Doldrums

Monday 4 March 2024

Generation from combined wind and solar grew at just 3.75% last year in the US, its slowest pace in decades. One can come up with explanations that might ease the shock of this single year performance, but frankly, the world can no longer afford to have “down years” from any domain where higher renewables growth is achievable. Natural gas generation meanwhile once again exploited the poor showing, growing at 6.8%. That was a repeat performance, by the way, from 2022 when natural gas power also grew by 6.8%. Cold Eye Earth has been warning for over a year now that natural gas growth both in the US and globally is still competing hard in the market for new power. Until that trend is halted, actual emissions declines in global electricity are neither happening, nor are they on the way.

One of the more unhelpful trends in understanding the fight to decarbonize power is the proliferation of charts showing capacity additions to powergrids. Yes, one obviously has to build capacity to obtain generation, but the misinterpretation of capacity growth forecasts can seriously lead one astray from the only thing that matters: generation. Indeed, let’s demonstrate just how far astray. Below is a chart from EIA that was wildly popular early last year, showing that a great run of new solar and wind and battery additions were just ahead.

Now the results. Last year, power generation from natural gas grew by 115 TWh. Generation from combined wind and solar grew by 24 TWh. Yes, natural gas generation grew from a much bigger base. But, that is in fact a feature of the problem we’re trying to solve. Wind and solar are growing from a smaller base of course, and are growing fast. We can expect, for example, that the late-year capacity additions to solar in 2023 will show up this year in generation. Indeed, it’s a certainty that wind and solar growth will be much stronger this year. But constantly flogging the growth rate of wind and solar has become valueless, unless it’s measured against the ability to neutralize marginal growth in fossil-fuel power generation. As for capacity addition forecasts, they really only have one useful function: they allow us to estimate future generation growth using capacity-factor adjustments. For the general public, however, such charts are a nuisance.

Here is the recent history of combined generation growth from wind and solar, as measured in TWh:

According to the most recent polling, Joe Biden is on course to lose the 2024 election. Should this happen, a Republican administration would set a big course change on climate policy, turning away from clean energy and towards fossil fuel production. The question, therefore, is how much of that course change could they actually achieve? To understand the contours, let’s begin with the latest update, this time from The Wall Street Journal, on the massive impact underway in US manufacturing and investment from the grand suite of climate legislation.