Relative contributions within the renewable energy slice

July 2, 5:58 PMEnergy ExaminerJohn Guerrerio

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The speed with which we increase renewables' share of the energy industry is under review.

Roughly at present, this is our current energy consumption by sector within the industry.  Petroleum, coal, and natural gas are the top three making up 85% of our total energy consumption; nuclear and renewables make up the last 15%.

The energy industry, alongside policy decisions, has created conditions whereby the 7% renewables slice can grow to be 25% by 2025, 50% by 2050?!

Renewables as a sector within the energy industry encompasses several subsectors including solar, wind, geothermal, waste, biofuels, biomass, and hydroelecric power.  Wind, geothermal, and solar have the potential to spread from their small market share today and plug into the grid for electrical energy that can displace coal's share of the energy pie.  Waste, biofuels, and biomass have similar potential and can be substituted on either the electrical energy side or in the petroleum slice.  As more electric vehicles plug into the electricity transmission system, a smart grid that can balance the load and distribute energy more efficiently based upon two-way digital communincation is ideal.

It is a completely plausible scenario to envision in twenty years time the ability to transition a majority of the automobile fleet to EV-flex fuel vehicles that plug into the grid and run on biofuel while simultaneously expanding solar, wind, biofuels, and geothermal to match the increases in energy demand.  Making the grid intelligent will then preserve any efficiency gains into the future.

With environmental policy, the renewable energy sector as a whole by 2030 will be equal in proportion to the petroleum industry, each contributing 30% to total energy makeup.  Coal and natural gas will each shrink to 20% of our total energy.  To grow from a 7% marketshare to 30% requires policy, technology, culture, and business interests all to mesh into one agreeable thread; but that is a rare alignment.  Still, if momentum gets rolling, there can be a global competitiveness, a race of sort, to see which country will capture the largest share of specialty clean energy markets;, we have all seen what recent markets will pop in their newest bubble markets, renewable energy can be sustained...it is not a bubble industry.  If a true build-out of a functioning smart grid with significant renewable energy components alongside a rollout of EVs, renewable energy can sustain global markets through the twenty-first century.

There are many challenges to this assertion of growth by renewables within energy sector.  Among the top concerns is the expense of EV batteries; 15-25 thousand dollars more for a car is not an agreeable condition for a rollout, swap, conversion, upgrade, whatever you want to call the changing of the automobile industry to use less petroleum.  Maybe another decade to get batteries ready, or maybe they are ready, but the auto companies aren't.  40 grand for a Volt is a bit steep.  Next of major concern is the condition of the grid and the intermittent nature of wind and solar.  An increase in renewables will require energy storage facilities along electrical transmission routes that can capture and store peak wind and solar energy, and it will require us connecting the regional grids across regions of the country through a national transmission highwway.  Regulation gridlock is always a serious hazard to consider when discussing the nationalization of the electrical grid.

Utility-scale concentrated solar power has a water issue in the desert southwest; these facilities while generating heat sustainably from the sun, still use water to make steam and spin the turbine.  In a fragile desert ecosystem, water is a precious commodity.  Can biofuels find a path toward sustainability in the near future?  Can the waste to energy (W2E) industry clean up our mess?

At least, for now the recession is making us go through this whole 'energy industry transition-thing' slowly.  The truth is that the energy industry transition-thing will far outlast the '08 Recession.  If we're lucky, we'll get it right this time.