7 ms·

99% of Costa Rica's electricity came from renewable energy in 2015

110 points by ph0rque 11y ago

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> The Costa Rican Electricity Institute(ICE) released a statement that 99% of the electricity came from renewable sources this year in 2015. Fossil fuels provided the rest 1% Awesome. * The majority of this is from hydro. * This scenario can't be replicated everywhere (due to the heavy reliance on hydro, but solar and wind can be used everywhere). * The remainder of fossil fuel generation in Costa Rica could be replaced with more solar and wind generation. * Utility scale battery storage will play a large part in increasing renewables firm dispatchability, while home batteries until their power distribution network reaches first world standards.
- barney54 11y ago
  For example, in California new hydro is not considered a renewable source for purposes of achieving their renewable electricity standard.
markbao 11y ago
The Reddit thread has some interesting perspectives on this: User /u/CatsandCrows: > Yeah, it's great and it makes me happy that in this sense we are eco-friendly, however this comes a great costs. Our electricity rates are one of the highest in the region (central america) and a sht-load higher than the states, this costs summed to other issues scare industrial investment over here. Depending on your area you will have power failures anywhere from 0- 24 times a day, whenever there is a drought we have power shutdowns (as it ocurred some years ago when the country had to shut down residential electricity from 5pm-11pm, eventually "fixed" by adding another hydroelectric plant). It is never as simple as headlines makes it seem... just remember that. https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3xhedt/99_of_costa_ricas_electricity_came_from_renewable/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3xhedt/99_of_cos...
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  So their electric costs are higher, but they also don't burn any coal or natural gas (which doesn't price in the negative environmental effects those generation types incur). Also, intermittent power can be a function of transmission network quality, not just generation type. Renewables don't do anything but help. Generating too much? Curtail your production until you can store it in a cost efficient manner. Generating too little? Add more capacity.
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    > Also, intermittent power can be a function of transmission network quality, not just generation type. Yes, but hydro is the only renewable power source that is weather-independent. Wind, solar and tidal energy all fluctuate wildly during the day. In case there's no backup/storage (e.g. with pump-hydro systems, cheap-ish and effective, but a crime on nature!) you have to either import power from outside the country or resort to conventional power generation. Oh, and even hydro sucks for nature, because hydro plants interrupt natural pathways for fishes and like pump-hydro plants, there's a HUGE additional negative impact if you use a dam (in contrast to natural state, animals can't pass over the waterway, and as seen in China, important areas of biodiversity simply get flooded). The lack of a truly environment-friendly energy storage is and will be keeping renewables from ever truly replacing fossil energy. Batteries need vast amounts of (rare) metals which have to be mined, refined and manufactured, molten-salt high power solar towers are a safety risk (as anything operating at three-digits-celsius temperature is)...
    - justinator 11y ago
      > Yes, but hydro is the only renewable power source that is weather-independent. Droughts? https://wrrc.arizona.edu/drought-diminishes-hydropower https://wrrc.arizona.edu/drought-diminishes-hydropower
      - mschuster91 11y ago
        Hadn't thought of that one, yeah. Thanks. So either we destroy the environment or we destroy the environment (unless fusion actually works)...
graycat 11y ago
They don't have cars? They use electric heating? The cook with only electricity? They don't have and Diesel engines, for large trucks, earth moving equipment, boats?
- justinator 11y ago
  12.1% of their GDP is from travel and tourism, so I don't think they're counting planes coming in, or taking off from their airports. They also import food, that's grown elsewhere. So, that's another hidden cost. The only thing they produce in large quantities in country are rice, and beans. http://news.co.cr/tourism-sector-in-costa-rica-poised-to-grow-5-5-in-2014/34051/ http://news.co.cr/tourism-sector-in-costa-rica-poised-to-gro... http://www.fas.usda.gov/regions/costa-rica http://www.fas.usda.gov/regions/costa-rica
- 7952 11y ago
  The article uses the word "electricity" not "energy".
  - graycat 11y ago
