Reality Check: Energy Powers That Be
Jessica Rettig

 

The world must face a glaring fact: Demand for energy is growing, and countries need to expand their energy sources if they want to keep up. The Obama administration made a commitment to clean energy. But here's a source-by-source look at nine types of energy that could change the landscape in the United States.

OIL

Claim: Global demand for oil has reached its peak.

Reality: According to the International Energy Agency, demand for oil has in fact peaked in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries, 30 of the world's most developed nations. The agency's chief economist, Fatih Birol, estimates that because of advances in technology, the demand for petroleum in these developed nations probably will never return to the levels seen in 2007. However, despite the flat demand over the past two years in Europe, Japan, and the United States, the IEA predicts that burgeoning demand for oil in emerging markets such as China and India will offset any declines and that worldwide demand will continue to increase.

With demand growing, the concept of "peak oil"--the theory that the world's supply of accessible oil will reach a high point and then begin to decline--has many people worried and uncertain about oil's prospects. According to Gary Long, the Energy Information Agency's expert on crude oil reserves, while the world supply is finite, there's very little consensus about how much is left or how much technology will progress to extract difficult-to-obtain reserves. But what happens in the future will depend on the available alternatives, Long says.

COAL

Claim: Carbon capture and storage technologies will make coal a nearly zero-emissions energy source.

Reality: Coal-fired power plants add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than any other energy source in the United States, and they provide more than half of the nation's electricity. President Obama has devoted $4 billion to new clean coal technologies, specifically carbon capture and storage, or CCS, with the hope of making the source nearly emissions free. CCS is a process by which carbon dioxide is separated from the production process and stored beneath Earth's surface. Experts say this technology is years, even decades, away from widespread commercial viability, but one project shows promise.

In September 2009, American Electric Power's Mountaineer coal plant in West Virginia launched the largest CCS demonstration project in the world when it implemented a coal-fired system with underground CO2 storage. The company hopes to move ahead with a commercial-scale demonstration by 2015. But even if the technology proves successful, Gary Spitznogle, AEP's top engineer on the project, sees a potential problem. "Just because we can prove at Mountaineer that you can put CO2 in the ground doesn't mean that it's viable somewhere else," he says.

NATURAL GAS

Claim: Natural gas can replace gasoline for use in vehicles.

Reality: This idea, most recently promoted by businessman T. Boone Pickens, seems ideal in theory. There's already plenty of natural gas in the United States, natural gas is cheaper than petroleum fuels, and it's reportedly much better for the environment, producing at least 20 percent less in emissions than diesel or gasoline. But the claim is a far reach, given that as of 2008, fewer than 1 percent of the vehicles in the United States use natural gas as a primary fuel.

Efficient natural gas vehicles have been around since the 1990s, so the problem is not the technology but rather the availability of fueling stations and the manufacture of cars. With few people driving natural gas vehicles, fueling stations are less eager to carry natural gas, but nobody wants to drive one if there's no place to fill the tank. Pickens, backed by Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, has proposed an initiative to invest in natural gas fueling stations; experts say changing the minds of American drivers and car manufacturers may take more time.

SOLAR

Claim: The cost of solar energy in America will be on par with traditional energy sources by 2015.

Reality: Though the solar industry has expanded almost 35 percent over the past five years and the past two years have seen nearly a 50 percent drop in the price of solar photovoltaics, the cost still raises doubts about the industry's ability to widely penetrate the power market. Nevertheless, the Department of Energy and its Solar Energy Technology Program hope to bring solar prices down to competitive levels over the next five years. John Lushetsky, the manager of the DOE program, says costs need to come down 25 to 50 percent for the systems to be economic without subsidies. "We think that the 2015 goals are very realistic for a significant part of the country" because of current research and development, says Lushetsky.

Even if the long-term costs of solar energy drop, the upfront expenses, such as installation in the home, create an unlevel playing field to compete with oil and coal, which carry no upfront investment for the consumer, says Mark Sinclair, vice president of the Clean Energy Group, a nonprofit advocacy group. Nevertheless, he notes that recent statewide incentives and public-financing programs have proved successful.

WIND

Claim: Wind energy could generate 20 percent of the power needed in the United States by 2030.

Reality: As of December, wind accounted for only 1.9 percent of the country's energy consumption. Yet in May 2008, the Department of Energy reported that by 2030, as much as 20 percent of the nation's energy could be derived from wind power. The scenario proposed by DOE could be feasible, but only if the government, the private wind energy industry, and utility companies continue to bolster the rate of installation each year for the next 20 years.

