Windy Uruguay
There has been excited talk in the UK press about Uruguay generating 91.2% of its electricity from “renewable” sources, with an implication that the UK should try to emulate this success
A local consultancy firm in Uruguay specialising in renewables gives the breakdown of electricity generation in 2023 thus:
Wind 44.5%
Hydro 32.2%
Biomass 11%
Fuel 8.8%
Solar 3.8%
Hydro generally produces 70% of the country’s electricity, but there has been a profound drought in the last years. This means that the baseload is usually provided by hydro, and that makes the intermittent sources more easy to handle
80% of the biomass-generated electricity comes from paper mills burning trees. Trees are planted and harvested as a crop. People invest in them as a pension. There is plenty of space for this crop, though the waiting times for cashing in are long, and costs have to be paid each year for managing the woodlands, and of course for the eventual harvesting and transportation.
Wind is doing well, and solar not so much, despite Uruguay being very sunny. Sunshine has a diurnal variation, annoyingly not being available when most needed, at night. Solar farms can be increased, and the economics may eventually change, but this is the expensive stage of the business. Storage of electricity costs about three times the cost of production.
Curiously, Uruguay does not have much enthusiasm for a rational policy about sunshine. The current obsession is to convert all energy sources into electricity. This is wasteful. Even when solar panels are cheap, because of over-production, their efficiency is low, in the 10 to 18 % range
Solar water heating is little used in Uruguay, yet it would markedly reduce the need for electricity, since in most homes the electric heating of domestic water is the major ingredient of home electricity bills. It may be that the initial outlay is too high, and the long term gains not high enough to generate enthusiasm, even though they are 30 to 70% efficient.
Uruguayan electricity prices are high given that wages are far lower than in the UK, and these high prices are explained as the initial costs of windmills and solar farms being high, though there is hope they will come down later. Perhaps so. Windmills need maintenance, so we will have a better idea about lifetime costs in 20 years.
The United Kingdom could not emulate Uruguay unless it was willing to flood far more land for hydroelectric power stations. Even then, most of the viable sites are already identified and established. It would be hard to find more. The UK would also have to plant even more trees as crops, and harvest them regularly, as part of paper-making operations or something similar, but the volumes would be prohibitive in terms of land use. In terms of Kilowatt hours per kilo, wood is a poor fuel. Petrol and deisel provide about 12.8 Kwh per kilo, coal 9 and wood .5 . Using wood to provide power is only worthwhile if you are doing something else with it, like making paper, but moving wood to a distant furnace is not a sensible policy.
Although it might involve some inconvenience, and possibly cause some concern and mild protest, the most ecological thing the United Kingdom could do is to reduce its 65+ million population to a sustainable 3.4 million. It will all be in a good cause, because as you zero in to zero population you zero in to zero carbon.
"Although it might involve some inconvenience, and possibly cause some concern and mild protest, the most ecological thing the United Kingdom could do is to reduce its 65+ million population to a sustainable 3.4 million. It will all be in a good cause, because as you zero in to zero population you zero in to zero carbon."
LOL