The Reddit thread has some interesting perspectives on this:
User /u/CatsandCrows:
> Yeah, it's great and it makes me happy that in this sense we are eco-friendly, however this comes a great costs. Our electricity rates are one of the highest in the region (central america) and a sht-load higher than the states, this costs summed to other issues scare industrial investment over here. Depending on your area you will have power failures anywhere from 0- 24 times a day, whenever there is a drought we have power shutdowns (as it ocurred some years ago when the country had to shut down residential electricity from 5pm-11pm, eventually "fixed" by adding another hydroelectric plant). It is never as simple as headlines makes it seem... just remember that.
Power failures and unreliable power delivery in general is not a renewable energy problem (or rather, it is but it's not an unfixable one), it's a Costa Rica problem due to insuficient infrastructure to handle it. Other nations with very large percentages of green power (Denmark and Portugal come to mind) don't suffer from those.
The countries you mention have neighbours with large and stable base power generation capacity, and a well-connected international power grid. In Denmark, for instance, a single one of the power lines goin up to Norway has 1700 MW capacity. Costa Rica isn't as fortunate; even though they are connected to their neighbours, the network is limited to just 300 MW total and the neighbours don't have the most stable grids either. From what I can see, Denmark net imports up to 15% of their annual electricity consumption, while Costa Rica gross imports around 2%.
That's one, uninteresting perspective. Comparing rates is difficult and if it really is higher, that's not a deal-breaker. Electricity in many of Costa Rica's peer countries doesn't work perfectly. "come years ago"? Yes, things get fixed by making improvements.
So their electric costs are higher, but they also don't burn any coal or natural gas (which doesn't price in the negative environmental effects those generation types incur).
Also, intermittent power can be a function of transmission network quality, not just generation type.
Renewables don't do anything but help. Generating too much? Curtail your production until you can store it in a cost efficient manner. Generating too little? Add more capacity.
Let me guess: your income is more than US$6,000 per year, the median per capita income for Costa Rica. For the United States, the median per capita income is about US$27,000.
It looks like electricity costs around US$0.30/kWh in Costa Rica. In the United States, it's about US$0.13.
So, the electricity in Costa Rica costs 2.3 times as much, and the income is about 20% of that in the United States, meaning that electric bills are effectively over 10 times higher.
Would you be willing to pay an electric bill that was ten times what you pay now? Even if you would, I assure you that many others would not.
Let me guess: you don't live in Bangladesh. Where there are ~160 million people, and the country is just one big flood plain. Bangladesh already has the highest population density of any "big" country, and the sea is eating away at the land.
If $0.30/kWh is the real price of electricity after externalities have been added in, then so be it. Because the alternative is too awful to imagine.
Also you've forgotten to include in your calculations that Costa Ricans probably use a lot less electricity than Americans. Someone earning $6k.pa probably does not have AC, a huge refrigerator, etc.
If you pay $300/mo in air conditioning, then of course you won't have an air conditioner, assuming you earn 6k/yr
Also, if population density everywhere was the same as in Bangladesh, having green energy wouldn't have helped. It is far more "green" for many countries to force a one child policy than it is to switch to green energy.
"Someone earning $6k.pa probably does not have AC, a huge refrigerator, etc."
No, they almost certainly don't. And they almost certainly suffer from the food-borne illness, heat stroke, and other health consequences associated with that fact (not even counting the general quality of life issues). Why do you think this is a good thing?
It's always amazing to me how people living a privileged Western lifestyle blithely condemn people in poor countries to a life of privation and misery, just so they can feel good.
Multiplying by 5 because incomes are 20% of US wages, doesn't make any sense to me. Do you think electricity costs should be linked to income, or something (I suppose it could work as a kind of taxation...)?
Your link gives a number of 33 cents per kWH for consumption above 501 kWH/month.
I was comparing the U.S. with Costa Rica.
The average U.S. home uses 901 kWH/month, which would put you in the 33 cents per kWH bracket (the source I found earlier said 30, which is pretty close).
The "peak" and "off-peak" pricing doesn't really enter into it, since most of the things you'd want to use a lot of electricity for (e.g., air conditioning) are time-dependent, and can't easily be shifted to "off-peak" times.
So, no, the numbers I was using aren't incorrect.
"Multiplying by 5 because incomes are 20% of US wages, doesn't make any sense to me."
I'm not sure why this doesn't make any sense. You spend x% of your income for electricity. Costa Ricans have to spend 5x% of their income to get the same amount of electricity. It seems perfectly straightforward to me.
In actuality, it's even worse than that, since someone in Costa Rica is going to have far less discretionary income to cover things like outrageous power bills.
