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From The Spectator: Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy:

Here’s a quiz; no conferring. To the nearest whole number, what percentage of the world’s energy consumption was supplied by wind power in 2014, the last year for which there are reliable figures? Was it 20 per cent, 10 per cent or 5 per cent? None of the above: it was 0 per cent. That is to say, to the nearest whole number, there is still no wind power on Earth.

Even put together, wind and photovoltaic solar are supplying less than 1 per cent of global energy demand. From the International Energy Agency’s 2016 Key Renewables Trends, we can see that wind provided 0.46 per cent of global energy consumption in 2014, and solar and tide combined provided 0.35 per cent. Remember this is total energy, not just electricity, which is less than a fifth of all final energy, the rest being the solid, gaseous, and liquid fuels that do the heavy lifting for heat, transport and industry.

Did wind power account for less than half a percent of total global energy usage in 2014?

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Andrew Grimm
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  • Suggested reading list: [iea: Key world energy statistics](https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/KeyWorld2016.pdf) and [iea: Key Renewables Trends](https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/KeyRenewablesTrends.pdf) – Jordy May 11 '17 at 09:00
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    Looks like a bit less than a percent from the graph at the top here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption It seems about 1/5th of the world energy consumption is for electricity, and wind farms are only for this (I guess back when we used wind mills for making flower the percent energy usage of wind would be higher) – daniel May 11 '17 at 09:09
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    They are being a bit sly by considering all energy use, not just electricity generation, in order to make renewables look insignificant. –  May 11 '17 at 10:44
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    Yup they are trying to say not to invest in wind because of this, that is like me saying I shouldn't go to work because I make 0% of the countries GDP (with rounding). – daniel May 11 '17 at 11:07
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    Skimming that opinion piece, there are claims in there more worthy of challenge than this one, which amounts to "electricity is a small part of global energy demand" multiplied by the global wind power as a fraction of electricity figures. Many of them seem familiar and have been addressed in the literature already. – Chris H May 11 '17 at 11:13
  • @ゼーロ: when you have an agenda... – Matthieu M. May 11 '17 at 11:14
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    The numbers are correct. The way they are being used to draw a conclusion does not resemble actual logic in any way. – Tim B May 11 '17 at 11:27
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    @daniel Actually they're saying to invest in natural gas and nuclear instead of wind. Which is more like saying that you would make more money if you become a lawyer instead of an english major. (even though lawyers are destroying the environment) – Steve Cox May 11 '17 at 13:43
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    @ゼーロ Why should we consider only electricity generation? It's not as if coal becomes renewable if we don't make electricity out of it. – eigensheep May 11 '17 at 13:43
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    @eigensheep - we would consider electricity generation because that's what wind power would be used for - replacing other forms of electricity generation. If you never burn or use existing coal, it's renewability does not matter. If I were talking about a way to recycle waste water into usable, potable drinking water, factoring the volume of the oceans would be a fundamentally dishonest addition to the discussion, because the oceans are not part of the volume of water we're talking about impacting. – PoloHoleSet May 11 '17 at 14:30
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    @Steve Cox: Which is like saying we should have invested in land-line phone companies because cell phones were less than 1% of the market in say 1999. – jamesqf May 11 '17 at 16:53
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    @jamesqf haha yeah ridiculous right. Thankfully the landline companies like AT&T, Verizon, and sprint were squeezed out of the telephone market. – Steve Cox May 11 '17 at 19:04
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    @Steve Cox: I was thinking of the companies that made landline phones. – jamesqf May 12 '17 at 04:53
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    "to the nearest whole number" - author doesn't even understand (ore deliberately denies) that percent is 1/100th, not a "whole number". – Agent_L May 12 '17 at 16:31
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    Or we can say "Penicillin used in only 1% of medication before 1938". The whole reasoning is so ridiculous that it already tells me the people attaching any value to it won't listen to reason anyway. – Sebastiaan van den Broek May 12 '17 at 16:49
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    RE "cell phones were less than 1% of the market in 1999", "penicillin used in only 1% of medication before 1938", etc. True, and a valid point. But by the same token, segways were a tiny percentage of transportation in 2002 ... and are still a tiny percentage today. Pet rocks were a tiny percentage of the pet market in 1975 ... and are even less of a percentage today. Presumably the point of the statistic is to say that, to date, wind power has not proven to be very successful. Of itself that doesn't prove it never will be, but it's a valid argument. – Mark Daniel Johansen May 12 '17 at 17:51
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    Here's a quiz, no conferring: To the nearest whole number, what percentage of transportation in total miles in 1800 was by car? – user121330 May 12 '17 at 20:57
  • @jamesqf But cell phones were new and untested in the 1990s. Wind turbines have had a century to get more than 1% of the market. – eigensheep May 13 '17 at 06:49
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    If they are going to include the solid, gaseous, and liquid fuels used for transport, it's only fair to also count the amount of energy from wind power used for transport (i.e. sailing) – wim May 14 '17 at 05:57

3 Answers3

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Yes.

