This posts collates, summarises and illustrates the performance characteristics of the different power generation technologies in a unified visual format.

Considerations in this post

This post considers the following power generation technologies:

• Onshore Wind
• Offshore Wind
• Solar PV on grid
• Gas-fired CCGT
• Advanced Nuclear
• Biomass
• Coal / Lignite
• Hydro + Pumped.

This post provides illustrated comparisons between these power generation technologies from the following points of view:

• Energy Return on Energy Investment, ERoEI ratio
• Achieved productivity / capacity percentages
  • Mass of installations required for a comparable power output: tonnes / GW
  • Non-fuel CO2 emissions embedded in various generation technologies:  tonnes / GW
  • CO2 emissions from Fossil fuels
  • Land Usage for comparable power output:  sqkm / GW
  • Estimated construction times for power generators
  • Approximate service life of generation installations
• Cost effectiveness comparisons between generation technologies:  $bn / GW
• Excess expenditures on Weather-Dependent Renewables in Europe:  $bn / GW

Energy Return on Energy Invested:  ERoEI ratio

The abundance of available energy is the source of Man-kind’s advancement in wellbeing for the last 200 years, the greater the excess the better.  Any power generation technology must return more energy to the system than it takes for its implementation, installation and maintenance and then a great deal more to be truly viable.  ERoEI is the ratio of the Energy output over Energy expanded to create and maintain the generation technology.

It is generally accepted that any ERoEI ratio for a particular generation technology less than 7 is an insufficient excess of available to maintain the minimum wellbeing of Mankind.  The greater the ERoEI ratio value above the economic threshold of 7 the better for the provision of abundant useful Energy.

Thus with low EROI ratios, all Weather-Dependent “Renewable” generation and Biomass are parasitic on other sources of power for their manufacture, installation and maintenance.  As they are increasingly imposed by Government mandate upon functioning power grids they both increase power generation costs by the duplication of installations and the likelihood of Grid failure.  It would not be possible to re-build a wind farm or a solar park using only Wind and Solar power.

https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2020/06/Constable-Brink-of-Darkness.pdf

https://www.thegwpf.com/britain-saved-by-coal-at-huge-cost/

https://www.netzerowatch.com/content/uploads/2023/09/Renewables-Increase-Electricity-Bills.pdf?mc_cid=6e29dd563a&mc_eid=87854dddc5

Without accounting for storage to cover the unreliability and intermittency of Wind power both Onshore and Offshore may on occasions exceed the economic threshold, (ERoEI = >7).  Because of their unreliability an non-dispatchability Weather-Dependent “Renewables” with a European combined productivity / capacity factor in the region of ~<20%  are still ineffective when compared with 24/7 Conventional generation technologies with productivities in the region of 90% with 24/7 availability.

ERoEI for Beginners 

This podcast sets out very clearly, from min 30 onwards, the effect of the inefficiency and the lack of excess Energy generation resulting from any attempt to move backwards in history to a total dependence on Weather-Dependent “Renewables”.  The attempt to exploit Weather-Dependent “Renewables” returns the Energy generation effectiveness back to the times 1650 before the use of coal was discovered.  After the discovery of the use of Fossil fuels, that excess availability of Energy has powered all of Man-kind’s development in the last 200 years and has provided the massive Global increase in Mankind’s well-being.  The excess energy generated by Nuclear power vastly exceeds even the use of fossil fuels.

The ERoEI figure shown above assumes that no energy storage is provided.  Pumped Storage is the least costly form of Energy storage at scale.  However the potential for Pumped Storage is severely limited by capital costs and local geomorphology.  Any other form of battery storage can only ever be for the very short term and is even more limited by its excessive costs.

When the costs of energy storage are included in the ERoEI ratio calculations, all Weather-Dependent “Renewables” and the exploitation of Biomass fall well below the threshold of Energy and economic viability.

Generally Conventional generators have no need to consider costly energy storage:  their back-up energy storage, (batteries etc),  is already built-in with their stockpiles of fuel on site or in local gas tanks immediately available.

Note:  1 kilogram of Coal contains ~40 times more energy than 1 kilogram of a charged Tesla powerwall battery, which costs ~330 times more/kilogram.  In other words a stockpile of Coal on site is ~13,000 times more cost effective for energy storage than the most advanced batteries.

In effect these ERoEI results indicate that, even if cost effective storage were available, neither Weather-Dependent generators nor imported Biomass can ever produce sufficient useful excess power essential to support developed civilisation.

All Weather-Dependent “Renewables” generation and Biomass are parasitic on other sources of power for their manufacture, installation and maintenance.  As they are increasingly imposed by Government mandate upon a functioning power grid, they increase the likelihood of Grid failure.

