China Charges Ahead on Floating PV; the US Dithers
First Take: Floating PV is a Field of Action the Climate Movement Must Sieze
The good folks at Climate Action Now alerted their readers (like me!) to what’s happening in the world of floating PV in China and the US, and I’ve cribbed off their sources to write this post.
However, I’m going to begin with a broader context within which to float floating PV, and I’ll conclude with suggestions for Climate Movement Artist-Athletes in both nations.
A Tale of Two Countries
When it comes to tech innovation more generally and clean tech specifically, to paraphrase Mr. Dickens, it’s a tale of two countries. It is the best of times; it is the worst of times (well, ok, maybe not the worst, but it ain’t great), an age of wisdom and one of foolishness, a season of light and darkness.
China rising. The US falling.
China is the world’s manufacturing superpower, which is a key to their energy policy. With solar, wind, and EVs they want to manufacture their way to energy independence. But not just through manufacturing of inventions and innovations coming from the West, ideas coming from the outside. They want the ideas coming from the inside.
China now has most of the top research universities in the world. The US is not just falling behind in manufacturing — frankly that race has been over for a long time. The US is also now becoming a second-rate research power. All of the boosterism and flag waiving and chest-thumping about the US’s research superiority can’t wave away the facts — real facts, not gaslighting “alternative facts.” The Trump Administration, with its hostility to smart people, is even cutting funding to research universities and limiting and scaring away top scientists and grad students. Stupidity on steroids.
It’s not just their own people that has made China the world’s top dog in research. As the New York Times reports:
“China has been pouring billions of dollars into its universities and aggressively working to make them attractive to foreign researchers. In the fall, China began offering a visa specifically for graduates of top universities in science and technology to travel to China to study or do business.”
When it comes to ARTC, the accelerating rate of technological change, our Third Catalytic Source of Transformation, China is leading the way.
Reducing fossil pollution and our temperature goal of 1.5C are now aligned with China’s strategic energy independence goals, their clean energy exports, and their desire for domestic stability by addressing environmental unrest. Thus, their clean energy manufacturing and ARTC leadership are good news for climate action.
But China is not doing this for the climate, frankly, which is at most a secondary consideration, or out of the goodness of their hearts.
They are doing these things because Xi Jinping and the current Chinese leadership believe it is in their perceived national interest.
As Xi recently stated:
Only by fully leveraging my country's renewable energy resources, vigorously developing new energy sources [i.e. clean energy], increasing total energy supply, optimizing the energy structure, and improving energy efficiency can my country's energy security be fundamentally guaranteed.
Given the structure of China’s government and society and their history, this is quite a secure foundation. While it’s true that Xi Jinping and the politburo can sour quickly on parts of their economy, turning $trillions into rubble, they have been all-in on clean energy for decades because its case for being in the national interest is a strong one.
And, honestly, the country hasn’t needed a large and active Climate Movement to push for these outcomes. Such a movement could help China with the rest of our agenda, including speeding up the take-down of fossil infrastructure. But right now and for the foreseeable future China’s strategic clean energy independence efforts are a gift to the climate.
PV Can Help Float Our Climate Action Boat
China
China has been called an “engineering state,” and for good reason. If anyone can construct massive engineering projects it is China, given its leaders for decades have been engineers. Besides installing more clean energy than the rest of the world combined, over the last 30 years China has built highways twice the size of the US system, a high-speed rail network 20 times that of Japan, the world’s tallest bridges, and housing for a city the size of NYC plus Boston each year.1
So the fact that they have built the world’s largest offshore solar farm should come as no surprise. Everything’s big in Texas China. And this is gigawatt big. It could provide the electricity needs of over 2.6 million people.
But it’s more than just gigawatt-2.6-million-people big, a muscle-bound oaf at the beach. It’s also smart and innovative.
Efficiency is 5-15% higher than comparable onshore PV due to cooler air and sunlight reflected off the water.
Transmission and storage design increases capacity by about 20%.
Unit costs are reduced by around 15%.
It is engineered to combine fish farming with power generation
It will reduce carbon pollution by over 1.3 million tons.
