Study: Renewable energies' potential untapped
If you think the lack of technology is the reason we don't have more wind and solar power, think again.
The National Research Council on Monday published a report that finds that renewable energy sources--wind, solar, geothermal, wave, tidal, and biomass--could supply 10 percent of U.S. electricity supply in 2020 with existing technology. Today, renewable energies excluding hydro power are about 2.5 percent of the U.S. electricity mix.
Getting to 20 percent of U.S. electricity by 2035 is possible with sustained policies and investment, it said. To achieve more than 50 percent of electricity generation from renewable sources, excluding hydro power, beyond 2035 would require new scientific advances and dramatic changes in the power-generating industry, the report concludes.
The primary barriers to deeper penetration in the near and medium term are cost, policy, and insufficient transmission lines, the report finds.
More solar power in the cards?
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)The study, called "Electricity from Renewable Resources, Status, Prospects, and Impediments," was done to inform politicians on energy policy, which is in a crucial period. The House and Senate are considering bills to mandate more renewable energy and efficiency. The House bill includes regulations to cap greenhouse gas emissions. The National Research Council is the main operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.
Of the technologies available, wind and solar offer the most potential in the U.S., which has good resources for both in different regions. Conventional geothermal and biomass resources are also ready for deployment. Enhanced geothermal--which involves fracturing rock underground and injecting water to heat it--and wave and tidal power are still not commercially available.
On-land wind farms could provide 10 percent to 20 percent of current electricity demand. The only technological improvements in the short term revolve around optimizing performance of components and better integrating wind into the grid.
Solar energy--both photovoltaic panels and concentrating solar power systems--"is capable, in principle, of providing enormous amounts of electricity without stress to the resource base."
To increase the penetration of renewable energy beyond 20 percent, the report says that energy storage technologies are required. Smart-grid technology to better manage the flow of energy from variable resources like the sun and wind is also necessary.
Technology, policy, capital
Costs for solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources are going down but are still more expensive than fossil fuel-derived electricity.
The report says that consistent policies, such as renewable portfolio standards, are required to attract investment in renewable energy, which should improve the technology and bring down costs. Attaching a price for releasing large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere through carbon regulations will make cleaner forms of energy generation than fossil fuels more cost-competitive, it said.
"Currently, use of renewable resources for electricity generation generally incurs higher direct costs than those currently seen for fossil-based electricity generation, whose price does not now include the costs associated with carbon emissions and other unpriced externalities. Some form of market intervention or combination of incentives is thus required to enable renewable resources to contribute substantially to the national electrical energy generation mix," according to the report.
Another key challenge related to cost is industrial scale. Without an increase in manufacturing capacity for energy products, it will be difficult for renewable energy to move beyond single-digit contributions, the study said.
For example, a Department of Energy report calculated that to increase wind power to 20 percent of U.S. electricity would require construction of 100,000 wind turbines, an additional $100 billion of capital, and 140,000 workers in manufacturing and transmission upgrades.
On an environmental level, a significant barrier to wind and solar is conflict over how land is used for power plants and new transmissions lines.
The report says that investments in research and development are needed now to improve costs and for enabling technologies, such as storage and grid management. "Overall, technological developments and consistent policy will need to be coordinated with manufacturing capacity and access to capital in order to accelerate deployment of renewable electricity."
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
The technologies in various areas are being developed and will continue to show progress. The manufacturing volumes are being ramped up and will continue to lead to lower cost.
What is needed more than anything is persistence and tenacity. Our leaders must create an environment that is conducive to long term investments and planning. Administration after administration following the same basic concepts. Just as they did (and do) in military spending.
While the military spending has yielded questionable long term value (e.g. planes rotting away in the desert), technology leadership in energy will define a nation's position in the new world more than anything.
We have two options ? lead or follow. The train is beginning to roll. With or without us.