The good news for wind power is that the rates of installation are already higher than had been predicted, and the United States is adding wind systems more quickly than any other country in the world. In 2008, the United States topped the list with an addition of more than 8,500 megawatts, or enough to serve over 2 million homes. In 2009, the rates increased to 10,000 MW for the year, which many people attribute to financing that was included in the stimulus bill. Still, because of job losses in the manufacturing sector and reduced private investment, experts worry that the industry won't keep pace for 2030.

NUCLEAR

Claim: The United States will rely more on nuclear power in the future.

Reality: As of last May, power from nuclear fission accounted for 19.4 percent of the nation's total energy, according to the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy. Though established nuclear power plants have been mostly safe, successful, and well regulated, no new plant has been built in the past 30 years, as utilities companies have opted instead for plants fired with natural gas or coal, and environmentalists have expressed concern about the dangers of storing the radioactive byproducts of the process. Now the cost of building a new nuclear reactor, up to $10 billion each, is keeping the industry stagnant.

Obama recently committed $8.33 billion in loan guarantees for the construction of two new reactors at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia, which will provide electricity to 1.4 million people by 2017. The money Obama pledged came from the Energy Act of 2005, which set aside $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear plants. DOE has requested $36 billion more, according to Ebony Meeks, a DOE representative. Meeks says that without economic guarantees, more of these large-scale projects will be very difficult to get off the ground. Not to mention, each project must pass through the red tape of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before construction can begin, a process that now has more than two dozen U.S. projects waiting for approval.

FUSION

Claim: There will be a functioning nuclear fusion plant by 2020.

Reality: Fusion technology, which will essentially harness the same type of energy found in stars by fusing the nuclei of two atoms, is still in development. Scientists have already conducted fusion reactions; they just require more energy to produce than they currently emit. A number of research groups around the world are working to develop the would-be revolutionary technology that could power whole cities using hydrogen from water, an unlimited source without harmful chemical emissions.

The National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California appears to be the global front-runner in the race to fusion energy. In December, it was able to position 192 lasers on a test pellet the size of a BB, heating it in a way that scientists believe may produce the conditions necessary to achieve a controlled fusion reaction. In one to two years, the lab expects to achieve ignition with pellets consisting of hydrogen atoms, which is a step toward fusion energy. According to Edward Moses, associate director of the NIF, researchers around the world are hopeful that an NIF demonstration fusion power plant could be ready within a decade. Moses says that if the prototype is successful and if the technology can penetrate the market, the potential could be limitless. Hundreds of plants could be built in 30 to 40 years, he says. "Every country could have it," says Moses. "It would change the nature of how people saw their energy future."

HYDROGEN

Claim: Fuel cell vehicles are the future of transportation.

Reality: In 2003, President Bush announced a $1.2 billion initiative for hydrogen fuel cell technology, touting the future of "the hydrogen economy" for the auto industry. Yet last May, with other green auto technologies advancing more quickly and becoming more economically feasible in the short term, the Obama administration cut research into fuel cell vehicles from its budget. Car manufacturers are continuing to develop the technology despite the setback in funding.

The problem with hydrogen fuel cell technology is that hydrogen, while one of the most common elements on Earth, does not exist alone in nature. The majority of hydrogen is now derived from natural gas, the rest from water. Yet the process of obtaining hydrogen, an energy carrier rather than a source, requires significant energy input itself, and a more efficient production process will be necessary to reduce both costs and environmental effects. In addition, though prototypes of hydrogen-powered autos such as Chevrolet's Equinox have performed successfully, issues with storing and distributing hydrogen pose problems for the widespread use of the technology.

WAVE

Claim: Wave power from America's shores can fill up to 6.5 percent of national energy demand.

Reality: Wave power was officially redefined as a renewable energy source in 2005, but prior to that, the technology's funding took second place to more popular energy sources, like wind and solar. Since 2005, with somewhat more money heading in its direction, the wave power industry has moved forward. However, wave power technologies are still in the research stage, and no commercial-scale wave energy project exists in the country (story, Page 50).

Roger Bedard from the Electric Power Research Institute estimates that up to 6.5 percent of today's U.S. energy demand could be filled by commercially harvested ocean power, though he says that may take 50 to 100 years. He says that while wave power is important for diversifying the national energy portfolio, especially in coastal regions, it doesn't have the same potential as other renewables and therefore may take longer to develop. Nevertheless, he believes that in terms of environmental impact, ocean wave technologies could be one of the most benign modes of producing electricity.

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Reality Check: Energy Powers That Be | Jessica Rettig

 

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