A revolution is in the making.
Over the last several years, interest in the renewable energy market has increased dramatically. Many of us have either seen solar panels or wind farms from our cars or through our window seat on an airplane. More people and organizations are getting involved, from the traditional players in federal, state and local governments and utilities to the less-traditional private companies and individual homeowners. According to Lester Brown’s latest book, “Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization,” which was released in mid-2009, “the transition from coal, oil, and gas to wind, and geothermal is well underway.” Globally, renewable energy — defined by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) as “conventional hydroelectric power, geothermal, solar/PV, wind, and biomass” — continues to become a larger percentage of the total energy production mix.
In the United States between August 2008 and August 2009, net generation of electricity dropped for 13 consecutive months.1 All the while, renewable energy production grew at rates much higher than expected. The current percentage of renewable energy generation seems small in comparison to more-traditional generation sources; however, there is an increasingly strong case for harnessing renewable energy sources to meet 100 percent of energy demands. New legislation that would have significant impacts on the renewable energy sector already passed in the House of Representatives in 2009, and a very similar bill is expected to pass the Senate in 2010. Is 2010 the year when renewable energy gains the momentum necessary to become a dominant fuel source?
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Megawatt (MW) = 1 million
watts
Gigawatt (GW) = 1 billion watts
Terawatt (TW) = 1 trillion watts |
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The Current Mix of Renewables in the Energy
Marketplace
The EIA tracks all “supply sources” of energy and the “demand sectors” that
consume what is produced (Figure 1). The primary supply sources
include:
* Petroleum
* Natural Gas
* Coal
* Renewable Energy (as defined
previously)
* Nuclear Electric
Power
Even though traditional fossil fuel sources and nuclear production remain
dominant in the United States, and the EIA expects those to grow to meet
ever-increasing demand, the renewable energy sector projections show “overall
consumption of marketed renewable fuels … grow(ing) by 3.3 percent per year in
the reference case, much faster than the 0.5 percent annual growth in total
energy use.”[2] It is important to note
that these EIA projections only account for current legislation and government
policy and do not attempt to predict the effects of policy changes. (See Figure
2.)
How do these projections compare to the actual growth of renewable energy
production since the above figure was published in March 2009? According to the
SUN DAY Campaign:
“Specifically, EIA reports that for the first
quarter of 2009 compared to the first quarter of 2008, renewable energy sources
used for electrical production increased by 7.2 percent and accounted for 10
percent of the nation’s electrical generation. Conventional hydroelectric
power increased by 4.6 percent while all other renewables combined (biomass,
wind, geothermal, and solar) increased by 12.4 percent.[3]”
Further, this article goes on to point out that:
“The numbers for the month of March 2009 alone are even more dramatic with
renewables accounting for nearly 10.9 percent of net U.S. electrical
generation. Conventional hydroelectric power provided more than 6.9
percent of total U.S.
electrical generation while other renewables generated almost four percent of
electric power. Most notably, net generation from wind sources was 38.5 percent
higher in March 2009 than it had been in March 2008.
Conversely, the coal-fired electricity production drop experienced between
August 2008 and August 2009 was the largest fuel-specific declineoverall.[1]“
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| Economic Impacts of S. 1733: The Clean Energy
Jobs and American Power Act of 2009. October 23, 2009 U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency Office of Atmospheric Programs
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/economics/pdfs/EPA_S1733_Analysis.pdf . |
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The Potential of the Future
Mix
At a time when overall electricity demand is falling and the use of
conventional fuels such as coal are decreasing, the use of renewable fuel
sources appears to be growing at an increasing rate. Despite a marketplace that
prefers, incentivizes and subsidizes conventional “dirty” fuels, renewable
energy is taking hold and becoming a larger part of the fuel mix. With the
growth in renewable fuels in the current energy economy, it is easy to see that
a few strategic policy changes or shifts could create an explosion of renewable
energy production growth in a short period of time.
So what do the experts say the potential for renewable energy production truly
is? Is wind and solar power production destined to always be a small part of
the overall fuel mix? Or can renewables truly become a dominant component of
our country’s and the world’s energy production source? According to a recent
article in Scientific American, renewable energy has the ability to become not
only the dominant fuel source but also the only fuel source needed to supply
our energy needs and the conversion can occur by as early as
2030.[4]
According to the article, “Supplies of wind and solar energy on accessible land
dwarf the energy consumed by people around the globe.” The authors define total
global power consumption today and in 2030 to be 12.5 trillion watts (TW) and
16.9 TW, respectively. The latter figure is considered to be accurate if the
current energy economy continues. However, if renewable energy becomes the
dominant or only fuel type, the inherent efficiencies of such an energy
economy, which include distributed generation and the efficiencies of direct
electrification, would mean that the global consumption projection in 2030
would only be 11.5 TW.
