The Future of EnergyINTRODUCTION

Perhaps it is time to retire the term “energy crisis”. We are not about to run out of energy: We have enough fossil fuels on the planet to power civilization for another half century or more. It is more honest to say that we are in the midst of an energy transition, a change in the kinds of energy we use and the ways we produce them. If we continue to rely on coal to keep the lights burning and gasoline to keep our cars running, we are bound to pay a heavy price. Imported oil accounts for 42 percent of our trade imbalance. Fossil fuels collectively produce 95 percent of the carbon emissions that are heating the planet.

The following excerpts were taken from two articles from DISCOVER. The articles were titled “Power Play” (Nov 2011) and “Earth, Wind & Water” (Nov 2012). Both articles explore a future in which the United States powers itself both independently and cleanly. The excerpts are from panel discussions from two different years on Capitol Hill where DISCOVER teamed up with energy and environmental experts, as well as, government officials to map out the road to a new energy economy.

Greenhouse-gas emissions produced by each economic sector in the United States. Source: EPA; numbers rounded.

 ELECTRIC VEHICLESThe first mainstream plug-in hybrids and fully electric vehicles (EVs) are on the market, and while initial sales have been slow, the EV revolution is in full swing. Since transportation is responsible for 27 percent of America’s carbon emissions, the time is now to integrate the electrical grid with the transportation infrastructure. This will ensure the country’s carbon emissions drop as a result of the introduction of electric cars.

Designers of both the electrical grid and future electric vehicles will have to take into account when and how owners charge their vehicles. Eighty percent of charging is expected to take place at home or the workplace. Influencing when people recharge their cars could have huge implications for the effect of electric vehicles on the environment.

During off-peak hours, electric companies rely on the base load power generated in large part by carbon-neutral nuclear power plants; when demand rises during peak hours, they bring dirty, coal-fired plants online to meet increased need. Utilities need to give EV owners preferential pricing for charging during off-peak hours, when energy is cleaner.

There needs to be more research and development, particularly in batteries and advanced technology that can help bring down manufacturing costs. In the last five years, improvements in batteries have driven down the price per kilowatt-hour of electric storage in an EV from $1,000 to $600, and the industry hopes to reach $300 in the next few years. We also need new policies to give EVs more charging stations. If costs come down, EVs could become very appealing, since their driving cost per mile can be extremely low.

SMALL MODULAR NUCLEAR POWER

The meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant during the tsunami quake that hit Japan called into question the safety of nuclear energy. At the same time, nuclear reactors are still the only option for generating electricity on a large scale with no carbon emissions. Experts say, small modular reactors offer a better way to harness nuclear energy to produce power. All the designs for small modular reactors eliminate the features in larger plants that can contribute to a potential accident. Not only are they safer, but modular reactors are (relatively) cheap. The price tag for a conventional, 1,600-megawatt nuclear power plant is about $8 billion to $10 billion. A 300-megawatt, $850 million modular unit is a much more plausible proposition, and it could be fabricated using domestic supplies. That means more high-tech jobs in the U.S, and an opportunity to regain leadership in nuclear energy.

Existing reactors circulate water from the core to a steam generator. A leak can uncover the core and cause a core meltdown. Modular reactors house all the components in one vessel, reducing the risk of accident. Some designs are so simple they could be switched on and buried for years.

The nation’s first small modular reactor is being planned to be built in Tennessee. If it receives funding and passes regulatory hurdles, the reactor could be operational by 2020 and power up to 70,000 homes. Other prototype modular reactors are being developed and considered at other locations across the country. Meanwhile, other countries like Russia and China are fast-tracking similar projects. At this time it seems as if we are in a race. When we deploy these new small reactors, will we build them at home or buy them from other countries?

BIOFUEL FROM ALGAECorn and sugarcane are well-established sources of biofuel, but algae is more efficient than either. Some algae species contain up to 60 percent oil, and genetic engineers say they can boost that percentage even higher. And unlike the corn used to produce ethanol in the U.S., algae do not compete with food for farmland, one of the biggest problems with current biofuels. Algae can grow on marginal land, even in agricultural and human wastewater. They are sustainable, highly productive, and easy to cultivate, and they capture carbon dioxide. If oil-intensive algae were cultivated on a broad scale—the kind of scale now used for other commercial crops—they could eventually replace the 70 percent of the U.S. oil supply used for transportation.

The key to cultivating algae as a biofuel is genetically manipulating them to produce more oil than they do naturally. Until now, geneticists have studied only one species in any depth, but thousands of other species are possible sources of biofuel. Researchers have long known that when algae are starved of nitrogen they produce more oil. Unfortunately, nitrogen-starved algae also grow more slowly. Scientists recently found a way around this problem when they discovered a gene that produced high oil yield even in the presence of nitrogen. By manipulating this gene, the researchers managed to engineer algae that both grow rapidly and yield a lot of oil.

Algae biofuels should benefit from recent changes to the Renewable Fuel Standard, a set of regulations that require gasoline in the U.S. be blended with a certain amount of renewable fuel. However, there are concerns that the current regulations are too specific. Ramping algae biofuels up to commercial-scale production will also be a challenge: Going from 0 to 60 million acres will require considerable research, development, and investment. But the oil industry grew in a similar dramatic fashion 150 years ago. If the economics and environmental incentives pan out, biofuel made from algae could do it too.

