The Phoenix Sun

Solar power and climate change

Speaking earlier today at a press conference in Copenhagen, the head of the main European photovoltaic (PV) industry organization made the case for PV as a fundamental solution to climate change.

“The problem is global,” said Adel El Gammal, “and PV can bring a global solution.”

El Gammal, secretary general of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) since 2008, pointed to PV’s major pluses. His key points included:

• Solar energy is massively available.
• PV can provide distributed electrical generation (as well as centralized).
• It’s a scalable technology, from a few watts to MWs.
• PV can ramp up production very quickly
• It is one of the only technologies that be easily integrated into a dense urban setting.

The potential for solar energy is not just theoretical, he added. In the last year alone, El Gammal said, PV accounted for nearly 20% of all new electrical generation in Europe — some 4.7 GW.

Solar in the “Sunbelt Countries”

In the developing world, El Gammal sees an even larger role for solar PV.

The land between 35°N latitude and 35°S is sometimes referred to as the Sunbelt Countries, for reasons that are obvious after glancing at the map to the right, showing the amount of solar energy falling on the planet.

“Sunbelt countries contain 75% of the world’s population,” said El Gammal, “and are also the fastest growing populations.”

Many of the sunbelt countries have a poor electrical infrastructure — with many as 1.6 billion people living with access to electricity. And where electricity is available it is generated primarily by fossil fuels and at a higher cost than elsewhere.

“PV is a perfect solution to match increasing electrical demand” in sunbelt countries, said El Gammal. It is already competitive with peak load generation and, he added, in two to three years, PV will be competitive with medium load generation.

These projections come from several studies commissioned by the EPIA, primarily the report SET for 2020, published in June of this year. That study takes its name, and its mission from the European Union’s climate and energy policies goals adopted in 2007. These include the so-called 20/20/20 goals:

• Reduce greenhouse-gas emissions unilaterally by 20% from 1990 levels;
• Ensure that renewable energy represents a 20% share of total energy use;
• Reduce overall energy consumption by 20%.

By combining a number of best-case scenarios, the EPIA claims that PV can provide more than half of the EU target for renewable energy, moving from 1% of all electrical generation today to up to 12% by 2020.

A Needed Vision

But is such a rapid shift really possible, or is this just a case of industrial wishful thinking? I put that question to Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, and director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at the school.

Although Jacobson couldn’t speak to the details of SET for 2020 plan, he told The Phoenix Sun that the report is “the kind of vision needed to solve serious problems we are all facing with respect to climate, air pollution health, and energy security.”

Like El Gammal (who told a reporter today that “We have to change our relationship with energy”), Jacobson does not think half-measures are adequate. “I think we need to transform our energy infrastructure entirely,” he said, “to a combination of large scale renewables, including PV, and this needs to occur over the period of 20-40 years (2030-2050)….PV will play a pivotal role in this transition, so large-scale plans such as this are welcome.”

(Jacobson is no stranger to large-scale plans. He is co-author, with Mark Delucchi, of the recent Scientific American cover story, A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables).

Which Energy Future?

El Gammal ended by pointing out what so many seem to miss: that our energy choice has very little to do with technology per se. It’s a question of policy.

“There is no technological issue with PV,” he said. “It is just a matter of political will.”

Which is both bad news and good

Bad, because politics are far more complicated than any technology. Good, because politicians are the servants of public will. That means the choice is ours, as is the responsibility for conveying our determined wishes to our leaders.

Resources

To download the executive summary of the SET FOR 2020 report, click on the report image. (PDF file.)

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There is no one reason to go solar. People are attracted to different aspects. Even individuals usually have a variety of motivations for their decision to install PV panels.

Going solar?

I talked with a woman last week who already had the panels up and was just waiting for her utility company to come out and replace the old style meter with a new bi-directional one. Her enthusiasm for the project was so strong that at one point she felt compelled to swear she wasn’t a shill for the solar industry.

But when I asked why she and her husband were taking this leap into solar, the silence that followed went on for so long that I thought we had been disconnected. When she finally answered, it sounded like a different person. Her tone was meek and apologetic; her voice barely audible.

“I’d like to say it was just because I care about the environment,” she answered, “but it was mostly…about the money.”

Another pause, and then: “We wanted to lower our electric bill.” It was the voice of a defendant breaking down on a witness stand, admitting that, “Yes, yes, I did it. I confess!

Well, who doesn’t want to lower their electric bills? Isn’t that how a market economy is supposed to work?

She hurried to add, though, that the couple also cared about the environment. If they hadn’t been concerned about climate change, she said, they probably would not have made the change.

Which begs a question: Given the grave consequences of climate change, if most people need a combination of economic and social/ethical factors to go solar, how will that happen?

One hint comes from the conversation above. We’ve learned a lot in a just a few decades about the environmental costs of generating electrical power. These costs, however, aren’t reflected in the price of electricity. The problem isn’t new. The price of electricity generated by burning coal didn’t include the 30,000 early deaths from heart and respiratory diseases caused by coal-fired power plants in 1999 alone.

Some blame the “invisible hand” of the marketplace for failing to internalize these costs. That’s the easy way out. It’s not the fault of some vague and unaccountable economic principle. It’s not even an economic failure. It’s a question of political will. In the immortal words of Pogo: We have met the enemy and he is us. We collectively allowed government regulators to turn a blind eye, protecting energy companies from the rigors of the marketplace.

And yet, the couple described above were able to install solar panels. How? Because they didn’t have to buy them; they lease the solar power system. The monthly cost of the lease combined with their now-reduced electrical bill comes to less than what they had been paying for power.

The Missing Ingredient

But there’s one more component needed. The solar company that installed and owns the PV array wouldn’t earn enough from leasing alone to make this system profitable. Not while the government subsidized their coal-burning competitors by forcing downwind communities and taxpayers to bare the full cost of burning coal. (And this is without factoring in climate change — the biggest cost of all.)

The missing ingredient came first from state governments that decided it was time to level the playing field for all forms of energy.

Tomorrow Who was the first governor to change marketplace rules for electrical generation in his state in 1999, resulting in that state becoming #1 in wind-power capacity in the nation today?