I think he would consider me to be too optimistic. However, the tech has moved on in terms of the size of the turbines and towers.
I'm not sure what exactly was driving his decision to only include 1/3rd of the available sea area. Shipping lanes and fishing but I don't think there was much thought beyond "hey, shipping and fishing will need some space".
The real change in my mind is the floating offshore wind technology at eg Hywind.
My model for these things is that new ways of doing things start costing eye-watering multiples of the alternatives. With a bit of development you might start seeing a way to getting the cost down to a mere order of magnitude more. If there are not any fundamental barriers implicit in the physics the cost reduction becomes a function of learning curve effects, scale economies the interactions with adjacecent enabling technology. Once you get yourself on the cost reduction path you are likely to come out at as cheaper than the existing alternative over time.
So key barriers are fundamental barriers in the physics and whether the investments required by earlier adopters to get the technology on a cost reduction path are ever going to be worth it.
CCS for me fails the two tests because it's difficult to see a way of burning fossil fuels and sequestering the carbon that releases more usable energy than just sourcing it from solar PV and even if you could solar PV is almost certainly going to chase you down the cost curve.
Off-shore floating wind passes the first test. There doesn't seem to be a physical limits that stop us building the turbines we would want. Looks like the technology is on a beneficial glide path for costs.
I still think solar PV and big cables will end up being cheaper.
It is a shame he's not around to update the book. I'd be interested to see if his fundamental thinking changed in light of the different economics.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2020-02-10 12:59 pm (UTC)I'm not sure what exactly was driving his decision to only include 1/3rd of the available sea area. Shipping lanes and fishing but I don't think there was much thought beyond "hey, shipping and fishing will need some space".
The real change in my mind is the floating offshore wind technology at eg Hywind.
My model for these things is that new ways of doing things start costing eye-watering multiples of the alternatives. With a bit of development you might start seeing a way to getting the cost down to a mere order of magnitude more. If there are not any fundamental barriers implicit in the physics the cost reduction becomes a function of learning curve effects, scale economies the interactions with adjacecent enabling technology. Once you get yourself on the cost reduction path you are likely to come out at as cheaper than the existing alternative over time.
So key barriers are fundamental barriers in the physics and whether the investments required by earlier adopters to get the technology on a cost reduction path are ever going to be worth it.
CCS for me fails the two tests because it's difficult to see a way of burning fossil fuels and sequestering the carbon that releases more usable energy than just sourcing it from solar PV and even if you could solar PV is almost certainly going to chase you down the cost curve.
Off-shore floating wind passes the first test. There doesn't seem to be a physical limits that stop us building the turbines we would want. Looks like the technology is on a beneficial glide path for costs.
I still think solar PV and big cables will end up being cheaper.
It is a shame he's not around to update the book. I'd be interested to see if his fundamental thinking changed in light of the different economics.