In this tale of two countries, in China it is the best of times for clean energy, and the future looks even brighter.
And the US? Well, it’s not yet the worst of times. But the Trump Administration is doing their awful best to make it so.
The US
Floating PV in the US? You’ll be happy to know that we’ve got an excellent study from the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).2
It shows that the potential for floating PV in federally owned reservoirs is enough to:
power 100 million homes;
provide more than half of PV’s projected role in decarbonizing the electricity grid by 2050, or 861 GW of PV’s projected contribution of 1600 GW.
Interested in floating PV for a federal reservoir near you? Want to know the potential for any such reservoir? One of our National Labs has created an online tool that gives you what you need to know for nearly 850 reservoirs, including solar capacity and economic potential.
Floating PV has the potential for additional co-benefits:
increase solar panel efficiency 5-15%;
reduce solar’s use of limited land;
help conserve water by providing shade, cooling the water and preventing evaporation; one study found that Colorado could save enough water to provide for over 400,000 families with 4 members each;
support wildlife if each project is properly designed.
However, one serious drawback that must be addressed is the potential for floating PV to increase the production of methane and CO2 “by changing physical, chemical, and biological processes.” If The Climate Movement in the US is going to support and promote floating PV, projects must be designed to minimize the creation of GHGs.
So in the US we’ve got great studies, great tools, great potential, great benefits.
There’s just one problem: We currently don’t have one large-scale project or any in the works.
In other words, in the US we’re all talk, no action. All hat, no cattle. We’re dithering our way to mediocracy.
The Climate Movement’s Role
We must push floating PV projects wherever they make sense to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.
China
In China there appears to be hardly a need for The Climate Movement there to push for the production and use of clean energy technologies, including floating PV.
In my humble opinion, where The Climate Movement in China could focus its energy would be on coal burning power plants:
shutting down old plants — those still operating full-time and those sitting idle as back-up power;
stopping the building of new coal plants;
keeping plants not yet shut down idle, or as inactive as possible.
In combining wisdom and pragmatism, two of our Movement Values, this doesn’t have to involve a public conflict or confrontation with President Xi Jinping and senior Chinese leadership. Indeed, the Chinese Climate Movement can keep their involvement at local and regional levels with messages that align with Xi and the politburo.
As a recent Carbon Brief analysis points out, while national leadership wants coal plants to play a “supporting role,” meaning they are only used when necessary, this isn’t happening consistently on the ground. The Chinese Climate Movement could push for this “supporting role” to become a reality where it isn’t, then push for such a supporting role to mean staying idle. This can happen by simultaneously supporting the creation and use of clean tech like floating PV. Thus:
“Supporting” => Idle. Idle + clean tech => never.
The US
Floating PV is just another example of why The Climate Movement in the US must become big and broad and active enough, our first movement characteristic/imperative/goal. We need to do so to have the people power to combine with our moral power to get this done.
For floating PV to even achieve half of its potential in the US — and do so in a climate-friendly fashion by limiting GHGs — it needs local and state Climate Movement Artist-Athletes to see this as one of their Olympian Fields of Action.
In each reservoir where it makes sense, local Climate Movement members and their allies must make it happen. We must rally Climate Action Supporters and push governments-and-markets to implement such projects. In other words, The Climate Movement must make it a Catalytic-4 project and push the other three to play their parts.
Where’s the Hope?
Right now with floating PV it is a tale of two countries. It is the best of times in China. But it doesn’t have to be the worst of times in the US.
Floating PV’s unfulfilled circumstances in the US underscores once again that hope is in our hands. In many areas we are making hope happen and striving together for Gold on many Olympian Fields of Action. And now, before us, is another field, filled with potential Gold and glory.
Could it be that this is one of your Olympian Fields of Action where you can strive with your teammates for Gold? I hope so!
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See an excellent segment by PBS titled “How China’s Engineering Mindset Has Shaped its Infrastructure and Society.” It features China expert Dan Wang, author of the recently published Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.
I won’t be calling NREL by the name recently given it by the Trump Administration, which attempts to deemphasize renewables.