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Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row
- antuneza 3y agoIf you need the gas plants ready to dispatch at any moment, can you still say you are running on 100% renewables?
- not2b 3y agoFor those six days they could. But even if we need fossil fuel as backup for some time, burning a lot less of it means we don't cook the planet as much.
- melling 3y agoPeople like these small wins. Population of Portugal is 10.5 million people. We have such a long way to go. Global fossil fuel will hopefully peak by the end of the decade. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/world-oil-gas-coal-demand-peak-by-2030-iea-says-2023-10-24/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/world-oil-gas-coal-d...
- pmoleri 3y ago> People like these small wins. And for good reason, it proves wrong the mainstream thinking that this is impossible. Quite a few countries already run the full year over 90% renewable[1] and we still neglect it with all kind of excuses. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewab...
- mmasu 3y agoa lot of data there is pre-covid, would be interesting to see what’s happening today - especially in Europe, with the consequences of the Russia-Ukraine war on energy markets.
- kieranmaine 3y agoThis contains data up to Jun 2023 for the EU. https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/eu-fossil-generation-hits-record-low-as-demand-falls/ https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/eu-fossil-genera... "The first half of 2023 saw a collapse in EU fossil generation, leading to the lowest output on record. Wind and solar continued their growth, with solar generation increasing by 13% and wind by 5%. Hydro and nuclear are recovering from their historic lows in 2022, though their long term outlook is uncertain." The section "Wind and solar are leading the renewables charge" has graphs for each EU country showing H1 TWh generation by either fossil or renewables.
- mmasu 3y agothanks!
- barney54 3y agoWe still neglect what? There is incredible pressure to build renewables.
- pmoleri 3y agoAsk the countries that keep building coal and gas power plants, polluting the only planet we have.
- vasco 3y agoIf only they all listened to you! I don't have all the answers but a few of the ones I researched that are being built are needed to ensure people have heating through the winter in the next 3-7 years until reliable other solutions appear.
- sien 3y agoSort that by percent of renewables and then check the hydro. If you have lots of hydro you can have 90% plus renewables.
- huytersd 3y agoYes? If you’re not burning gas, there’s no issue.
- marcusverus 3y agoThe issue is that renewables require extensive, expensive redundancies which are misleadingly excluded from the ubiquitous “renewables are cheaper” studies.
- zik 3y agoNot really. Most real world studies take this into account. It's still way cheaper than nuclear.
- eldaisfish 3y agono, they do not. The vast majority of studies that estimate the LCOE for renewable generators consider only the spot price of electricity and OPEX costs. The cost of reliability is absolutely not factored into this energy cost.
- notTooFarGone 3y agoFirst give me a world that runs on 90% renewables all the time. The last 10% is really not something that will have weight. Actually I consider complaining about that bad faith. Too many countries run on pretty much majority fossils, reducing that has the largest impact and setting an example will help there. A world where we run on 90% renewables is a good one.
- tsimionescu 3y agoFirst of all, to avoid the 2 degrees warming threshold, we need to be at net 0 emissions in like 10 years. Which absolutely requires 0% fossil fuels in electricity and heating, all year round, all over the world. 10% fossil fuels in electricity is nowhere close to good enough. Secondly, the current best for renewables is nowhere close to 90% year round. Those 6 days in the article are a huge record for Portugal. 90% would essentially mean 330 days of exclusive renewables use, which no one in the world is close to, except maybe Iceland.
- defrost 3y agoYes - the plants are on standby, not consuming much beyond a "pilot light" worth of natural gas and not putting energy into the national grid. This is quite different to coal fired power generation which doesn't have low energy standby mode with rapid online to full generation ramping up in the manner of gas fired turbines. During the six day period the national grid was supplied only with energy from renewable sources.
- deburo 3y agoAt what cost?
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoWind and solar are cheap as chips. Hydro has always been cheaper than alternatives, where the geography is favorable.
- jagger27 3y agoGood question! At what cost do the externalities of fossil fuels come? What is the cost of inaction? What are you trying to achieve with this banal line of questioning?
