Firstly, I certainly don't wish to demonise PV - a technology that I'm delighted we're adopting rapidly. Secondly, there are two issues with the uptake of wind, which I don't think allow it to rank alongside PV as a paradigm-shifting technology.
a) is the issue of capacity. Only a fraction of the total energy flux onto the earth ends up as usable wind energy. By contrast, solar allows you to go back to the source, and tap into that. b) solar energy (I'm led to believe), is on a "Moore's law" cost curve at present, where there is a predictable, medium term drop in costs. I'm not sure the same is true for wind, which has AFAIK had less precipitous drops in price. a + b, taken together, mean that ultimately the generation change in energy systems will likely be made by the forthcoming PV revolution, rather than by wind. From a geoengineering point of view, this allows us to track and state when we might be required to pick up the baton from the existing aerosol loading, in order to deal with the 'termination shock' of unmasked warming. I appreciate that the issue of SLCFs has not been fully resolved, as per Mark's earlier email on the subject. Notwithstanding, let's look to make a working prediction, if possible. My starting guess is this: - we should have a deployment-ready solution on standby before 2030 If I'm wrong, please tell me why. A On 23 August 2014 20:06, Greg Rau <[email protected]> wrote: > Why is PV the only villain here? I thought wind energy is supplanting coal > more quickly than PV, not to mention inroads made by "clean" natural gas. > Greg > > ________________________________ > From: Andrew Lockley <[email protected]> > To: geoengineering <[email protected]> > Sent: Saturday, August 23, 2014 3:06 AM > Subject: [geo] The scary tipping point nobody talks about here > > A personal view : > Solar costs are falling precipitously. And this makes geoengineering more > urgent, not less. To quote from the article linked below > "Citigroup said solar already competes in the growing regions of the world > on "pure economics" without subsidies. It has reached grid parity with > residential electricity prices in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Australia > and the US southwest. Japan will cross this year, Korea in 2018. It forecast > that even Britain will achieve grid parity by 2020, a remarkable thought for > this wet isle at 51 or 52 degrees latitude." > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/11046842/Oil-industry-on-borrowed-time-as-switch-to-gas-and-solar-accelerates.html > Solar power is not only cheap, it's available everywhere (if not everywhen). > After years of fruitless negotiations, we're about to see technology hand > decarbonisation to us on a plate. > When the transition comes, it will be frighteningly fast. I suggest that > we'll see large scale grid decarbonisation within a decade of the crossover, > and this will take vehicles with it. Only winter heat and air travel will be > stubbornly resistant, as EV batteries buffer demand through the day. > Herein lies a problem. The tropospheric aerosols are going to go away, and > fast. They're shielding us from a substantial fraction of present warming. > We have until around 2030 to decide what to do about this. Nothing anyone > can say or do will defer this day of reckoning. We'll need to be deployed on > adapted by then, and I don't think adaptation will happen. > What's your view? > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "geoengineering" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
