U.S. Could Have 10% Renewable Energy by 2020 - If Policy, Money Line Up

By Jeff St. John

Studies claiming that renewable energy could supply a much larger portion of the nation's power needs - if the money and policies can be built to support it - are all the rage these days.

The latest arrived Monday, projecting that The United States could get 20 percent of its power from renewable energy (excluding hydropower) using today's technology by 2020, up from its share of about 2.5 percent today.

The report from the National Research Council says that today's technology could get the country to 10 percent non-hydro renewable energy by 2020 and 20 percent by 2035.

To get beyond that, "major scientific advances, and changes to the way we generate, transmit, and use electricity, will be needed," the report said. That includes large-scale grid storage, a "smart grid" that allows two-way communication and fine-tuned management and other improvements.

But even to get to the scenario allowed by today's technology will require the right mix of pubic policy to encourage renewable energy and the politically tricky matter of building massive new transmission lines to carry it to where it's needed, the report said.

The question of transmission is part of the debate over energy legislation now before Congress. Proposals to give the federal government increased power over siting those transmission lines are part of a broader set of policies for boosting renewable energy and putting a price on carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade program (see Draft Legislation a Boon for Solar, Grid and Come Get 'Em: Gov't Plans to Give Freebies Under Cap-and-Trade).

The report notes that "issues of land use and other local impacts (e.g., noise from wind turbines or potential effects on local weather) will become increasingly important as deployment of renewable technologies grow."

States with renewable portfolio standards - mandates that state utilities supply a certain portion of their electricity from renewable sources by a set date - are coming to terms with those challenges.

California, which is proposing that its utilities supply 33 percent of their power from renewable resources by 2020, is one of them. According to a recent report from the California Public Utilities Commission, reaching that new goal will require seven new transmission lines at a cost of about $12 billion - and that's not even counting the cost of building the renewable power plants to supply the electrons (see California Dreaming: Achieving 33% RPS Could Cost $12B in New Transmission).

It isn't yet clear if the state will meet its current RPS of 20 percent renewable by energy by 2010. As of the latest figures available for 2007, the state's three investor-owned utilities - - were supplying 12.7 percent of their power from renewables, according to the CPUC.

Still, one can dream - particularly when one's dreams and one's profits coincide.

For example, Greenpeace and two solar industry groups last month made the bold claim that making electricity from the sun's heat could provide a quarter the country's electricity need by 2050.

But then, that would require spending on such solar-thermal plants to increase by $51 billion every year between now and 2030, and by even more after that, to get there. That would be quite a jump from the $2.8 billion or the report said was being put into solar-thermal this year - a welcome prospect, no doubt, to report co-issuers European Solar Thermal Electricity Association and SolarPaces, but perhaps a long shot.

Still, there is a benefit to thinking big. According to a February report from U.S. grid operators, getting 20 percent of the country's power from wind - up from less than 1 percent in 2007 - would cost $1.1 trillion for the wind farms and an additional $80 billion in transmission lines.

But getting 5 percent of the country's power from wind by 2024 wouldn't be that much cheaper - about $700 billion for the wind farms and $50 billion in transmission, the report said (see Wind Growth Could Cost Eastern U.S. $80B in Transmission Lines).

Comments

[Doc 224899:]

If you want "green", consider all the energy costs and all the resources that the conversion to "green" will require, then recognize that none of that energy and none of the necessary resources will be available to do anything else with while that conversion is being accomplished. If you want solar, and you want grid storage, you're talking about heaps of ultra-rare minerals and copper and iron and huge amounts of energy and freshwater for extraction and fabrication, and you better figure out what will keep the lights on at night.

If you want wind power, it may take more time, iron ore, copper, freshwater, and electricity to manufacture the infrastructure than the world has. That assumes no regulatory or legal problems, and we know there are regulatory and legal problems.

Electricity doesn't come from little smiling pixies in the wall.

Jun 16 05:29 AM

[jmmx:]

This country just pissed away over $1 TRILLION (and some say twice that before we are through) in the useless, unnecessary invasion of Iraq. Look what we could have done with that money here!

Jun 16 10:07 AM

[jmmx:]

@ Doc

You add up the costs as if the current energy system has none. All that you name above are costs that currently are required for existing technology. The difference between Green and Coal is that once it is built you do not need to continue the extraction of resources, nor do you pollute the air (leaving GHG emissions aside for the moment.)

