Part 2: Key concept texts

Text 1

Barriers to renewable energy technologies

1. The most obvious and widely publicized barrier to renewable energy is cost—specifically, capital costs or the upfront expense of building and installing solar and wind farms. Like most renewables, solar and wind are exceedingly cheap to operate—their “fuel” is free, and maintenance is minimal—so the bulk of the expense comes from building the technology.

2. The average cost in 2017 to install solar systems ranged from a little over $2,000 per kilowatt (kilowatts are a measure of power capacity) for large-scale systems to almost $3,700 for residential systems. A new natural gas plant might have costs around $1,000/kW. Wind comes in around $1,200 to $1,700/kw.


3. Higher construction costs might make financial institutions more likely to perceive renewables as risky, lending money at higher rates and making it harder for utilities or developers to justify the investment. For natural gas and other fossil fuel power plants, the cost of fuel may be passed onto the consumer, lowering the risk associated with the initial investment (though increasing the risk of erratic electricity bills).

4. However, if costs over the lifespan of energy projects are taken into account, wind and utility-scale solar can be the least expensive energy generating sources, according to asset management company Lazard. As of 2017, the cost (before tax credits that would further drop the costs) of wind power was $30-60 per megawatt-hour (a measure of energy), and large-scale solar cost $43-53/MWh. For comparison: energy from the most efficient type of natural gas plants cost $42-78/MWh; coal power cost at least $60/MWh.


5. Even more encouragingly, renewable energy capital costs have fallen dramatically since the early 2000s, and will likely continue to do so. For example: between 2006 and 2016, the average value of photovoltaic modules themselves plummeted from $3.50/watt $0.72/watt—an 80 percent decrease in only 10 years.
 
Market entry
6. For most of the last century US electricity was dominated by certain major players, including coal, nuclear, and, most recently, natural gas. Utilities across the country have invested heavily in these technologies, which are very mature and well understood, and which hold enormous market power.

7. This situation—the well-established nature of existing technologies—presents a formidable barrier for renewable energy. Solar, wind, and other renewable resources need to compete with wealthier industries that benefit from existing infrastructure, expertise, and policy. It’s a difficult market to enter.


8. New energy technologies—startups—face even larger barriers. They compete with major market players like coal and gas, and with proven, low-cost solar and wind technologies. To prove their worth, they must demonstrate scale: most investors want large quantities of energy, ideally at times when wind and solar aren’t available. That’s difficult to accomplish, and a major reason why new technologies suffer high rates of failure.

9. Increased government investment in clean energy—in the form of subsidies, loan assistance, and research and development—would help.
 
Reliability misconceptions




10. When done correctly, reliability isn’t a concern with wind and solar—it’s actually a strength.
Renewable energy opponents love to highlight the variability of the sun and wind as a way of bolstering support for coal, gas, and nuclear plants, which can more easily operate on-demand or provide “baseload” (continuous) power. The argument is used to undermine large investments in renewable energy, presenting a rhetorical barrier to higher rates of wind and solar adoption.

11. But reality is much more favorable for clean energy. Solar and wind are highly predictable, and when spread across a large enough geographic area—and paired with complementary generation sources—become highly reliable. Modern grid technologies like advanced batteries, real-time pricing and smart technologies can also help solar and wind be essential elements of a well-performing grid.

12. Tests performed in California, which has some of the highest rates of renewable electricity use in the world, provide real-world validation for the idea that solar and wind can actually enhance grid reliability. A 2017 Department of Energy report confirmed this, citing real-world experience and multiple scientific studies to confirm that the United States can safely and reliably operate the electric grid with high levels of renewables.

13. Many utilities, though, still don’t consider the full value of wind, solar, and other renewable sources. Energy planners often consider narrow cost parameters, and miss the big-picture, long-term opportunities that renewables offer. Increased awareness—and a willingness to move beyond the reliability myth—is sorely needed.


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Text 2

Edited extract from:
Other Barriers to Renewable Energy Development

Political and regulatory barriers
1. Lack of policies and regulations favouring the development of renewable energy technologies can hinder adoption of these technologies. Due to the nature of renewable energy structures, the renewable energy market needs clear policies and legislation to increase the interest of investors (15). This is because “enabling policies create stable and predictable investment environments, help overcome barriers and ensure predictable project revenue streams” (16). Additionally, regulatory measures such as standards and codes enhance the adoption of renewable energy technologies by minimising the technological and regulatory risk that comes along with investments in these projects (17).