    > The article uses the word "electricity" not "energy". Wrong. Flatly wrong. Exactly wrong. Literally wrong. The article does very much use the word energy. E.g., one of the statements in the article is, and I saw and responded to, was: > The country has recently made headlines by operating 100% on renewable energy for 285 days. So it's the "country", presumably the whole "country", including electricity, cars, trucks, home heating, airplanes, etc. And that statement said "energy" and not just "electricity". Sure, in the article, the pictures I saw were for solar panels and wind turbines. I saw mention of their hydroelectric facility but no picture. So, clearly enough, the article is propaganda for electric energy via wind and solar and, then, wants to jump to say "energy" for the whole "country". It's propaganda for the global warming and climate change alarmists, e.g., solar panel and wind turbine salesmen. I responded very calmly to the misleading propaganda. All I did was just read the article. Apparently there are lot of really sensitive Greenies here all desperately pulling, pushing, pleading for renewable energy and very much against evil fossil fuels because they will overheat the planet, melt all the ice caps, cause the sea levels to rise to flood NYC, cause massive, destructive climate change that will make forests into deserts, all due to evil, greedy, ignorant people stealing from everyone else from ignoring the costs of the commons. Sorry 'bout that. So, in case you are worried or gave even $0.01 of credibility to Al Gore's big movie, I have some very, very good news. No worries, mate. Gore is wrong, 100% totally wrong. All the emphasis on reducing CO2 is silly, wasteful, foolish, uninformed, ill-informed, misinformed, dangerous, just plain wrong, as wacko as some primitive tribe worshiping the moon or the Mayans killing people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky, literally. No joke. Gore is pushing a quasi-religion, taking something really important that people need to do and calling it sin and, then, trying to control it. Read and learn: Here in just a few lines I take the entire, global, IPCC, Al Gore, Kyoto, Paris, etc., EPA, NOAA, Obama, carbon footprint movement and totally destroy it. It's, to use a word, "settled". Sure, can strike a match and, thus, warm the planet, but that warming is not significant. For anything significant, for anything reasonable, CO2 and methane have zip, zilch, and zero to do with the climate. Even a factor of 10 times the present concentration of CO2 will do essentially nothing to the climate. Same for CFC's. Same for men not shaving and drinking Coke instead of Pepsi. Yes, CO2 and methane have to be counted as greenhouse gasses, but their effects are just insignificant for earth in the past, the present, and any reasonable future, no matter what the heck is going on on Venus. And, so far human activity has had nothing, nichts, nil, nada to do with the climate. Instead, here is what the heck has been driving climate change so far, back at least for some hundreds of thousands of years and right to the present as in year 2015: More clouds have a cooling effect. The rate of cloud formation varies with the rate of water droplet formation (caused by cosmic rays) which varies with the rate of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere which varies with the amount of solar wind blocking the cosmic rays which varies with the rate of sun spots which varies with the activity level of the sun which has absolutely nothing at all to do with anything on earth, not CO2, not methane, not humans, not even Al Gore or the IPCC or the Paris conference or international treaties. Good news unless you are selling solar panels or wind turbines. References: A very nicely done BBC video: "The Great Global Warming Swindle" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg Besides, as in Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, National Research Council, Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, ISBN 0-309-66264-8, 196 pages, National Academies Press, 2006, available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html as far as we can tell, the temperature in 2006 was exactly the same as in year 1000 well before any human industrialization. As in the BBC piece, in the last 100 years, temperature has varied with the solar wind and not with CO2. Greenies, I've done you the very best favor -- now you can stop worrying. Why'd you ever take Al Gore seriously anyway? Heck his graph of CO2 and temperature of the past several hundred thousand years from the Vostok ice cores clearly showed that he is a doofus; didn't you notice, the CO2 levels went up about 800 years after the temperature went up. So, clearly the CO2 increases did not cause the temperature increases and, instead, the temperature increases, from whatever source, caused the CO2 increases. Right: More temperature resulted in more biological activity which is a major source of CO2. Also, for a total nail in the coffin of Gore's candidate science, the climate scientists made some temperature predictions which have now, just from careful temperature measurements, been shown to be wildly wrong. In science, when there are wildly wrong predictions, we junk the science. Net the climate science arguing about the effects of CO2 on the climate no longer has even a square nanometer to stand on. That candidate science is done, "settled", stick a fork in it, flush it, f'get about it. Here, for asking a very appropriate question challenging some outrageous propaganda, I've been attacked by angry Greenies and am due sincere, public apologies. Let's keep the paid alarmist, wind/solar salesmen propagandists out of HN. Enough of this Al Gore flim-flam, fraud scam.

