Category: Renewable energy

Looking Back at Energy Policy in the 1970’s

Recently I have spent some time cleaning up some boxes in my basement, as ‘requested’ by my wife. Three of the boxes contained personal files from my several years as Staff Scientist with the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee in the mid 1970’s. This was the period following the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-4 when the U.S. first began to think seriously about energy policy. The history of this period is still largely to be written, and it promises to be a rich history. It also represents a unique period in recent American political history in that Democrats and Republicans occasionally cooperated to pass legislation that was deemed to be in the national interest.

Reviewing the files in the boxes took me several days because I.found the contents much more interesting than anticipated after 35 years of non-attention. I also will donate the files to the Senate Archives after I have absorbed more of and thought more about the contents.

The Oil Embargo focused U.S. attention on the country’s significant and increasing dependence on imported oil from unstable and often unfriendly parts of the globe. While only about a quarter of total oil consumption was affected at the time, the Embargo was a rude shock to Americans when they had to endure higher prices and long lines at gas stations and even alternate day access to the pumps based on their license plate numbers.

Suddenly, energy became a dominating issue and the Ford Administration and the Congress were struggling to reassure the American public and devise policies that addressed this increasing import dependence. Lots of disagreements ensued, particularly on oil pricing, but attention also began to be focused on limiting energy demand and indigenous energy resources. Thus was born a large push for greater use of America’s large resources of coal and for increased use of nuclear power. Most economists talked of the one-to-one relationship between gross national product and energy consumption (not true, as has subsequently been demonstrated) and a favorite theme of nuclear supporters at the time was to call for a “doubling every decade”, meaning that we should double the number of nuclear power plants every ten years until the turn of the century. It was also a time when domestic oil production had just peaked and natural gas supplies were thought to be in limited supply. This led to restrictions on the use of natural gas, reduced use of oil for power generation, announcements of many new nuclear power plant construction projects, increased attention to reducing energy demand in buildings, industry, and transportation, attention to non-fossil fuel energy resources (read ‘renewables’), and calls for a national energy strategy. In the intervening years we’ve made progress on a number of these issues, some more than others, but we still lack a national energy strategy, a critical missing piece as we penetrate further into the 21st century.

A major step forward was the passage in 1975 of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA – Public Law 94-163), the country’s first comprehensive energy legislation. It passed that summer in the House by more than a 3:1 margin and by 3:1 in the Senate, triggering a 3-month House-Senate Conference to iron out differences. The bill, as finally negotiated, was signed by President Ford just before Christmas that year despite Republican threats of a Presidential veto. It created many features of our current energy scene, which are discussed below. I also want to recognize those I consider the major legislative leaders, both Republican and Democrat, who fought for this legislation across party lines and brought it to the President’s desk. I do not believe that they have yet received the full recognition that they richly deserve.

EPCA’s primary goals were to increase energy supply, reduce demand, put a focus on energy efficiency, and give the President more tools with which to respond to energy supply disruptions. It’s primary actions were to:
– establish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The need for such a reserve had been recognized for decades, since the 1940’s, but the Oil Embargo underscored the critical need for such a reserve.
– Part B/Title III established the Energy Conservation Program which gave “authority to develop, revise, and implement minimum energy conservation standards for appliances and equipment.” It also authorized an appliance labeling program, to assist consumers in making energy- and cost-wise purchasing decisions.
– Part A/Title III established the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for new automobile fleets. This legislation, which remained unamended for 32 years, is still the nation’s most impactful energy conservation measure.
– other provisions included loan guarantees to encourage domestic coal and oil production by smaller firms, and additional presidential authority to act in times of emergencies.

The principal legislative leaders behind EPCA (see photos below) included Fritz Hollings (D-SC) who was the prime mover in the Senate of the CAFE legislation, Warren Magnuson (D-WA) who chaired the Senate Committee On Commerce, Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson (D-WA) who chaired the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Ed Muskie (D-ME) who chaired the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Chuck Percy (R-IL), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), and John Tunney (D-CA), all strong Senate supporters of energy conservation, John Dingell (D-MI) who chaired the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Harley Staggers (D-WV) who chaired the House Science and Technology Committee, and Phil Sharp (D-IN) who shepherded the CAFE legislation through the House. One must also give credit to President Gerald ‘Gerry’ Ford of Michigan who signed the bill into law despite severe pressure not to from many of his constituents and advisors. All deserve the thanks of a grateful nation for putting national interest ahead of party politics as we don’t do too often today.