Jun 16 10:11 AM

[billp37:]

Don Brown's email read Tuesday June 16, 2009

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "Don Brown"
To: [e-mail]
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 2:53:11 PM GMT -08:00 Tijuana / Baja California
Subject: FW: Rebates
Bill, got your request for answer to the following questions. I have an inquiry into our generation folks and will be in touch. Thanks. db

1 What is the purpose of the PNM Algodones solar facility?

2 Is the PNM Algodones solar facility connected to the grid?

3 What is the CAPACITY FACTOR of the PNM Algodones solar facility by month from September 2007 through March 2009?

Please provide a plot similar to the ITRON SGIP Figure 3-1.

4 How many kWh [kilowatt HOURS] of electricity per month from September 2007 through March 2009 does the PNM Algodones solar facility produce? Table presentation please.

5 What is the average peak output [kW] of the PNM Algodones solar facility for each hour [24] for each month of the year from September 2007 through March 2009? Table presentation please.

-----Original Message-----
From: James, Sharon
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 2:54 PM
To: Brown, Don
Subject: FW: Rebates

Hello Don - This email came through our rebate website. Thanks. Sharon


-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail] [mailto:bpayne37@comca...
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 1:04 PM
To: van Moorsel, Emma; James, Sharon
Subject: Rebates


Name: bill payne
Phone: [phone]
Message: Please help us to get Don Brown to reply to litigimate
questions about PNM Algodones solar array.


These answers may be important because of Solar Array is the fourth
solar manufacturing venture planned, under construction or operating in
New Mexico, joining Schott Solar, Advent Solar and Signet Solar.

www.prosefights.org/pn...

Thanks.

home.comcast.net/~bpayne37/pnmelectric... fpeak



China Becomes Global Green Leader with Massive Solar Projects comment.

We are on a first name basis with Greg Nelson as a result of attending the PNM electric irp.

This was conducted over a period of about a year with 17 essential sessions.

A 229 page final report was submitted to New Mexico Public Regulation Commission.

We are also stockholders in PNM.

Let's ask Nelson to comment on

fast neutron
Santa Fe, NM
January 12, 2009

From actual experience, wind farms produce 1.2 watts per square meter. Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic methods capture 5 to 6 watts per square meter. There is no economy of size in either technology. Dividing the watts you need by those values gives the land area in square meters needed to produce the juice. The numbers are astronomical

www.topix.net/forum/so...

for stockholders and investors reasons.

www.prosefights.org/nm...

Lots of money to be made in altenergy in New Mexico.

17.9.572.6 OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this rule is to implement the Renewable Energy Act, NMSA 1978 Section 62-16-1, et seq., and to bring significant economic development and environmental benefits to New Mexico. [17.9.572.6 NMAC - Rp, 17.9.572.6 NMAC, 8-30-07]


The REA and Rule 572 established an RPS applicable to all investor owned electric utilities in New Mexico. In 2006, the RPS will be 5% of retail sales in kWh’s, reaching 10% by the year 2011. Recent legislative changes to the REA (SB418, signed March 5, 2007 by Governor Bill Richardson) have increased the RPS percentages and extended the time lines - IOU’s now must have in their portfolio as a percentage of total retail sales to New Mexico customers, renewable energy of no less than 15% (by 2015) and 20% (by 2020).
Resource Diversity and the RPS

In addition to the RPS, Rule 572 requires that IOU’s must offer a voluntary renewable energy program to their customers. In addition to and within the total portfolio percentage requirements, utilities must design their public utility procurement plans to achieve a fully diversified renewable energy portfolio no later than January 1, 2011, as follows:

Diversity requirements for IOU’s as % of total RPS requirement:
No less than 20% Wind
No less than 20% Solar
No less than 10% Other technologies
No less than 1.5% Distributed Generation (2011-2014) and 3% Distributed Generation by 2015

Above goals may be physically impossible if Fast Neutron's statements are correct.

Nonetheless, there is a lot of money to be made building the faciltities anyway.


www.prosefights.org/pn...

