame.

It’s true that property owners do place those solar power panels on their roofs. What is not true is that solar only benefits the well-to-do. A 2022 study by Lawrence Berkeley Labs showed that 60% of all solar users in California then were actually low- to middle-income residents. In addition, claiming that residential solar power is significantly responsible for driving the state’s electricity rates up just isn’t true either. Those rates have largely risen because of the eternal desire of California’s utility companies to turn a profit.

Here’s an example of how those rates work and why they’ve gone up. Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), whose downed power lines have been responsible for an estimated 30 major wildfires in California over the past six overheating years, was forced to pay $13.9 billion in settlement money for the damage done. The company has also been found guilty of 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter for deaths in the devastating 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County. In response to those horrific blazes and the damages they inflicted, the company claims it must now spend more than $5.9 billion to bury its aging infrastructure to avoid future wildfires in our tinder-box of a world. Watchdog groups suggest that it’s those investments that are raising electric bills across the state, not newly installed solar power.

In short, large utilities make their money by repairing and expanding the energy grid. Residential solar directly threatens that revenue stream because it doesn’t rely on an ever-expanding network of power stations and transmission lines. The electricity that residential solar power produces typically remains at the community level or, better yet, in the home itself, especially if coupled with local battery storage. Not surprisingly then, by 2018, 20 transmission lines had been canceled in California, mainly because so many homes were already producing solar power on their own rooftops, saving $2.6 billion in total consumer energy costs.

A recent Colorado-based Vibrant Clean Energy analysis confirmed the savings rooftop solar provides to ratepayers. Their report estimated that, by 2050, rooftop panels would save California ratepayers $120 billion. That would also save energy companies from spending far more money on the grid (but, of course, that’s the only way they turn a profit).

“What our model finds is that when you account for the costs associated with distribution grid infrastructure, distributed energy resources can produce a pathway that is lower cost for all ratepayers and emits fewer greenhouse gas emissions,” said Dr. Christopher Clack of Vibrant Clean Energy. “Our study shows this is true even as California looks to electrify other energy sectors like transportation.”

However, such lower costs also mean less profits for utility companies, so they have found an ingenious workaround. They could appease climate concerns while making a bundle of money by building large solar farms in the desert. In the process, nothing about how they generated revenue would change, energy costs would continue to rise, and little would stand in their way, not even a vulnerable forest of Joshua trees.

Solar Panels vs. the Joshua Tree

“Why Razing Joshua Trees for Solar Farms Isn’t Always Crazy,” a troubling Los Angeles Times headline read. Sammy Roth, an intrepid environmental reporter who has written insightfully and cogently on the way humanity is altering the climate, was nonetheless all in on uprooting thousands of Joshua trees in California’s Kern County to make space for that giant solar farm. The “Aratina Solar Project,” a sprawling 2,300-acre installation in the heart of the Mojave Desert, would transfer electricity to wealthy coastal areas, powering more than 180,000 homes. As Roth reported, “There are places to build solar projects besides pristine ecosystems. But there’s no get-out-of-climate-change-free card… Hence the need to accept killing some Joshua trees in the name of saving more Joshua trees. I feel kind of terrible saying that.

He should feel terrible. Roth believes that tearing up Joshua trees, already in great jeopardy due to our warming climate, is the price that must be paid to save ourselves from ourselves. But is sacrificing wild spaces — and, in this case, also threatening the habitat of the desert tortoise — truly worth it? Is this really the best solution we can come up with in our overheating world? There do appear to be better options, but they would also upend the status quo and put far less money in the pockets of utility shareholders.

Here’s how Californians could think outside the box or, in this case, on top of it. A single Walmart roof averages 180,000 square feet. In California, there are 309 Walmarts. That’s 55,620,000 square feet or 1,276 acres of rooftop. Home Depots? There are 247 of them in California and each of their roofs averages 104,000 square feet, totaling 25,668,000 square feet, or around 589 acres. Throw in 318 Target stores, averaging 125,000 square feet, and you have over 39,750,000 square feet or another 912 acres. Add all of those up and you have 2,777 acres of rooftops that could be turned into mini-solar farms.