Figure 3 describes the wind, water and sunlight (WWS) renewable energy
production sources that are already in place and the specific generation
capacity that is needed to make a complete renewable energy economy a
reality.
Brown, author and president of the Earth Policy institute, also has a great
deal to say about the potential of renewable energy production, specifically in
the United States. In his latest book, he says, “Three states — North Dakota, Kansas,
and Texas — have enough harnessable wind
energy to run the entire (U.S.)
economy.” Additionally, “the National Renewable Energy Lab has identified 1,000
gigawatts of wind energy waiting to be tapped off the East Coast and 900
gigawatts off the West Coast. This offshore capacity is sufficient to power the
U.S.
economy.” At any time in the U.S., it is estimated that nearly 40 wind farms
are under construction and that proposed wind generating capacity that is on
hold is somewhere near 300,000 megawatts due to the need for further grid
construction.[5]
Legislation — Market Transformation
Now that we know renewable energy is taking hold and that the potential to
transition to an economy powered completely by renewable energy sources is
possible, what will it take to usher in a complete transformation? One answer
is to shift public policy from one that emphasizes and supports the old energy
generation fuels like coal, oil and natural gas to one that prioritizes clean,
indefinitely available renewable energy. The good news is that new policies are
not necessary because the regulatory and financing institutions are already in
place. These include among others:
* Types of Policy
Instruments
* Feed-in tariffs
(FIT)
* Fossil fuel tax
* Subsidy and tax
shifting
* Bio-fuel and farm
subsidies
* Investment in new
transmission
* Investment in the
smart-grid
* Cap and trade
* Research and development investments
Mid to late 2009 also saw the first real climate and energy related legislation
in a while that would potentially leverage many of these policy options.
H.R.2454 passed the House of Representatives on June 5, 2009, and includes the
following specific energy-related initiatives[6]:
* Limit or cap the quantity of
greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted from facilities that generate electricity and
from other industrial activities over the 2012–2050 period. (GHGs and
HFCs);
* Provide energy tax credits or energy
rebates to certain low-income families to offset the impact of higher
energy-related prices from cap and trade programs;
* Require certain retail electricity
suppliers to satisfy a minimum percentage of their electricity sales with
electricity generated by facilities that use qualifying renewable fuels or
energy sources;
* Establish the Carbon Storage Research
Corporation to support research and development of technologies related to
carbon capture and sequestration;
* Establish a Clean Energy Deployment
Administration (CEDA) within the Department of Energy (DOE), which would be
authorized to provide direct loans, loan guarantees, and letters of credit for
clean energy projects; and
* Authorize appropriations for various
programs under EPA, DOE and other agencies.
As shown in Figure 4, the Senate version of the bill, S.1733 Clean Energy Jobs
and American Power Act, would do much of the same as the House version but with
slightly different metrics or targets.
Though the current Senate version of this bill, referenced above, is not
assured to pass, look for the U.S. federal government to act in 2010 in some
way. Additionally, even though a binding agreement was not reached in Copenhagen late last
year, these aforementioned bills will be used to demonstrate that the endeavor
was a success and that progress in this area is being made.
Conclusion
Without a doubt, the world is moving toward a renewable energy future. The only
questions, at this point, are:
When will this growth escalate even
further?
What will the transition look like with
regard to fuel sources that will have an emphasis in the short term versus
sources defined for long-term strategies?
What policy vehicles will be used to
usher in the transformation (i.e., strictly government policy or broader
market-based growth)?
What will cost structures look
like?
As this article has demonstrated, the resources are available, the will of the
public to make this change is growing stronger, and our ability to harness
these resources is becoming easier every day. Couple the momentum of this
paradigm shift with a broader understanding of the importance “building
efficiency” plays in this process and the emergence of a modern “smart-grid,”
and it appears that all of the pieces are in place for an energy revolution
like none that has been seen before.
The policy shifts described above will unleash the creative and entrepreneurial
superiority of the United States once again and will create new jobs, new
businesses and new industries — all the while securing financial and domestic
security for our country by reducing our dependence on other countries for
ideas, technology, products and fuels that pollute our air and negatively
affect our ability to be competitive in a global market economy.
Footnotes:
1. Electric Power Monthly. November 2009. Energy Information
Administration, www.eia.doe.gov.
2. “Annual Energy Outlook 2009 with Projections to 2030.” March 2009. Energy
Information Administration, www.eia.doe.gov.
3. “SUN DAY Analysis: Renewable Electrical Generation Sources Soar.” June 18,
2009. RenewableEnergyWorld.com, www.renewableenergyworld.com.
4. “A Path to Sustainable Energy By 2030,” by Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A.
Delucchi. November 2009. Scientific American, www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030.
5. “Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.” By Lester Brown, Earth Policy
Institute, 2009. www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4/pb4_table_of_contents.
6. H.R.2454 American Clean Energy and Security Act, (CBO cost estimate June 5,
2009). www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=10262
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