Comments on: Shale Gas Won’t Kill Solar & Wind, Renewable Growth Unstoppable (Citigroup Study)

By: San Diego Loves Green – Citigroup Study suggests Renewable Growth Unstoppable

Sat, 18 May 2013 22:18:45 +0000

[…] (This was written by Giles Parkinson and posted to Clean Technica on March 30, 2013) […]

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:30:00 +0000

You are welcome to participate in discussion here, but would you please quit spamming your site?

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:29:00 +0000

Diesel and gasoline are best killed by better EV batteries along with higher manufacturing volumes which should bring down vehicle prices.

Moving from diesel/gasoline to natural gas is almost certainly an unnecessary step. And it might actually make it harder to get petroleum products off our streets. Introduce another supply such as natural gas and the price of oil might be lowered in order to maintain market share. We need as much spread as possible between EVs and ICEVs in order to drive the market.

By: Ron Wagner

Ron Wagner — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:23:00 +0000

101 Useful references about natural gas: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19Yf0MWpo91vrlu-mmJtjB1ERukjJo5W41oi4RZVQBug/edit

By: Ron Wagner

Ron Wagner — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:22:00 +0000

How about killing diesel ( a known carcinogen) and gasoline which is much dirtier? https://docs.google.com/document/d/19Yf0MWpo91vrlu-mmJtjB1ERukjJo5W41oi4RZVQBug/edit

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:27:00 +0000

Interesting perspective…

By: Doug

Doug — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 15:07:00 +0000

Shale gas is helping with one thing only – killing coal. After coal is dead and buried, the EPA will tighten up on fracking. The only reason they haven’t done this already is because this would keep the coal plants running. Renewables will be very competitive with natural gas after new regulations restricting Shale gas fracking are put in place. These regulations are inevitable as fracking is environmentally unsound

By: Doug

Doug — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 15:02:00 +0000

We’re a long way off from having excess renewable energy production in any market, except maybe the big island of Hawaii. Economically, any “excess” would be better used for pumped water storage or reverse osmosis water purification than generating H2 from electrolysis, which is very inefficient.

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:48:00 +0000

I was at the world’s largest single-unit CSP plant recently, located in Abu Dhabi. They chose a dry-cooling power plant design even though it’s more expensive bcs… it was to be located in the middle of the desert. If you ain’t got water, you ain’t got water.

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:43:00 +0000

Yeah, not surprised, nuclear is definitely priced out of the market.

By: David Lipschitz

David Lipschitz — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 08:30:00 +0000

Hi Ivor. “only works”. In South Africa our peak electricity demand is from 7 to 10am and from 6 to 8pm. This because we don’t have natural gas pipelines, although many people cook and heat with gas (bottles).

I don’t see why plants can’t be built to store energy during the day at off peak times and make it available at peak times. This could make CSP affordable as the price per Watt of our Diesel Power Gas Turbines is incredibly high.

By: David Lipschitz

David Lipschitz — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 08:28:00 +0000

Hi Zachary. My research shows that CSP is on a par with Nuclear build in terms of build costs.

By: Crama

Crama — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 03:54:00 +0000

With CSP (concentrated solar power) we have the added byproduct and benefit of large scale production of distilled water for use in desert cities and desert agriculture, as well as the ability to run the steam turbines 24 hours by storing heat as molten salt. That, coupled to a high voltage DC trunk line installed around our nation (USA) will solve much of our electric power generation as well as the coming water shortages in our desert cities, all in as a sustainable way as possible. Check out http://www.desertec.org/

By: Ron Wagner

Ron Wagner — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 21:32:00 +0000

I am not a chemist or an engineer, but understand that hydrogen can be made from wind and solar power when there is excess. Rather than store it, for long, it could be fed into the natural gas stream. Of course if there is a better way to get it to market, or use it, that is best. Biomass is the best way , I know of, to make methane.

By: sola

sola — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 19:54:00 +0000

You mean producing methane (not hydrogen) and adding it to the natural gas pipelines. Hydrogen alone cannot be added to natural gas.

Yes, that would be soon economical and there are already projects for this (the Volkswagen e-gas project).

The synthetic gas cycle is especially appealing for countries which have big nat-gas storage facilities. My country, Hungary, has built huge storage facilities in recent years in order to counteract the possible supply outages resulting from the quarrelling between Russia and Ukrain.

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 12:38:00 +0000

Personally, I don’t see them as being advocates, simply studying the market. Right now, CSP is too expensive to compete in the market in most places (as current pricing and incentives sit). I don’t know, but simply see them as studying the matter rather than advocating for natural gas. (& same with this article.)

By: Ron Wagner

Ron Wagner — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 22:23:00 +0000

I am a proponent of natural gas but have no problem with the above scenario as long as the best price to the customer is achieved. I like wind and solar, so long as they can compete on an even playing field. Hopefully the economics will improve. As it is now, the affordable solar panels are made in China though, and all we do is install and maintain them. Europe pays twice what we do for electricity. We need to use our natural gas as much as possible, while expanding and reducing costs of solar, wind, and related energy storage.

The best storage idea I know of is producing hydrogen with excess power, and adding it to natural gas pipelines. Hopefully better batteries will be coming to.

By: Ivor O'Connor

Ivor O'Connor — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:42:00 +0000

You mention concentrated solar plants. The most efficient I know of is solar thermal and that only works well over a 24 hour period. Then there is converting excess energy to methane which will last years but the process of creating and using it later is not great. I don’t think either will replace the energy needed by our country. However I’m not understanding what you so maybe a bit of clarification might teach me something…

By: David Lipschitz

David Lipschitz — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 14:53:00 +0000

Interesting. They (Citigroup) say that (shale) gas will be used for Peaking Power because eventually we won’t need conventional base load, and we will need cheap peak load capacity. And they say there is a symbiotic relationship between Renewable Energy and Shale Gas!! Very long term they say that the gas will be replaced with large scale storage. Well we already have the ability for large scale storage in Concentrated Solar Plants. Why not leap right over the need for shale gas at all? So it seems like Citigroup are saying they will support Shale Gas at the right price.

What is also interesting is that Michael Eckhart, who used to be the President of ACORE, the American Council on Renewable Energy, is now is now Managing Director and Global Head of Environmental Finance and Sustainability at Citigroup in New York City! I wonder how Mr Eckhart feels about Citi’s approach to Shale Gas?