Your numbers are only close to correct if the person is using the same amount of electricity as a person in the USA (which no-one does) and they used all that power during peak hours (which no-one does). Were that the case, then it's 29 cents per kWH on average using those figures.
I will freely admit that poor people in Costa Rica have less discretionary income than rich people in the USA.
> It looks like electricity costs around US$0.30/kWh in Costa Rica.
Typically I find costa ricans using about 300 kwh per month per person, and on the first 300 kwh you pay about 12c per kwh or so. It's very similar to the US, really and much cheaper than the EU where the average sits above 20c.
And that says a lot. Yes, $1 spent by a CR is 'more expensive' than for a North American when looking at income levels. But that's not very relevant. The discussion is really about 'are these renewable energy sources good for Costa Rica?', someone like you says 'perhaps not so much because it's expensive'. But that's silly. Energy is necessary, if not renewable, then something else. So compare alternative energy sources for CR. And then you'll get a question 'is 12c per kwh that electricity in CR costs today under 99% renewables, much more expensive than a non-renewable alternative?'. And you'll find the answer is generally no. Decentralised diesel generators, or a bunch of coal firing plants will not be much cheaper at all, nor alleviate all outage problems. You'll also find that general all utilities are often more expensive in poorer countries, the cost of 1 kwh of electricity, x amounts of lumens to light up your room or 1 liter of clean water, is generally much cheaper in New York than in a small village in central africa.
In short, financially electricity in CR is relatively well organised. If you read through the reddit threat referenced you'll find people giving examples of how little they pay monthly, and if you compare the costs to neighbouring countries or countries at similar income levels worldwide (particularly pre-subsidies) or countries with very few renewables, CR actually does quite well.
As for outages, it depends. In big cities they occur almost never, like once every few months. (I lived in Montreal for comparison, it was once every few weeks). In rural areas it's more frequent, but then consider two things. One, 75% of Costa Rica is urban, and two, in significant rural areas in Central America you would be lucky to even be connected in the first place for any period of time, say in neighbouring Nicaragua. CR is the exception with nearly 100% electrification levels, compared to say 58% in Nicaragua, while outages outside big cities do happen, it's better than having no electricity at all. No CA country has CR's levels of electrification. Except of course Belize, a country of just 300k people (hardly a fair comparison) which generates about half of its electricity from fossil and surprise surprise, has more expensive electricity rates than CR as far as I can tell.
In short, the notion that CRs are paying much more because of renewables is bs, and the notion they're worse off than similar or neighbouring countries isn't true, either.
> Also, intermittent power can be a function of transmission network quality, not just generation type.
Yes, but hydro is the only renewable power source that is weather-independent. Wind, solar and tidal energy all fluctuate wildly during the day. In case there's no backup/storage (e.g. with pump-hydro systems, cheap-ish and effective, but a crime on nature!) you have to either import power from outside the country or resort to conventional power generation. Oh, and even hydro sucks for nature, because hydro plants interrupt natural pathways for fishes and like pump-hydro plants, there's a HUGE additional negative impact if you use a dam (in contrast to natural state, animals can't pass over the waterway, and as seen in China, important areas of biodiversity simply get flooded).
The lack of a truly environment-friendly energy storage is and will be keeping renewables from ever truly replacing fossil energy. Batteries need vast amounts of (rare) metals which have to be mined, refined and manufactured, molten-salt high power solar towers are a safety risk (as anything operating at three-digits-celsius temperature is)...
Much as i don't want to cause any further depression in an already quite depressing thread, but if you follow Joseph Tainters work on The Collapse of Complex Societies.
The lack of a truly environment-friendly energy storage is and will be keeping renewables from ever truly replacing fossil energy.
Fortunately this is slowly changing. Different technologies are right in different situations, but the battery story in particular is undergoing rapid development.
For example flow batteries[1] usually don't require rare metals, are (fairly) cheap, reliable and are slowly becoming available.
One of the first uses is on cellular towers in South and Central America where the power grid isn't reliable.
Geothermal has its own shares of risks (crossing waterways in the ground can lead to contamination and the drilling can cause earthquakes, http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/erdwaerme-in-deutschland-erdbe...), and biomass fouling towers look ugly, stink and the cow manure (or whatever is to be used as fuel) has to be transported.
If you work out the energy density of pumped hydro it's actually rather high. If your worried about the enviorment you can make it a completly closed system so the only impact is just building some buildings and an underground pipe.
However, just building two ponds in the middle of nowhere and pumping in water is another option.
