Renewables — The line between positivity and dangerous deception
All of us lie. At a minimum, we relentlessly focus on the positives even if the positives are a very small part of a larger picture. In many situations, it could be the right thing to do. For example, when my Yoga teachers focus on what I did right in an aasan rather than point out how much more I need to do, I believe that they are doing the right thing. Celebrating small wins are the best ways to keep someone like me motivated over long periods of time. However, this strategy can be taken too far. Especially in areas of public policy. Especially when commentators don’t just celebrate small wins but hugely embellish those same wins and shut down contrary voices. Also, these tiny wins may not be replicable and may be coming at enormous costs.
This has definitely happened in case of Climate Change mitigation efforts. Commentators routinely report ‘success stories’ from around the world and when you dig deeper, you realize that these stories are seriously misleading at best and outright lies at worst. I describe three types of ‘sleight of hand’ in this short piece.
It is not what you think
We have all seen headlines such as “Renewables account for 83.64% of the power generated in Brazil in 1h 2023” . These headlines are accompanied by pictures of solar panels or windmills as in the article above. Many of us would assume that the Renewables category is made up mainly of Solar and Wind. We would be wrong.
In addition to Wind and Solar (W/S) the classification Renewables usually includes Hydropower, Geothermal and Biomass (HGB). There is a huge difference between W/S and HGB. Wind and Solar plants generate electricity when the wind is blowing and when the sun is shining. HGB power plants generate electricity when consumers of electricity need it. This is important because electricity is extremely costly to store, especially for a long period of time. The Variability in generation from W/S is very significant. Hence, two types of plants are called Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) plants. Any modern society — a society which needs assured 24/7 electricity supply — would backup the VRE plants with more reliable plants including HGB plants. Additionally, VRE plants need higher transmission investments per unit of electricity generated. They also cause power quality problems. This means that extra investments need to be made in the grid whenever it has VRE generators and this makes electricity costly.
In its excellent paper Electravision*, JP Morgan has listed 62 countries with a share of renewables over 60%. There are “Just a few: Namibia, Uruguay, Denmark, Lithuania and Portugal where wind and solar provide at least 30% of electricity generation.”
In all the above countries — including the two large ones, Brazil and Canada — the bulk of renewable electricity comes from Hydro power plants and from Biomass. Hydro power generation is indeed renewable. However, unlike W/S, it is dispatchable. That is, it would generate electricity when we need it. Moreover, new hydropower capacity additions are very low all over the world (outside China). This is because of concerns of local communities and those related to the environment. Most other countries in the world cannot learn much from the experience of these 62 countries because they are not in a position to grow their hydropower capacity.
We should also be careful of what ‘Biomass’ could mean. The general perception is that Biomass plants generate electricity from some kind of waste such as household waste or crop husk. However, what is included in this category could surprise you. Let’s take a quick look.
Denmark and Biomass — It is definitely not what you think
This is the energy consumption mix in Denmark as per the International Energy Agency. (Note that in this section we are talking about total energy mix and not just electricity).
It is worthwhile to look deeper in the Biofuel and waste part of the energy consumption. As per a report from the Danish Energy Agency
“In 2018, wood accounted for 75% of solid biomass, while biodegradable waste and straw accounted for 13% and 12%, respectively. More than half of woody biomass used in Denmark is imported from abroad.”
There is a lot of analysis on whether this woody biomass is ‘green’ or not. Governments conclude that some of it is. However, for our purposes it is necessary to know that a lot of this imported wood is from cut down forests. Something that may not be apparent to us when we hear the term biomass or renewables.
I first came to know of this complex issue from this tweet thread.
Sensational as this is, there is perhaps a bigger reason to not to be too enthusiastic about success stories about renewables in countries like Denmark. These countries are just too small.
Too small to matter
The population of Denmark is slightly less than 6 million. To put it in perspective, this is less than the population of Chennai city and less than half the population of Chennai Metro area. The small population is also a feature of all the 62 countries which get more than 60% of their electricity from renewables as can be seen from the table in Electravision share above. Eswatani, which was number one in that table for example, has a population of 1.2 Million. As a comparison, that is less than the population of Andheri (East and West together), a suburb of Mumbai.
The comparison of the populations of countries that have a more than 30% contribution from VRE with the large countries is instructive. From Electravision again,
As can be seen, the five countries are tiny compared to the big energy consumers of the world. Furthermore, Namibia and Uruguay also have a very low economic complexity. That means that the per capita consumption of electricity in those countries is very low.
Because of their small size, these countries can rely on their neighbors for electricity supply when their own VRE power generators are not working. So, Denmark can import electricity from its neighbors when the wind stops blowing. Large countries do not have this luxury. Electravision has called such small countries PUNIs. The acronym “PUNI” refers to Panama, Uganda, Norway and Iceland, prime examples of this phenomenon.
Additionally, the geographical features of some countries make them very suitable for renewable generation. Other countries do not have this luxury.
Too unique to replicate
Can countries replicate the success of Canada and Brazil? Most other countries do not have the requisite geographical characteristics to generate hydroelectricity (Large quantities of water falling from a great height). Even if they did, it has become too difficult to create hydro capacity in most parts of the world. Concerns about environment and local population displacement means that it is very difficult to create new hydro capacity. This is perhaps the reason that “global hydropower generation is only growing at ~1% per year when excluding China”.
Summary and why does it matter?
As many as 62 countries get a very high share of their electricity from renewable sources. This is commendable and possibly there is something to learn from their experience. However the learning would be meaningful only if we accept the positives as well as their uniqueness. If we realize that most of this renewable electricity is not Wind and Solar. Also that most of these countries are tiny and possibly economically underdeveloped. Finally, these countries are also geographically unique.
So the media “embellishes the truth” a bit. What is the harm in that, you ask? By focusing on the positives aren’t the commentators being like my Yoga teacher? The answer is that there is a line between being positive and being dangerously deceptive. My Yoga teachers do not show me videos of what seven year olds are able to do and expect me to do it immediately. They don’t show me videos of Olympic gymnasts and expect me to copy them. They do not show me Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated videos of middle aged men performing miracles and expect me to copy them. They know that if they did this, they would cross the line between positivity and dangerous deception.
When we hear stories of Denmark or Eswaitni and expect that immensely larger and more complex societies like India can blindly ape them, we set ourselves up for failure. This failure could be catastrophic because VRE can make electricity very expensive and unreliable. Costly and unreliable electricity has a direct impact on job creation and development.
We need to be very skeptical when we see climate change related stories. Not be misled by headlines. We would do well to take this advice from Electravision,
“If you come across an article on any of the PUNIs, you can probably just skip it.”
* I have relied a lot on Electravision for this article. PUNIs is a very small portion of this paper. It is an excellent resource if you want to understand energy. I cannot recommend it enough.
This story is part of a series called ‘Electricity deep dive’. In the coming weeks, we will be diving deep in many of the issues discussed above.
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