BOSTON--If you attached a cost to putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, how would the energy business change?
Steven Koonin, the undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy and former chief scientist of BP, has thought this question over. Koonin was the keynote speaker Thursday at the Fifth Annual Conference on Clean Energy here, where he offered a big-picture analysis of how the U.S. should convert to low-carbon energies.
Steven Koonin, undersecretary for science in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
(Credit: DOE)The main drivers toward cleaner energy are efforts to improve the country's energy security and to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But there are many paths to that destination and we won't get there by only putting a price on carbon, Koonin said.
"Now the economists will tell you that all you need to do (is put a price on carbon emissions) and the market will take care of itself after that," Koonin said. "And that may be true, but as a technologist I have the ability and in fact the responsibility to look ahead and ask what the likely responses will be if there is a carbon price."
Establishing a significant, long-lasting, and universal carbon price would act as a "supply side" signal to the energy industry and favor certain technologies, he said.
One clear implication for the U.S. would be a greater shift toward natural gas, which is significantly less-polluting than coal for making electricity. Recent drilling improvements allow for capturing large amounts of natural gas from shale in the U.S., Koonin said.
Onshore wind is economically competitive in many areas in the U.S. and has the potential to supply 20 percent of the country's electricity by 2030. Another clean source of power is small and medium-size hydro power, which can supply tens of gigawatts from small dams.
Nuclear fission, which now supplies about 20 percent of the electricity in the U.S., is also poised to expand in an economy with a carbon price because there are no emissions during power generation. Carbon capture and storage facilities attached to coal-power plants, too, are needed because existing coal plants will continue to operate, he said.
Finally, increased conservation and efficiency are required in both the transportation field and for heating and power, he said.
Not just about technology
Koonin favors a cap-and-trade system to regulate carbon emissions, a system proposed in the energy and climate legislation now being debated in the Senate. Under cap and trade, heavy polluters such as utilities are given pollution permits and can buy additional permits to stay under a government-set limit on carbon.
But other policies are required, in part because the energy industry by its nature changes very slowly. Koonin specifically mentioned portfolio standards, where utilities need to get a portion of their electricity supply from renewable sources or a "low carbon" portfolio standard.
"One of the most important things we need to do beyond technology is to accelerate energy change," he said. "It takes decades to affect significant changes in the energy system."
It's a mistake to look at the IT industry as a model for how quickly energy can change, Koonin said. Whereas digital technologies evolve very quickly, energy changes slowly because power plants and buildings last decades and even cars last 15 years.
The first hybrid passenger car came to the U.S. in 2001, and even now, eight years later, there are fewer than 1 million sold, out of a total 150 million cars, he noted.
The scale and investments required to adopt different energy technologies is much bigger in than IT, and the energy industry is dominated by incumbents with well-optimized processes, he added.
To accelerate changes in energy, the DOE has established different types of research centers. This year, there will be $25 million a year to fund three "innovation hubs" at universities focused on specific problems, such as advances in nuclear. The DOE also recently awarded grants for ARPA-E, research aimed at breakthrough technologies.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Everyone from politicians, investors, and consumers tout the potential of solar and wind technologies.
But even BP, a company that changed its tagline to "Beyond Petroleum," sees renewable energy as a very small piece of the global energy picture--a situation that's not likely to change in the coming decades, according to BP's chief scientist, Steven Koonin.
Koonin spoke here on Monday to Massachusetts Institute of Technologies' energy student fellows, part of a campuswide initiative to promote technology innovation in energy.
BP is perhaps the most high-profile oil and gas company to take alternative energy seriously.
But Koonin said that changing from BP's core oil and gas exploration business is a slow process, given that demand for liquid fuels continues to go up.
"We're trying (but) it's not easy to change things...You can't cut off the present," he said. "Deployment of energy innovations (in the oil and gas industry overall) is very hard because of entrenched interests."
He said that climate regulations that put a price on emitting carbon dioxide would incent energy companies to invest in low-carbon energy sources.
"The only way you're going to get a shift off of this is through a price on carbon," Koonin said. A carbon tax or cap-and-trade system would act the same way that a rise in gasoline prices has prompted many people to conserve, he said.
"The question is whether it will be high enough...It needs to be high enough to hurt to get people to do something different," Koonin said.
He noted that Europe already has climate regulations in place, and the U.S. is likely to adopt its own. At the same time, he said "it was hard to imagine" the fast-growing economies of China and India having costly limits on carbon emissions.
In his talk, Koonin listed a number of technologies that BP is exploring or funding research in, including biofuels, underground carbon storage, and various means of improved oil and gas exploration.
BP researchers are exploring under-ice drilling in the Arctic, building more robust drilling platforms, more environmentally benign methods to extract oil from tar sands, and hydrogen production.
"Technically, there are lots of opportunities in conventional fossil fuels," he said.
At the same time, BP is investing a billion dollars to establish a biofuels business and is pushing into wind power. It has also done a handful of tests in carbon capture and sequestration, where large amounts of carbon dioxide are stored underground.
Carbon storage is a technology that could be an important option for reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, but it also faces a number of technical challenges, such as safe storage, Koonin said.
BP is also researching energy storage for renewable energy and advanced photovoltaics, although Koonin predicted it would be decades before they would make a major impact on worldwide energy use.
One of the most promising research paths is the intersection of biology and energy. BP, for example, is looking at how enzymes in cows and other ruminants can sequester carbon, he said.
"Beyond Petroleum was once an advertising slogan when I came in (in 2004). We're trying to do something about it now," he said.
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