Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems

Heard, Ben P.; Brook, Barry W.; Wigley, T. M. L.; Bradshaw, Corey J. A.

doi:10.1016/j.rser.2017.03.114

Cited by 325 publications

(192 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…In the recent article 'Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems' [73] the authors of the article (henceforth 'the authors') analysed 24 published studies (including [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]) of scenarios for highly renewable electricity systems, some regional and some global in scope. Drawing on the criticisms outlined above, the authors chose feasibility criteria to assess the studies, according to which they concluded that many of the studies do not rate well.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’

Brown

Bischof-Niemz

Blok

et al. 2018

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

414

220

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A recent article 'Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems' claims that many studies of 100% renewable electricity systems do not demonstrate sufficient technical feasibility, according to the criteria of the article's authors (henceforth 'the authors'). Here we analyse the authors' methodology and find it problematic. The feasibility criteria chosen by the authors are important, but are also easily addressed at low economic cost, while not affecting the main conclusions of the reviewed studies and certainly not affecting their technical feasibility. A more thorough review reveals that all of the issues have already been addressed in the engineering and modelling literature. Nuclear power, which the authors have evaluated positively elsewhere, faces other, genuine feasibility problems, such as the finiteness of uranium resources and a reliance on unproven technologies in the medium-to long-term. Energy systems based on renewables, on the other hand, are not only feasible, but already economically viable and decreasing in cost every year.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’

Brown

Bischof-Niemz

Blok

et al. 2018

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

414

220

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“…These issues not only affected our review but represent a significant general limitation across the energy indicators literature. Without transparent definitions and methods, reproducing results and applying those results in future comparisons of energy sources will be impossible and may contribute to further disagreements regarding optimal energy futures [54][55][56][57][58][59].…”

Section: Review Limitations and Caveatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Disagreements also exist around Jacobsen's recommendations for renewable energy adoption [68,69]. This debate largely stems from differences of opinion regarding how to perform the analyses and what effects of renewables to measure [58,70]. Resolution of these debates will likely require acceptance of a framework (a combination of methods and choice of indicators) that is accepted by the majority of the community of practice and research.…”

Section: Establish Framework For Comparisonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of indicators for comparing environmental effects across energy sources

Dorning

Diffendorfer

Loss

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Robust, quantitative comparisons of environmental effects across energy sources can support development of energy planning strategies that meet growing demand while managing and minimizing undesirable effects on environmental resources. Multicriteria analyses of energy systems often use a suite of indicators to make such comparisons, but those indicators and their units of measure vary among studies. We reviewed 179 papers that described or applied energy indicators to compare environmental effects of different primary energy sources to answer four questions:(1) what environmental indicators have been used in multicriteria energy-source comparisons? (2) across studies, how consistently are these indicators used to quantify effects? (3) to what degree are different effects accounted for across energy sources and locations? and (4) how comprehensive are indicators in terms of assessing known environmental effects? For reviewed studies, we quantified the number of unique indicators and the diversity of indicators used to measure different effects. We also recorded the specific measurement units applied to quantify each indicator, the energy sources evaluated, and the continent where each study was conducted. While we found that many environmental effects of energy development have been analyzed across multiple sources, indicators were frequently measured, interpreted, and applied in ways that are not directly comparable, and some known environmental effects were infrequently assessed. We also found an emphasis on applying indicators to renewable energy sources; assessing current and potential energy sources, both renewable and nonrenewable, would greatly clarify the full suite of tradeoffs among sources and can inform energy development strategies that minimize adverse environmental effects. Overall, our review indicated that making comprehensive comparisons of the effects of energy development across sources may require efforts to standardize how effects are measured, synthesize effects literature into an open-source database, expand the range of environmental effects analyzed, and establish consistent frameworks for comparison.

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“…Transmission requirements also present problems arising from cost of transmission lines and power losses over long distances [45]. Another difficulty is that the technosolar energy sources are inherently variable and intermittent-sometimes they deliver a lot of power and sometimes little or none, for short or extended periods [24,45,46]. This means that to satisfy the needs of an "always on" power demand, even with a multi-source interconnected distributed network, ways must be found to store vast amounts of heat or electricity to cover the non-generating periods [47], or else keep fossil-fuel or nuclear plants as a backup [17,45,48].…”

Section: Alternative Energy Mixes and The "Silver Buckshot"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, recent peer-reviewed critiques of the future global role of renewable energy [22,24,41,43] provide exhaustive details on the constraints imposed by variability, dispatchability, large-scale energy storage, the need for overbuilding and geographical replication (and the likely consequence: "dumping" of unused excess energy), low energy returned on energy invested and other key points. There are also recent meta-reviews that consider technological maturity, fit-for-service replacement capacity, cost and life-cycle emissions, as constraints on renewables capacity to displace fossil fuels [7,41,56].…”

Section: Alternative Energy Mixes and The "Silver Buckshot"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Silver Buckshot or Bullet: Is a Future “Energy Mix” Necessary?

Brook

Blees²,

Wigley

et al. 2018

Sustainability

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Abstract:To displace fossil fuels and achieve the global greenhouse-gas emissions reductions required to meet the Paris Agreement on climate change, the prevalent argument is that a mix of different low-carbon energy sources will need to be deployed. Here we seek to challenge that viewpoint. We argue that a completely decarbonized, energy-rich and sustainable future could be achieved with a dominant deployment of next-generation nuclear fission and associated technologies for synthesizing liquid fuels and recycling waste. By contrast, non-dispatchable energy sources like wind and solar energy are arguably superfluous, other than for niche applications, and run the risk of diverting resources away from viable and holistic solutions. For instance, the pairing of variable renewables with natural-gas backup fails to address many of the entrenched problems we seek to solve. Our conclusion is that, given the urgent time frame and massive extent of the energy-replacement challenge, half-measures that distract from or stymie effective policy and infrastructure investment should be avoided.

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Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems

Cited by 325 publications

References 80 publications

Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’

Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’

Review of indicators for comparing environmental effects across energy sources

Silver Buckshot or Bullet: Is a Future “Energy Mix” Necessary?

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