Mott's Blog

We are often told in Poland by advocates of coal that renewable energy is too expensive. They ignore the fact that onshore wind is cheaper than new coal plants right now and that PV will be cheaper during the investment life of any new coal plant planned today. The cost of renewable energy support in Poland is about 7 PLN per month on an average consumer bill of 153 PLN. Most of this has gone to electricity producers who would have generated the electricity without support (old hydro and co-firing). Had new capacity in RES been supported, the impact on consumers is normally cut in half by pressure of prices due to increased supply. Now we are told that consumers must pay to have old coal-plants standing by on the few days a year when extra power is needed. Studies in the United States have demonstrated that this is the most expensive way possible to meet peak demand. See U.S. Electric Power Research Institute (2013).* Now, however, the cost impact on consumers is being finally d...

I have argued strongly that the move by the DG Competition in Brussels to push support for renewable energy into auctions will have very negative effects on the amount of investment in new technologies. Auctions create uncertainty over support, award support to many projects that will never be built, and crowd out some technologies that cannot compete head-to-head (although they may have substantial benefits other than a low price per MWhr). The data from 2015 in Europe tend to show that my fears have been realized. Just as the EU raises its RES targets for 2030 with many Member States having very ambitious targets, the total investment in Europe is declining. Some of this is the lower price of PV solar per MWhr, but most of it is lower investment. Bloomberg New Energy Finance  reports a decline in German RES investments year-to-year of 42% and a French decline of 53%. This is hardly good news if you were expecting RES to meet the bold policy announcements out of Brussels and nat...

The year is ending with the new Polish Government trying to re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic which is Polish energy policy. The Law and Justice party seems confused between its election campaign rhetoric and the realities of the situation it now faces. As the deck is vanishing under the encroaching sea, the politicians gather on the fantail making speeches about the ship's seaworthiness. Almost all elements of the proposed path to energy security are fraught with bogus assumptions, bad information and a special kind of Polish naiivity. Shale gas- when there is a major rise in  oil and gas prices worldwide and the government gets out of the way, this might be possible. Until then, it is a dead-end street in Poland. The type of policies it would take to really jump start shale gas here (where it is in deep formations and quite expensive to develop) seem implausible in the context of Polish politics. Now more than ever.....  This day, if it ever comes, also depen...

Apparently the problem of getting enough cooling water for the coal-fired power plants in Poland is not going away this winter. The likelihood is that residential users as well as industrial ones will be hit with restrictions on energy usage. Low water levels which will now freeze up in January will make it impossible to get enough cooling water to the coal-fired plants. Of course, our neighbors will diversified electricity providers have not reported any problems. They rely on more renewable energy which is not related to the need for massive amounts of cooling water. In fact, the PV solar element is counter-cyclical to low water levels: more sunshine/less water. Every politician in Poland has been too busy pushing the hopeless coal sector here is see the inevitable problems of 90% dependency on one type of electricity production.

My speech at PowerGen 2015 in Amsterdam has gotten some substantial press  here and here. My thesis is that the large conventional utilities prevailed on the Commission to restrict renewable and distributed energy in important ways that favor their interests. This includes the requirement that everything above 500 kW be connected to the grid (restricting distributed energy on many types). The requirement that every project over 1 MW compete in an auction, where large utilities have shown historical dominance and market power (replacing guaranteed support systems that have nurtured a decentralized power model in Europe). And finally an incomprehensible provision that takes away the renewable energy classification for green energy that is stored and used later (potentially devastating to efforts to encourage the critical development of energy storage in Europe). The auction system is proven to be a "box of lose gears" that does not produce a predictable amount of renewa...

" According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)'s latest "Electric Power Monthly" report, with data for the first six months of 2014, renewable energy sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) provided 14.3 percent of net U.S. electrical generation. Conventional hydropower accounted for 7.0 percent, while non-hydro renewables provided an even larger share at 7.3 percent.  Overall, electrical generation from non-hydro renewable energy sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, solar, wind) expanded by 10.4 percent compared to the first half of 2013,   according to the EIA . "   Renewable Energy World. This growth in US renewable energy largely occurs in state markets that use the residential portfolio system or green electricity quotas. These are implemented by green certificates as used in Poland, Sweden and the UK.  The remarkable part about the growth is that it occurs during a period of uncertainly over the federal t...

News that the peak market prices are getting out of hand in Poland raises the issue of using more means to balance energy production. The 24 hour cycle seems to be getting worse. Energy storage over a short span of hours seems to be an attractive idea. While there are a number of energy storage solutions using batteries to store electricity, or devices to store kinetic energy to produce electricity later, one of the renewable energy sources itself has the potential to provide output matched to the 24-hour demand cycle - biogas, All biogas plants have biogas storage in some form. The most common is shown below: One biogas vendor explained one of the advantages of gas storage:   " Since the gas-store can hold several hours of gas, the CHP unit can be turned down during off-peak generating times without loss of biogas. The stored biogas can then be burned during high-peak electricity demand hours to maximize revenue efficiency. In addition, the gas store provides a steady s...

   Maybe the Polish policy-makers thought that a renewable energy law had to keep being renewed?    More delays have emerged in March as the "legal commission" made its changes and now the local government organizations and the environmental committee weigh in. The biggest external source of pressure for changes is undoubtedly the European Commission, on two fronts - the DG Competition that determines what state aid will not distort competition (which has not been an unintended consequence in Poland but part of the design of the law) and the DG Energy that determines if the law meets the transposition requirements of the Renewable Energy Directive.    The delays seem to be inevitable, since major interests were locked out of the deliberations and the successive drafts were all prepared in secret and largely ignored the consultation period inputs. Several political miscalculations have also been in play, i.e. the ruling coalition assuming hat green ene...