Renewables “Surge” From 1.2% To 1.4%!!

By Paul Homewood

A couple more thoughts on the Renewable Global Status Report, wildly hyped by Matt McGrath:

You will recall this chart, showing that how wind/solar/biomass only supplied 1.4% in 2014:

REN21 do not appear to have published a report for 2013, but this was the comparable chart for 2012:

http://www.ren21.net/resources/publications/

In other words, in two years the contribution from wind/solar/bio increased from 1.2% to 1.4%.

They don’t know total final energy consumption figures for 2015, but their data does suggest that this percentage may have increased to about 1.6% last year.

This is what Matt McGrath calls “surging”!

Solar Costs

According to REN21, $161 billion was invested in solar power last year, which added 50GW of capacity:

This equates to $3.2 billion per GW.

Assuming 15% capacity utilisation, 1 GW would produce 1.3 TWh pa. Given a 15-year life, annual depreciation would amount to $215 million/GW, or $165/MWh.

This calculation does not allow for the cost of interest, operational costs, transmission costs, or back up costs.

Clearly solar power is not anywhere near as cheap as its proponents make out.