In other words, just three big box stores in California cities ripe for solar power would provide more acreage than the 2,300-acre Joshua-tree-destroying solar installation in Kern County. And that doesn’t even include all the Costcos (129), Lowes (111), Amazon warehouses (100+), Ikeas (8), strip malls, schools, municipal buildings, parking lots, and so much more that would provide far better options.

You get the picture. The potential for solar in our built environment is indeed enormous. Throw in the more than 5.6 million single-family homes in California with no solar panels, and there’s just so much rooftop real estate that could generate electricity without wrecking entire ecosystems already facing a frighteningly hot future.

In 2014, it was estimated that solar power from California homes produced 2.2 gigawatts of energy. Ten years later, that potential is so much greater. As of summer 2024, the state has 1.9 million residential rooftop solar installations capable of churning out 16.7 gigawatts of power. It’s estimated that 1 gigawatt can conservatively power 750,000 homes. This means that the solar generation now installed on California’s roofs could theoretically, if stored, power 12,525,000 homes in a state with only 7.5 million of them. Already, in 2022, it’s believed that the state wasted nearly 2.3 million megawatt-hours worth of solar-produced electricity. 

And mind you, this isn’t just back-of-the-napkin math. A 2021 geospatial analysis of rooftop solar conducted by researchers at Ireland’s University of Cork and published in Nature confirmed what many experts have long believed: that the U.S. has enough usable rooftop space to supply the entire country’s energy demands and, with proper community-based storage, would be all we would need to fulfill our energy production demands — and then some! If properly deployed, the U.S. could produce 4.2 petawatt-hours per year of rooftop solar electricity, more than the country consumes today. (A petawatt-hour is a unit of energy equal to one trillion kilowatt-hours.) The report also noted that there are enough rooftops worldwide to potentially fully feed the world’s energy appetite.

If residential solar has succeeded exceptionally well and has so much possibility, why are we intent on destroying desert ecology with massive, industrial-scale solar farms? The answer in Gavin Newsom’s California has much more to do with politics and corporate avarice than with mitigating climate change.

Profit-Driven Utilities

Despite what Governor Newsom and the California Public Utilities Commission have claimed, electric rates have increased not because of solar power’s massive success but because of old-school capitalist greed.

“Rooftop solar has value in avoiding costs that utilities would have to pay to deliver that same kilowatt-hour of energy, such as investments in transmission lines and other grid infrastructure,” reports the solar-advocacy group, Solar Rights Alliance. “Rooftop solar also reduces the public health costs of fossil-fuel power plants and the costs to ratepayers of utility-caused wildfires and power shut-offs. Rooftop solar also provides quantifiable benefits through local economic development and jobs. It preserves land that would otherwise be used for large-scale solar development. When paired with batteries, rooftop solar helps build community resilience.”

Nonetheless, blaming rooftop solar for California’s increased electricity rates has been a painfully effective argument. So, here’s a question to consider: Why does it seem like Newsom is working on behalf of the utilities to limit small-scale rooftop solar? Could it be related to the $10 million Pacific Gas & Electric donated to his campaigns since he first ran for office in San Francisco in the late 1990s? Or could it be because key members of his cabinet are tight with PG&E executives? (Dana Williamson, his current chief of staff, was a former director of public affairs at PG&E.)

Then, consider the potential conflict of interest when the law firm O’Melveny & Myers, which previously worked for PG&E, was tasked by Newsom with drafting wildfire legislation to save the company from bankruptcy. PG&E would, in fact, end up hammering out a deal with CPUC to pass on the costs of the bailout, a staggering $11 billion, to ratepayers over a 30-year period.

It all worked out well for the company. In 2023, PG&E, which serves 16 million people, raked in $2.2 billion in profits, nearly a 25% jump from 2022.

