The Limits of Renewable Energy: A Call for Research and Development

Despite these trends, conventional wisdom holds that a “clean-energy future” is not only possible but looming. Through a combination of energy efficiency and renewable technologies, some argue, we can “solve” the problem of climate change.

The case for “we’ve got all the renewables we need” recently received a boost from aNational Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) study, which concluded: “Renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country.” Physicist Amory Lovins, a leading advocate of green energy, was among those praising the study. It showed “how to produce 80 to 90 percent of America’s electricity from proven, reliable and increasingly competitive renewable sources like the sun and wind,” he said.

Yet on close reading, the study not only doesn’t support these optimistic claims, it also reveals the need for a more diverse technology strategy and aggressive investments in innovation.

For starters, the study doesn’t find that wind and solar can, even theoretically, supply 80 to 90 percent of U.S. power by 2050. In the best case, less than half would come from wind and sun. The remaining balance of renewable power would come from newhydropower, equivalent to adding 50 Hoover-size dams and building biomass plants equal in capacity to the U.S. nuclear fleet; the biomass plants are unlikely to be carbon-neutral.

Even achieving the goal of 50 percent of the U.S. power supply from solar and wind assumes that 100 to 150 gigawatts of energy storage, or roughly half the size of the country’s coal capacity, will emerge to provide power when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. While pumped hydro-storage is available in some locations today, other technology options, such as very large batteries and compressed air, require significantly more innovation to become cost- effective at commercial scale.

In fact, the study’s storage estimate may be low, because it assumes that the number of residences and businesses that will go offline at peak times when wind and solar aren’t available are equivalent to 1? New York states. It also assumes no growth in U.S. electric consumption for the next 40 years, thanks to improvement in energy efficiency. Consider that California’s energy-efficiency efforts lead the world — but demand has still increased 25 percent in the Golden State in the past 20 years.

Furthermore, to meet the goal of having 50?percent of the U.S. power supply come from solar and wind sources, the study presumes a doubling of the U.S. transmission system that is simply not feasible. Nearly every mile of new U.S. transmission lines is fought over by the localities they run through. And the report is mum on what happens to electricity reliability or consumer costs if more than one of these assumptions fails to materialize.

Simply put: Far from a realistic plan, the NREL study suggests what might be possible in an ideal world. The authors even admit that although their analysis suggests “a high renewable generation future is possible, a transformation of the electricity system would need to occur.?.?. involving every element of the grid.”

Certainly, better efficiency and increased wind and solar power will be among the ways to address global warming. But placing all of our bets on today’s renewable technologies is unwise. A more sensible approach would be to invest in improving the performance and cost of a broad range of zero-carbon technologies through innovation, including better and cheaper wind and solar power as well as energy storage.

We must also be realistic about fossil fuels, which provide 87 percent of the planet’s energy and aren’t disappearing anytime soon. The United States needs to bring commercially proven carbon capture and storage to scale and reduce its cost. It also would be prudent to explore cheaper next-generation nuclear technologies that offer better safety, waste and security options than the Fukushima-type light-water designs that were locked in during the Eisenhower administration.

The real lesson of the NREL study is that much more innovation is necessary to achieve deep and affordable carbon reductions. Yet almost all of the policy and funding today focuses on deploying current technologies. U.S. investment in energy innovation is less than 5 percent of federal spending on defense research and demonstration. That has to change. We need better, cheaper options if the grid is to produce less carbon.

Matthew Stepp is a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

This article was originally published on the Washington Post and was republished with permission.

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Stricter emission limits rules spur clean energy innovation

"Set by these standards, will be business opportunities that will be created, it" Browner said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg television's Peter Cook for "Capitol gains" Feb. air 10.

"There are companies that can develop new technologies," she said. "Maybe we will investigate more about renewable energy. We seek to improve energy efficiency."

President Barack Obama said in his second term inaugural address, that he responds, referring to droughts and stronger hurricanes, set up a possible conflict on threats posed by climate change, with owners of coal-fired plants including Southern Co. of Atlanta and American Electric Power Co. of Columbus, Ohio.

Browner, a former adviser to Obama, said that the Administration in addition proposes that the EPA for new installations will propose rules to emissions from existing plants to the rules.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Agency had to act, if the emissions were found to "endanger public health and welfare", said Browner. "EPA this scientific statement made, so now they have to do this."

Existing installations

When the EPA imposed the same requirements for existing plants for new plants, "about 25 percent of the gas plants, carried out in the country, that standard would meet not" drawn Institute, an industry-based Washington Group for publicly traded utilities are, Thomas Kuhn, President of Edison Electric, said during a Feb. 6 interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York.

In response to a question, Browner said, it remains to be seen whether the rules, companies will force to develop gas-trapping technology in response.

The Obama administration is considering action on an array of other energy issues, including the control of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking extracts gas from shale and possible export of liquefied natural gas over objections from manufacturers such as Dow Chemical Co.

"The games-changer is natural gas," said Browner, is a member of the Advisory Board of the Bloomberg administration. "The question is, what natural gas for coal, and ultimately on renewable energy and efficiency as we will go forward."

Gas-glut

Advances in drilling in shale formations have produced a glut of natural gas. Futures prices for the fuel on the New York Mercantile Exchange since July 2008's leading investment in natural gas at the expense of other forms of generation including coal and nuclear energy 75 percent declined.

Hydraulic split, led to regulate the EPA, though the "probably not likely", said Browner the Agency from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. If you leave the task to the States, as proposed by Republicans such as representative of John diplomat from Illinois, "We go to a variety of needs, to see which will quite frankly be hard on industry," said she.

In the first four years, loan guarantees for wind and solar-energy projects exhibited the Obama administration and increased standards for cars in addition to write rules for power plants.

"We have a real opportunity to position the United States in the global demand for clean energy technology," said Browner.

Copyright 2013 Bloomberg

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