Category: Electric utilities

The Vulnerability of Our Electric Utility System to Cyber Attacks

I have touched on this issue in an earlier blog post (‘Vulnerabilities of U.S. Infrastructure: We Need To Pay More Attention’) and turn to it again because its importance and associated risks have been highlighted by the recent hacking of SONY’s corporate web site. The U.S. and other countries are highly vulnerable to digital hacking – a point emphasized again by the recent hacking of U.S. Department of Defense web sites – and unless we take steps to adequately protect our web-connected systems from these interventions I fear we will pay a terrible price. Too many of our public systems are now remotely controlled by wireless networks, and someone bent on doing damage and who knows how to hack can make us hostage if our systems are penetrated. My concern is less with SONY than with our centralized electric utility systems that power our homes, businesses, hospitals, water supply systems, and many other aspects of modern life.

image

Is it difficult to provide this cyber protection? The simple answer is yes, for several reasons: the growing numbers of wireless networks and cyber hackers, the cost of counteracting malicious hacking, the availability of trained professionals to address the hacking issue, and what I have long considered a major problem: the inability to focus enough attention on cyber security issues.

Let me discuss each of the barriers in order. Wireless networking is growing because it offers many advantages – reduced wiring requirements and related costs, remote operation and reduced manpower requirements, ability to monitor more variables continuously and control systems to a finer degree. Disadvantages arise when inadequate attention is paid to preventing hacker penetration into the network, thus allowing disruption of normal operations or allowing hackers to take control of the network. Also, the number of capable hackers is increasing rapidly. Many schemes have been proposed for restricting unauthorized access to a network, usually using passwords, but often these passwords are not adequate to stop an experienced hacker and most people are resistant to remembering long, complicated passwords. Many companies are also not yet convinced of the need to spend the money on sophisticated protection systems, and some may see the consequences of a hacking as less costly than the required investment. At some level we can all relate to this mindset.

Costs are inherent in any attempt to prevent hacking, ranging from software and hardware costs to labor costs. There is some indication that SONY, an electronics company, spent too little on protection costs by underestimating the potential threat to its cyber systems. It is a mistake it won’t make again, and should serve as a wake up call to other corporate and government bodies.

The trained manpower issue is a critical one. As a vice president of Oracle Corporation noted in Congressional testimony: the vast majority of people available today to address cyber security issues are the ones who designed and implemented the current vulnerable information technology system. Should they be the ones to try and fix it, or do we need newly-trained cyber experts who are not so closely linked to today’s operating modes? Clearly there are people who have the requisite high level skills – think NSA – but are they available broadly on a global basis? Looks like a good field to get into as soon as possible.

Finally, let me address the issue of focusing attention on cyber security issues. I come to this discussion with some personal experience. Several years ago I served on a Department of Defense (DoD) committee reviewing energy proposals for military buildings and bases. Other members of the committee were from the various military services and the DoD Secretary’s office. DoD has always taken an interest in energy issues as a large part of their costs are energy-related – e.g., DoD maintains more than 500 buildings globally and the U.S. Air Force is the largest single user of aviation fuel in the world. Many of the proposals we reviewed were for wireless networks on military bases that needed to go independent of the grid at times of grid failure or other times of emergency. Many of the proposals were technically sound, proposing wireless networks on bases that could switch to power sources on the base that were independent of the grid when needed (solar, wind, geothermal, minihydro, diesel) and making sure priority loads were covered first. These networks also allowed continuous monitoring of energy systems and improved energy efficiency on the bases at all times. When I first raised the issue of network vulnerability to hacking I received a cordial hearing but no follow through. In year two, making a pest of myself again, there seemed to be more of an interest in potential hacking problems, perhaps stimulated by the reports of U.S. drones in Afghanistan transmitting unencrypted video signals to troops on the ground that were available both to the U.S. troops and the enemy troops the drones were tracking. I finally gained some traction in year three when the committee seemed more interested in requiring hacking protection in the proposals. Today the issue is hopefully more appreciated and getting much more attention.

image

Let me now tie all these concerns to our electric unity system. Today, and for most of the past century, it has been a highly centralized grid system where large central power plants distributed electricity radially via high voltage transmission lines and lower voltage local distribution lines. It was a ‘dumb’ system with little overall control and when one part of the grid went down lots of people lost their electricity supply until the grid problem could be fixed. Today we are developing a ‘smart’ grid with lots of electronic controls that allow isolation of problem areas to minimize the number of people affected, that facilitates transfer of power from one grid region to another, and that allows utilities access to consumer homes and businesses for better balancing of supply and demand. These ‘smart grid’ features offer many advantages to suppliers and consumers, ranging from improved energy security to reduced costs. The downside is that electronic networks controlling these various features of the smart grid can be penetrated by sophisticated hackers, and my impression is that until fairly recently utility executives were not paying sufficient attention to cyber security issues. I hope this is no longer the case, but we all know of utilities that have underinvested in protecting their systems – e.g., Pepco in the Washington, DC/Maryland area who underinvested for years in trimming back trees that could fall on and disrupt power lines during storms.