Without accounting for storage to cover the unreliability and intermittency of Wind power both Onshore and Offshore may exceed the economic threshold, (ERoEI ~7), on occasions but because of their unreliability an non-dispatchability they are still wastefully ineffective when compared with Conventional 24/7 generation technologies.

In a rational world, the ERoEI consideration alone should write off any consideration of Weather-Dependent “Renewables” in the generation mix for a developed economy.

Comparative measures

Mass of materials for power generation installations per unit of power output

The weight of the material involved in the installation of generation technologies gives an idea of the necessary scale of engineering enterprise they require.  The bulk of the materials involved are mainly concrete and steel but with significant and growing requirement for rarer and more costly elements leading to massive demands on rare earth mining.

CO2 emissions embedded in generation technologies per unit of power output

These comparisons give an indication of the CO2 emissions “problem” that the various power generation technologies impose.

• Onshore Wind:  the embedded CO2 involved is accounted for by their heavy but essential concrete foundations and access roads.
• Offshore Wind:  does not require massive foundation but much more steel is involved.
• Solar PV on grid:  the high CO2 emissions arise from its low productivity, (~11%), its diurnal and seasonal intermittency, the excessive CO2 emissions from its large scale Silicon chip manufacture (mainly using Coal firing power generation in China) and the CO2 costs of the extensive distributed support structures, mostly concrete and aluminium.
• Gas-fired CCGT:  the embedded CO2 emissions for Natural Gas power generation are minor in comparison even with other conventional generation technologies.
• Biomass when imported involves processing and port facilities at each end of the supply chain.
• Advanced Nuclear:  involves much larger quantities of engineering materials than for conventional fossil fuel generation.
• Coal / Lignite:  installation of Coal-fired power is comparatively modest but not as compact as Gas-firing.
• Hydro + Pumped:  involves massive civil engineering works with large quantities of mainly concrete for dams.

CO2 emissions from Fossil fuels

This diagram shows the nominal comparative CO2 emissions for fossil fuel power generation technologies.

Coal-firing results in about twice the CO2 emissions of Gas-firing, this results from the longer chain Carbon molecules in Coal.

However importing Biomass is particularly self-defeating as its use involves more processes, often clear felling the woodland, harvesting, drying and pelletisation of the timber as well as the international transport involved.  Accordingly imported Biomass produces ~3.6 times the CO2 emissions of Gas-firing.

In the UK and Germany this misguided use of imported Biomass has entirely negated any and all CO2 emissions savings that may have been achieved by the use of all the other installed Weather-Dependent “Renewables”, Wind and Solar power.

Contradictory Biomass policies to limit CO2 emissions

Land Use requirements for Power installations

All conventional power generators and Biomass have modest land use requirements, a few square km / GW at the point of generation.

• Onshore Wind has space limitations:
  • wind turbines have spacing requirements so that their wind shadows do not conflict with each other and reduce their mutual efficiency.
  • local limitations as to the closeness of habitation.
  • Wind power also requires land area for access, installation and continuing maintenance.
  • when seeking optimum siting on ridge is visually intrusive and particularly damaging to birdlife.
  • Onshore Wind power also requires significant clearance of surrounding woodland otherwise interfering with local wind flow.
  • however he spacing requirement for Onshore wind can allow for other agricultural uses.
• Offshore wind:  has similar spacing requirements for efficiency and does cover very large areas at sea.  It is now clear that the sonar effects of Offshore wind installations interfere massively with sea life, particularly whales and other sea mammals.  Only the scale of Onshore support installations are considered here.
• Solar PV:  entirely negates any secondary land use, as its land coverage is total.  Installation of Solar farms means the loss of valuable agricultural land.  As Solar power is dilute and intermittent it would require loss of very large areas, often productive agricultural land.  An area ~18 km x ~18km would be needed to intermittently produce the equivalent power contribution of 1GW to the Grid.
• Conventional generators:  only require comparative small land footprints
• Overseas Biomass:  destroys extensive forest resources overseas and requires installations at source for processing harvested timber,drying, pelletisation and transport terminals.  The generation plant shown here is essentially the same as for Coal firing.
• Hydro power:  the lake area necessary to support a 1Gigawatt generator is about 230 sqkm.  But that lake area is available for other usage such as water storage and recreation.

https://www.nei.org/news/2022/nuclear-brings-more-electricity-with-less-land

Estimated construction times for power generators

Onshore Wind and Solar power are comparatively quick to install.  It is to be hoped that eventually factory built  Small Modular Reactors SMRs will be relatively quick to install.