- deburo 3y agoWhat's the cost of maintaining both green energy plants & non-green plants for Portugal? What's the cost of electricity there? Is it subsidized (perhaps heavily)?
- defrost 3y agoAt the cost of building enough solar and wind farms to supply the nation I would guess, with additional costs to upgrade the distribution infrastructure for smarter load balancing, etc. It's quite possible Portugal has put out a white paper on their transition toward renewable energy that you can find with some hunting about. Wikipedia has a rough overview that'll provide some points to drill down further into if you're interested in the per capita comparative costings of a hybrid national power scheme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Portugal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Portugal
- wongarsu 3y agoAs long as the gas plants aren't burning any natural gas, I would say that's fair. Standing by to supplement power on load spikes is one of the primary roles of gas plants (together with pumped hydro), and that they didn't need to supply any electricity over those six days is noteworthy. From a climate standpoint there also isn't much wrong with having generating capacity in fossil fuels, what matters is how many greenhouse gases and how much pollution they put out. Which isn't much if they are just standing by.
- gustavus 3y agoOf course if they had a nuclear base they wouldn't even need the natural gas plants.
- helloooooooo 3y agoHow would they regulate fluctuations in demand? Nuclear can’t do that. You need storage, or a reasonably scalable generation medium. Nuclear as a base load is moot
- flextheruler 3y agoDidn’t Germany just put its nuclear power plants on standby instead of shutting them down last year
- kuchenbecker 3y agoControl rods modulate the output.
- malfist 3y agoNot quickly
- flashback2199 3y agoNot great, not terrible
- dpierce9 3y agoIf I have a hybrid car and I make a trip that doesn’t use the engine, are you saying I can’t say I didn’t use the engine because I could have?
- lazide 3y agoOr that it’s misleading to say you drove an electric car?
- hiddencost 3y agoThis is not a misleading headline.
- tambourine_man 3y agoDon’t you have a backup for your files? Do you not have a savings account?
- cranky908canuck 3y ago"If you need..." misses the point. The point of the article was that there is sufficient renewable capacity that the standby wasn't needed, for six days. So that's a milestone of some sort. Or, if not a milestone, then at least a checkpoint that shows that seven, eight, ten, or twenty days is only a matter of continuing to scale up.
- 627467 3y ago- Portugal electricity prices: ranks top 30% of EU - Portugal per capita GDP: ranks bottom 30% of the EU
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoSo if a relatively poor country like Portugal can do it, what excuse do the rich countries have?
- fbdab103 3y agoPowerful entrenched interests.
- lokar 3y agoAnd how much worse off will a (relatively) low income nation like Portugal be when the serious impact of climate change hit?
- dukeofdoom 3y agoHuge waves in Portugal, when I visited. I'm guessing it's the wind coming off the Atlantic Ocean is strong and steady. And somewhat not common. Where I live, for most of the Winter the sky is overcast with clouds. So that somewhat limits solar panels. But I'm sure California is great place for them.
- pmoleri 3y agoTidal, waves, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, biomass. Many options to choose from, it just takes political will.
- simonhorlick 3y agoDid you know that tidal energy is actually not renewable? Harvesting tidal energy slightly slows the rotation of the planet over time. Here's a quote from the relevant paper by Liu: > Based on the average pace of world energy consumption over the last 50 years, if we were to extract the rotational energy just to supply 1% of the world's energy consumption, the rotation of the Earth would lock to the Moon in about 1000 years.
- pmoleri 3y agoI did not. And find mind boggling that we have the ability to virtually stop earth rotation in such a small timeframe with that little effort. I'll definitely read more about it.
- Cyphase 3y agoSource: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/zjl/pdf/tide1.pdf https://cs.stanford.edu/people/zjl/pdf/tide1.pdf
- EmmaEngineer 3y agoSolution: in summer we pump the tides higher with PV, and in winter we draw them down.
- Marsymars 3y ago
- tambourine_man 3y agoThis is good news people. We’re just not very used to them anymore. Scaling to 365 days and 8 billion people is harder than 10 million and 6 days. But it’s a nice step in the right direction.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 3y agoA very large percentage of the world is already on 100% renewables, they simply don't have grid power. Their footprint is a fraction of the wealthy remainder.