GEOTHERMAL ENERGYGeothermal energy has been around so long that it hardly deserves to be called “alternative”; people have been tapping hot water below the Earth’s surface to generate electricity for a century. But geothermal accounts for less than half of 1 percent of total

electricity consumption in the U.S. As with wind energy, geothermal is simple in principle but hard to do successfully in practice. Too often, drilling results in wells that are hot but have no water or wells that are simply not hot enough.

It is estimated that there are 100 to 500 gigawatts of potential geothermal energy locked beneath the U.S. What is needed to successfully exploit all that energy is investment in more detailed geologic mapping, three-dimensional modeling of underground water flows, and testing of water chemistry that can indicate the temperature of subsurface waters. More surveys of ancient hot springs, which can point to the locations of still-active geothermal systems, would help too.

Such support for geothermal energy is suddenly looking more likely due to an unlikely ally: the natural gas industry, which is in the midst of a giddy boom driven by the widespread adoption of the controversial drilling technique known as fracking. It has been discovered that many of the gas wells that have already been drilled produce significant amounts of hot water. Many of those fracked wells could be reengineered to have a second life as sources of geothermal energy.

ENERGY FROM WASTEWATEREvery day you are literally flushing energy down the toilet. You can’t talk about energy as a resource and water as a resource independently. In California alone, 19 percent of all the electricity and 30 percent of the natural gas is used to move, treat, and heat water.

Since transporting water eats up so much electricity, developing ways to recycle the water that goes down the drain could yield big energy savings. The nation’s model for this kind of innovation is Las Vegas. Las Vegas reuses virtually 100 percent of its wastewater. Over the past 20 years, the district has modernized its water reclamation system, which now returns 70 billion gallons of treated wastewater annually to Lake Mead, the source of 90 percent of Las Vegas’s water. We need to avoid pumping water over long distances and focus on systems that produce water for reuse where it’s generated.

And the wasted energy in each flush lies not just in the water—there is also energy in the waste itself. One gallon of typical domestic wastewater contains enough organic compounds and nitrogen to power a 100-watt lightbulb for five minutes. The exciting implication is that next-generation wastewater treatment plants could use new technologies, including microbe-powered fuel cells, to capture enough methane, hydrogen, and other fuels from wastewater to generate all the energy they need, and then some.

Wastewater Treatment of the Future:Today a typical plant consumes 0.7 kilowatt-hours of energy to clean a cubic meter of wastewater. But that same cubic meter contains about 2 kilowatt-hours of potential chemical energy. Next generation plants will not only be more efficient but also will extract energy from the organic material and nitrogen in sewage.

WIND ENERGYAnyone who made a cross-country trip in the last few years will have seen the transformation that turned the U.S. into the world’s leading producer of wind energy. The wind farms that now punctuate the landscape from California to New York produce a total of almost 100 terawatt-hours of electricity a year, almost 2.5 percent of total demand. But that is still small potatoes compared with the 45 percent generated by coal-fired plants. There are a host of scientific issues to overcome before wind can seriously challenge fossil fuels, but one of them is surprisingly basic: We still do not completely understand the way winds blow. The wind behaves differently 200 to 400 feet up, where the turbines actually operate, than it does near the ground. There are thousands of monitoring stations around the country measuring the wind up to about 30 feet, but very few above that.

A small change in the wind has big implications: A 10-mile-an-hour wind can generate 65 kilowatts, but at 15 miles an hour, the same turbine can produce 300 kilowatts. Since turbines are designed without a complete understanding of how wind flows, they are failing at higher than expected rates. Failure to anticipate sudden gusts is especially problematic, because they can both damage the turbines and lead to sudden transmission line overloads.

Being able to predict average wind speed within just a fraction of a mile an hour would make a huge difference. The way to do that is to gather the missing data. Government, academia, and industry need to invest in new research on wind flow that will allow us to truly wrap our heads around what’s going on up there—and to reap the full benefits of wind power.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY & CONSUMERISM

The greatest clean energy sources and efficient technologies are pointless if nobody wants to use them. Often, though, the problem is one of perception. We need to understand consumer behavior needs to be at the heart of a meaningful energy policy.

Some of the most effective strategies to help consumers overcome aversion to change are very simple. Merely offering the energy-efficient option as the default choice can greatly increase its acceptance. For example: in a survey, when incandescent bulbs (which use more electricity) were made the default option (in a newly renovated home, for instance), 44 percent of consumers said they would stay with the choice. But when CFLs (which use considerably less energy) were presented as the default option, 80 percent went with them instead. Consumers have registered some complaints about CFLs, but it seems that one of the most intense ones is the hassle of making a change.

Competition can also spur people to make more efficient choices. For example there is a power company that sends utility subscribers an energy “report card” comparing their energy usage with that of their neighbors. Analysis of this data shows that customers who receive the notices become more conscious of energy use and consume an average of 2 percent less power than those who do not get the comparisons in the mail. There is no government mandate, no utility incentive, just a better kind of communication.

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