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In a new scenario, the Human Power Plant will convert an entire area in Rotterdam into a fossil fuel free society. Bospolder-Tussendijken (BoTu) is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the Netherlands, and has been selected as a testing ground for the energy transition. Because it is not clear who will pay for the government's high-tech plans, we propose an alternative that is affordable.
A first impression of the neighborhood in 2030.
Almost all Dutch households are connected to the gas network, and rely on it for heating, cooking and electricity use. Natural gas also supports an energy-intensive industry and agriculture, and provides the Dutch government with billions of tax revenues.
Can the Netherlands become independent of fossil fuels without pushing people into energy poverty?
The household sector is tackled first. All newly constructed buildings need to be gas-free, and from 2022 onwards, every year roughly 200,000 homes will be disconnected from the gas network. For heating, natural gas boilers will need to be replaced by district heating or by electric heat pumps, depending on the area. Cooking will be all-electric and electricity production will depend on solar panels and wind turbines.
This energy transition is not cheap. All households will need to replace their natural gas boilers and cooking stoves. Homes that will rely on heat pumps not only face the costs of the heat pump but also those of the building insulation to make them effective. The cost per household is estimated to be 30,000 euro. It is not clear who will pay for these costs.
Energy poverty
The high expenses of the energy transition are especially problematic for people who don’t have that much money. Although solar panels, electric heat pumps or home insulation may be able to save households money in the long term, they require a significant investment. Furthermore, the energy consumption in poor households is relatively low, meaning that the financial and energetic payback time of energy-efficient investments may be longer or may not happen at all.
A map of Bospolder-Tussendijken (BoTu)
The government has selected 27 ‘testing grounds’ in the country to investigate the opportunities and risks of the energy transition. It concerns neighborhoods or villages in each province. One of these testing grounds is the “Bospolder-Tussendijken” (BoTu) district in the city of Rotterdam. It is one of the five poorest neighborhoods in the whole country.
The average household income is only 15,000 euro per year, and many people are living on unemployment benefits. Obviously, many of them have no savings to invest in sustainable technology. Energy consumption is also far below the average: the average annual gas and electricity consumption is respectively 2,080 kilowatt hours and 975 m3, compared to 3,000 kilowatt hours and 1,500 m3 for the whole of the Netherlands.
Human Power Plant: A new scenario
The Human Power Plant has been invited to develop a new scenario for the Bospolder-Tussendijken area. What if the neighborhood takes a different direction and switches to human power to meet the requirements of the energy transition?
With this provocative proposal, we aim to broaden the discussion beyond the strict focus on expensive, technological solutions. As an energy source, human power has a unique advantage: if we have to generate energy ourselves, we will first and foremost ask ourselves how much energy we actually need. A strict focus on human power forces us to question our current way of life, instead of seeing it as an established fact.
How realistic is the energy transition?
In this first blog post, we want to delve deeper into the reasons why we come up with an alternative scenario. After all, there is already a plan on the table: the intention is that BoTu will become independent of natural gas by switching to a district heating network and renewable electricity from solar panels. However, the affordability of this strategy is not the only challenge. Even from a technical point of view, the question arises how realistic and sustainable these plans really are.
How many solar panels?
Current electricity consumption in the neighborhood averages 2,800 kilowatt hours per household per year. With about 7,000 households, that equates to a total electricity consumption of 19,600,000 kilowatt-hours per year, or 53,690 kilowatt-hours per day. Most of the electricity now comes from natural gas power plants, but that will no longer be possible. The plan is therefore to generate that electricity from solar panels on the spot. But how many solar panels are needed, and how much space do they take up?
Natural gas extraction in the Netherlands. MJ Smit & NASA (CC BY SA 3.0)
According to Milieucentraal, ten solar panels of 300 watts each provide an average of 2,600 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, which is an average of 7.1 kilowatt-hours per day. To cover the current electricity production of 7,000 households, 75,380 solar panels are needed. Each of these panels has a surface area of about 2 m2, so 150,760 m2 of space is required. The neighborhood has an area of approximately 1,000,000 m2 (or 1 km2), so that doesn't sound too bad.
Unfortunately, the average yield per year is not very relevant. In the Netherlands, there is on average ten times less solar energy in winter than in summer. From November to February, solar panels only provide 12% of their total annual production. So not 7.1 kilowatt-hours per day, but 2.55 kilowatt-hours per day. We need to triple the number of solar panels in order to be able to supply sufficient electricity in the four darkest months: not 75,380 solar panels, but 226,140 solar panels. Naturally, we need three times as much space : 452,280 m2, almost half of the BoTu neighborhood.
How much energy storage?
Even with three times as many solar panels, there is no guarantee that the solar panels will produce 7.65 kilowatt-hours per day. That is also an average. There are also days, especially in the Netherlands, when a solar panel produces virtually nothing. And, obviously, from sunset to sunrise, solar panels produce no electricity at all. Energy storage is being considered to deal with both problems. The fossil power network now fulfills the role of energy storage for solar energy, but it will no longer be there.