- mcjiggerlog 3y agoWho do you think is using renewable power that is not connected to a grid? Poor off-grid communities are pretty much exclusively burning fossil fuels or biomass for primary energy, which are most certainly not carbon-neutral or good for the environment.
- jacquesm 3y agoBiomass is carbon neutral.
- mcjiggerlog 3y agoThere's nothing green about chopping down forests for energy - biomass being called carbon neutral is one of the greenwashing scams of the century. Whether burned forests are ever regenerated at all is something that I'm incredible sceptical about - there's very little oversight into companies' claims. Even if they are being replanted, you are tearing down potentially primary forest and important habitat and replacing it with tree farms. Finally, burning wood is incredibly polluting and awful for anyone in the region of said power plants.
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- simonhorlick 3y agoNote that since about 2021 renewables have overtaken fossil-based sources of energy on price. New installations of utility scale wind and solar PV are now cheaper than their alternatives. Not to mention protection from price fluctuations in the cost of fuels needed to power fossil fuel plants.
- kuchenbecker 3y agoThe backlog of hooking variable load sources to the US electric grid is very long, often requires retrofitting the grid, and cost is borne by the generator. It's not as simple as having the capacity because power is used the instant it's produced.
- bobthepanda 3y agoIIRC there are actually starting to be wind, solar and pumped hydro sited at former coal mines and plants because they already have transmission capacity. (In the case of pumped hydro, a coal mine can also act as a big hole with an elevation difference to drive a turbine.)
- syllablehq 3y agoThere's lots of exciting progress happening with underground mechanical storage like this. It's so interesting that the U.S. DOE has been studying underground pumped hydro since at least the 1980.(https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6517343 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6517343) Today: - Hydrostor just signed a near $1 Billion contract to build their first underground facility in California using advanced compressed air with water to help efficiency. See also: Green Gravity, Gravitricity, Terrament, Renewell, RheEnergise, and more.
- kuchenbecker 3y agoMy comment is less about storage and more about the physics of the Grid (not an expert though so fact check me) It's largely one giant multitenant pool of both capacity and consumption with Voltage being the indicator. Variable load sources often change transmission requirements on existing lines because there can be power draw increase between A and B where previous there was less generation at A.
- vegetablepotpie 3y agoThis article promotes a narrative that privatization leads to more renewables. This point lacks nuance as different energy markets that employ privatization can have wildly different ways to involve private firms and vastly different outcomes. 1. The retail competition of Texas, which has the highest renewable energy production in the U.S. [1], but is also a market where consumers overpay for electricity [2]. 2. The regulated competition of California where municipalities have the ability to buy electricity in bulk and pass the savings onto the consumer. This ironically leads to more local government involvement in electricity procurement, and also gives private electricity generators more customers to sell to and rate payers at least two options to choose from. This leads to lower electric rates and higher renewable adoption, with some municipalities reaching over 90% renewable adoption [3]. 3. Then you have what I call the energy tyranny of Arizona where ratepayer dollars are directed into the pockets of shareholders through legal fictions of “fair and reasonable return” for private investor owned utilities. Private companies are granted monopolies and guaranteed profits. Any form of competition is suppressed, community Solar is essentially rejected by the utility board [4], and the state legislature repealed competition laws to prevent it from being used to compete with utilities [5]. Renewable generation is just 10% of the states energy supply [6] despite having the most favorable conditions for solar in the nation. [1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/these-states-use-the-most-renewable-energy https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/these-sta... [2] https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/report-texans-overpay-for-electricity/1911146/ https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/report-texans-overpay-for-... [3] https://www.mcecleanenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2021_MCE_Impact-Report_FINAL.pdf https://www.mcecleanenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/20... [4] https://ilsr.org/arizona-useless-community-solar-policy-2023/ https://ilsr.org/arizona-useless-community-solar-policy-2023... [5] https://www.nrg.com/assets/documents/energy-policy/_2022/arizona-gme-news%20-release-post-house-senate-vote-hb2101-04192022.pdf https://www.nrg.com/assets/documents/energy-policy/_2022/ari... [6] https://www.seia.org/states-map https://www.seia.org/states-map
- vondur 3y agoLower electric rates and California aren’t two words I see together.