“The coziness between Gavin Newsom and [PG&E] is unlike anything we’ve seen in California politics… Their motive is profit, which is driven by Wall Street,” says Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of California Solar & Storage Association, who has over a decade of experience monitoring the industry. “[The utility companies] have to keep posting record profits, quarter after quarter. It’s a perversity that nobody is really thinking about.”

It’s pretty simple really. Growth means more money for California’s utilities, so they’ve gone all in on expansive and destructive solar farms. Ultimately, this means higher bills for consumers to cover the costs of a grid they are forced to rely on as home solar systems become increasingly expensive.

(More) Bad News for the Climate

Newsom’s war on rooftop solar has had another detrimental impact: it’s threatened the state’s clean energy goals. And the governor hasn’t said a word about that. The California Energy Commission estimates that, to meet its climate benchmarks, the state must add 20,000 megawatts of rooftop solar electricity by 2030. At this pace, they’ll be lucky to install 10,000 megawatts. With such a precipitous decline in home solar installations, the 20,000 megawatts goal will never be reached by that year, even when you include all large-scale solar developments now in the works.

The Coalition for Community Solar Access estimates that 81% of solar companies in the state fear they’ll have to close up shop. Bad news for the solar industry also means bad news not just for California, the nation’s leader in solar energy production, but for the climate more generally.

A rapid decline in new solar installations also means massive job losses, possibly 22% of the state’s solar gigs, or up to 17,000 workers. In addition to such bleak projections, disincentivizing rooftop solar will also hurt the Californians most impacted by warming temperatures and in need of relief — those who can’t afford to live along the state’s more temperate coast.

“Rooftop solar is not just the wealthy homeowners anymore,” State Senator Josh Becker, a San Mateo Democrat, recently told CalMatters. “Central Valley people are suffering from extreme heat. The industry has been making great strides in low-income communities. This [utilities commission decision] makes it harder.”

The slow death of new residential solar installations is likely to mean that most of California’s electricity will continue to be made by burning natural gas and sending more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere. All of this may also be a sign that rooftop solar across the country is in peril. Utility companies and those hoping to gut residential solar programs in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina are already humming Newsom’s “cost-shift” tune.

“They [the big utilities] know it’s a pivotal time,” Bernadette Del Chiaro tells me, with a sense of urgency and deep concern for what lies ahead. “They are fighting really hard, and they are fighting hardest in California because where California goes, there goes the nation.”

]]>
Over half of Turkey’s Electricity now comes from Renewables as it seeks to Escape Energy Dependence on Russia https://www.juancole.com/2024/07/electricity-renewables-dependence.html Sat, 20 Jul 2024 04:15:47 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=219549 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Turkiye is finally making strides toward a renewable grid. In the first half of 2024, according to the energy think tank Ember, over half (53%) of Turkiye’s electricity was generated by renewables.

In the first two quarters of the previous year, 2023, that figure was only 44%. Moreover, the percentage of electricity coming from wind, water, solar and batteries increased even though total electricity output grew by 7%.

Turkey has now overtaken Morocco as having the cleanest grid in the Middle East. In Morocco, about 40% of electricity comes from renewables. Turkiye, moreover, has a much bigger economy and has much more in the way of industry. Turkiye is in the G20, the twenty states with the largest gross domestic product.

Turkiye’s grid is still very dirty, and it burns more coal than do Poland or Germany, other big coal users in Europe. What is remarkable is that so far this year Turkish companies have cut coal’s share of the grid by 5%. Likewise, Turkiye purchased much less fossil gas this year, which is expensive in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the move to renewables reflects popular discontent with high Turkish electricity costs.

TRT World Video: “Türkiye ranks 11th in renewable energy in the world”

Renewables are cheaper. Turkiye saw a substantial increase in hydro-electric power this year, and both wind and solar surged as well.

In mid-June, the share of solar in Turkiye’s electricity reached about 16%

Turkiye plans to add 3.5 gigawatts of solar annually for the foreseeable future.

Likewise, Turkiye now has 12 gigawatts of wind power, accounting last year for 11% of its electricity generation capacity. Ankara plans, however, to add 28 gigawatts of wind power by 2035.