The sooner we can begin to address these issues in a serious manner the more secure our energy systems will be. At this point we are highly vulnerable to physical sabotage attacks on our exposed power transmission line infrastructure and hacking attacks on our utility control networks. This is true in the U.S. and elsewhere. Let the SONY situation serve as the needed wake-up call.

More on the Lighting Revolution

This blog post is stimulated by an OpEd piece in today’s (12 December 2014) Washington Post. I reproduce it here as published before I comment on what it says.

“One of the most boneheaded anti-government policies of the last decade is back”

By Stephen Stromberg

A vintage-style incandescent light bulb (C) is shown with an LED light bulb (L) and a compact florescent (CFL) light bulb on December 27, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois (note: this picture not reproduced in this blog post). These incandescent bulbs, which have been in use for more than 100 years, are being replaced by the more energy efficient compact florescent and LED light bulbs. (Photo Illustration by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
In the trillion-dollar budget deal Congressional leaders revealed Tuesday, Republicans didn’t press to defund the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate change rules. But they did uphold one of the most boneheaded anti-government riders of the last decade.

Some quick background: The United States wastes astounding amounts of electricity on light bulbs. The Energy Department figures that American homes spend about 10 percent of their electricity bills on lighting, and households that use old, Edison-era incandescents convert less than 10 percent of the electricity they buy for their bulbs into light. The rest uselessly dissipates as heat.

Though households quickly save money on energy bills when they buy more expensive bulbs that waste less power and last longer, Americans for years didn’t push the transition forward absent a government nudge. This left hefty national savings on the table, as well as a surprisingly large environmental dividend. The EPA calculates that every incandescent bulb switched for a more efficient compact fluorescent bulb saves about 84 pounds in carbon dioxide emissions every year. The Energy Department figures that a transition to super-efficient LED bulbs by 2027 would save about 44 large power plants’ worth of electricity (h/t Brad Plumer).

So Congress passed some simple light bulb efficiency standards in 2007. Lawmakers didn’t ban incandescent bulbs. Instead they demanded that bulbs produced in or imported into the U.S. use no more than a certain amount of electricity to produce a certain amount of light. If manufacturers could make incandescents less wasteful, they could produce the improved bulbs freely. One result has been a boom in the commercialization of new lighting technologies that could save Americans some $6 billion next year.

Another result was an upsurge in counterproductive ideological fuming from the right: In a different budget compromise passed earlier this year, Republicans added a rider prohibiting the Energy Department from enforcing the bulb standards. The rules are still technically on the books, and major manufacturers have switched over to producing better bulbs. But the government won’t be able to stop anyone from playing to people’s short-term bottom line by producing, importing or selling ancient Edison bulbs. It’s not clear whether that will happen on a large scale, in part because retailers have been selling leftover inventories of old-design incandescent bulbs over the course of this year. But those supplies will run out. Regardless, in the latest budget deal Republicans again tacitly encourage undercutting the efficiency rules, keeping the rider in place.

Among other overblown complaints, critics have argued that the light that new bulb designs put out doesn’t feel the same as that of the old incandescents. In fact, bulb manufacturers have made great strides in adapting bulbs to Americans’ tastes. Even if they hadn’t, avoiding a few drawbacks in otherwise functional bulbs clearly isn’t worth wasting $6 billion and creating tons of extra emissions every year. Any rational government would push this transition along. I’m still not sure what kind of government Republican lightbulb hawks want.”

This is a topic I’ve commented on before (see my earlier blog post entitled ‘Lighting: A Revolution in Progress’) but feel the need to comment on again as some members of Congress are still pushing a policy that acts against the U.S. national interest – i.e., the need to reduce energy unnecessarily wasted in producing light. About one fifth of U.S. generated electricity goes into lighting, a large fraction, much of which can be saved by switching to more efficient and increasingly less costly forms of lighting such as LEDs. In addition to reducing the need for power plants to provide this electricity, associated carbon emissions and consumer electricity costs can be reduced significantly. This transition is inevitable and is picking up speed as LED costs come down as large-scale manufacturing of LEDs takes place.

