THE PROBABILITY of having an electric grid running on renewable power in the coming decades is becoming clearer after many countries and regions are already at or close to 100 percent now.
Citing a data compiled by the United States Energy Information Administration, thinkprogress.org says that there are seven countries already at, or very near 100-percent renewable power: Iceland (100-percent), Paraguay (100), Costa Rica (99), Norway (98.5), Austria (80), Brazil (75), and Denmark (69.4).
The main renewables in these countries are hydropower, wind, geothermal, and solar.
A new international study, which debunks many myths about renewable energy notes that many large population regions are “at or above 100-percent” including Germany’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Hostein regions, New Zealand’s South Island, and Denmark’s Samsø island.
In Canada, both Quebec and British Columbia are at nearly 100-percent renewable power.
Lately, China’s State-run Xinhua News Agency reported that “Qinghai Province has just run for seven straight days entirely on renewable energy.
It said this was part of a test by the country’s State Grid Corporation to show a post-fossil-fuel future was practical.
On the other hand, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) projected that by 2040, Germany’s grid will see nearly 75 percent renewable penetration, Mexico will be over 80 percent, and Brazil and Italy will be over 95 percent.
BNEF was not looking at what could theoretically happen by mid-century if countries pushed as hard as required by the Paris Climate Accord.
They were just looking at business as usual over the next two decades.
Another study found that “Indonesia has far more than enough pumped hydro storage sites to support a 100-percent renewable electricity grid.”
Storage is one of the most straightforward ways to integrate wind and solar power into the grid, to account for the times when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine.
Pumped hydro is by far the most widely used electricity storage system in the world.
Water is pumped from a reservoir at a lower level to one at a higher level when there is excess electricity or when electricity can be generated at a low cost.
Then, during a period of high electricity demand, water in the upper reservoir is run through the hydroelectric plant’s turbines to produce electricity for immediate sale.
In the International Energy Agency’s 2012 Technology Roadmap: Hydropower, “Pumped storage hydropower capacities would be multiplied by a factor of 3 to 5,” by 2050.
The US Department of Energy projected that “domestic hydropower could grow from 101 gigawatts to nearly 150 gigawatts of combined electricity generation and storage capacity by 2050.”
In 2016, NOAA researchers concluded that just with “improvements in transmission infrastructure” using existing technology, “the United States could slash greenhouse gas emissions from power production by up to 78 percent below 1990 levels within 15 years while meeting increased demand.”
In the coming years, emerging and existing technology will work together to bring deeper and deeper penetration of carbon free power into the grid.
The only question is no longer “if” but “when.” (jaypeeyap@ymail.com/PN)