- poor_engineer 3y agoWait until you learn how many days did Uruguay run on renewables.
- throwaway2037 3y agoDid you mean Paraguay? They are 100% hydro. So is Albania.
- poor_engineer 3y agoNop I did mean Uruguay they are like 3/4 hydro 1/4 wind.
- adev_ 3y agoMeaningwhile, today 17/11/2023 the same Portugal is back to the normal and emitting 170g CO2/kwh [1][2] - This is 6.8x the emissions of Sweden (25g) running on Nuclear and Hydro - This is 4.1x the emissions of France (41g) running on Nuclear, Hydro and Gas - This is 2.8x the emissions of Switzerland (59g) running on Nuclear and Hydro But still much better than "Green" Germany that reaches 647g CO2/kwh.... with 22GW of power generated from Coal after closing its Nuclear powerplants for reasons. Interestingly, these facts are not praised in the press as much as "Country X has been able to run renewable for X hours". Maybe because, like the article point out, Nuclear is not entirely "privatised". Nuclear "just works" and consequently does not act as an interesting roller-coaster for speculators on the energy market and stock market ? [1] https://postimg.cc/WDVZqnK1 https://postimg.cc/WDVZqnK1 [2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT
- adev_ 3y agoWould people that minus a post stating facts backed by sources deign to explain why ? I am aware that reality can be harsh to accept sometimes. And that a world where renewable are our only source of energy is more seducing to our collective imagination. But unfortunately, it is still the reality. And we have to deal with it, even if it is pretty unpleasant.
- troupo 3y agoIn a different discussion a few days ago someone told me I was lying when I pointed out that Germany is burning 20GW of coal to compensate for their 140GW of renewables working at only 15% capacity.
- adev_ 3y agoI am half surprised. People are often shocked when they discover the real number about the Carbon intensity of the German electricity production. There is years of green washing to digest before accepting the truth.
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- tibbydudeza 3y agoHydro generation works great if the climate plays along - Zimbabwe and Keyna is struggling at the moment due to low water levels which has put some plants out of commission. They now switching to geothermal.
- louison11 3y agoMeanwhile many Portuguese cars are 25+ years old and a portion of them have black exhaust fumes that stink from a 100 meters. As in: proper black smoke coming out of the exhaust as it drives. I don’t know if there are SMOG tests, and if there are, they’re clearly not enforced. The reality in poorer countries is that pollution reduction is not as much a priority as saving money. So yeah, I mean, I always find it funny when Portugal is presented like this ecological example. Again, it’s not “their fault,” it’s poverty, but let’s not fool anyone here. There are also piles of old furniture, concrete, and other construction materials that people are just in the habit of dumping on the side of the road in most rural areas.
- adrianN 3y agoSo you're saying renewables are so cheap now that poor countries that only care about saving money build a ton of them? That sounds like excellent news to me.
- louison11 3y agoPT used to be very energy dependent due to not having much local fossil fuel. They had to import most of it. Simultaneously, they have a lot of sun, a lot of wind, and the tide. Also turns out it’s warm so they don’t need all that much power. So yeah, renewables are optimal for them in this specific scenario. That’s definitely a positive thing. It’s good PR but I just find it relevant to point out that it’s not necessarily an “example” beyond that. But yeah, they are getting cheaper. They’re just particularly cheap for a country with great weather and wind with low consumption.
- vasco 3y agoI could say the same about country side France, Spain, Italy, all of the Balcans including Greece and keep going, including the USA as well. This feels like typical intra-euro "they are poor" so we must be dirty stereotypes reminiscent of the times when we got called PIGS. For your information the EU average fleet age is 11.8 years, Portugal stands at 13.2 and France at 10.3. Perhaps not the story you're trying to tell.
