Page - 41 - in Clean Water Using Solar and Wind - Outside the Power Grid

The renewable energy revolution 41 the EPA “AVoided Emissions and geneRation Tool”, AVERT. AVERT calculates the pollution reductions provided by renewable energy and energy efficiency by statistically determining which fossil-fired power plants are most likely to have their output reduced due to the addition of renewable energy or energy efficiency). Also, land use is minimal since wind power generation can share the land with other activities (see also Chapter 13). Due to the intermittent nature of both wind and solar PV (see Chapter 10), there are always issues of both lack of production and excess energy. DNV GL (2017) explains that there is too little economic consideration of what effect temporary surpluses of wind and solar power will have on the economics of renewables: “we have not yet shown what the impact is of that.” However: “we will also need to decarbonise heat, so it makes sense to store the surplus renewable energy, for example to heat water with it or to convert it into gas, to be used for heating. It is not yet clear what the most economic route will be.” 3.7 GEOPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS Renewable energy has an impact on two important factors: economy and geopolitics. Renewable energy sources are products of manufacturing (Mathews & Tan, 2014). Using mass manufacturing means that the cost is related to economy of scale. Furthermore, as more experience is gained, manufacturing efficiency can be improved and can follow the scaling pattern characteristic of industrial learning curves. An increase of the production volume will almost surely imply a cost reduction. It seems to be a rule of thumb for a surprisingly big range of products that a doubling of the production volume leads to a 20% reduction in unit cost. There are surely other factors except production volume that will affect the price. The fact that manufacturing can in principle be conducted anywhere means that renewables can offer genuine energy security. There is no geopolitical pressure where one country has deposits of a fossil fuel, but another does not. Renewables promise an end to energy security being closely related to geopolitics. In Table 3.1 we list the top two countries in terms of total capacity or generation. Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/520710/wio9781780409443.pdf by IWA Publishing user