
99% of Costa Rica's electricity came from renewable energy in 2015 - ph0rque
http://www.solarcrunch.org/2015/12/99-of-costa-ricas-electricity-came-from.html
======
markbao
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._

[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3xhedt/99_of_cos...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3xhedt/99_of_costa_ricas_electricity_came_from_renewable/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
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.

~~~
mschuster91
> 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)...

~~~
justinator
> Yes, but hydro is the only renewable power source that is weather-
> independent.

Droughts?

[https://wrrc.arizona.edu/drought-diminishes-
hydropower](https://wrrc.arizona.edu/drought-diminishes-hydropower)

~~~
mschuster91
Hadn't thought of that one, yeah. Thanks. So either we destroy the environment
or we destroy the environment (unless fusion actually works)...

~~~
Litost
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.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI)

a) Complexity has killed off pretty much every major society prior to ours.

b) People's innate desire to problem solve increases complexity.

c) Cheap energy has enabled this process.

So there's an argument, an unlimited source of free energy would actually be a
major problem because

1) It would enable more complexity, which is already pretty unmanagable.

2) You've still the problem of out of control resource usage.

------
toomuchtodo
> 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.

~~~
barney54
For example, in California new hydro is not considered a renewable source for
purposes of achieving their renewable electricity standard.

------
graycat
They don't have cars?

They use electric heating?

The cook with only electricity?

They don't have and Diesel engines, for large trucks, earth moving equipment,
boats?

~~~
7952
The article uses the word "electricity" not "energy".

~~~
graycat
> 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.

At

[http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg](http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg)

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):

(A) A WSJ DISCUSSION AND GRAPH

There is a lot of expert overview discussion, at

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020430140457717...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop#)

with

"Commentary

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,

available at

[http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html](http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html)

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.

Reference:

A very nicely done BBC video:

"The Great Global Warming Swindle"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg)

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.