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoFor most economies, assuming positive real interest rates, the choice is between natural gas and nuclear. Solar + wind will be the cheapest, and will make up the bulk of primary production. But they won’t replace coal, natural gas, oil and nukes—not in the near term, and certainly not if we’re tooling up for EVs. Portugal has gone gas. America will, too, in all likelihood. Both will be subsidised by countries without natural gas reserves who have decided to shun nuclear.
- Maxion 3y agoWhat you say is not true in most places. EV charging won't raise overall power consumption that much, and the majority of tthe EU will stop burning coal around the 2030's. Nuclear isn't much on the table in Europe, especially since new wind developments produce cheaper power than nuclear plants. Solar works quite well at lower latitudes, but at higher latitudes in Europe it can work as a supplement to hydro in the summer (as there's less water around then), but it won't play any significant role in power production (some 10s of percentage points perhaps). Biggest challenge for the next few decades is inertia as well as base load when there's low wind over large geographic areas. We need cheaper (and better) grid scale energy storage. A lot of people forget about the cheaper part.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> EV charging won't raise overall power consumption that much It does create a better use for batteries. Both for raw materials and talent.
- hackerlight 3y ago> Solar + wind will be the cheapest, and will make up the bulk of primary production. But they won’t replace coal, natural gas, oil and nukes Replacement isn't binary, though. What I want is to go like 80-90% solar+wind immediately by following Denmark model but with addition of solar & overbuilding & inter-country sharing. The last-mile is made up of natural gas until cheaper storage tech is invented. Nuclear can get you to 100% but you have to look at AUC of emissions from now until the future, which is potentially worse for nuclear because it takes longer to build, not to mention the higher financial cost of getting there. If you really want to make a purely climate argument, you could even say that with the money you save by not going nuclear, you can subsidize renewables in poor countries. Two countries with ~60%+ renewables can be better than one country with 100% nuclear. Notwithstanding the AUC emissions benefit of renewables that I describe above.
- mrweasel 3y agoAs always, this is the electrical grid only, not all the other stuff a nation will need various type of energy for. Still it's a major stepping stone. Back in 2006/2007 I had a job as a consultant for an energy trading company and it was huge the first day when the entire country ran solely on wind power. If was during the Christmas holidays, so less power was used overall, but still it was absolutely a huge deal for us. After that if has just been more and more days on renewable energy powering the majority of grid and more and more frequently 100% renewable. I get the problem that it's only for a short time and then Portugal is back at emitting CO2, but it also does mean that they are moving in the right direction and it's only going to get better.
- gardenhedge 3y ago> not all the other stuff a nation will need various type of energy for like what?
- mrweasel 3y agoHeating (and hot water), transportation, industry (which to be fair is also often heating). You can't make cement for instance with electricity, you can't produce enough heat, you need gas (or coal). You can use the electricity to make hydrogen and use that for heat, but then your electricity needs to be really cheap/free, because gas isn't actually that expensive.
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoThe lion share of renewables in Portugal is hydroelectric. The renewable statistics looks good on paper but wind power and PV is still fractional in their contribution. Base load is still assured by Methane 'Natural' gas. The country has the geography and a long history of politicians focusing on large infrastructure projects, dams are needed for water supply since most water has origin in Spain who itself also hogs it. The hydro turbines are a bonus on top of water supply since the country has to import most hydrocarbon based fuels. All countries with the funds for it should continue to invest in Wind and PV but unless we as a collective of nations seriously invest in renewable 'storage' there will never be a renewable assured base load.
- pedrocr 3y ago> The lion share of renewables in Portugal is hydroelectric. This is not true. Portugal produces more wind power than it does hydroelectric: https://datahub.ren.pt/pt/eletricidade/balanco-mensal/ https://datahub.ren.pt/pt/eletricidade/balanco-mensal/ 10 TWh versus less than 8 for hydro. Solar is also already past 3 TWh and has barely started in a country with excellent conditions for it. We also already have quite a bit of storage. Hydro already contributes over 3 TWh of storage.