My point in revisiting this topic is to emphasize some of the important points in the OpEd piece that unfortunately still need emphasizing with some members of Congress and the public: the economic and environmental benefits of switching from traditional incandescent light bulbs to LEDS are abundantly clear and U.S. Government action to impose standards on light bulb performance is not a ban on incandescent bulbs as some people have misrepresented. As the Oped correctly states: “So Congress passed some simple light bulb efficiency standards in 2007. Lawmakers didn’t ban incandescent bulbs. Instead they demanded that bulbs produced in or imported into the U.S. use no more than a certain amount of electricity to produce a certain amount of light. If manufacturers could make incandescents less wasteful, they could produce the improved bulbs freely.” If legislators see this imposition of standards as objectionable, then they must also be opposed to the variety of energy efficiency performance standards other Congress’ have mandated since the 1970s on devices such as refrigerators, air conditioners, and hot water heaters. Let them speak up if that is their position and take their arguments to and their chances with the American public rather than sneaking undiscussed items into must-pass budget legislation.

I would also like to take this opportunity to restate, in a simple example, the clear energy and economic benefits of switching from incandescents to LEDs. In the world of no-brainers this stands at the top of the class. In my earlier blog post I did this calculation for a CFL (compact fluorescent light bulb) which is now losing out to LEDs. The LED example is even more compelling.

In this example I compare a 60 Watt incandescent bulb (Sylvania A19 Soft White Dimmable) with an LED replacement (CREE 60W Soft White A19 Dimmable LED). The former are available at Lowe’s for $4.49 for a package of 8, and the 11 Watt LED is available at Home Depot for $7.97. The Sylvania bulb is advertised to have a 2,000 hour life while the identically shaped LED bulb is advertised to have a lifetime of “22.8 years (Based on 3hrs/day)”.

For purposes of calculation let me round the numbers off to 55 cents per bulb for the incandescents and $8 per bulb for the LED. Electricity is assumed to cost 10 cents/kWh. The LED lifetime is (3hours/day)x(365days/year)x(22.8years)=24,966 hours. In this amount of time you would replace the 55 cent incandescent light bulb 12.5 times.

Thus, after 24,966 hours the cost of using the incandescent bulb would be (0.06kW)x(24,966hours)x($0.10/kWh) = $149.8 + (12.5bulbs)x(0.55cents/bulb) = $156.7 (Note: this does not take into account any costs associated with replacing the bulb at least 12 times). The cost of using the LED to provide an equivalent amount and quality of light would be (0.011kW)x(24,966hours)x($0.10/kWh) = $27.5 + (1bulb)x($8/bulb) = $35.5.

This simple comparison demonstrates why a switch from incandescents to LEDs is inevitable and is already underway as initially high LED costs come steadily down. Even at $8/LED bulb the economic comparison ($36 vs $157) is devastating to incandescents, even improved incandescents that have been developed in response to the new efficiency standards. The economic argument for consumers is only buttressed by the benefits to electric utilities that need fewer power plants to meet lighting needs, and by the associated environmental benefits. Given that lighting needs consume about 19% of global generated electricity the benefits of this lighting revolution in combatting global warming and climate change are obvious.

While there can be debatable policy differences on how to generate the electricity we need, there should be no argument about proceeding down the LED path. This really is a no-brainer that even ‘Republican lightbulb hawks’ should understand.

What Might the 2014 Elections Mean for U.S. Energy and Environmental Policy?

The simple answer is that at this point we don’t know. Lots of different paths are possible, depending on how Republicans interpret their enhanced power in the U.S. Congress, how the President approaches his final two years in office, and how Congressional Democrats react to their minority party role. Nevertheless, I will offer my current thoughts and speculations, subject of course to significant change as we proceed in Congress’ 2014 lame duck session and the start of a new Congress in January with Republicans in charge of both Houses for the first time in eight years.

One major consideration that dominates my thinking is that Republicans, facing inevitable demographic realities in future elections (older white people as a declining percentage of the voting population, more non-white voters/mostly Latino and Asian, and a growing number of young voters generally more progressive than their parents and grandparents), must demonstrate that they can govern effectively if they are to win national elections in the future. Remembering the Gingrich era in the 1990’s, when Republicans took over the Congress, it proved much easier to be in the minority and sling arrows than to govern effectively when finally in power. The modern House of Representatives, under John Boehner as Speaker, has proved to be one of the least effective in American history, but with control of both Houses in Republican hands after January, Boehner and McConnell (the presumed Majority Leaders in the new Congress) have the opportunity to do more than just oppose Obama Administration initiatives. What Boehner and McConnell want to do and are able to do will determine their places in history.

The issues as I see them are as follows: policy for fossil fuel supply – coal, oil, natural gas, fossil fuel exports, Keystone XL pipeline, global warming and climate change, support for clean energy, water issues. Each will be discussed briefly below.

