Parliamentary Committee Supports Nuclear – But Only If Everyone Is Into It , Solar Quotes, December 19, 2019 by Ronald Brakels “……..The Parliamentary Nuclear Committee used 214 pages to come to the wrong conclusion. But arriving at the right conclusion can’t be easy if you have no ability to smell bullshit in your own research.
One Solar Panel Does Not Cause 0.8 Tonnes Of CO2 Emissions
Take a look at this table included in the report, taken from a publication that advocates nuclear power:
Casually looking at that you might think CO2 emissions for both nuclear energy and solar PV are pretty low. But if we stop for one minute and use basic mathematical ability that’s available to anyone who doesn’t have to take their socks off to count to 20, then we can see that a Parliamentary committee saw fit to include a table in an official report that gives ridiculous results.
Looking at their minimum figure for Solar PV (Utility scale), I see they are claiming a large solar farm will result in at least 18 grams of CO2 emissions per kilowatt-hour generated. While generating electricity from PV doesn’t result in any emissions, they are involved in the manufacture of solar panels, so they aren’t completely emissions-free. However, they are a lot bloody closer to emission free than this table suggests.
These days a typical standard sized solar panel is around 300 watts. In a solar farm in Australia on a fixed mount it will generate around 12,300 kilowatt-hours over 25 years. This means they are saying the solar panel will result in a minimum of 222 kilograms of CO2 emissions. If we use their maximum figure it will result in 2.22 tonnes of CO2, all for a panel that weighs about 18 kilograms. So they are saying manufacturing and installing one solar panel results in emissions equal to burning 80-800 or more kilograms of coal.
Jinko Solar, the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer, has a figure from 2017 of just 2.19 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour generated by a solar farm. As this has been decreasing year by year it will be even lower now. However, this is just for the solar panel and doesn’t include emissions from the construction of its ground mount or inverter, so I’ll double it to 4.4 grams. This means the actual emissions per kilowatt-hour are probably less than the best figure on the table and more than 40 times less than the worst figure. Even if we triple the Jinko figure it still comes to less than their median emissions for nuclear energy and less than 4% of their maximum figure for PV.
It’s clear the committee had no ability to detect figures that were bullshit — or they simply didn’t care.
Renewable Energy Increases The Cost Of Nuclear
Here is section 1.50 of the report:
I note the committee has failed to understand the economics of nuclear power if they think it works well with solar and wind energy. This is because if a nuclear power station produces half the energy its capable of, it almost doubles the cost of that energy. This is due to nuclear fuel being very cheap1 per kilowatt-hour, so very little money is saved by ramping down, while nearly all other costs remain the same.
This means nuclear power, which is already too expensive when operated in the most economical way — almost continuously at full normal power — becomes even more expensive when used in a grid with a significant amount of solar energy and/or wind power capacity. Australia already has more than enough to adversely affect the economics of nuclear energy and, even if we approve and build a nuclear power station in one quarter the average time it has taken overseas this century, things will be much worse for its economics by the time it’s complete….. https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/nuclear-energy-australia/