Jun 16 12:26 PM

[Mad Hedge F...:]

It could. Since energy is going to be the dominant factor in making our investment decisions for the next decade, I thought it would be a good time to sit down with Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Carl is as sharp as a tack, with the fervor of an evangelist, always a dangerous combination. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I was a member of the Sierra Club back in the sixties when they were mostly interested in identifying mountain wildflowers and bird calls. They changed a little after that. Carl says that the “Earth has a fever,” with temperatures rising, glaciers melting, forests burning, oceans rising and acidifying, and the overwhelming cause is hydrocarbon burning. The US needs to cut CO2 emissions to 2 tons per person, per year, by 2050, or down 90% from today’s levels. To do this we need to ban the burning of coal by 2030, unless it is sequestered, and stop all petroleum consumption by 2040. We can accomplish this by converting all cars to electric and moving freight via an electrified rail system. Petroleum needs to be classified as toxic waste, and a cleanup superfund needs to be set up, funded by 10% of the earnings of the oil companies for the next ten years. If we eliminate oil consumption, our trade deficit will improve by $100 billion/year, that money can be invested in the US to create 10 million jobs, and we will all be a lot healthier. The biggest and quickest way to cut CO2 emissions is to convert all coal fired power plants to natural gas immediately, and Carl likes the Pickens plan (see madhedgefundtrader.com... ). Carl is not shy about using his 40 man Washington DC office to twist the arms of recalcitrant Senators and Congressmen to achieve these ambitious goals. I had to pinch myself. The Sierra Club has backed off from its earlier, more radical positions, and that much of what they are saying makes good economic sense. No more going back to a bicycle based economy. While 40 years is not exactly tomorrow, look how fast the last 40 have gone by. Remember pedal pushers, thin ties, fins on Chevy’s, and the Bay of Pigs? When contemplating your risk positions, you always have to consider all views. Who knew that $147/barrel would turn us all into environmentalists?

Jun 16 02:50 PM

[Doc 224899:]

You are wrong. This is the error that alternative energy fans make all the time.

Green power will take enormous amounts of energy and resources to fabricate and install, on a massive scale and in a process that will require at least 30 - 50 years to establish (assuming ideal conditions and everybody all over the world pitches in and all efforts are perfectly coordinated). Call that Step 1 Investments. Then, as soon as every part of it is built, the part already built will require a further and continuous investment of energy and resources to maintain and adjust, Call that Step 2 Investments.

Last time we did something like this, gearing up for coal and oil, regulations and general complexity were much smaller and less problematic globally, but now everything you try takes an act of congress and gaggles of lawyers before you can wiggle a finger.

During the entire time that Step 1 and Step 2 investments are being made, all the energy and resources that are used in green projects will not be available for any other applications, and the rest of the world, in all its complexity, keeps on rolling along with all if its energy and resource needs.

As the magnitude of Step 1 investments expended increases, the costs of these resources rises, because all these resources are non-renewable, and because up to this point many of the the ones used in green energy production have not been extracted to any significant extent and they frequently have been byproducts (indium, cadmium, lithium, gallium, germanium, rhodium, scandium, yttrium, molybdenum, rhenium, selenium, tellurium, lanthanum, neodymium, boron, tantalum, tungsten, manganese, chromium, vanadium) of the extraction of more commonly used materials (copper, zinc, iron, aluminum, nickel, lead, tin, uranium).

Skip ahead a little. By the time half the nation's energy is obtained by solar and wind, assuming that's where you think a permanent energy free ride will come from, the costs of iron and copper and lead and aluminum and other "common" resources will have become prohibitively high, and the world's supply of rare technical minerals will have been exhausted. We will be unable to make the Step 2 investments to keep what we've already built up and running, and we will be unable to complete Step 1 investments because the conversion process used up rare materials that nobody had ever used before in large amounts, and because the conversion process drove the costs of iron and copper and lead and aluminum to prohibitive levels.

At the same time that has happened, all the energy and resources applied to the conversion to green have not been available to maintain and replace what we had previously been using, like nuclear and fossil fuel energy production.

You are now in a condition Leeb calls "Game Over", which is what it sounds like.

And all the little green pixies have their little lights flicker and die out. Populations shrink gobally as food supplies and healthcare resources fail to keep up with growing populations, and shrinking global resource supplies make it increasingly difficult to maintain stable populations.

Then, my friend, we face the second half of the 21st centruy.



On Jun 16 10:11 AM jmmx wrote:

> @ Doc
>
> You add up the costs as if the current energy system has none. All
> that you name above are costs that currently are required for existing
> technology. The difference between Green and Coal is that once it
> is built you do not need to continue the extraction of resources,
> nor do you pollute the air (leaving GHG emissions aside for the moment.)

Jun 21 11:07 AM