Comments on: Must read McKinsey report shatters myths on cost of curbing climate change

By: msn nickleri

msn nickleri — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:32:38 +0000

When I was looking up what Holdren had to say in the past, I saw a speech given by him at “The American Response to Climate Change” conference. McKinsey had a number of speakers, one was waving a similar chart to what Joe has posted above around during his presentation. Access the conference speeches at this link:

By: David Lewis

David Lewis — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:04:14 +0000

http://www.wildcenter.org/index.php?sub=36

Ostrowski’s speech was the one that discussed this I think. The written report McKinsey reps were circulating at that conference was called “Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost?” and is available at this link:

http://www.usclimateaction.org/pages/US_ghg_final_report.pdf

One surprising finding (to me) was that about the costliest way to spend money to abate CO2 emissions was to spend it on hybrid autos. The chart Joe posted above was presented with hybrids on the far right as a bar way higher than all the others. Note the “Nuclear” abatement bar – its a very low cost way to go according to McKinsey.

By: Jim Bullis

Jim Bullis — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:12:09 +0000

Once more I went on the wild goose chase to find the basis of the oft shown chart by McKinsey.

The report I found offered nothing in support of this chart you call a “cost curve.”

I did find that McKinsey combines “management and economics” to find global solutions etc. Huh? Seems like they left out technical expertise. No wonder there is nothing more to the chart.

Only about a third of the specific bars on the chart carry a notation. And these notations are not discussed anywhere that I can find.

Has anyone actually found the detail on this?

By: Eric G

Eric G — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:18:11 +0000

Hey Peter,

Yes, the cost of energy from PV varies depending upon where you are, in addition to your system’s attitude to the sun, construction costs, etc. Which is fine, because it’s real, and the cost of energy is what interests us, not the cost of power.

By: Andy Bauer

Andy Bauer — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 02:15:29 +0000

David B.

BIPV = Building Integrated Photovoltaics. Check out Steve Strong’s work at solardesign.com. Some of his stuff has the PV in the windows!

By: N. Tesla

N. Tesla — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 19:47:20 +0000

You aren’t fooling anyone with that ‘Mark Shapiro’ pseudonym, Mr Edison.

By: Peter Wood

Peter Wood — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:11:36 +0000

Both the McKinsey cost curve analysis and the wedges analysis suggest that mitigation will be easy, the barriers are political.

The cost curve analysis suggests to me that we need a strong price on carbon from either a tax or emissions trading (with an aggressive cap). The cost curve also suggests the importance of implementing the mitigation opportunities with negative costs, and addressing the market failures that have prevented these opportunities from being realised.

By: Bob Wallace

Bob Wallace — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 04:28:40 +0000

I’m off the grid and know a lot of other people around here who are also off the grid. None of us us DC ‘anything’ any longer. (Well, I can think of one person who has a DC light in his power closet in case his inverter fails. I have a flashlight. ;o)

DC appliances are just too expensive and most are not very efficient. Better to get an Energy Star refrigerator off the appliance store floor and buy a few extra panels and batteries than to pay thousands more for a super-efficient DC model. There’s a manufacturing economy of scale that makes losing some power converting to AC worth it.

As for bricks and phantom loads, we switch stuff off when we’re not using it.

By: Ronald

Ronald — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:05:00 +0000

Eric,
I can understand why you would want a standard for PV’s but does Kwh really do it. Isn’t that a function of where you are in the country, in the southwest it will be one number and in the northwest the same PV’s will be something else.

The industry must be using something else to compare PV’s.

By: Earl Killian

Earl Killian — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 23:28:07 +0000

Eric G, someone on this blog pointed me at this company, so I’ll pass it on: http://www.nextekpower.com/index.html

Dano, it is not the cost of inverters are the issue (since even many off-grid houses with lots of DC appliances have them for the oddball stuff). It is the efficiency loss. The inverter is usually 90-94% efficient at their peak (feed something other than a resistive load at peak power and you’ll get lower numbers). That’s pretty good (a few years ago it was more like 80-90% I think). But all those wall warts, power bricks, and similar vampire loads are usually pretty inefficient. You’re probably luck to get one at 80% efficiency. (One reason power bricks can get hot is that they are inefficient.)

Multiply and you find that you might be losing 25% of your PV output to stupid DC to AC to DC.

For comparison, I’ve seen DC to DC converters rated at 98% efficiency (e.g. the Outback MX60).