The technologies in various areas are being developed and will continue to show progress. The manufacturing volumes are being ramped up and will continue to lead to lower cost.
What is needed more than anything is persistence and tenacity. Our leaders must create an environment that is conducive to long term investments and planning. Administration after administration following the same basic concepts. Just as they did (and do) in military spending.
While the military spending has yielded questionable long term value (e.g. planes rotting away in the desert), technology leadership in energy will define a nation's position in the new world more than anything.
We have two options ? lead or follow. The train is beginning to roll. With or without us.
Why so sarcastic? And as for Germany, where coincidently I am presently living, well yes about 20% of the electricity produced is wind powered and a further 3 to 5% is solar. In about ten years time these two sources are planned to reach about 50% of total power generation. Most other EU-countries have similar plans. We're not exactly elated about the high prices here of course but then per person we don't use even half as much electricity as in the US. And I suppose doing something about global warming means being prepared to pay for it.
During the America?s Power Factuality Tour, we?ve been traveling around the country talking to the people who are behind the production of cleaner electricity from coal.
That?s why we stopped by Mattoon, Ill., the proposed site of FutureGen, a public-private partnership to build the world?s first near-zero emissions coal-based power plant. Citizens and legislators are continuing to work towards the original plan ? and town residents are excited, too. They understand what a great boost the plant will be to the local economy ? and how much the technology will mean to the rest of the world.
http://sn.im/factuality5
I used to wonder why oil companies didn't embrace biodiesel and ethanol - after all, they have the distribution channel, the brand names, and the technical know-how to build and deliver biofuels more efficiently than any new company. Then I realized they have hundreds of billions of dollars in sunk costs in the existing fossil fuel technology - refineries, tankers, transport terminals, exploration, etc., that would have to be written down if all of a sudden, oil (and coal) were obsoleted. So they will do everything they can to protect their investment, because they like their lifestyles, and they don't want to have to learn a whole new business. Kind of like politicians, who like being in office, and can only get jobs as lobbyists if they are voted out. So they take contributions from the incumbent energy providers, and, while pretending to care about our energy security and our environment, do the bidding of those energy incumbents.
So until voters hold politicians accountable for something other than gay marriage, the study is probably right, we won't see any real change for a long time.
Coal industry likes to advertise itself as being the cheap and abundant energy source, but just maybe not the cleanest. If it is so cheap, then it can afford to clean itself up without further subsidies to compete with renewables on a fairer basis. The billions of tax dollars to be invested into CO2 sequestration should be invested into wind, solar thermal, solar voltaic and grid infrastructure. The power generated will be clean automatically and not put into a dubious, unproven process to clean up inherently dirty fossil fuels. Sequestration of CO2 will be very expensive and may not work, leak or have unintended consequences. It is a large scale project that is a subsidy for an long established industry that has received many subsidies in the past.
One question I have had for a long time, is how the pollution from a coal fired power plant is calculated? Does it include the methane, heavy metals and coal dust that is given off by the mining, transportation and storage of coal. Also the pollution of diesel fueled vehicles involved should be counted like it is for ethanol and bio-fuel production. Site restoration after the usual process of terra forming done by open pit mining operations here in the US should be included.
Coal is a powerful, very useful resource that can be used for a lot of industrial processes; petroleum is really a magic stuff that might be considered too valuable to burn. I do not suggest stop utilizing fossel fuels, but utilize them better, cleaner and more efficiently. We will not be able to close down coal power plants except the dirtiest since coal provides about half our power, but we can make it a policy to invest in renewable energy and efficiency because it solves the issue for the long term.
And we should also focus on R&D to get fusion also working.
- by zelrik June 20, 2009 5:33 PM PDT
- How clean is wind energy? What is the environmental cost of manufacturing/maintaining those turbines??? What about this solar energy? What is the current cost in terms of material? I dont think we have a clear idea of where we are going. Everything in the cycle has to be clean and reusable, we are not there yet.
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