Approximate service life of generation installations

Weather-Dependent “Renewables” have comparatively short service lives and they would require full capital replacement a few times over to be able to compete with Conventional generation technologies.  As they fail progressively Weather-Dependent “Renewables”will pose ever greater toxic pollution problems.  There will be little possibility of recycling recovery of the scarce elements embedded in their manufacture.  It appears that the wind power industry is having significant profitability problems because of onerous performance guarantees and much higher failure rates than anticipated.  This particularly applies to Offshore wind power because of the adverse maritime environment.

Comparative costs of Generation technologies

The US  EIA provides a table giving indications of comparative power generation costs by technology.  US$ are used through these analyses for comparative purposes.  The interpretation of the US  EIA data results in the following abbreviated table:

A Comparative Cost Model for Power Generation Technologies 2023

The use of Gas-firing to provide the same level of power to the Grid is generally much cheaper the any Weather-Dependent generation or Biomass.  In capital cost terms Solar power is apparently only marginally dearer than Gas-firing for the equivalent Nameplate capacity, whereas Onshore wind power is only about twice the cost to install.

The comparative bare overnight capital costs for the nominal size of installations from US  EIA data is as follows.  On the basis of initial capital costs and long term costs Onshore Wind power and Grid scale solar power seem to be cost comparable with Gas-firing.  Offshore Wind Power appears to be competitive with Nuclear generation.

The long-term 40 year combined capital and running costs are as follows.  These costs assume that for the 40 years there is an uplift in gas fuel prices of +50% when compared with the USA.

The charts above take no account of the productivity of each generation technology.  The comparison between actual measured productivity of conventional generation technologies and Weather-Dependent “Renewables” becomes clearer.  Imposing the actual productivity values on Weather-Dependent “Renewables” shows starkly shows the real comparative cost of delivery of a unit of power to the Grid.   The average European productivity values over the last decade are shown below

However, once the productivity factor is included the comparative costs of delivering a unit of power to the grid changes radically.  The graphic below shows how that affects comparisons for the capital expenditures.  The comparative long-term costs are shown below.  These costs show the actual comparative cost of delivering a unit of power to the European Grid.   These calculations deliberately omit any Government mandated subsidies or contractual support for “Renewable” technologies and also the costs involved in standby backup support needed as well as the connection and power loss costs of installing power generators remote from their customers.  Capital cost terms Onshore Wind power

It is only when their actual productivity contributing power to the grid that true cost comparisons of the power supplied to the Grid can be made: these are summarised below.  Taking into account productivity the installation of:

• Onshore Wind power is ~5 – 6 times the cost of Gas-firing to deliver a unit of power to the Grid.
• Offshore Wind power is ~18 – 22 times the cost of Gas-firing to deliver a unit of power to the Grid.
• Solar power is about ~10 – 11 times the cost of Gas-firing to deliver a unit of power to the Grid.

But even when the variable and fuel costs are increased 1.5 fold, the long-term costs of Weather-Dependent “Renewables” still exceed the running costs of a conventional power generation fleet.  2023 data shows the comparative costs and over expenditure on “Renewables” across E Europe and the UK.

Cost comparisons with conventional means of CO2 emissions reduction

The two main means of actually reducing CO2 emissions from Power generation are replacing Coal-firing by Gas-firing, (~30% reduction in CO2 emissions in the USA since 2000), and by the use of Nuclear power.  An estimate of the scale of the excess costs over using Gas-firing in stead of Weather-Dependent “Renewables” incurred across Europe is shown below.  This summarises the adverse fiscal achievement of the Green movements across Europe which have managed to block Fracking for indigenously available Natural Gas and that have impeded the use of Nuclear power by excessive regulation.

Any assertion that Weather-Dependent “Renewables” are reaching cost parity with conventional power generation to supply a unit of power to the Grid is patently false.

These comparative values show how the irrational political obsession with nominally reducing CO2 emissions, (UK at ~1% – Europe ~10% of Global CO2 emissions), increases both the costs and reliability of power generation for any Nation attempting Climate mitigation measures with Wind and Solar power.  The use of Weather-Dependent “Renewables” actually represents the Government mandated regression to the Energy production efficiency prior to the use of fossil fuels and the concomitant benefits to the well-being of Mankind.

Using the US EIA based calculation, the installed European fleet of ~518 GW Weather-Dependent “Renewables” had a capital cost of ~920 $billion.  If a 920 $billion investment had been made in Conventional Gas-fired power generation those installations would have been sufficient to replace the whole of the generation capability of Europe with reliable 24/7 Conventional power.  Instead the obsession with Green thinking at a productivity percentage of less than ~20% has actually only contributed the equivalent of ~91 GW (~17%) of power input to the European Grid.