They refer to International Energy Agency's 2016 Key Renewable Trends report, which contains these 2 graphs:

Figure 1: 2014 fuel shares in world total primary energy supply Figure 2: 2014 product shares in world renewable energy supply

Combining these two graphs shows that Wind energy is 3.3% of the 13.8% of the renewable fuel share.

13.8% * 3.3% = 0.46%

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    It might be worth adding something to say that while the numbers are right they don't support the conclusions? – Tim B May 11 '17 at 11:27
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    @TimB, I'm sorry, but which conclusion do you mean specifically? – Jordy May 11 '17 at 11:34
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    I've not read the article but based on the title they seem to have "Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy" as the conclusion which is questionable on the first two claims and clearly false on the last. – Tim B May 11 '17 at 11:37
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    The author claims that it's zero when you round it to the nearest whole number. The part about neither clean nor green is also addressed in the article itself but that should be a separate question I think. – Jordy May 11 '17 at 11:40
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    @ABailey: It's the title of the linked article – jazzpi May 11 '17 at 12:58
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    @jazzpi It's the title of the linked article, but not the subject of the question. :-) – Mark Daniel Johansen May 12 '17 at 17:43
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NO, (or YES dependent on the definition of primary energy) as answer to the claim: "Wind power does not account for less than half a percent of total global energy usage in 2014."

The wording of the report (from Jordys answer)indicates that they compared electrical output of renewables to the energy contents of combustibles. Putting these on the same graph can be wrong depending on the definition of primary energy.

The caveat of this answer is that it is based on the definition of primary energy. The authors should have mentioned it, if they made the analysis while regarding the difference between primary and secondary energy for renewables. As they didn't, they most likely used the less favourable definition of primary energy with regard to renewables.

Supporting claims based on primary and secondary energy definitions (NO as answer)

Primary energy (1,3) is the energy contained in a fuel. So to speak the released heat in perfect combustion. Unburnt fuel is part of many energy conversion cycles. It is not the generated useful energy.

Non-Fuel based primary energy would be the input to the system, not the generated useful energy. For wind turbines this would be the energy contained in the wind, a perfect wind turbine can only get around 60% of the winds energy (Betz's law). For solar we have around 15-20% conversion efficiency. Therefore the primary energy of renewables is many times higher than the listed numbers.

Secondary energy (1,3) is the energy of energy carriers, these are for example fuels and electricity. Fuel can be an input for electricity generation, so even there are subclasses regarding the quality of the secondary energy. (Oil would be primary, gasoline a secondary energy in some regards, even though we don't use all of the energy in gasoline either)

Exaggerated alternative data (just to make a point)

Primary solar energy heats the earth during the whole year, if we assume that heating needs(relative to the avg temperature of space of a few Kelvin) are met by solar power, we get about 99.9+% (didn't calculate it actually) of the primary energy in solar.

Counterargument (YES as answer)

A claim arguing that the definition of primary energy is usually as probably envisioned by the authors of the Energy Report, from Ref 3:

The primary energy is transformed to secondary energy in the form of electrical energy or fuel, such as gasoline, fuel oil, methanol, ethanol, and hydrogen. The primary energy of renewable energy sources, such as sun, wind, biomass, geothermal energy, and flowing water is usually equated with either electrical or thermal energy produced from them.

Caveat: Thermal energy from the sun heats buildings passively.

Conclusion

No as answer

The graphs compare apples to oranges. Primary wind power should get a factor of 2-4, solar power a factor of 5-8 and hydro should also get some factor (but this is more difficult to figure out). I'm not sure how they calculated biomass, so I won't go into that.

The graphs are representing primary energy according to an outdated definition, as renewables are wrongfully represented by their secondary energy.

I see no indication in their report that they addressed the issue of defining primary energy with regards to renewables.

Yes as answer

The definition of primary energy is taken according to 3. By this definition the graph is correct.

References:

  1. Hall, Carl W., and George W. Hinman. Dictionary of Energy. Marcel Dekker, 1983. pages 222,240

  2. Report on Photovoltaics by the German Frauenhofer Institute for solar energy systems, slide 6

  3. Demirel, Yaşar. Energy: production, conversion, storage, conservation, and coupling. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012. Chapter 2