Every energy storage technology has charge and discharge losses. For the most affordable technologies, these are around 20-30%. This means that 20-30% more solar panels must be installed to compensate for that energy loss. If we assume an average energy loss of 20%, then an additional 45,228 solar panels are required, which brings the total to 271,368. The required area is now 90,456 m2 larger, or 542,736 m2 in total. More than half of the district is already covered by solar panels.
Production of solar panels and batteries
Solar panels and batteries don't fall from the sky - their production relies on mining and manufacturing processes that all require fossil energy. Solar panels are usually made in China, so that energy consumption does not appear in the Dutch statistics. However, given the global nature of climate change, it is of course relevant.
We therefore made a calculation of the energy it takes to produce all these solar panels and batteries, based on the most optimistic estimates from the scientific literature. This shows that the production of 271,368 solar panels requires approximately 226 gigawatt-hours of energy. In addition, solar panels last at least 30 years: it is therefore not enough to build 271,368 solar panels once. This means that 7.5 gigawatt-hours of energy is required each year to produce the solar panels that provide BoTu with household electricity.
If we were to build those solar panels in the area, with energy supplied by solar panels, an additional 28,980 extra solar panels would be needed. This brings the total surface of solar panels to 600,000 m2. If we make a similar calculation for the local production of the batteries, based on a week of energy storage, an additional 80,387 additional solar panels will be added, bringing the total number of solar panels to 380,735. The area occupied by solar panels will then be 761,470 m2.
If all household electricity use is covered by solar panels, the neighborhood would disappear.
Since we assume in this calculation that there is no millimeter of space between individual solar panels, we can assume in practice that the entire BoTu (1,000,000 m2) has now disappeared under the solar panels. If we do not take into account the local production of solar panels and batteries -- something that is not possible in practice because the necessary raw materials are lacking -- then the area still threatens to disappear completely under the solar panels, for two reasons.
First, this calculation is based on household electricity consumption only. Of course, electricity is also consumed by shops, industry and public facilities. Second, we are talking about current electricity consumption. After the energy transition, the electricity consumption will be a lot higher, because a number of activities that now run on gas -- for example cooking -- will also have to be electric.
District Heating Network
The second pillar of the energy transition in BoTu is the development of a district heating network, so that homes can be heated and supplied with hot water. But where does that heat come from? From factories and power plants that run on natural gas or other fossil fuels. Can you say that the residents of the neighborhood "get off the gas" when their heating and hot water are in fact still produced by fossil fuels?
Such a district heating network lowers the use of fossil fuels, because they are used more efficiently. But there is no question of an energy transition. On the contrary, factories and power plants running on fossil fuels become an indispensable part of the “sustainable” infrastructure in this way, because if we shut them down, there would be no heating or hot water. And the plan is exactly that: in 2050, all factories and power plants need to be independent of fossil fuels, too.
The same problem arises when heat is supplied by waste incineration plants. The incineration of waste - and the existence of waste - then become an indispensable part of the "sustainable" energy infrastructure. No more waste means no more heating or hot water. Using biogas coming from intensive cattle farming runs into the same problem: it is obvious that the current number of farm animals in the Netherlands is unsustainable, so its waste heat should not be counted on in the future. Geothermal energy and biomass are more sustainable sources of heat, but they are not free from problems either, and their share in total heat production is currently very small.
Human power to the rescue
All this does not mean that a district heating network or solar panels are bad ideas. However, an important element is missing from this - purely technical - plan: whether we need so much energy. Obviously, if energy consumption were to drop significantly, fewer solar panels would be needed, and the district heating network could switch to truly sustainable heat much faster.
That is why we are throwing the existing energy transition plan into the trash for a moment. We start with a clean slate and propose a totally different type of energy transition. By focusing on human power – and thus on energy use instead of energy production – we address not only the technical limitations, but also the affordability of the energy transition. We also address the limited support for the existing plans, especially in poor neighborhoods like BoTu.
A human powered energy transition
In the coming weeks, we will publish ten blog posts in which we will imagine a carbon-neutral and human-powered BoTu neighborhood with images, stories and calculations. The project is a collaboration between Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, the Human Power Plant and the Academie voor Beeldvorming.
Presenting the human power plant in Havensteder's model home.
BoTu is a very diverse neighborhood and we want to use this cultural wealth to gather inspiration for a society without fossil fuels. Some older people have experienced the second world war, many others bring all kinds of knowledge and experience from their own culture. In collaboration with Beekhuizenbindt, we collect that valuable knowledge from the neighborhood.
We also work together with parties involved in the energy transition: the Municipality of Rotterdam, the Zelfregiehuis Delfshaven, Empuls, Eneco, Voor Goed / Rotterdam Impact Agency, Delfshaven Energiecoöperatie, and social housing cooperative Havensteder. The latter has set up a model home in the neighborhood in which residents can gather information about the consequences of the energy transition. The aim is for the Human Power Plant to also furnish a life-size model home, in which an alternative - and affordable – energy transition takes shape.
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You may be interested in a gravity storage method that would allow for the storage of wind, solar and human power. There are several examples on my website and youtube channel. Some are more practical than others. I have several proof-of-concept examples. Please take a look.
https://www.bclifters.com/
and
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxuSnBuxIj9aWm0HtBXBzKA/videos
Posted by: Bill | 27 July 2020 at 02:20 AM