110 points by ph0rque 11y ago

> The Costa Rican Electricity Institute(ICE) released a statement that 99% of the electricity came from renewable sources this year in 2015. Fossil fuels provided the rest 1% Awesome. * The majority of this is from hydro. * This scenario can't be replicated everywhere (due to the heavy reliance on hydro, but solar and wind can be used everywhere). * The remainder of fossil fuel generation in Costa Rica could be replaced with more solar and wind generation. * Utility scale battery storage will play a large part in increasing renewables firm dispatchability, while home batteries until their power distribution network reaches first world standards.

barney54 11y ago
For example, in California new hydro is not considered a renewable source for purposes of achieving their renewable electricity standard.

markbao 11y ago

The Reddit thread has some interesting perspectives on this: User /u/CatsandCrows: > Yeah, it's great and it makes me happy that in this sense we are eco-friendly, however this comes a great costs. Our electricity rates are one of the highest in the region (central america) and a sht-load higher than the states, this costs summed to other issues scare industrial investment over here. Depending on your area you will have power failures anywhere from 0- 24 times a day, whenever there is a drought we have power shutdowns (as it ocurred some years ago when the country had to shut down residential electricity from 5pm-11pm, eventually "fixed" by adding another hydroelectric plant). It is never as simple as headlines makes it seem... just remember that. https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3xhedt/99_of_costa_ricas_electricity_came_from_renewable/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3xhedt/99_of_cos...

toomuchtodo 11y ago
So their electric costs are higher, but they also don't burn any coal or natural gas (which doesn't price in the negative environmental effects those generation types incur). Also, intermittent power can be a function of transmission network quality, not just generation type. Renewables don't do anything but help. Generating too much? Curtail your production until you can store it in a cost efficient manner. Generating too little? Add more capacity.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  > Also, intermittent power can be a function of transmission network quality, not just generation type. Yes, but hydro is the only renewable power source that is weather-independent. Wind, solar and tidal energy all fluctuate wildly during the day. In case there's no backup/storage (e.g. with pump-hydro systems, cheap-ish and effective, but a crime on nature!) you have to either import power from outside the country or resort to conventional power generation. Oh, and even hydro sucks for nature, because hydro plants interrupt natural pathways for fishes and like pump-hydro plants, there's a HUGE additional negative impact if you use a dam (in contrast to natural state, animals can't pass over the waterway, and as seen in China, important areas of biodiversity simply get flooded). The lack of a truly environment-friendly energy storage is and will be keeping renewables from ever truly replacing fossil energy. Batteries need vast amounts of (rare) metals which have to be mined, refined and manufactured, molten-salt high power solar towers are a safety risk (as anything operating at three-digits-celsius temperature is)...
  - justinator 11y ago
    > Yes, but hydro is the only renewable power source that is weather-independent. Droughts? https://wrrc.arizona.edu/drought-diminishes-hydropower https://wrrc.arizona.edu/drought-diminishes-hydropower
    - mschuster91 11y ago
      Hadn't thought of that one, yeah. Thanks. So either we destroy the environment or we destroy the environment (unless fusion actually works)...

graycat 11y ago

They don't have cars? They use electric heating? The cook with only electricity? They don't have and Diesel engines, for large trucks, earth moving equipment, boats?

