National Academies: U.S. energy at a crossroads
If changing the U.S. energy supply to be more secure and sustainable is like steering a massive ship, then the direction we set it on today won't be fully felt for 10 or 20 years.
The National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, on Monday released a report called "America's Energy Future" that seeks to focus the country's discussion on energy and draw attention to the most promising technologies.
One of the messages from the report is that long-term problems require sustained strategies and a break from business as usual. Technology has a big role to play, but none of the academic and business experts who authored the study expects a single fix.
"One of the committee's conclusions is that there is no technological 'silver bullet' at present that could transform the U.S. energy system through a substantial new source of clean and reasonably priced domestic energy. Instead, the transformation will require a balanced portfolio of existing (though perhaps modified) technologies, multiple new energy technologies, and new energy-efficiency and energy-use patterns," wrote Harold T. Shapiro, the chair of the committee on America's Energy Future.
Carbon-heavy: the source for energy in the U.S. The pie chart breaks out sources of electricity generation.
(Credit: Energy Information Administration, 2008.)Although there isn't one solution, certain technologies deserve more research than others, both in electricity and in transportation. Successful development and deployment of them can reduce greenhouse gases substantially in both sectors in the next 30 years using a portfolio approach.
In the short term, the study's authors concluded that efficiency is the easiest and lowest-cost option for "moderating" national demand for energy in the next decade.
Adopting existing building-efficiency products alone could potentially eliminate the need to build any new power plants, although some may be needed to address regional supply imbalances or upgrade existing power plants. Broadly applied in transportation, buildings, and industry, efficiency technologies could reduce energy use by 15 percent in 2020 and 30 percent by 2030, compared to the Energy Information Administration's "business as usual" reference scenario.
The U.S. has a number of good options for diversifying power generation as well but developing the products to do this will likely raise the price of electricity.
Because the U.S. has good resources, renewable energy from wind, solar, and geothermal could provide an additional 500 terawatt-hours per year by 2020 and 1,100 terawatt-hours per year by 2035. Total U.S. electricity consumption is now about 4,000 terawatt-hours per year.
Coal power plants with carbon capture and storage technology, where carbon dioxide would be stored underground, could replace the entire coal fleet by 2035 through retrofits or new construction. "Evolutionary nuclear technologies" could supply up to 850 terawatt-hours of electricity by 2035 by modifying existing plants and building new ones.
However, to take advantage of more renewable energy and run the system more efficiently will require modernizing the electricity system with smart-grid technologies, which the study says is "urgently needed."
Planning ahead
In assessing the transportation sector, the study's authors concluded that petroleum will continue to fuel the country's cars and trucks in the next three decades, although maintaining domestic petroleum production will be challenging. Once again, the best near-term option to cutting oil consumption is better vehicle efficiency.
Making liquid fuels from biomass, such as wood chips, and from coal with carbon capture and storage could replace about 15 percent of today's fuel consumption. But both approaches still have significant technical barriers. Also, there are potential environmental problems from using large amounts of land for biofuels and coal-to-liquid fuels would increase emissions without carbon capture and storage, according to the study.
Where your BTUs come from. This graphic shows the delivery of energy from primary fuel sources shown on the left.
(Credit: Lawrence Livermore Lab, Department of Energy)Meanwhile, making large numbers of electric light-duty vehicles will require advances in battery performance and fuel cells as well as smart-grid technologies to manage the demand.
The authors of "America's Future Energy" said that emerging technologies need to go through pilot tests in the next five years to demonstrate that they can be commercially viable and done at large scale 10 years from now.
The report said the most high-priority "demonstration stage" technologies are carbon capture and storage, evolutionary nuclear, cellulosic ethanol, and advanced light-duty vehicles. Long-term research and development is required for producing liquid fuels from renewable resources, advanced batteries and fuel cells, large-scale electricity storage, enhanced geothermal, and advanced solar photovoltaics.
To overcome technical and other barriers, the study said that policies and regulations and other incentives need to put in place.
"Actions taken between now and 2020 to develop and demonstrate several key technologies will largely determine options for many decades to come. Therefore, it is imperative that the technology development and demonstration activities identified in this report be started soon, even though some will be expensive and not all will be successful: some may fail, prove uneconomic, or be overtaken by better technologies," according to the report.
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. 
Huh! Just wait until there are "collisions" in space (or, a rogue raid on those nuclear waste) - like the ones involving those satellites some time ago!
Bull. Nuclear power could replace every ounce of oil and coal in our system by 2020. Drop the red tape and we could be clean and gas/coal free. True, fully electric cars would be a managable solution.
Why was nothing mentioned about the application of "HYDRO-POWER RESOURCES"; and, its development thereof!!!
The "British" technology mentioned is called pumped storage, and we have it here in the U.S., too. It's definitely going to grow because it is the best (and most low-carbon) way to even out the peaks and valleys from wind and solar, when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. It's also the only utility-scale energy storage option available today.
The solution is not this but to re-use the CO2 like Joule/algae based companies are doing. When is everybody going to realise the basics that Carbon is simply a medium (similar to blood in humans or engine oil in vehicles) that needs to be seen in the perspective of a closed system?
operational point takes about a decade minimum - the results laywers & lobbyist get $$$ no electricity
generated in that time - Even if nuclear was 100% safe it seems a lot more logical to
expedite the ban of incandescent light bulbs/Replace that example of 19th century tech with leds/ oleds
and super fund water desalinenization - do logical rational things to make the planet better!
- by Dr_Zinj August 24, 2009 7:45 AM PDT
- Our nuclear power plants aren't all that great. Operational lifespan is less than 50 years and they can't be refurbished and upgraded the way conventional fossil fuel plants can be. Nuclear power plants have to be completely disassembed and entombed once they've reached the end of their operational life span.
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