Costa Rica does not maintain a standing army (minor policing, border patrol, and a commando unit - company of 70 men); they informally rely on the U.S.'s army due to the U.S. - Costa Rica relationship. Also the U.S. forgave Costa Rican debt for forest conservation. These and other factors leave some of the GDP for investment in infrastructure like renewables. Other than building or damming another waterway, upgrading or increasing the number of generators, the ability to simply add capacity is limited with hydro.
Oh, I would say there's negative environmental effects of hydroelectricity, including the destruction of habitat.
Dams also have a life span, which is measured in decades (or less). Once the silt has built up, the dam doesn't really work in generating power any more.
> hasn't the hoover dam been up since the the '30s?
There are tens of thousands of dams in the US alone, and most if not all are not built to the proportions of the Hoover Dam. If you would like to use the Hoover Dam - one of the largest dams in the world, holding back one of the largest man made reservoirs in the world as my counterexample, be my guest.
My point wasn't that the dam will fail (although they do) - far from it: my point is that the dam, once put in, is really hard to take out and the dam itself holds back all the debris that usually flows out the river. That debris builds up, until - uh oh - you don't have enough water in your reservoir anymore to generate power.
That, and plugging up an entire watershed is pretty much akin to destroying the ecosystem that depends on the water flowing free to the ocean. Entire species of fish die off; the natural environment of other plants and animals is hopelessly changed, etc.
Some parts of the US only have 5% of rivers flow without a dam. Hydroelectricity is not sustainable now, and is far from inexhaustible.
So, back to the Hoover Dam - who's idea was it, to build a reservoir for water, in the middle of the desert? Did anyone think, "wonder if the water will all evaporate?" Because that's what's happening,
You seem to believe I am a staunch proponent of hydroelectric, but I am just asking you to give examples that most dams have a life span of "decades or less".
Your own link, says "Nowadays, from what structural engineers tell me, the typical design life is more like 100 years".
Swedish dams, some which are 100 years old already, are getting upgraded. This example, on a 50 year old dam, is supposedly prolonging the lifetime by 100 years.
"Although large concrete gravity dams have a theoretical design life of 80-100 years, the actual lifespan of a dam is determined by the rate at which its reservoir fills with sediment. In severely eroding catchments, millions of cubic metres of sediment can be transported annually. The average lifespan of a large dam in China is 45 years. "
http://mightyclutha.blogspot.com/2010/02/decommissioning-rox...
"Many scientists predict that within two decades, rising demand for Colorado River water and falling supply will drop the surface of the reservoir to its lowest level, known as “dead pool.” Because the lowest exit from the dam (the river outlet works) is 237 feet above the original riverbed, at dead pool Lake Powell will still hold 2 million acre-feet of water, one-thirteenth of capacity. "
https://orionmagazine.org/article/calamity-on-the-colorado/
And on, and on, and on. The takeaway is, the silt and sediment that collects on one side of the dam drastically shortens the usable lifespan of the dam, no matter how long the structure itself will be structurally be sound. That's a total engineering fall.
> The Costa Rican Electricity Institute(ICE) released a statement that 99% of the electricity came from renewable sources this year in 2015. Fossil fuels provided the rest 1%
Awesome.
* The majority of this is from hydro.
* This scenario can't be replicated everywhere (due to the heavy reliance on hydro, but solar and wind can be used everywhere).
* The remainder of fossil fuel generation in Costa Rica could be replaced with more solar and wind generation.
* Utility scale battery storage will play a large part in increasing renewables firm dispatchability, while home batteries until their power distribution network reaches first world standards.
> The article uses the word "electricity"
not "energy".
Wrong. E.g., one of the statements in the
article is, and I saw and responded to,
was:
> The country has recently made headlines
by operating 100% on renewable energy for
285 days.
So it's the "country", presumably the
whole "country", including electricity,
cars, trucks, home heating, airplanes,
etc.
And that statement said "energy" and not
just "electricity".
Sure, in the article, the pictures I saw
were for solar panels and wind turbines.
I saw mention of their hydroelectric
facility but no picture. So, tough not to
guess: The article is propaganda for
electric energy via wind and solar and,
then, wants to jump to say "energy" for
the whole "country".
I responded very calmly to the misleading
propaganda.
It it crystal clear that this article is
solidly in the center of the community of
global warming and climate change
alarmists. Okay, let's look at that
subject. Surprisingly, we now have some
quite good ways to do that.
We look in two parts, (1) the predictions
of warming and (2) the real science.
(1) THE PREDICTIONS
So, the claims of human caused global
warming claimed to be science and made
some predictions. Good: The predictions
were for a lot of global warming.
is a comparison of actual temperatures and
temperatures predicted from the global
warming community. Immediately from the
graph, the predictions are way too high.
Then, net, according to science, we regard
the candidate science as failed, as junk.