My final thought is the recognition that critical energy issues were clearly identified in the 1970’s, 40 years ago, but that progress since then has been slower than then hoped for. This has hurt the country in terms of preparing for the future (wje still lack a national energy policy codified by the Congress), less job creation and economic growth in clean energy industries, and unnecessary environmental degradation. We have made progress in the years following the scary wake-up call to the nation following the Oil Embargo and the Iran-Iraq War of the late 1970’s when global oil production was curtailed. Nevertheless, we can and must do better in the future if we are to successfully combat global warming and climate change (this became a public issue only after Jim Hansen at NASA began to talk about the issue in 1979) and ensure America’s place in the emerging and inevitable renewable energy society.

In order, left-to-right: Sen. Ernest ‘Fritz’ Hollings, Sen. Warren Magnuson, Sen. Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson, Sen. Ed Muskie Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sen. John Tunney, Sen. Charles ‘Chuck’ Percy, Rep. John Dingell, Rep. Harley Staggers, Rep. Plil Sharp.

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A Letter to President Obama

This letter, which will be published as a blog post, is a followup to my earlier post entitled ‘A Conversation With S. David Freeman’. In that post I stated:
“….. despite the obvious resistance that Obama faces from Republicans on anything he proposes, and the need to keep a Democratic Senate if at all possible (so that his last two years in office will not be even more difficult than his first six years), should the President think big and propose what he knows the country needs as opposed to what is politically feasible? My heart says yes, and the side of me that claims to be practical, after many years in Washington, DC, tries hard to understand Obama’s strategy and support it. But Dave may be right – we may have an intellectual President whose nature just won’t allow him to stick his neck out. As I said to Dave, the test for me will be after the November elections, when Obama will have no Democratic candidates to protect and nothing to lose by proposing farseeing energy and environmental legislation. He will not succeed in getting it passed by the most dysfunctional Congress I’ve seen in forty years, but as Dave says, we have to start somewhere.”

I’m also aware that a number of my liberal/progressive friends and colleagues, in addition to Dave Freeman, have expressed disappointment with the President for not doing more on energy and environmental issues as they assumed he would when he was elected. I have resisted joining this group and continue to support the President’s analytic and pragmatic approach to dealing with these issues. It has led to some difficult discussions, and despite my long and transparent political history led one long-standing friend to write: “…it is interesting, for sure, to see you moving toward the real Democrats.”

Needless to say, I disagree with this friend’s characterization of what a true Democrat believes, as if there is only one way to address these issues, and we will have to agree to disagree. Nevertheless, these interactions with friends and my own impatience about seeing more done quickly to achieve a clean energy society, leads to this appeal to you as you approach the final two years of your presidency.

Once we are past the elections in the first week of November you will have little reason, in my opinion, to hold back on your vision for this country’s energy future. I believe you have a clear understanding of what that future must be, but that vision has to be translated into a national energy policy that is codified by the U.S. Congress. As a nation we need to set long-term goals for moving away from dependence on fossil fuels and toward an energy system increasingly dependent on increased energy efficiency and renewable energy generating sources, as the European Union has done and even China is doing in its multiple five-year plans. You need to level with the American public about the policy choices we have to make now to ensure we are well on our way to that energy future that other nations have identified more clearly than we. Republicans and some Democrats may not agree but your leadership is needed to point the way forward and put pressure on the Congress to protect our long-term interests.

You have recently taken important steps to do what you feel you can reasonably do within your executive powers to reduce energy-related carbon emissions. You are taking some political heat for that. but that comes with the job and as best I can tell from media reports the majority of Americans agree with your approach. What is less clear is your vision for a long-term clean energy policy and how we can move rapidly to that end, which is part-and-parcel of addressing global warming/climate change and improving national security. Your all-of-the-above energy strategy leaves many of us wanting more clarity from you on the hard choices we have to make to ensure our energy future. This letter is a request for such clarity while you still have a chance to make a significant difference as President. It will undoubtedly lead to further political attacks, but so what? You were overly patient with Republican intransigence in your first Administration, a serious mistake that took you too long to learn from, and you must not repeat that again in setting out your goals for the future. They will huff and puff and perhaps slow down national progress, as they threaten to do on health care, but you must lead in pointing the way. We will get there eventually but the sooner the better. You can make a difference and I await your post-November 4th leadership.