2. However, in some countries like India, there are no complete renewable energy policy declarations simply because most renewable energy technologies in the country remain in the advancement stage (8). Similarly, Mohammed et al., (2013, p.461) in their study on renewable energy adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa noted that many countries in the region have distinctive national renewable energy policies whereas regional policies are not fully formed because of unsuitable implementation approaches… This means that, despite the many renewable energy policies developed in most of these countries, it has been difficult to implement them mainly because they are immature.


3. Additionally, private sector participation in renewable energy projects in some countries is hindered by the lack of well-defined policies on private investment and delays in the authorisation of private sector projects (8). Therefore, because large-scale renewable energy projects require large amounts of capital to run (17), many countries’ progress toward renewable energy is held back by policymakers’ failure to implement measures to attract private investors.

Social-cultural barriers
4. Socio-cultural barriers, for example, households’ unwillingness to adopt renewable energy for fear of unreliability (19), form one of the bases for failure to adopt renewable energy technologies in some countries. For example, general public disinterest and disengagement in wind energy development were identified as the main social issues hindering renewable energy development in Saskatchewan, Canada (18).

5. Further, lack of knowledge and awareness of renewable energy technologies and systems amongst rural communities in developing countries is another challenge encountered in renewable energy development (20). For example, a majority of people in Sub-Saharan Africa are uneducated and may not be familiar with the concept of renewable energy (7). These uneducated people in the region are also unlikely to be oriented to technical and environmental impacts associated with over-use of combustible renewables such as the wood they use for fuel (3). These factors coupled together have slowed down the rate of development, circulation and usage of renewable infrastructure and technological knowledge. Therefore, the creation of awareness of renewable energy among communities and a critical focus on their socio-cultural practices is required (21).

Market-related barriers
6. Initial investment costs for renewable energy systems are usually high. Consequently, market prices for these systems remain high and unaffordable to many potential customers, especially in the developing countries (21). This is because the total production cost of renewable energy also become relatively high compared to fossil fuels, and therefore, market prices for renewable energy remain relatively high. Consequently, because in most cases many people prefer to go for cheaper options, renewable energy technologies, therefore, suffer unfair market competition from fossil fuel technologies whose establishment and operational costs are usually subsidised.

7. In connection with this, other factors that make renewable energy technologies less competitive or unavailable in the markets include: lack of successful and replicable renewable energy business models to help turn small-scale projects into commercial businesses (30); inconsistent biomass supply in some areas like Europe (31); lack of market for renewable energy; and the high and fluctuating prices of renewable energy in some countries like China (28). Therefore, most people cannot afford renewable energy technologies because their initial installation costs and operation costs are usually high which raises their market prices, ultimately limiting their marketability. Since the market for renewable energy sources is limited, its development is also limited. This is because, when something is not marketable people do not invest so much in its development. In this case of renewable energy technologies, it is clear that most people are not motivated to acquire or develop them.


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Text 3

Social barriers to renewable energy landscapes

A. We are knocking on the door of a renewable energy future, and we are making some progress. If we can consolidate our gains, we may be able to pass through the portal with some real chance of developing a genuine measure of sustainability. Some barriers, however, still block our way. Some of the remaining barriers are technical, but most of them are social, and they are accumulating. This is not surprising because each new step forward prompts more people to begin considering what a renewable energy future will mean to their lives. Their most common reaction is to try to slow things down until their questions and reservations are addressed.

B. The social barriers to renewable energy have been underappreciated and under- examined. There are many examples of renewable projects from around the world that illustrate how, if not addressed, these social barriers can inhibit, redirect, discourage, or even halt projects. We need to rebalance the attention we pay to these challenges. Such rebalancing will require acknowledging that social issues can be as important as- and in many cases more important than- technical issues. We must realize that conditions for development differ from group to group, time to time, and especially landscape to landscape. This means that neither acceptance of nor opposition to a technology in one location will necessarily transfer to another location. Likewise, support or opposition to renewables will depend less on the type of resource than on how one location differs from another in terms of physical environment, cultural underpinnings, and social structures.

C. The problem that champions of renewable energy development face is that they have often assumed- and have expected to receive unquestioning public support for their projects. What they have not anticipated is that love of existing landscapes can rout any benefits that renewable energy development may promise. We are finding that commercial development of renewable energy resources, now upon us, is repeatedly bumping up against this hard reality. Renewable energy projects will require the construction of infrastructure which may radically alter the landscape, for example geothermal plants or wind turbines, and there is often fierce local public resistance when the renewable infrastructure project means the landscape will potentially look very different or be subject to different uses. The attachment that the public has to their landscapes is very often underestimated by renewable energy developers.