– Fossil fuel supply: with Kentucky’s senior Senator setting the agenda for the Senate it is likely that anti-coal activists will be unsuccessful in accelerating the pace of closure of coal-fired power plants in the near future. These decisions, made on economic grounds by power plant operators, will be self-interested decisions based on the legislative environment they are facing. With Republicans in charge I anticipate every effort will be made to slow down or repeal the EPA’s proposed rules on carbon emissions. While there are Republicans who understand the need to replace coal combustion with natural gas and eventually with renewable energy, the political reality that they may be challenged in reelection primaries by climate change minimalizers or deniers tends to keep them in line with status-quo positions. Coal’s role in power generation in the U.S. is clearly diminishing, faster than most people probably anticipated just a few years ago, but low-cost coal exports to other countries are picking up. As the UK experienced several decades ago, closing coal mines and losing the associated jobs is difficult politics, as this year’s Senate election in Kentucky demonstrated. Keeping one’s job is priority #1 for most if not all people, and the political system needs to keep this firmly in mind. Balancing this against the needs of environmental protection is what we pay our politicians to do.

The issues with oil and natural gas largely relate to fracking and its associated environmental threats, and with their export to other countries. Both are critical issues that can no longer be avoided and require careful policy prescriptions that Republicans are now in a better place to affect. Fracking of oil and natural gas from extensive shale deposits has expanded rapidly in the U.S. in recent years, and the U.S. Is rapidly becoming the world’s #1 oil producer (when shale oil adds to our declining but still large traditional domestic oil production) and a major souce of natural gas supplies. As discussed in two previous posts on this blog web site, I see no way to stop fracking in the U.S. because of the large associated economic returns, and therefore we must regulate it carefully to avoid the real possibility of water supply contamination and minimize accidental releases of methane, a powerful global climate change gas. Republicans can have their cake and eat it too if they support this needed regulation, gaining brownie points for their environmentalism and still allow the fracking industry to proceed on their profitable path. Substituting fracking gas for coal in power generation is in most people’s interest, and while I would prefer to replace coal with wind, solar and other renewable generation sources, we are not in a position to do that yet. Nevertheless, the U.S. public largely understands the need for this inevitable transition and Republicans would be politically wise to take a long-range view on facilitating this transition. We shall see.

A related issue is what to do about U.S. producers who want to export oil and natural gas. Large and remunerative potential markets await in Europe and Asia but since the 1970’s it has been illegal for companies to export crude oil in all but a few circumstances. The goal of the 1970’s legislation was to conserve domestic oil reserves and discourage foreign imports, but in reality, the export ban did not help accomplish either objective.

The Natural Gas Act of 1938, as amended, requires that anyone who wants to import or export natural gas, including liquefied natural gas (LNG), from or to a foreign country must first obtain an authorization from the Department of Energy. This is less of a barrier than the ban on oil exports, but until recently the U.S. was anticipating importing LNG, not exporting it. The fracking revolution has changed all this, and LNG import terminals are now being constructed as export terminals.

An argument against such exports is less fossil fuel and potentially higher energy costs for U.S. consumers. Foreign policy as well as economic considerations come into this discussion as we try to loosen other country’s dependence on Russian and Middle East producers. I anticipate that export controls will be loosened on a bipartisan basis and the U.S. will emerge as a major energy exporter in the decades to come.

Approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline by the President will be a key issue in the upcoming lame duck session of Congress and may carry over to the new Congress in January. My own view, expressed in an earlier blog post, is that stopping construction of the pipeline will not slow Canadian development of its tar sands oil resources and that I’d rather have the oil coming to the U.S. rather than going elsewhere. I also believe that transport of oil by pipeline is safer than transport by rail car, the obvious and unstoppable alternative. With regard to this issue, which many environmentalists have identified as a litmus test for President Obama’s environmental bona fides, I see the pipeline, which has strong Republican support as well as some Democratic support, as a done deal, perhaps as part of a tradeoff with other Democratic priorities such as immigration reform.

