Antinuclear

No2 NuclearPower January 2016 “……….Something incredible is happening right now across the globe. Achieving 100% clean energy is becoming “the new normal” in the fight to solve climate change. What’s driving this trend is a flowering of ambition. Cities across the globe are demonstrating what it means to lead with ambition. In Paris at the Climate Summit for Local Leaders, the largest-ever global gathering of local leaders focused on climate change, 1,000 mayors issued a declaration which states: “We—the undersigned mayors, governors, premiers, and other local government leaders—commit collectively to support ambitious long-term climate goals such as a transition to 100% renewable energy in our communities.” ………

An organisation called Renewable Cities aims to triple over the next five years, the number of cities that have 100% renewable energy targets. (3)

The world could soon be generating all its electricity from renewable sources, writes Dave Elliott, by harnessing diverse technologies for generation, grid balancing and energy storage. Add to that the use of power surpluses to make fuels, and it could even be feasible to make all our energy – not just electricity – renewable. A clean green future beckons. Some renewables are now cheaper than conventional sources, even when the cost of providing backup to deal with their variability is included.

Can variability really be dealt with and at low cost? Actually we already do it. Grid systems already cope with quite large variations in supply and demand,  mainly by ramping the output of some power plants up and down. With renewables on the grid, they will have to do that a bit more often, reducing the cost and carbon savings from not using fossil fuel very slightly. We don’t have to build new plants for this extra back up – they already exist. As they age, new, better, ones will have to be built, for example flexible gas turbines using low net carbon biogas as a fuel, produced from farm and home wastes. (4)

As renewables begin to dominate we will need further balancing measures. Energy storage systems, including pumped (hydro reservoir) storage and advanced battery technologies can offer part of the solution, as can other newly developing storage options like liquid air storage. ……..http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclearnews/NuClearNewsNo81.pdf