Should Renewables Make Friends with Gas?
Natural gas is viewed with suspicion bordering on hostility by the renewables industry. But in Europe, the natural-gas business has embarked on a charm offensive to soften that sentiment. Its message is clear: you need us to get to the next level of maturity.
Wind and PV are reaching new heights of penetration in the European energy system. Renewables accounted for 71.3% of the 45GW of new generation capacity added in the EU last year — by far its largest-ever share. Of that, 21GW was PV, more than twice as much as natural gas (9.7GW) or wind (9.6GW). Just 331MW of new nuclear capacity was added, while 6.3GW was taken off line.
But renewables advocates acknowledge that there is a limit to how much variable generation the system can handle, at least until major breakthroughs are made in energy-storage technologies, or vast numbers of pylons are built. Neither of those is likely to happen in the next decade, predicts Simon Blakey, special envoy for Eurogas, a trade body for Europe’s natural-gas sector.
“We’re beginning to get some hints as to the limits of how high wind and solar can go [in a country’s energy mix] — with wind in the likes of Spain, or solar in Germany,” says Blakey.
“They’re simply not going to achieve the same levels of growth as they have in the past, unless they find a way to liberate themselves from the constraints the grid is already putting on them.”
The easiest way for that to happen, he maintains, “is for gas and renewables to make friends”.
“We need to work together, both in terms of the basic climate objectives and in terms of the operational ways we go about managing the electricity system.” Gas plants are much better than nuclear or coal at complementing the peaks and troughs of renewables output — and the most efficient combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) emit up to 70% less CO2 than equivalent coal plants.
Open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) are the most nimble load-following power stations available, capable of ramping up and down rapidly to compensate for renewables’ variability. Meanwhile, a new generation of kit coming onto the market (such as GE’s FlexEfficiency and Alstom’s KA26 machines) is beginning to combine the agility of an OCGT with the high efficiency of CCGTs.
But striking a friendship between renewables and gas would be seen by many as a Faustian bargain. Christian Kjaer, chief executive of the European Wind Energy Association, points out that increasing reliance on natural gas would undercut two of the principal benefits of renewables in Europe: energy security and jobs.
“Each European citizen currently sends €700 [$930] abroad each year for energy imports; we are presenting every newborn with this bill,” Kjaer says. “If that baby could speak, it might ask what the bill will be for next year, but we wouldn’t be able to tell him.”
As for jobs, “we’ll never have a competitive advantage in conventional energy in Europe — we just don’t have the resources”, Kjaer says.
Others, however, argue that it is naive or misleading for green groups to downplay the role that fossil fuels will continue to perform in Europe’s energy mix for the foreseeable future.
And the detente between gas and renewables may be inevitable, as many members of Eurogas are also some of Europe’s largest renewables investors, including Dong, E.ON, Centrica and RWE.
With thanks to RECHARGE, the global source for rechangable energy news