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Coal is considered by many to be an enemy of renewable energy and the first fossil fuel being phased out, as the production of solar and wind energy has become cheaper. But the counter-attacks of coal can go even further than lobbying against pro-renewable policies, it seems. According to new research, air pollution caused by coal in China significantly reduces the production of solar panels by mitigating the effects of the sun.
China is undoubtedly the number one solar construction company at the moment, representing more than half of the world's facilities in 2017, for example. Between 2010 and 2017, China has grown from less than 1 gigawatt of solar capacity to 130 gigawatts, and the country is expected to reach about 400 gigawatts in 2030. After a period of transformative economic growth fueled by coal and other fuels fossils, China with a pollution of choking that is one of the main factors of this solar surge.
Recent research has established a record of solar radiation measurements in China dating back to the late 1950s. Research shows a downward trend in solar radiation until 2005, when it stabilized and began to ride up. This makes it possible to monitor the growing atmospheric pollution from particulates generated by coal-fired plants and the manufacture – as well as the burning of biomass – that has only recently been addressed.
A team led by Bart Sweerts at ETH Zurich took this record and fueled it in solar plant generation patterns in China to calculate how much production was lost – and how much we would gain by cleaning up the air.
The researchers found that over the entire record between 1960 and 2015, average potential solar output had decreased by about 13%. Expressed in terms of capacity factor – the fraction of the maximum output of a solar panel that is actually produced on average – the fall from the beginning to the lowest point of 2008 has gone from 0.162 to 0.142.
However, the change has not been the same everywhere, as air pollution and local conditions have varied. The five poorest provinces saw their potential output fall from 20% to 28%. These were industrial centers in the east, but also clearer and lighter mountain areas in the west, where low air pollution can have a significant impact.
If China could regain the air quality of the 1950s, its existing solar installations in 2016 would have produced an extra 14 terawatt hours of electricity for free. The more we build solar panels, the more this number will increase. By 2030, a cleaner air could generate an additional 70 terawatt hours of electricity each year, or about 1% of the total projected electricity production at that time.
The researchers used the current feed-in tariff of US $ 0.14 per kilowatt-hour and a predicted fall of US $ 0.09 per kilowatt-hour in 2030. In 2016, this would mean that a clean-up of the plant is expected. air would have generated $ 1.9 billion. value of electricity. By 2030, the additional 13% of solar potential could be worth more $ 6 billion a year.
By way of comparison, the improved efficiency of solar panels allowed to increase production by about 10% between 2005 and 2017, thus helping to make them more competitive. Returning to the air quality of the 50s would have more to do in China. As a commercial proposition, atmospheric pollution slows down solar energy.
Of course, researchers note that there is a cost decrease relative to the total cost of air pollution for health and the economy in China. But this adds another valuable – and perhaps surprising – benefit to eliminating pollution from coal and biomass.
Nature Energy, 2019. DOI: 10.1038 / s41560-019-0412-4 (About DOIs).
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