Turkey’s elite appears to have decided that the country’s energy dependence on Russia, from which it received the bulk of its petroleum, fossil gas and coal, is too dangerous and expensive.

]]>
Farmers turn to Solar Panels to shade Crops, Save Water and generate Power https://www.juancole.com/2024/07/farmers-panels-generate.html Sun, 14 Jul 2024 04:06:10 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=219516 By Amaia J. Gavica/Cronkite News

( Cronkite News ) – WASHINGTON – For 31 straight days last summer, temperatures in Phoenix hit or topped 110 degrees, the longest such streak ever. That searing Arizona heat dehydrates crops and evaporates water the state needs to conserve.

Creating shade is one way to combat the problem.

By using solar panels, farmers can simultaneously protect their plants, save water and lower their energy bills – and some are doing just that with help from federal programs designed to encourage this sustainable method of growing.

Photovoltaic panels are placed above the crops, harnessing the sun’s energy while providing valuable shade.

“The solar arrays … will help shade and help reduce our water use and improve our water-use efficiency, which is very important in places like New Mexico and Arizona,” said Derek Whitelock, supervisory agricultural engineer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Plants don’t need really as much sun as they get here in the West.”

Three-fourths of Arizona’s water supply goes to agricultural irrigation, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources. The Colorado River Basin is in a Tier 1 water shortage, requiring restrictions for agricultural users. As drought continues, farmers are searching for new sustainable methods of growing.

The University of Arizona, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has created an agrivoltaics research site to study the ways that solar farming could benefit Arizona.

”You are getting significant water savings,” said Greg Barron-Gafford, the UArizona professor leading the effort.

A study led by Barron-Gafford found that when irrigating every other day on an agrivoltaic plot, soil moisture remained 15% higher than on a nearby plot without solar panels.

Some plants actually produced more with less water. Cowpea beans, for example – also known as black-eyed peas – had a higher crop yield when grown in the shade of solar panels. Full sun required twice as much water, it turned out.

“Agrivoltaics actually helped us get even more bean production because now we were providing the shade, so they were less stressed,” Barron-Gafford said.

The nonprofit organization Growing Green built an agrivoltaic plot on Spaces of Opportunity, a 19-acre community farm in Phoenix.

Farmers work underneath solar array on Spaces of Opportunity’s agrivoltaic plot in Phoenix. (Photo courtesy of Sarah Bendok)

Farmers work underneath solar array on Spaces of Opportunity’s agrivoltaic plot in Phoenix. (Photo courtesy of Sarah Bendok)

Its small 4.8 kW system produces about 40% of the farm’s total energy needs, with a projected reduction of 17,000 lbs of carbon annually compared to conventional power generation, said Sarah Bendok, founder of Growing Green, and with more panels, “it can basically power everything on the farm. They have a cold storage where they put all of their produce that they want to store, the lights, the bathrooms, basically everything there.”

“It really feels great…to create a project that can benefit the community and the crops and the environment as a whole,” she said.

A number of federal programs are intended to promote sustainable growing methods, especially in tandem with renewable energy systems. The Rural Energy for America Program has sent $63 million to Arizona from 2018 to 2022.

REAP provides loans and grants to farmers who make clean energy investments. Funding comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Joe Biden in August 2022, a major tax overhaul that included incentives for clean energy and climate mitigation.

Among numerous other provisions, the IRA offers farmers a 30% tax credit for incorporating solar panels.

The Gila River Indian Community began installing solar panels above the Casa Blanca Canal earlier this year, with $5.65 million in federal funding. Nearly 3,000 feet of the canal will be covered, conserving water by reducing evaporation – and generating over 1.31 megawatts of green energy, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Via Cronkite News

Amaia J. Gavica(she/her/hers)

News Digital Reporter, Washington, D.C.

Amaia Gavica expects to graduate in December 2025 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication. Gavica aspires to be a war correspondent and is a youth soccer coach.

]]>