Alternative energy doesn’t mean what it used to
Coal and nuclear are alternative, wind and solar are mainstream
Alternate energy has typically been used to categorize and ghettoize non-fossil, -hydro and -nuclear generation technologies. It’s a legacy term deployed by legacy generation technologies, some of which are now obviously technologies which should be sunset as soon as possible, especially thermal coal generation.
‘Alternate energy’ should be reserved for technologies which are unproven, are proven to have larger consequences than the value that they bring or cost so much that they can only be commissioned or maintained for strategic grid diversification purposes. Unproven technologies would include tidal generation, wave generation and fusion power as three examples. Technologies proven to be more damaging than the value that they bring are coal-, oil- and diesel-generation, although coal is the biggest problem generation source by far. Nuclear is too expensive to build anew and often challenging to maintain on the grid even when it has been in operation for decades.
Wind energy is now regularly supplying high levels of predictable electricity to grids around the world. Utility-scale generation capacity is in excess of 500 GW, well over nuclear’s global 350 GW capacity although with slightly less than half the capacity factor on average. It exceeded 16% of demand in Germany in 2017. It provided 43.6% of Denmark’s total annual demand in the same year, 33.7% of demand in Spain and regularly exceeds 25% of demand in territories such as Texas and South Australia.
That’s not an ‘alternate energy’ source, that’s a mainstream and viable source of generation.
There are similar things to be said about solar.
Global capacity reached 227 GW in 2017, with a capacity factor a bit more than half of wind energy. An energy auction in Alberta saw utility-scale 20 year solar bids at 2–3 cents USD per KWH. Per Lazard, it’s now cheaper than natural gas and the only thing less expensive than solar right now is onshore wind energy.
Solar isn’t an ‘alternate energy’ source anymore either.
The US Department of Energy’s Vision projects 35% of demand met by wind energy by 2050, and in the same range for solar. NREL outlooks show wind energy being the cheapest source of new generation without any tax breaks or preferential treatment against natural gas which still has favorable permanent tax code treatment by 2025. That’s inclusive of new grid connections and the minor amount of ancillary services which will be about 1 cent per KWh.
Wind generation using modern and constantly improving horizontal axis wind turbines will be the primary source of new generation for the next couple of decades, with solar catching up fast. They are here, they are viable and they are not ‘alternate’.
New coal and nuclear generation, meanwhile, costs 2–6 times what new wind and solar generation do. Coal generation of electricity started fall off of a cliff three years ago, with a global peak of 46,591 TWH of generation in 2013 and 42,524 in 2016, a drop of almost 9%. In the USA, existing nuclear reactors are being shut down ahead of schedule simply because they can’t compete with cheap electricity from renewables and gas. And globally, new nuclear plants are over budget by billions, over schedule by years and construction is often being halted. China, which saw a blip of commissioning of nuclear in 2015 and 2016 has put the brakes on new nuclear plants while accelerating wind and solar.
The next time someone refers to alternative energy, ask “Ah, coal and nuclear generation. What about them?”