The issue of global warming and climate change is a difficult partisan issue but shouldn’t be. The science of understanding global warming is advancing steadily, its risks are clear to most people, and the largely negative impacts of climate change are increasingly being documented. The problem in the U.S. Is the political clout of industries dependent on sales of fossil fuels. In addition, Republican control of the Senate means that chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee will fall to Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), a climate change denier. This is clearly bad news for environmentalists and others who are concerned about climate change, but also for Republicans and Democrats who will eventually have to deal with this global crisis. Inhofe can slow things down and probably will, at least for the next two years before another Senate election is scheduled. It will be up to members and leaders of both parties to limit the damage that Inhofe can do.

image

Support for clean energy (efficiency, renewables) should also not be a partisan issue, but unfortunately is. Vested interests in the traditional energy industries still have too much power with a Congress highly dependent on campaign funds. My views on the need to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy are clearly stated in quite a few of my blog posts, reflecting my view that such a transition is inevitable and clearly in the national interest. Unfortunately, I expect the next few years, under Republican control of Congress, to be a repeat of the years under President George W. Bush (‘Bush 43’) when lip service was paid to clean energy but budget support didn’t follow. As I was taught on my first days in Washington, DC in 1974, budget is policy. I hope President Obama will take a strong stand on these issues, despite Republican electoral gains, since he no longer has to protect vulnerable Democratic candidates.

I bring water into this discussion because water and energy issues are ‘inextricably linked’. Energy production requires water and provision of clean water supplies requires energy. Republicans as well as Democrats must recognize the need to consider these two issues together, and I think they will. This issue needs visibility and increased understanding on the part of politicians and the public, and is a natural for bipartisan cooperation. I hope I am right.

Obviously, I have only touched lightly on the many energy and environmental issues facing the U.S., and encourage others to join me in this discussion. These next few years should be interesting indeed!

Looking Ahead 30-40 Years – A Risky Business

History has always been my favorite subject, starting in high school, and still constitutes a major part of my personal reading. Needless to say I have a strong interest in other topics as well, as attested to by my long career in science and engineering and education/mentoring activities with young people. What often fascinates me is looking back at how things have changed in the past, often in unexpected ways, and how people looking back in the decades ahead will put their perspectives on what we are doing today. This blog post is my attempt to flesh out these thoughts, while acknowledging the difficulty of looking into the future. If I look far enough into that future I will not be around to suffer the slings and arrows of projecting incorrectly, or collecting the kudos for projecting accurately. Nevertheless, it feels like a stimulating and challenging activity to undertake, and so here goes.

image

Let me start by going back seven decades to the 1940s when I was a young kid growing up in the Bronx and just beginning to form my likes and dislikes and develop opinions. My love for science fiction developed at that time and was probably a dead give-away of my future career interests. An important shaping event was the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Japan on August 6, 1945, an event that I still clearly remember learning about on the radio while sitting in the back seat of my parents’ car. Without a deep or much of any understanding at that time, I somehow sensed that the world had changed in that August moment. I still feel that way after many subsequent years of reading and studying.

The following decades saw several other unexpected and defining events: the addition of fusion weapons (hydrogen bombs) to our nuclear arsenals, commercial applications of controlled nuclear fission (nuclear submarines and nuclear-powered surface ships, and the first commercial nuclear power plant which was actually a land-based nuclear submarine power plant), development and emergence of the transistor as a replacement for vacuum tubes (first using germanium and then silicon), the development of the first solar cell at Bell Labs, the development and application of laser technology, the emergence of the information technology industry based on the heretofore abstract concepts of Boolean algebra (0s and 1s), and the increasing attention to a wide range of clean energy technologies that had previously been considered impractical for wide scale application – wind, solar, geothermal, ocean energy, fuel cells, advanced battery technologies, and a broad range of alternative liquid and gaseous fuels. Each in its own way has already changed and will further change the world in future decades, as will other technologies that we now only speculate about or cannot imagine. This is the lesson of history – it is difficult for most of us to look ahead and successfully imagine the future, and one of my earlier blog posts (‘Anticipating the Future: It Can Be Difficult’) discusses this topic. In the following paragraphs I speculate about the future with humility but also great anticipation. My only regret is that I will not live long enough to see most of this future unfold.

I will divide this discussion into two parts on which I have focused some attention and feel that I have some knowledge – medicine/health care, and energy. That leaves all too many aspects of the future that I don’t feel qualified to comment upon – e.g., what more will we learn about Amelia Earhart’s disappearance, Cuba’s possible participation in John Kennedy’s assassination, and the future of the tumultuous Middle East and the countries of the former Soviet Union. My primary focus in this post will be on the latter of the two parts, energy.

To help you understand my interest in medicine and health care I confess that at one point in my career, before committing to pursuing a PhD in physics, I gave serious consideration to attending medical school. During this period in the early 1960s I was a research scientist at Texas Instruments (TI) and was excited about the possibilities of miniature electronics which TI was pioneering in. I even suggested to my TI bosses that we undertake the application of transistors and sensors to artificial vision, but it was much too early for the company to make such a commitment. Today, 50 years later, that vision is being realized.