A Conversation With S. David Freeman

Had a most interesting discussion at lunch today (3 September 2014) with Dave, whose name is well known to older generations of energy policy types but less well known to many younger folks. He and I first met when we both joined the staff of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on October 1, 1974. Dave joined as a full-time energy staffer just after leading a major review of national energy policy sponsored by the Ford Foundation (‘A Time to Choose: America’s Energy Future’), and me as a Congressional Fellow/Staff Scientist. Dave is now 88 years old (I’m a relatively young 77) and in my opinion is as sharp, feisty and opinionated as he was when I first met him forty years ago. In the interim he has held a series of high level jobs (Chairman/TVA, General Manager/Sacramento Municipal Utility District, General Manager/New York Power Authority, General Manager/Los Angeles Department of Water and Power) and is still active in trying to close down California’s aging and poorly located nuclear power plants. We had not seen each other in a number of years and today’s lunch was a chance to catch up a bit.

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We met at noon at his apartment building in DC, and after walking to a nearby barbeque restaurant we got down to filling in the years. We reflected on the work we both did in the 1970’s on energy issues during Senator Warren Magnuson’s tenure as Chairman of the Commerce Committee, and on the many talented people we worked with at that time. We then discussed Dave’s time in Knoxville where he pushed hard to introduce conservation and solar energy into TVA’s energy portfolio and resisted the pressures to add more nuclear power plants. These priorities characterized his subsequent roles at SMUD, NYPA, and LADWP, and remain his priorities today. He was an early voice for clean energy in the U.S., and was appointed by President Johnson in 1967 as “..the first person with an energy responsibility in the federal government.” He has also been termed an “‘eco-pioneer’ for his environmentally-oriented leadership of SMUD.”

Our lunchtime discussion, after appropriate reminiscences, devolved into a discussion of energy policy under President Obama. Dave appreciates that Obama has an understanding of the importance of energy efficiency and renewble energy to our future energy system, but feels strongly that Obama is indecisive and has failed to put action behind his words. In fact, Dave called him “gutless” for failing to provide needed leadership on reducing our use of fossil fuels and making an all-out push on renewables. Dave’s feeling is that Obama is too cautious by nature (he quoted the opinion of an Illinois politician who had worked with Obama) and unwilling to stick his neck out, when what this country needs is a Preident who does just that. Notwithstanding the argument that the President is having a hard time getting any legislation through the Congress, and may have even more trouble after the November elections, Dave’s argument is that we have a critical need to reduce carbon emissions and that we have to start somewhere, even if it takes 10 years to get a meaningful program implemented. It is a powerful argument, as nothing gets done if one doesn’t try.

Dave gave me a lot to think about, as I’ve been a strong supporter of the President and his energy policies, but admit to being concerned about the President’s limited public explanations of his policies, whether energy or foreign policy. He may understand the issues, and Dave and I agree that he does, but is the President being too cautious by far? As a result, is he passing up an opportunity to lead the country in a needed direction at a critical time? As the leader of the nation is it encumbent upon him to propose legislation that limits our use of fossil fuels and puts us more aggressively on the path to a renewable future, even if the likelihood of passage is low to nonexistent in the near future? Upon leaving Dave after lunch I decided to write about our conversation and raise the question that Dave poses. This is the result.

My thoughts upon reflection are the following: despite the obvious resistance that Obama faces from Republicans on anything he proposes, and the need to keep a Democratic Senate if at all possible (so that his last two years in office will not be even more difficult than his first six years), should the President think big and propose what he knows the country needs as opposed to what is politically feasible? My heart says yes, and the side of me that claims to be practical, after many years in Washington, DC, tries hard to understand Obama’s strategy and support it. But Dave may be right – we may have an intellectual President whose nature just won’t allow him to stick his neck out. As I said to Dave, the test for me will be after the November elections, when Obama will have no Democratic candidates to protect and nothing to lose by proposing farseeing energy and environmental legislation. He will not succeed in getting it passed by the most dysfunctional Congress I’ve seen in forty years, but as Dave says, we have to start somewhere.

As those who read my blog will recall, I’ve taken issue with the Clinton-Gore Administration for not doing more on clean energy when they had the chance in the 1990’s. Dave’s point about Obama is similar – we need leadership that looks down the road despite today’s political realities. My final verdict on the Obama Administration’s achievements on energy policy will depend on what comes out of the White House after November. I hope that the President has it in him to do what Dave and I both agree the country needs, but at this point I still have confidence in President Obama. Dave does not.

This is a lot to think about, and I will continue to cogitate on Dave’s perspectives. Hopefully, others will join this discussion via comments on this blog post.

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.

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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.

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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.