FLVCS is advocating for the State of Florida to adopt Electric Portfolio Standards like the 37 other States that have mandatory or voluntary Renewable Portfolio Standards. The standards require electric utilities to generate a certain percentage of their power from non-emitting sources by specific dates. These standards are an important tool to reduce the production of greenhouse gasses that drive global warming and rising sea levels. See FLVCS climate change report, Urgency and Action, for further details.
A recent article by David Holt, President of the Consumer Energy Alliance, published on realclearenergy.org called for adoption of a balanced energy portfolio. Below is a well-reasoned response from Tim Rumage, Co-founder and Chief Science Officer, This Spaceship Earth.
Response to Americans Need a Balanced Energy Portfolio by David Holt, August 6, 2019
By Tim Rumage, Co-founder and Chief Science Officer, This Spaceship Earth
My first question when reading “Americans need a balanced Energy Portfolio” was- is this article about energy or about saving a business model that is facing its sunset years? To me, the article read more as a rationale for keeping centralized power using fossil fuels and nuclear energy as the backbone of America’s electricity supply.
I understand the historical preference for that model when electrical energy supply was functionally limited to a generate and distribute option but now that capture and storage is an available and increasingly more efficient and economical, it is time to adapt to the current realities and future demands for electricity.
I have lived in two states where my electricity was provided through a Power Purchase Agreement or PPA. In both cases the companies were using the premium payment to establish wind and solar energy infrastructure. It seemed a reasonable and appropriate business model and I had the satisfaction of helping a company and community switch from a fuel source with a heavy negative environmental and social impact to an energy source that was much more gracious to the land, the air, the water, the people and all other members of the biosphere.
As to the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, with all due respect, that sounds like a conversation I had with my mother more than 40 years ago. Even then there were batteries that could fill the gap and the need. I also remember being without centralized power during blizzards, ice-storms, hurricanes, tornados, wind-storms, lightning strikes, transformer breakdowns, car accidents, floods, and fires as well as when a house was being moved down Main Street to Water Street near my grandmother’s home.
I toured a military facility in Utah that had gone to 100% wind power for reasons of “national security”. The commanding officer wants to make sure that if some hostile power took down the electric grid that his base was still fully operational. I also visited a monastery in New Mexico that had gone 100% solar with battery storage back up because it was the both the moral and affordable thing to do.
One of the reasons I support solar and wind energy is that they do not need water to make electricity. Fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) do not give us electricity, they gives us heat. To get electricity, you use the heat from the fossil (and nuclear) fuels to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine, which turns an alternator to generate electricity. In solar, the energy from the sun moves the electrons in the cell to generate the electricity and in wind power, the blades turn the turbine and the alternator. In a world that is becoming more and more water stressed, why keep increasing the competition for water between energy, agriculture, manufacturing, business, people and ecosystems?
While Carbon Dioxide (CO2) has been made a central villain in global warming, it is not the only greenhouse gas that we need to consider. Natural gas, or fossil gas, is primarily methane – a greenhouse gas and has about 20X the global warming potential of CO2 when considered over a 100-year time line. When leaked, natural gas is a harmful Greenhouse Gas, and when burned it generates CO2. So fossil gas is not salvation that some individuals believe it is (unless we are talking about saving the old business model).
We also need to understand that the degree to which we want our energy portfolio to keep fossil fuels in the mix, is the degree to which we continue to accept, support and promote the increasing frequency and severity of Climate Change; Global Warming; Drought; Extreme Weather Events; Mega-Wildfires; Ocean Warming; Ocean Acidification; Ocean De-oxygenation; Ocean Dead Zones; Harmful Algae Blooms; World Hunger; Species and Habitat Loss; Air Pollution; Water Stress/Pollution/Shortages; and Human Physical and Mental Health Risks.
For nuclear energy to stay in the energy portfolio it too will have to change. I suspect the two biggest changes will be fuel type and scalability. Thorium-232 is getting a lot of interest as a nuclear fuel that is not weaponizable and could replace Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 as the primary fuel. Relative to efficiency and effectiveness even nuclear energy will have to decentralize. Can we adopt a nuclear energy model that is safe, can be reprocessed and scaled to run a school, a hospital, a housing development, and manufacturing plant and still be profitable?
I do not see how we can – in the next few years – meet the energy demand of megacities with just wind and solar. Then I remember that in 1961 that nobody knew how to (safely) get humans to the moon and back. By 20 July 1969 we did. When we commit to challenge we have demonstrated out ability to innovate and succeed.
The same will happen with energy. We can figure out how to identify the most effective and efficient energy source to use that has the least environmental and social harm for any task or need. Those parameters will determine the energy portfolio, not habit or history. We just have to change to conversation from “can we” to “we will.”
Additional notes:
The missing part of the conversation is matching the efficiency and effectiveness of the energy source to the task. Are we using the most effective fuel for the task and using the fuel as efficiently as possible? As the graph below shows, the answer is NO. Of the 101.2 Quads of energy consumed in the US in 2018, 68.5 Quads – or a little over 2/3rds of the energy “consumed” – was actually Rejected Energy or energy primarily lost as heat.
Americans used more energy in 2018 than in any other year, according to the most recent energy flow charts released by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
(https://www.llnl.gov/news/us-energy-use-rises-highest-level-ever)
But, as a March 2012 report done by the Rockefeller Foundation and Deutsche Bank Group shows, we could reduce our energy demand, save money, reduce CO2 emissions and employ people by improving building efficiency.
United States Building Energy Efficiency Retrofits
Market Sizing and Financing Models
March 2012
Executive Summary – Market Size, Climate, Employment Impact
- Scaling building energy efficiency retrofits in the United States offers a $279 billion dollar investment opportunity. The energy savings over 10 years could total more than $1 trillion.
- Scaling building retrofits could mitigate more than 600 million metric tons of CO2per year (~10% of U.S. emissions in 2010).
- Increased building retrofits could create more than 3.3 million new direct and indirect cumulative job years (excluding induced) in the United States economy.
(https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/report/united-states-building-energy-efficiency-retrofits/)
As to solar energy, keep in mind that in a single hour, the amount of power from the sun that strikes the Earth is more than the entire world consumes in a year.
430 quintillion Joules:
amount of energy from the sun that strikes the Earth each hour
410 quintillion Joules:
total amount of energy that all humans use in a year
U.S. Department of Energy
https://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-the-potential-of-solar-power-2015-9