I also see great promise in the application of miniature electronics to continuous in-vivo diagnosis of human health via capsules that float throughout a human’s blood network, monitor various chemical components, and broadcast the results to external receivers. This will depend on low-powered miniature sensors and analysis/broadcast capability powered by long-lasting miniature batteries or an electrical system powered by the human body itself. Early versions are now being developed and I see no long-term barriers to developing such a system.

A third area in which I see great promise is the non-invasive monitoring of brain activity. This is a research area that I see opening up in the 21st century as we are beginning to have the sensitive tools necessary to explore the brain in detail. Given that the brain is responsible for so many aspects of our mental and physical health I expect great strides in the coming decades in using brain monitoring to address these issues.

The energy area is where I have devoted the bulk of my professional career and where my credibility may be highest – at least I’d like to think so. Previous blog posts address my thoughts on a wide range of current energy, water-energy, and related policy issues. Recognizing that changes in our energy systems come slowly over decades and sometimes unexpectedly, as history tells us, I will share my current thoughts on where I anticipate we will be in 30-40 years.

Let me start with renewable energy – i.e., solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, biomass, and ocean energy. I have commented on each of these previously, but not from a 30-40 year perspective. Renewables are not new but, except for hydropower, their entering or beginning to enter the energy mainstream is a relatively recent phenomenon. Solar in the form of photovoltaics (PV) is a truly transformative technology and today is the fastest growing energy source in the world, even more so than wind. This is due to significant cost reductions for solar panels in recent years, PV’s suitability for distributed generation, its ease and quickness of installation, and its easy scalability. As soon as PV balance-of-system costs (labor, support structures, permitting, wiring) come down from current levels and approach PV cell costs of about $0.5-0.7 per peak watt I expect this technology to be widespread on all continents and in all developed and developing countries. Germany, not a very sunny country but the country with the most PV installed to date, has even had occasional summer days when half its electricity was supplied by solar. In combination with energy storage to address its variability, I see PV powering a major revolution in the electric utility sector as utilities recognize that their current business models are becoming outdated. This is already happening in Germany where electric utilities are now moving rapidly into the solar business. In terms of the future, I would not be surprised if solar PV is built into all new residential and commercial buildings within a few decades, backed up by battery or flywheel storage (or even hydrogen for use in fuel cells as the ultimate storage medium). Most buildings will still be connected to the grid as a backup, but a significant fraction of domestic electricity (30-40%) could be solar-derived by 2050. The viability of this projection is supported by the NREL June 2012 study entitled ‘Renewable Electricity Futures Study’.

Hydropower already contributes about 10% of U.S. electricity and I anticipate will grow somewhat in future decades as more low-head hydro sites are developed.

For many years onshore wind was the fastest growing renewable electricity source until overtaken recently by PV. It is still growing rapidly and will be enhanced by offshore wind which currently is growing slowly. However, I expect offshore wind to grow rapidly as we approach mid-century as costs are reduced for two primary reasons: it taps into an incredibly large energy resource off the coasts of many countries, and it is in close proximity to coastal cities where much of the world’s population is increasingly concentrated. In my opinion, wind, together with solar and hydro, will contribute 50-60% of U.S. electricity in 2050.

Other renewable electric technologies will contribute as well, but in smaller amounts. Hot dry rock geothermal wells (now called enhanced geothermal systems) will compete with and perhaps come to dominate traditional geothermal generation, but this will take time. Wave and tidal energy will be developed and become more cost effective in specific geographical locations, with the potential to contribute more in the latter part of the century. This is especially true of wave energy which taps into a large and nearly continuous energy source.

Biomass in the form of wood is an old renewable energy source, but in modern times biomass gasification and conversion to alternative liquid fuels is opening up new vistas for widescale use of biomass as costs come down. By mid-century I expect electrification and biomass-based fuels to replace our current heavy dependence on petroleum-based fuels for transportation. This trend is already underway and may be nearly complete in the U.S. by 2050. Biomass-based chemical feedstocks will also be widely used, signifying the beginning of the end of the petroleum era.

I expect that other fossil fuels, coal and natural gas, will still be used widely in the next few decades, given large global resources. Natural gas, as a cleaner burning fossil fuel, and with the availability of large amounts via fracking, will gradually replace coal in power plants and could represent 30-40% of U.S. power generation by mid-century with coal generation disappearing.

To this point I have not discussed nuclear power, which today provides close to 20% of U.S. electricity. While I believe that safe nuclear power plants can be built today –i.e., no meltdowns – cost, permanent waste storage, and weapons proliferation concerns are all slowing nuclear’s progress in the U.S. Given the availability of relatively low-cost natural gas for at least several decades (I believe fracking will be with us for a while), the anticipated rapid growth of renewable electricity, and the risks of nuclear power, I see limited enthusiasm for its growth in the decades ahead. In fact I would not be surprised to see nuclear power supplying only about 10% of U.S. electricity by 2050, and less in the future.