Even at the current inflated prices for Natural Gas in Europe this still imposed excess costs on power generation of about 1.4 $ trillion in the 40 year long-term.  Those excess costs would still be ~ 500 $ million, if those power supplies were provided by Nuclear installations.

This a measure of the adverse fiscal success of the campaigns to ban Fracking for Natural Gas in Europe.  This result should be considered to be the outcome of the continuing Cold War against Western capitalism.

 

Conclusions

These points can be summarised as follows:

• In terms of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (ERoEI) terms, Solar PV power and Biomass can never generate sufficient excess power to support developed society.  As such they can only ever be a parasitic drain on the energy resources of any Nation opting by policy to use them.
• On occasions Wind power both Onshore and Offshore might generate some small  excesses power for society in ERoEI terms.  But as they are non-dispatchable, variable, unreliable and intermittent, they require full duplication by other power generation technologies to maintain a consistent service for whenever they are unavailable.
• Over the decade 2011- 2021, the combined productivity of Weather-Dependent Renewables across Europe EU(27)+UK achieved just ~19%:   the productivity value across Europe fell to 17.5% in 2023 .
• Gas-firing, Nuclear power and a diminishing amount of Coal / Lignite generation with an attainable productivity in the region of 90% provides the essential power to maintain European society, whenever Weather-Dependent “Renewable” energy failed.
• measured in terms of their sheer mass:
  • Onshore Wind and Biomass require almost 20 times the scale of engineering installations than Gas-fired CCGT installations.
  • Onshore Wind power and Solar PV power results in Engineering installations about twice the size required by Nuclear power facilities.
  • Biomass requires about twice the size engineering installation as conventional Coal-firing.
• measured in terms of the non-fuel CO2 embedded in the technologies for their manufacture:
  • Wind power has ~10 times the embedded CO2 of Gas-fired CCGT installations.
  • Solar power requires ~25 times the embedded CO2 of Gas-fired CCGT installations, the bulk of this is associated with overseas chip fabrication
  • Biomass requires about twice the embedded CO2 of Coal / Lignite.

It is to be hoped that the development of Small Modular Reactors, (SMR), using current Nuclear fission technologies will in due course mean that Nuclear power can become much cheaper to install and more widely employed.  Fission power as a power source will become increasingly important, if Fossil fuels eventually become progressively depleted.  Thereafter, Fusion power with nil concern for Nuclear waste might finally become viable:  It seems that Fusion power will remain  costly and difficult to introduce widely.  The possibility of its success in due course should in no impede any development efforts for fission atomic power.

However, Fossil Fuel resources, if not maligned and negated by Climate Change alarmism, would be able to provide effective power and power for the developing and Western worlds for several generations with Coal use at ever increasing levels.  It is only irrational Green dogma that has negated the access to fossil fuels that have been the backbone of human development over the last two centuries.  This is particularly so as the further capability of CO2 ability to cause “catastrophic Global warming is already virtually exhausted at the current 420ppmv level.

Negligible future warming from: CO2 – CH4 – N2O

As conventional generation installations have become intermittently underused by Green policy, they have become unprofitable and thus either require Government subsidy support to maintain their operations so as to sustain Grid viability or otherwise may be subject to closure.  The sight of Government ministers celebrating the demolition of dispatchable conventional generators consistently working 24/7 at ~ 90% productivity, seems to be the short-sighted, mis-guided but intended consequence of the Energy policies of Western Governments.

As such those policies are rendering the power supplies in Western nations more and more vulnerable.  Making power generation ever more unreliable, poses an existential danger to Western societies.  The immediate damage from the danger of loss of power supplies for Western societies is far in excess of any possible risk from putative but irrelevant Man-made Global Warming perhaps far in the future.

Never forget:

Sun Tsu’s first art of war:

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

That is exactly what is happening as Western governments pursue self-harming Green Energy policies.  There is no better way to damage Western societies than by rendering their energy supplies unreliable and expensive.  So Green thinking can only be regarded as a continuation of the “Cold War” intended to erode the viability of the economies of the Western world.

Cui bono  Who Benefits ?

and

The late Professor David MacKay:

“the dependence on Weather-Dependent “Renewable Energy” to power a developed economy is an Appalling Delusion”.

There’s so much delusion and I think it’s so dangerous for humanity that people allow themselves to have these delusions that they’re willing to not think carefully about the numbers, the realities, and the laws of physics and the realities of engineering… humanity really does need to pay attention to arithmetic, and the laws of physics.”

Arithmetic?  Laws of physics?  Engineering?  They are all lost on politicians, to our incalculable cost.