Really, right there is the end of the
global warming science. Done.
But, maybe that devastating refutation is
too succinct. So, for more, below I
include three chunks of evidence, (A) --
(C):
No Need to Panic About Global Warming
There's no compelling scientific argument
for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the
world's economy. January 27, 2012
Editor's Note: The following has been
signed by the 16 scientists listed at the
end of the article:"
See also the graph there that compares
actual temperatures with measured
temperatures.
(B) THE US NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE
REPORT
There is the report:
Committee on Surface Temperature
Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years,
National Research Council, Surface
Temperature Reconstructions for the Last
2,000 Years, ISBN 0-309-66264-8, 196
pages, National Academies Press, 2006,
From that report, if only from just the
graph on page 2, as far as we can tell,
the temperature in 2006 was exactly the
same as in year 1000 well before any human
industrialization.
(C) THE VOSTOK DATA USED BY AL GORE
In his movie, Al Gore showed a graph of
data from the ice core samples from the
Vostok station in the Antarctic. The
graph covered several hundred thousand
years and showed both temperature and CO2
concentrations rising and falling
together. That graph was Gore's main
evidence that more CO2 causes global
warming.
But, just looking at the graph shows that
the CO2 levels rose about 800 years after
the temperature rose. So, clearly the
higher CO2 levels did not cause the higher
temperatures. The higher temperatures
were caused by something but not CO2
levels. That situation was clear right in
Gore's movie for anyone who just looked at
it. Net, Gore's evidence was really solid
evidence that CO2 did not cause global
warming -- just read the graph.
SUMMARY OF PART (1)
For the science, pictures of arctic sea
ice in the summer, polar bears, glaciers
falling into the ocean, stories about the
snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, other
anecdotal evidence, etc. are just
irrelevant and not at all convincing
otherwise.
Instead, we need just a simple comparison
of real temperatures and predicted ones.
Since the predictions of the candidate
science were badly wrong, we reject the
candidate science. In science, it really
is just that simple.
(2) THE REAL SCIENCE
But we do have some real science that
explains temperatures quite accurately back
at least for some hundreds of thousands of
years.
Here in just a few lines I take the
entire, global, IPCC, Al Gore, Kyoto,
Paris, etc., EPA, NOAA, Obama, carbon
footprint movement and totally destroy it.
It's, to use a word, "settled".
Sure, can strike a match and, thus, warm
the planet, but that warming is not
significant.
For anything significant, for anything
reasonable, CO2 and methane have nothing
to do with the climate. Even a factor of
10 times the present concentration of CO2
will do essentially nothing to the
climate. Same for CFC's. Same for men not
shaving and drinking Coke instead of
Pepsi.
Yes, CO2 and methane have to be counted as
greenhouse gasses, but their effects are
just insignificant for earth in the past,
the present, and any reasonable future, no
matter what is going on on Venus (has a
lot of CO2 and is really hot).
And, so far human activity has had nothing
to do with the climate.
Instead, here is what the heck has been
driving climate change so far, back at
least for some hundreds of thousands of
years and right to the present as in year
2015:
More clouds have a cooling effect. The
rate of cloud formation varies with the
rate of water droplet formation, which
varies with the rate of cosmic rays (a
significant cause of water droplet
formation) hitting the atmosphere which
varies with the amount of solar wind
blocking the cosmic rays which varies with
the rate of sun spots which varies with
the activity level of the sun which has
absolutely nothing at all to do with
anything on earth, not CO2, not methane,
not humans or human activity.
As in the BBC piece, in the last 100
years, temperature has varied with the
solar wind and not with CO2.
Net the climate science arguing about the
effects of CO2 on the climate no longer
has even a square nanometer to stand on.
That candidate science is done, "settled",
forget about it.
Here, for asking a very appropriate
question challenging some outrageous
propaganda, I've been attacked and am due
sincere, public apologies.
12.1% of their GDP is from travel and tourism, so I don't think they're counting planes coming in, or taking off from their airports.
They also import food, that's grown elsewhere. So, that's another hidden cost. The only thing they produce in large quantities in country are rice, and beans.
User /u/CatsandCrows:
> Yeah, it's great and it makes me happy that in this sense we are eco-friendly, however this comes a great costs. Our electricity rates are one of the highest in the region (central america) and a sht-load higher than the states, this costs summed to other issues scare industrial investment over here. Depending on your area you will have power failures anywhere from 0- 24 times a day, whenever there is a drought we have power shutdowns (as it ocurred some years ago when the country had to shut down residential electricity from 5pm-11pm, eventually "fixed" by adding another hydroelectric plant). It is never as simple as headlines makes it seem... just remember that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3xhedt/99_of_cos...