To summarize, my picture today of an increased amount of U.S. electricity generation in 2050 is as follows:

Generating Technology : Percent of U.S. Generation in 2050
nuclear: 5-10
coal: 0-5
Oil: 0
natural gas: 30-40
solar + wind + hydro: 50-60
other renewables: 5-10

I am sure that some readers of this post will take strong issue with my projections and have very different thoughts about the future. I welcome their thoughts and invite them to join me in looking ahead. As the title of this post acknowledges, looking ahead is risky business, but it is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. This seems as good a time as any to do so.

image

Thoughts On U.S. Energy Policy – Updated

In October 2008, just prior to the U.S. presidential election, I drafted a piece entitled ‘Thoughts on an Energy Policy for the New Aministration’. It was published about a month later and republished as my first blog post in May 2013. I said at that time “What I find interesting about this piece is that I could have written it today and not changed too many words, an indication that our country is still struggling to define an energy policy.” This post is my attempt to look back at what I said in 2008 and 2013 and see if my perspectives and views have changed.

In that piece I started off by listing 14 items that I labeled as ‘facts’ on which most can agree. These ‘facts’ are reproduced below, followed by my comments on what may have changed since 2008.

1. People do not value energy, they value the services it makes possible – heating, cooling, transportation, etc. It is in society’s interest to provide these services with the least energy possible, to minimize adverse economic, environmental and national security impacts.

2. Energy has always been critical to human activities, but what differentiates modern societies is the energy required to provide increasingly high levels of services.

3. Population and per capita consumption increases will drive increasing global energy demand in the 21st century. While not preordained, this increase will be large even if others do not achieve U.S. per capita levels of consumption.

4. Electrification increased dramatically in the 20th century and will increase in the 21st century as well. The substitution of electricity for liquid transportation fuels will be a major driver of this continued electrification.

5. Transportation is the fastest growing global energy consumer, and today more than 90% of transportation is powered by petroleum-derived fuels.

6. Globally energy is not in short supply – e.g., the sun pours 6 million quads of radiation annually into our atmosphere (global energy use: 460 quads). There is considerable energy under our feet, in the form of hot water and rock heated by radioactive decay in the earth’s core. What is in short supply is inexpensive energy that people are willing to pay for.

7. Today’s world is powered largely by fossil fuels and this will continue well into the 21st century, given large reserves and devoted infrastructure.

8. Fossil fuel resources are finite and their use will eventually have to be restricted. Cost increases and volatility, already occurring, are likely to limit their use before resource restrictions become dominant.

9. Increasing geographic concentration of traditional fossil fuel supplies in other countries raises national security concerns.

10. The world’s energy infrastructure is highly vulnerable to natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other breakdopwns.

11. Energy imports, a major drain on U.S. financial resources, allow other countries to exert undue influence on U.S. foreign policy and freedom of action.

12. Fossil fuel combustion releases CO2 into the atmosphere (unless captured and sequestered) which mixes globally with a long atmospheric lifetime. Most climate scientists believe increasing CO2 concentrations alter earth’s energy balance with the sun, contributing to global warming.

13. Nuclear power, a non-CO2 emitting energy source, has significant future potential but its widespread deployment faces several critical issues: cost, plant safety, waste storage, and weapons non-proliferation.

14. Renewable energy (solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, ocean) has significant potential for replacing our current fossil fuel based energy system. The transition will take time but we must quickly get on this path.”

What has changed in my opinion are items 9, 11, and 12. The availability of large amounts of home-grown natural gas and oil at competitive prices via hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of shale deposits has turned the U.S. energy picture upside down. It may do that in other countries as well. Whereas the U.S. was importing over 50% of its oil just a few years ago, that fraction is now under 40% and the U.S. is within sight of becoming the largest oil producer in the world, ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia. Whereas in recent years the U.S. was building port facilities for the import of LNG (liquified natural gas) these sites are being converted into LNG export facilities due to the glut of shale gas released via fracking and the large potential markets for U.S. gas in Europe and Asia (where prices are higher than in the U.S.).

The phenomena of global warming and climate change due to mankind’s combustion of carbon-rich fossil fuels are also becoming better understood, climate change deniers have become less and less visible, and the specific impacts of climate change on weather and water are being actively researched. An important change is the substitution of natural gas for coal in new and existing power plants, which has reduced the share of coal from 50% just a few years ago to less than 40% today. This has reduced U.S. demand for domestic coal, which is now increasingly being sold overseas.