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoFair, things have changed, I stand corrected. Wind power farms have grown a lot more than I had assumed. My point still stands storage infrastructure for intermittent renewables (Wind, PV) is still the key problem to solve for Gas/Coal to finally stay in the ground.
- dontlaugh 3y agoEven if it wasn't true, why would it matter? Hydroelectric power has no direct carbon emissions either.
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoIt matters because hydroeletric is a non-intermittent renewable source. The available hydro does not allow to cover all base load. It needs to be supplemented and the other renewable sources available are by their nature intermittent. So the problem of energy storage needs to be solved fast in order for gas/coal to be finally sunset.
- antsou 3y agoIt really doesn't tell what really happened: -This was only due to hydro production... -The amount of rain that fell was consistent along those days, which is definitely not usual. -The energy produced was mainly exported to Spain, but at ZERO or even NEGATIVE euros. Does this help? Doesn't seem to me! And besides having to pay full price to the renewables producers (while exporting the same energy at ZERO), which amounts to a significant energy deficit, they are talking about even more H2 or whatever schemes??? This is the reason why Portugal has had one of the biggest rises of electricity prices in Europe over the last 15 years...
- causi 3y agoIn addition, the title "Portugal just ran on 100% renewables" is inherently misleading because it implies the whole country operated free of fossil fuels and should really be "Portugal's electrical grid just ran on 100% renewables". Often less than half of a country's energy usage passes through the grid, with more than half of it being fuel in vehicles, fossil fuel heating, etc.
- Already__Taken 3y agoThat's a real leap to think anyone given that title would assume for six days all vehicles in the country were swapped to electric. Specific to the absurd, implied context isn't misleading.
- benj111 3y agoWhen/if the UK gets to this landmark it'll be because the wind was unusually strong. I don't think that takes away from the achievement. We also have negative prices on windy days and the interconnects tend to be exporting power to Europe at night.
- anonyfox 3y agoThis is good news. And while there are problems with achieving 100% renewables year round, from energy storage to geographic country conditions, the world would be much better off when the fossils only are used on these days where there isn't enough renewable energy. No need to go overzealous here for the last few %, I'd be very happy if we manage to globally run the vast majority of the time clean.
- libertine 3y agoThe problem that isn't mentioned in the article is: at what cost to the Portuguese people this achievement was done? We're already a poor country, and we're kept in mediocrity because we keep getting crushed by rising prices. So the question is: if we don't get anything positive out of it, other than a green drop in the ocean of pollution which won't change that tide of events, why are we paying a premium for it? Shouldn't we be one of the last European countries to perform these achievements, until we got the means to do it? Or is Portugal going to collect a tax from those countries that are not performing? With this, I'm not saying this isn't a positive achievement, of course it is, but the Portuguese people are so numbed from an economic point of view that at least I, and my circle of family and friends, don't rejoice.
- anonyfox 3y agoEvery country has these problems currently. But people’s money is tacked away in the pockets of the riches and shareholders, something that can and should be solved in different ways than burning dinosaurs. We can not destroy our environment AND distribute wealth more equally, it’s not an „OR“.
- libertine 3y agoThen that's solving the problem from the top down. It's like the EU giving tax benefits to those who buy electric vehicles, and slapping taxes on those who burn dinosaurs -> when a lot of those have no choice but to burn dinosaurs, and they have to drive old cars because they can't afford new electric vehicles. How do you expect "regular people" to be onboard, when they are getting squeezed and penalized for being poor/middle class? It's not like they have a choice. I'm not disagreeing with you, but the " something that can and should be solved in different ways" should have come first, before anything else, and it's not happening any time soon. Guess who is paying in the meantime? The sentiment that fuels extremism and movements that oppose these measures don't pop out in the vacuum.
- numitus 3y agoGreen power is working like a business of child of rich parent. The child may do the business, but in case of problem, then can alway ask his daddy(fossil fuel) to help. There is no sence to analize portugail or sweden seprarately, because they are a part of EU energy system and can infinitely get energy in case of lack of wind or solar. For e.g. in germany 60% of energy is produced from renewable source, but there are weeks when it is only 10%. So you have to have coal or gas station to compensate it