World Energy Outlook and the Prospects for Sustainable Sources世界能源展望和可持续来源的前景.ppt

Solar and wind provide power only while the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Since modern societies need electricity at all times of the day and night, much of the so-called “base load” power must be provided from other sources such as hydro, nuclear or fossil-fueled plants. Studies by Michael Grubb and others have estimated that perhaps 20-25% of power from intermittent sources can be accommodated directly by the electric grid. * To explore the impact of this intermittency, lets look at the share of power that solar and wind provide. We see that by around 2040, the needed contribution from solar and wind will exceed the 25% level The implications of this are that capacity additions after 2040 will need to provide for storage so that the additional power from solar and wind can serve base load needs * There is not a lot of data on how costly it would be to provide base load power from solar and wind and I have used an analysis made by John Strickland (who will be speaking later in the conference) and applied some learning factors to arrive at these numbers. They are likely optimistic. But to put these numbers in context, let’s look at the extent of global investment in energy, and indeed the numbers are big. * Annual expenditures have historically been running 1% of GWP based on recent experience The additional costs for emissions-limiting scenarios reflect that capital costs for renewables are generally substantially higher than for fossil sources and that the carbon capture and sequestration that will be required for continued of fossil sources will also be expensive to implement The range of these estimates is from -2% (i.e., a net benefit) to +5% [Stern Exec summary xiv] Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is a 700report released on October 30, 2006 by economist Lord Stern of Brentford for the British government [formerly Sir Nicholas Stern] “If we don’t act, the overall cost and risks of climate change will be equivalent to