Electricity: Renewables vs Fossil Fuels
Everywhere we look, we hear the news about new wind and solar power plants being built at higher capacity. What is the consequence of building these power plants? Using the real world data over last 20 years, we can examine how the increasing contribution from wind and solar has resulted in increasing capacity of power plants. What we observe, world wide, is that wind and solar only operate about 20 % of the time. Because we have to accept the electricity generated by wind and solar when it is generated, the % of times fossil fuel power plants are run is also reduced. As a result, we are increasing the capacity (and hence capital cost investment) of power plants at much faster rate than the rate at which our consumption is increasing. As more and more electricity is generated by wind and solar, bigger is the investment in capital cost required. It is fair to ask: would it be reasonable to ask very poor countries (about 1.5 billion people) who do not have access to any electricity to build wind and solar power plants at excessively higher capital costs with no guarantee of reliability, or build fossil fuel power plants which can be built at lower capital costs and can provide reliable electricity?
#Electricty; #renewables: # fossilfuels: #energyjustice; #climatechange; #poorcountries