The slow transition towards green tech isn't merely an issue that is born out of stubbornness and greed, it's just far more difficult to implement on a regional - nevermind global - scale than the loudest proponents tend to let on and I'm not even sure if they're aware of it given a lot of the hysterical rhetoric. By implement I don't mean in terms of government policy but the literal utilization. Peter Zeihan addressed this in his recent book.
Available greentechs just don’t cut it. There’s a profound mismatch between demand patterns for energy and what, when, and how much green systems can produce. It all comes down to the balance among the concepts of supply, demand, energy density, and reliability.
The vast majority of mankind’s carbon emissions come from two sources: oil-derived liquid transport fuels and the burning of fossil fuels for electricity production. This is how humanity has done things for good reason. These fuels are not simply relatively easy to source and reliable, but also anyone using them can choose when to use them because they are eminently easy to manipulate.
Production efforts can be ramped up and down as necessary. Above all, storage is simple. Gasoline, diesel, and propane can be kept almost indefinitely in a tank. Coal can literally be left in a pile on the ground. That’s not the case for greentech. A heavy list of factors limit its application.
Latitude. Any zones north of about 42 degrees north latitude — just above Chicago — (or south of 42 degrees south latitude) have too much seasonal variation to enable solar to generate appreciable power half the year. Solar can be brilliant in Phoenix or Santiago, but it is idiotic in Stockholm or Toronto.
Climate. Africa’s Gulf of Guinea region or southern China seem to have good solar potential — they are nowhere near 42 degrees north — until you realize that the regions’ often-rampant humidity creates a persistent solar-impinging haze and clouds, landing them with some of the world’s lowest solar radiation ratings.
Intermittency. Even in places with good solar potential, clouds, mist, dust and such often impair power generation on a minute-by-minute basis. Each time local generation proves insufficient, power surges and brownouts ripple across the electricity-distribution system as some areas get too much power and others not enough. Modifying the U.S. grid so it can handle the ebb and flow of a high-greentech-powered system would run a cool $750 billion. And that assumes there’s enough power coming in from somewhere.
In the case of larger-scale disruption — say an entire city being under cloud cover — another, more traditional source of power generation needs to be tapped to keep electricity flowing. And of course all throughout the history of humanity, the sun has never once shone at night — so you’ll be needing that backup for half the day on average even if everything else is perfect.
Supply/Demand mismatch. Peak daily demand for electricity is between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m., but peak solar supply lies between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. The lack of match-up means that even if nameplate solar generating capacity could handle all demand, the inability to generate power when it is needed forces utilities to operate carbon-burning power generation anyway. Since a coal plant takes 24 (or more) hours to ramp up or down, even large-scale greentech buildouts translate into only negligible reductions in net GHG emissions.
Strategic competition. The best places for solar on the planet are in the Saharan and Arabian Deserts and the Persian highlands. The best place for wind is Siberia. All areas where petroleum is king.
Density. Solar panels take up a great deal of space, particularly if they are not near the equator and must be slanted and separated to capture angled sunlight. Generating 150MW of power from a natural gas-burning facility in the Phoenix area only takes 17 acres of land. Once you take into effect things like panel spacing and angle, getting the same draw from solar would require almost five thousand — and that in the U.S. city with the highest solar potential.
Transmission. There certainly are places where the wind is more reliable (Western Iowa, the North Sea, Western Texas come to mind) or where solar radiation is reliably high (the American High Plains, Tibet and the Australian Outback). But this is not the norm. Only 10 to 20 percent of the Earth’s surface is ideal for either wind or solar power. Deepening the problem is that most of such areas have shockingly low population densities. Transmitting such green power to cities typically requires so much more infrastructure and related maintenance that transmission costs are triple more traditional carbon-based fuels.
Germany is the poster child for the limitations of a fast-paced buildout with today’s less-than-stellar greentechs. The country’s Energiewende program is designed to move the country fully away from carbon-based fuels by 2050, and as part of the program the country has installed some 40 gigawatts of solar-generating capacity, technically enough to generate nearly all its normal electricity requirements.
However, between Germany’s high latitude and persistent cloud cover, the sun rarely shines. All those panels generate but 6 percent of the country’s electricity. For public concern reasons the country is shutting down its nuclear power program, and for geopolitical reasons the country is sidelining its natgas-burning power plants. That only leaves wind (which limited by siting concerns is pretty much maxed out already) … and coal.
