The Energy Storage Conundrum - Highlighted Article

From: The Global Warming Policy Foundation

By: Francis Menton

Date: December, 2022

THE ENERGY STORAGE CONUNDRUM

Introduction and Executive Summary

Advanced economies – including most of Europe, much of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others – have embarked upon a quest to ‘decarbonise’ their economies and achieve ‘Net Zero’ emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The Net Zero plans turn almost entirely on building large numbers of wind turbines and solar panels to replace generation facilities that use fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) to produce electricity. The idea is that, as enough wind turbines and solar panels are built, the former coal, oil, and gas-burning central stations can gradually be closed, leaving an emissions-free electricity system.

But wind and solar facilities provide only intermittent power, which must be fully backed up by something – fossil fuel generators, nuclear plants, batteries, or some other form of energy storage – so that customer demand can be matched at times of low wind and sun, thus keeping the grid from failing. The governments in question have then mostly or entirely ruled out fossil fuels and nuclear as the backup, leaving some form of storage as the main or only remaining option. They have then simply assumed that storage in some form will become available. Their consideration of how much storage will be needed, how it will work, and how much it will cost has been entirely inadequate.

Energy storage to back up a predominantly wind/solar generation system to achieve Net Zero is an enormous problem, and very likely an unsolvable one. At this time, there is no proven and costed energy storage solution that can take a wind/solar electricity generation system all the way to Net Zero emissions, or anything close to it. Governments are simply setting forth blindly, without any real idea of how or whether the system they mandate might ultimately work or how much it will cost. The truth is that, barring some sort of miracle, there is no possibility that any suitable storage technology will be feasible, let alone at affordable cost, in any timeframe relevant to the announced plans of the politicians, if ever.

This report seeks to shine a light on the critical aspects of the energy storage problem that governments have been willfully ignoring.

Section 1 shows that full backup is indispensable in an electricity grid powered mainly by intermittent generation. Without it, there would be frequent blackouts, if not grid collapse. It doesn’t matter if one builds wind and/or solar facilities with capacity of ten or one hundred or even one thousand times peak electricity usage. On a calm night, or during days or weeks of deep wind/sun drought, those facilities will produce nothing, or close to it, and only full backup of some sort – that is, backup sufficient to supply all of peak demand for as long as it takes – will keep the grid from failing. (continue reading)

THE ENERGY STORAGE CONUNDRUM