WalyKu
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    Do you have citations for any of these facts or figures? – doppelgreener May 11 '17 at 14:50
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    Fuel diverted from the ground to a powerplant is used energy, whether it is going to waste heat or not. Wind that isn't turning a turbine blade, or sunlight that doesn't a PV cell isn't 'used' by humans. I understand your objection, but you can only measure what is used. – kingledion May 11 '17 at 14:52
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    @kingledion: right, but what appears to be happening here is that they're comparing the _usable_ energy generated by the solar/wind supply to the _total energy present_ in coal/oil/etc. This is apples-to-oranges. – Jack Aidley May 11 '17 at 14:54
  • @JackAidley A valid complaint, but since the thermodynamic efficiency of every powerplant/car engine on Earth is highly variable, I don't think you can actually measure 'usable' energy from coal/oil. So there is a distortion, but it is what it is. On the plus side, the switch to renewables in the future will make it seem like total global energy usage is going down. – kingledion May 11 '17 at 14:57
  • @doppelgreener Primary and secondary energy should be dictionary definitions. Betzs's law is easily googleable, and it is basically something like Pythagoras theorem for wind power. The factors are dependent on the PV and wind turbines, I have no data on average efficiencies globally. – WalyKu May 11 '17 at 14:58
  • This answer is terribly confusing. I'm not an expert on this so bare with me. I assumed that the graph is measuring power actually used (Secondary as I think you're calling it). If you believe that is not the case, can you explain why more clearly? – Goose May 11 '17 at 15:01
  • @kingledion I like the rule that people shouldn't compare things if they don't have a valid way of comparing them. But I see where you are going. Also *used by humans seems* vague. – WalyKu May 11 '17 at 15:02
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    @Goose my point is simply that they compare secondary energy to primary energy, or apples to oranges. – WalyKu May 11 '17 at 15:03
  • I would suggest you clean up this answer. I understand your complaint that your comparing primary energy to secondary, but you never explicitly state that, going straight from explaining the two defintions to saying the comparisons are unfair doesn't state why they are unfair. Even guessing what your intent was I still wasn't 100% certain of your intended argument until I saw your clarifying comments. Starting out by saying in the first sentence that the charts compare primary to secondary would clarify the complaint and make reading and understanding the intent of the answer much easier. – dsollen May 11 '17 at 15:11
  • @dsollen thanks for the suggestion. I eilm try to addres it. – WalyKu May 11 '17 at 15:14
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    @WalyKu but why do you think that? You say "I see no indication in their report that they properly addressed this (important) issue, so I must assume that they didn't.", but you also assume that they mixed primary and secondary in a way that makes solar look bad, if I'm understanding you correctly. Do you have a reason to think it was skewed in this way? Can you provide counter data? – Goose May 11 '17 at 15:15
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    Do you have proof that these graphs are comparity primary to secondary energy? That is to say can you quote something in report Jordy linked to that proves that the non-renerable energy sources are looking at primary energy only and have not already translated all energy sources to secondary? After all in the case of power plants, a large percentage of power usage, it would be easier to find the electricity output of the plants then the primary power put into the plants so I would be assume I'm looking at secondary power from power plants unless explicitly told otherwise. – dsollen May 11 '17 at 15:15
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TL;DR Yes, their are numbers that can be interpreted that way, but it is doubtful that any conclusion can be derived from these numbers.

I would like to expand upon the excellently formatted answer of Jordy, where the original articles' first two diagrams are accurately quoted without further context.

We have a question where the title is "Did wind power supply less than half a percent of global energy in 2014?" and the question body is mostly a quote from The Spectator, that appears derisive of wind energy.

Since the question body contains such a quote, it seems worthwhile to not only find out whether some numbers allow such an interpretation, but also whether the numbers that allow this interpretation make sense when comparing wind energy to the rest of the energy in these numbers.

We first have to find out what "energy" is being talked about. The paper quoted uses "Total Primary Energy Supply (TPES)" in the first two presented graphs that are also presented in the answer above.

I can find a definition of TPES on the OECD iLib:

TPES equals production plus imports minus exports minus international bunkers plus or minus stock changes.

... based on the calorific content of the energy commodities and a common unit of account. The unit of account adopted is the tonne of oil equivalent (toe) which is defined as 107 kilocalories (41.868 gigajoules). This quantity of energy is, within a few per cent, equal to the net heat content of one tonne of crude oil. ...

Unfortunately, I haven't yet been able to find out how e.g. wind or hydro power get derived their TPES. What the heck is the "calorific content" of wind or solar electric power supposed to be? (Highly appreciated if anyone could edit that in here.)

To put the numbers into further perspective, the item Biofuels is clarified in the paper:

Due to its widespread non-commercial use in developing countries (i.e. residential heating and cooking), solid biofuels/charcoal is by far the largest renewable energy source, representing 66.2% of global renewables supply (Figure 2).

So what we have here is a Total Primary Energy Supply (TPES) pie chart. This includes all the worlds energy production(?), including some measure of an estimation of the "calorific content" of all the charcoal used in all the world developing countries.

And yes, for the OECD's definition of the TPES value of wind power, wind power contributes less that 0.5% of global TPES.

Inhowfar there is a logical conjunction between "Wind turbines are neither clean nor green" and "they provide zero global energyTPES" eludes me however.

I think the answer of WalyKu has some merit here: Even if we only take the raw numbers into account, it is not quite unlikely that we compare apples to oranges.

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