The second part of the 2008 article was a set of 10 recommendations that are reproduced below:

1. Using the bully pulpit, educate the public about energy realities and implications for energy, economic and environmental security.

2. Work with Congress to establish energy efficiency as the cornerstone of national energy policy.

3. Work with Congress to provide an economic environment that supports investments in energy efficiency, including appropriate performance standards and incentives, and setting a long-term, steadily increasing, predictable price on carbon emissions (in coordination with other countries). This will unleash innovation and create new jobs.

4. Consider setting a floor under oil prices, to insure that energy investments are not undermined by falling prices, and using resulting revenues to address equity and other needs.

5. Work with Congress to find an acceptable answer to domestic radioactive waste storage, and with other nations to address nuclear power plant safety issues and establish an international regime for ensuring nonproliferation.

6. Establish a national policy for net metering, to remove barriers to widespread deployment of renewable energy systems.

7. Provide incentives to encourage manufacture and deployment of renewable energy systems that are sufficiently long for markets to develop adequately but are time limited with a non-disruptive phaseout.

8. Aggressively support establishment of a smart national electrical grid, to facilitate use of renewable electricity anywhere in the country and mitigate, with energy storage, the effects of intermittency.

9. Support an aggressive effort on carbon capture and sequestration, to ascertain its feasibility to allow continued use of our extensive coal resources.

10. Remove incentives for fossil fuels that are historical tax code legacies that slow the transition to a new, renewables-based, energy system.

I still support these recommendations, buttressed by the following observations:

– more public education on global warming and climate change has taken place in recent years, and a majority of Americans now accept that global warming is driven by human activities.

– there is a lot of lip service given to the need for increased energy efficiency, and President Obama’s agreement with the auto industry to increase Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards over the next decade is an important step forward. What is lacking, and slowing needed progress toward greater efficiency, is a clear policy statement from the U.S. Congress that identifies and supports energy efficiency as a national priority.

– with the shutting down of the Yucca Mountain long-term radioactive waste storage facility in Nevada, the Obama Administration is searching for alternatives but believes the country has time to come up with a better answer. This may be true, or may not, and only time will tell. It is not a uniquely American problem – other countries are struggling with this issue as well and most seem to favor deep geological storage. This is a problem we will definitely be handing down to our children and grandchildren,

– net metering as a national policy, as is true in several other developed countries, has gone nowhere in the six years since 2008. It is another example of a lack of Congressional leadership in establishing a forward-looking national energy policy.

– progress has been made on moving renewable energy into the energy mainstream, but we have a long way to go. NREL’s June 2012 report entitled ‘Renewable Electricity Futures Study’ made it clear that renewables could supply 80% of U.S. electricity by 2050 if we have the political will and make appropriate investments. The study puts to rest the argument used by the coal and other traditional energy industries that renewables can’t do the job. The public needs to understand that this canard is inaccurate and not in our country’s long term interests.

– the need for a national grid, and localized mini-grids (e.g., on military bases), has been recognized and appropriate investments are bring made to improve this situation. A national smart grid, together with energy storage, are needed to assure maximum utilization of variable clean energy sources such as wind and solar. Other renewable energy sources (geothermal, biomass, hydropower, ocean energy) can be operated as baseload or near base load capacity. And even intermittent wind and solar can supply large amounts of our electricity demand as long as we can transfer power via the national grid and use averaging of these resources over large geographical areas (if the wind isn’t blowing in X it probably is blowing in Y).

– the carbon capture and sequestration effort does not seem to be making much progress, at least as reported in the press. My blog post entitled ‘Carbon Capture and Sequestration: Is It a Viable Technology?’ discusses this issue in some detail.

– with respect to reducing long-standing and continuing subsidies for fossil fuel production, no progress has been made. Despite President Obama’s call for reducing or eliminating these subsidies the Congress has failed to act and is not likely to in the near-term future. This is a serious mistake as these industries are highly profitable and don’t need the subsidies which divert public funds from incentivizing clean energy technologies that are critical to the country’s and the world’s energy future.

– today’s electric utility sector is facing an existential threat that was not highly visible just a few years ago. This threat is to the utility sector’s 100 year old business model that is based on generation from large, centralized power plants distributing their energy via a radial transmission and distribution network. With the emergence of low-cost decentralized generating technologies such as photovoltaics (PV), these business models will have to change, which has happened in Germany and will eventually happen in the U.S. Keep tuned as this revolution unfolds.

As a final word I repeat what I have said in earlier posts: we need to put a long-term, steadily increasing price on carbon emissions that will unleash private sector innovation and generate revenues for investments in America’s future. This is a critical need if we are to successfully address climate change, create new U.S. jobs in the emerging clean energy industry, and set an example for the world.