justinator 11y ago
12.1% of their GDP is from travel and tourism, so I don't think they're counting planes coming in, or taking off from their airports. They also import food, that's grown elsewhere. So, that's another hidden cost. The only thing they produce in large quantities in country are rice, and beans. http://news.co.cr/tourism-sector-in-costa-rica-poised-to-grow-5-5-in-2014/34051/ http://news.co.cr/tourism-sector-in-costa-rica-poised-to-gro... http://www.fas.usda.gov/regions/costa-rica http://www.fas.usda.gov/regions/costa-rica
7952 11y ago
The article uses the word "electricity" not "energy".
- graycat 11y ago
  > The article uses the word "electricity" not "energy". Wrong. Flatly wrong. Exactly wrong. Literally wrong. The article does very much use the word energy. E.g., one of the statements in the article is, and I saw and responded to, was: > The country has recently made headlines by operating 100% on renewable energy for 285 days. So it's the "country", presumably the whole "country", including electricity, cars, trucks, home heating, airplanes, etc. And that statement said "energy" and not just "electricity". Sure, in the article, the pictures I saw were for solar panels and wind turbines. I saw mention of their hydroelectric facility but no picture. So, clearly enough, the article is propaganda for electric energy via wind and solar and, then, wants to jump to say "energy" for the whole "country". It's propaganda for the global warming and climate change alarmists, e.g., solar panel and wind turbine salesmen. I responded very calmly to the misleading propaganda. All I did was just read the article. Apparently there are lot of really sensitive Greenies here all desperately pulling, pushing, pleading for renewable energy and very much against evil fossil fuels because they will overheat the planet, melt all the ice caps, cause the sea levels to rise to flood NYC, cause massive, destructive climate change that will make forests into deserts, all due to evil, greedy, ignorant people stealing from everyone else from ignoring the costs of the commons. Sorry 'bout that. So, in case you are worried or gave even $0.01 of credibility to Al Gore's big movie, I have some very, very good news. No worries, mate. Gore is wrong, 100% totally wrong. All the emphasis on reducing CO2 is silly, wasteful, foolish, uninformed, ill-informed, misinformed, dangerous, just plain wrong, as wacko as some primitive tribe worshiping the moon or the Mayans killing people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky, literally. No joke. Gore is pushing a quasi-religion, taking something really important that people need to do and calling it sin and, then, trying to control it. Read and learn: Here in just a few lines I take the entire, global, IPCC, Al Gore, Kyoto, Paris, etc., EPA, NOAA, Obama, carbon footprint movement and totally destroy it. It's, to use a word, "settled". Sure, can strike a match and, thus, warm the planet, but that warming is not significant. For anything significant, for anything reasonable, CO2 and methane have zip, zilch, and zero to do with the climate. Even a factor of 10 times the present concentration of CO2 will do essentially nothing to the climate. Same for CFC's. Same for men not shaving and drinking Coke instead of Pepsi. Yes, CO2 and methane have to be counted as greenhouse gasses, but their effects are just insignificant for earth in the past, the present, and any reasonable future, no matter what the heck is going on on Venus. And, so far human activity has had nothing, nichts, nil, nada to do with the climate. Instead, here is what the heck has been driving climate change so far, back at least for some hundreds of thousands of years and right to the present as in year 2015: More clouds have a cooling effect. The rate of cloud formation varies with the rate of water droplet formation (caused by cosmic rays) which varies with the rate of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere which varies with the amount of solar wind blocking the cosmic rays which varies with the rate of sun spots which varies with the activity level of the sun which has absolutely nothing at all to do with anything on earth, not CO2, not methane, not humans, not even Al Gore or the IPCC or the Paris conference or international treaties. Good news unless you are selling solar panels or wind turbines. References: A very nicely done BBC video: "The Great Global Warming Swindle" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg Besides, as in Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, National Research Council, Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, ISBN 0-309-66264-8, 196 pages, National Academies Press, 2006, available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html as far as we can tell, the temperature in 2006 was exactly the same as in year 1000 well before any human industrialization. As in the BBC piece, in the last 100 years, temperature has varied with the solar wind and not with CO2. Greenies, I've done you the very best favor -- now you can stop worrying. Why'd you ever take Al Gore seriously anyway? Heck his graph of CO2 and temperature of the past several hundred thousand years from the Vostok ice cores clearly showed that he is a doofus; didn't you notice, the CO2 levels went up about 800 years after the temperature went up. So, clearly the CO2 increases did not cause the temperature increases and, instead, the temperature increases, from whatever source, caused the CO2 increases. Right: More temperature resulted in more biological activity which is a major source of CO2. Also, for a total nail in the coffin of Gore's candidate science, the climate scientists made some temperature predictions which have now, just from careful temperature measurements, been shown to be wildly wrong. In science, when there are wildly wrong predictions, we junk the science. Net the climate science arguing about the effects of CO2 on the climate no longer has even a square nanometer to stand on. That candidate science is done, "settled", stick a fork in it, flush it, f'get about it. Here, for asking a very appropriate question challenging some outrageous propaganda, I've been attacked by angry Greenies and am due sincere, public apologies. Let's keep the paid alarmist, wind/solar salesmen propagandists out of HN. Enough of this Al Gore flim-flam, fraud scam.