Renewable energy - all electrons on board - using all resources now
How should we plan to generate renewable energy? Should we emphasize "distributed" projects - improvements in energy efficiency, and household and other urban solar systems - or are we better off relying on large-scale solar and wind projects?
Each type has advantages and disadvantages. The distributed projects have few negative environmental impacts, but they are harder to bring about and predict because they require concerted investments by thousands or even millions of property-owners. Large concentrated projects cost much less per watt generated, but relying on desert sunshine or windy mountain passes, they are often sited at locations we would like to protect. They require building of long-distance transmission lines, and a significant fraction of power is lost over these distances.
At this time in history, though, we need both. With vastly more CO2 in the air than at any previous time in the last 600,000 years (see figure), and perhaps a decade left before the earth reaches a tipping point, we need projects of all sizes. If we are to block construction of new coal plants and retire existing ones, if we are to replace the nation's 103 aging nuclear power plants, if we are to bring renewable energy to scale in time to prevent coal from dominating our resource mix - we need to implement alternative-energy sources at an unprecedented rate.
There's not time to "sequence" our responses to defer the tough decisions; we need to take every reasonable step at once. Doing nothing or doing only the easy things is a prescription for disaster and intrinsically irresponsible.
We literally have to transform the way we power our economy. We need to do many things - simultaneously - with little room for error. We need all the energy efficiency and conservation we can get, we need all the distributed generation we can get, and we need large-scale renewable-energy supplies. We will need to fix, modernize, and expand transmission infrastructure. All these projects will need to be done in a way that preserves our natural resources and avoids ecologically sensitive places. They will need to be done differently from ever before, and will require cooperation with organizations and people that environmentalists are not used to working with. Financing is limited, and so we need to size the system carefully.
What will California do?
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed an executive order setting the goal of deriving 33% of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 2020. This is not necessarily enough, but it is far more than we do today, and more than other states have achieved or are trying to achieve.
California's Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI) was launched by a set of California agencies and utilities to help figure out how much renewable energy we need, and how to design an economical and environmentally benign transmission system. (The Sierra Club participates on the steering committee.) It is the first time ever that environmental and economic issues have been given equal consideration in planning electrical transmission. RETI is not a regulatory entity, but was charged with bringing together stakeholders from all relevant interests to make an influential recommendation about how to meet California's renewable energy goals for the electricity sector and to identify transmission solutions needed to make it happen. Regulators, land managers at the federal and state level, and renewable-energy generators have joined environmentalists, utilities, and counties in assessing our options and making recommendations.
How much renewable energy do we need?
The more energy efficiency and conservation we implement, the less energy we need to generate. The more distributed energy we can create, the less large-scale energy and transmission we will need. Unfortunately it is especially difficult to forecast how much distributed solar we are likely to have in a decade. Some of our friends in the environmental community have suggested opposing large-scale projects and working full-bore for distributed power. Alas, such hopes for distributed renewables to become cheap and widespread enough to meet most of the need do not appear realistic.
Consultants for RETI project annual electricity consumption in 2020 to be 335,000 GWh (a gigawatt hour equals a billion watt hours - the energy used if a billion watts are used for one hour, or one watt for a billion hours). This projection is fairly reliable, as the state and electrical industry have a good track record after decades of experience with such forecasts.
Renewable energy today amounts to 35,500 GWh annually, and more will surely be on-line by 2020, but it is not likely to be nearly enough to meet the 33% goal. RETI projects that California will need an additional 59,700 - 68,000 GWh of large-scale renewables.
To get by with significantly less large-scale renewable energy, California would need to dramatically increase energy efficiency, conservation, and distributed renewables far beyond anything we have ever seen in our state before. If prices for solar equipment drop considerably, will people adopt it more quickly? How quickly? How much would prices have to drop? What policy adjustments would we have to make to get a substantial increase in distributed solar? For example, what difference would be made by a "feed-in tariff", a long-term contract price for electricity fed into the grid (see article, page 11) as in Spain and Germany? More energy efficiency and conservation are goals to aim for - but not certainties to stake our future on.
We can't afford to put all our renewable eggs in one basket. We need to do all we can with energy efficiency and distributed renewable energy - and to develop large-scale renewable resources. We need to build these in the least-sensitive, already-most-disturbed places possible. We must design a transmission system that makes fullest use of existing infrastructure, and adjust our development plans as needed to reflect the progress we are making in reducing the need for large projects. We simply cannot afford to fail.
To learn more about RETI, visit the website