U.S. to increase consumption of renewables by 60% within 20 years

WASHINGTON, DC, US, February 22, 2006 (Refocus Weekly)

The United States will be consuming 9.6 quadrillion Btu of renewable energies by 2025, an increase of 60% from 2004, according to the latest government prediction.

The increase from 6.0 quads in 2004 will result from programs at the state level, including renewable portfolio standards, mandates and goals for green power, technological advances, higher prices for oil and natural gas, and the effects of federal tax credits, explains the latest ‘Annual Energy Outlook’ released by the Energy Information Administration. The prediction under the reference case estimates consumption only for marketed renewable fuels, and does not include off-grid electric and Green Heat technologies.

In the 2005 outlook, total renewables were projected to be 8.5 quad in 2025 while, in the 2006 version, 60% of the projected demand for renewables is for grid-tied green power, including combined heat & power (cogeneration), with the balance for dispersed heating and cooling, industrial uses, and fuel blending. The report presents information on 30 alternative cases, including the impact of greater or slower improvement in renewables and other energy technologies, to provide “a better appreciation of the full range of uncertainty that surrounds long-term energy projections.”

Total production of primary energy will increase at 0.9% per year from 2004 to 2030, boosting the 70.5 quads to 89.4. Oil will decline by -0.5% over the period, while dry natural gas increases 0.5%, coal rises 1.6%, nuclear increases 0.4% and renewables increase by 1.8% per year over the 25 years.

“In the face of international concern over GHG emissions, the eventual peaking of world oil production, and recent volatility in fossil fuel prices, many have seen promise in exploiting an ever-increasing range of renewable energy resources,” the report explains. “To date, however, market adoption of most renewable technologies has been limited by the significant capital expense of capturing and concentrating the often diffuse energy fluxes of wind, solar, ocean, and other renewable resources.”

“The challenge for emerging technologies, as well as those on the horizon, will be to minimize both the monetary and environmental costs of collecting and converting renewable energy fuels to more portable and useful forms,” it adds.

“The United States has substantially larger and better wind resources than most countries of Europe, and thus is unlikely to see its onshore resources exhausted in the mid-term outlook,” it predicts. “Still, localized factors such as state renewable energy requirements and constraints on electricity transmission from conventional power plants into coastal areas may make some offshore resources economically attractive, despite the abundance of lower cost wind resources further inland.”

“In view of the significant contribution of government-funded R&D to the progress of solar energy technologies, much of the future improvements occur independently from actual market growth (although significant market growth is projected),” it states in the analysis of solar. “Given the wide variety of potential technologies and uncertainty as to the success of any particular one, solar technology is modeled from the known cost and performance parameters of commercial technologies, along with both production-based and production-independent improvements in cost and performance.”

Growing demand for electricity and the retirement of 65 GW of older generating capacity will mean that 347 GW of new power capacity will be needed by 2030, of which 50% will be coal and 40% gas-fired, with 8% of the expected capacity expansion to come from renewables.

From 2004 to 2030, 26.4 GW of new green power capacity is added, including 21.9 GW in the utility sector and 4.5 GW in end use, it predicts. Half of that total will be at least partially stimulated by state programs, with the remainder resulting from commercial projects. Texas will benefit from 3.7 GW of central-station capacity, 3.4 in California, 0.9 in Nevada and 0.5 GW in Minnesota, with the combination of federal production tax credits and state programs resulting primarily in new windfarms.

“With the federal production tax credit assumed to expire on December 31, 2007, its potential to trigger capacity additions using technologies with longer lead times, such as biomass, geothermal and hydropower, is limited,” the report notes.


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