GREENPEACE LIKES SUN IN THE DESERT

Solar power could surge by 2050 in deserts-report
Alister Doyle (w/Richard Williams), May 25, 2009 (Reuters)
and
Beam me up Sunny!
25 May 2009 (Greenpeace Internatiional)

SUMMARY
Concentrating Solar Power Global Outlook 2009; Why Renewable Energy is Hot, the 3rd report on solar power plant technology from Greenpeace International, the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association (ESTELA) and the International Energy Agency's (IEA) SolarPACES sees continuing enormous opportunity and finds, for the first time, that market value exceeded $1 billion in 2008. It predicts that value could double in 2009.

Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is a set of solar energy technologies that move far beyond the rooftop solar panel. Panels turn solar light into electricity. CSP is used in solar power plants to capture the heat of the sun and use it the same way nuclear energy-generated heat or coal plant energy-generated heat is used, to boil water and make steam that turns a turbine whose mechanical energy is used to generate electricity.

Solar power plants require locations saturated with sunbeams (high “beam radiation”), usually between the equator and 40 degrees latitude north or south. For the right clear-sky, hot-sun desert-like locales, solar power plants offer the same kind of opportunity that offshore wind offers Europe and the U.S. Mid-Atlantic Coast.

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CSP solar power plant technologies vary. They may use parabolic trough mirrors and tubes, flat plate mirrors and a solar power tower or cupped mirrors focused on a Stirling engine. (See BIG SOLAR POWER PLANT ACTION...)

The Greenpeace report calculates that solar plants now produce electricity at 0.15-to-0.23 euros (21-to-32 cents) per kilowatt-hour and the price will, by 2020, fall to 0.10-to-0.14 euros (14-to-19 cents) per kilowatt-hour with supportive policies that generate new volumes and economies of scale. The latter price is expected to be competitive with the cost of electricity from other power sources as the cost of emissions and the cost of construction rise.

The report predicts that 2009 investment in solar power plants will pass the 2 billion euros (USD 2.58 billion) mark and could reach 20.8 billion euros (USD 26.8 billion) in value. It describes a scenario in which solar power plants supply as much as 7% of world power in 2030 and 25% of world power 2050. Such growth would employ 2 million people worldwide and eliminate 20% of world greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions.

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The cumulative worldwide installed capacity of solar power plants at the end of 2008 was 430 megawatts.

The report’s predictions are based on an assumption of a 21 billion euro per year level of investment by 2015 and a 174 billion euro per year investment by 2050. Under that scenario, the industry would have an installed capacity of 1,500 gigawatts by 2050. By contrast, the International Energy Agengy (IEA) business-as-usual forecast is that solar power will provide no more than 0.2% of world power by mid century.

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COMMENTARY
Making its case for the power of concentrated solar energy, Greenpeace pointed out that (1) the concentrated heat of the sun is powerful enough to easily melt steel and that (2) a solar power plant heats liquids to between 400 and 1000 degrees C. while bacteria dies at 50 degrees, water boils at 100 degrees and volcanic lava is 1000 degrees.

Solar power plant technology was first used on a large scale in 1912 by Egyptians to drive irrigation pumps because other pumps required coal that was, in Egypt, rare and expensive. But fossil fuels became too cheap to ignore, in Egypt and around the world, much to the present-day detriment of earth’s atmosphere and ecosystem.

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The first commercial scale solar power plants using CSP technology were built in California’s Mojave Desert in the 1980s. Interest waned in the technology in favor of cheap natural gas in the 1990s but a concern with GhGs has produced a revival. New solar power plants are just going into operation or now being planned in California, Nevada, Arizona and Spain and many more are in the development process around the world.

The report calculates that if solar power plant technology were developed to its fullest potential it could eliminate half the emissions produced annually by Australia by 2020 and 5 times the emissions produced by Germany annually by 2050.

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QUOTES
- 2nd (2005) Greenpeace International report on solar power plant technology: "CSP is ready for take off!"
- Greenpeace International, 2009: "CSP has taken off…"
- Greenpeace International, 2009: Concentrating Solar Power systems are the next big thing in renewable energy… In a very short time, the technology has demonstrated huge technological and economic promise. It has one major advantage - a massive renewable resource, the sun - and very few downsides…”

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- 3rd (2009) Greenpeace International report: “CSP is now the third multi-billion dollar industry (alongside wind and solar photovoltaics) for clean power generation having expanded rapidly over the past five years to become a mass-produced and mainstream energy generation solution. It can deliver reliable industry-scale power around the clock thanks to modern storage technologies and hybrid operations.”
- Jose Nebrera, president, ESTELA: "CSP plants can deliver reliable industry-scale power supply around the clock due to storage technologies and hybrid operations within the power plant…"