D. The mistake commonly made in the name of a renewable energy future is to consider the technical and economic challenges of commercialization as the only obstacles that must be overcome in order to make the leap from dream to reality. Government programs and industry give little attention to identifying and addressing social barriers. Consequently, attention tends to bounce around, alighting on one topic after another that happens to appeal to the media, or some interest group, or an individual set of researchers. With wind power, for example, attention has been directed to such topics as ice toss, fires, fluid leaks, turbine collapse, generator efficiency, blade design, interference with radar, aircraft navigation, and the potential of wind turbines to maim or kill wildlife. Although these are legitimate concerns, equal attention should be directed toward public attitudes, perceptions of risk, interference with established lifestyles, altered landscapes, and even the infringement of new projects on the local sense of propriety and justice, all topics that contribute much more directly to public attitudes.

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TEXT 4


So I’d like to say just a little bit about what the major obstacles are to most societies going one hundred percent clean energy. By 100% clean energy I mean 100% renewable. So I’ll start by saying that social acceptability is probably the hardest obstacle to overcome because whatever we do, it means a lot of change it means changes in the sources of our power supply which means we might have to accept some different infrastructure around our countryside but it also means behavioural change in ourselves and how we use energy on a day-to-day basis as well so change for all of us sustaining that over a long period of time as being the number one thing I think that will make a big difference.

Now we don’t think about our energy use today, we don’t think about it very much. We turn on our light switch and we expect the energy to be there and I think fundamentally if we’re going to get to zero carbon as a way of living we would have to just radically rethink that and engage with energy in a completely different way understand what we’re using why we’re using it when we’re using it. it’s a tricky issue this because at the moment the thinking seems to be if people can’t see it doesn’t matter you know they can’t see most of the carbon emissions it doesn’t really
matter.

01:39
And it’s the same with the renewable technologies. Most people are supportive of renewables and they don’t for example mind a wind farm provided it’s not near them or anywhere they’d like to go on holiday. You see this incredible resistance, there’s many examples of this, when people, when local communities object to renewable energy infrastructure, when it’s built near them, where they can see it. For us to get to zero carbon will mean a radical change in our energy infrastructure and people are
supportive of that for the most part, there’s an awareness that things need to change, until that infrastructure is in their backyard so to speak, in their local community and then they object, they want the wind farm, but they don’t want the wind farm near their house. So there’s this disconnect between the awareness that we need to move towards renewable energy technologies and the acceptability of those technologies in our communities.
As I said, we need to engage with energy in a different way. Right now, we’re living like kings and we’re unaware of the amount of energy that’s being produced and turned into useful forms on our behalf but if you had to collect it at the shopping with your shopping at the supermarket every day yeah it would be about 30 kilograms of stuff you’d be having to cart home. That weight translates into that’s the weight of the fossil fuels and the co2 per person every day. It’s a lot of milk right?

So that’s one major obstacle to going completely renewable – let’s call it the social acceptability. Renewable energy is great, but not where I can see it – I don’t want to see the wind farm or the solar farm or the geothermal plant. People don’t want the landscapes around their homes to change.

So what are the other obstacles in the way of going one hundred percent clean energy? Well, first let’s think about what the renewable options are. There’s onshore wind, offshore wind, wave and tidal power, heat pumps and electric vehicles, building insulation a lot of things which at today’s prices are quite expensive and so a barrier to getting there, a barrier is it’s actually a bit too expensive right now. Not everyone can afford these sort of things.

So what do we need? We need innovation support to drive the inventions and the breakthroughs that will drive down the cost of these technologies. I think a very short term one is probably financing and funding of these things and you know there’s a lot of debate continually in the media around the cost of energy and the future is very uncertain depending on you know are fossil fuel prices going to go up? Or you know are nuclear power plants and solar panels too expensive? We see this a lot in the
media and I think the initial inertia in financial markets getting over that, finding the money to come into renewables and follow with the innovation follow with the acceptability, that’s what you need to really get this thing started and once you’ve got that money coming, that investment coming and getting it started, then it stands a chance of keeping going. I’m confident that with continued innovation support for engineers, for universities, there’s lots of smart inventors out there, I’m confident that with continued innovation support we’ll be able to get some breakthroughs and drive down the costs of the low-carbon equipment.

So there we go, we need breakthroughs, innovation breakthroughs and financial support for innovation research to drive down the cost of renewable technologies, and we need investment in renewable infrastructure but perhaps the trickiest part is that we need to get people to embrace the infrastructure. We need to work with communities, find ways of embedding the technologies in those communities in a way that’s acceptable to them. Because ultimately it’s the public acceptance of these things that’s going to make or break it.