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WASHINGTON, DC, US, October 11, 2006 (Refocus
Weekly)
A transition from fossil fuels to renewables will
require “continued improvements in cost and performance of renewable
technologies,” says the strategic plan of the U.S. Climate Change
Technology Program.
The plan was released by the Department of Energy to examine
measures which accelerate the development and reduce the cost of new
and advanced technologies to avoid, reduce or capture and store
greenhouse gas emissions. CCTP is the technology component of a
strategy introduced in 2002 to combat climate change, which includes
measures to spur clean energy technology development and deployment
and slow the growth of GHG emissions through voluntary,
incentive-based and mandatory partnerships.
The plan organizes US$3 billion in federal spending for climate
technology and sets six goals, and examines renewables, energy
efficiency, hydrogen and green fuels among an array of other
low-emissions energy technologies. Cumulative global emissions over
the next century must be reduced by 300 to 1,000 billion tonnes of
carbon, and it explains that deployment of 1 million MW of wind
turbines would reduce emissions by only 1 billion tonnes per year
while advanced energy efficiency could cut 270 billion tonnes.
Renewables contributed 5.9 quads (8% of supply or 6% of total
energy) in the U.S. in 2003, of which 2.8 quads came from
hydropower, 2.7 from burning biomass, 0.3 from geothermal and 0.1
quads from solar and wind energy combined, it notes. An additional
0.2 quads of ethanol were produced from corn for transportation.
“The technologies in the suite of renewable energy technologies are
in various states of market penetration or readiness” and, in many
cases, industry has the financial incentive to make incremental
improvements to commercialized renewable energy technologies, or
other policies exist to promote renewable energy development and
deployment. Hydropower is well established but technological
improvements could increase efficiency, while geothermal is
established in some areas but “significant improvements are needed
to tap broader resources.”
“The installation of wind energy has been rapidly and steadily
expanding during the past several years” and, in the past decade,
global wind capacity has increased ten-fold from 3.5 GW in 1994 to
59 GW by 2006. “Technology improvements will continue to lower the
cost of land-based wind energy and will enable access to the immense
wind resources in shallow and deep waters of U.S. coastal areas and
the Great Lakes near large energy markets.”
“The next generations of solar - with improved performance and lower
cost - are in various stages of concept identification, laboratory
research, engineering development, and process scale-up,” it
explains. Development of integrated and advanced systems involving
solar PV, concentrating solar and solar buildings “are in early
stages of development but advances in these technologies are
expected to make them competitive with conventional sources in the
future.”
Renewable energy technologies are modular and can be used to help
meet the energy needs of a stand-alone application or building, an
industrial plant or community, or the larger needs of a national
grid or fuel network, and this flexibility requires that
technologies and standards to interconnect green power are very
important. The diversity of renewable energy sources “offers a broad
array of technology choices that can reduce CO2 emissions,” and
increasing the contribution of renewables to the U.S. energy
portfolio will directly lower GHG intensity.
“Given the diversity of the stages of development of the
technologies, impacts on different economic sectors, and geographic
dispersion of renewable energy sources, it is likely that a
portfolio of renewable energy technologies - not just one - will
contribute to lowering CO2 emissions,” the report notes. “The
composition of this portfolio will change as R&D continues and
markets change” and “appropriately balancing investments in
developing this portfolio will be important to maximizing the effect
of renewable energy technologies on GHG emissions in the future.”
“Transitioning from today’s reliance on fossil fuels to a global
energy portfolio that includes significant renewable energy sources
will require continued improvements in cost and performance of
renewable technologies,” and this transition will require “shifts
in the energy infrastructure to allow a more diverse mix of
technologies to be delivered efficiently to consumers in forms they
can readily use.” Changes include additional transmission lines to
access green power resources located far from load centres and
storage to accommodate intermittent renewables, as well as greater
use of renewables in a distributed generation mode and adapting
current fossil generation for biomass co-firing.”
“The transition from today’s energy mix to a state of GHG
stabilization can be projected as an interweaving of individual
renewable energy technologies with other energy technologies, as
well as market developments through the upcoming decades,” it
continues. “Today, grid-connected wind energy, geothermal, solar
energy and biopower systems are well established. Demand for these
systems is growing in some parts of the world. Solar hot-water
technologies are reasonably established, although improvements
continue. Markets are growing for small, high-value or remote
applications of solar PV, wind and biomass CHP.
“In the near term, as system costs continue to decrease, the
penetration of off-grid systems could continue to increase rapidly,
including integration of renewable systems such as photovoltaics
into buildings” and, as interconnection issues are resolved, “the
number of grid-connected renewable systems could increase quite
rapidly, meeting local energy needs such as uninterruptible power,
community power, or peak shaving.”
“Wind energy may expand most rapidly among grid-connected
applications, with solar expanding as system costs are reduced,” it
adds. “The use of utility-scale wind technology is likely to
continue to expand onshore and is targeted to become competitive in
select offshore locations between 5 and 50 nautical miles from shore
and in water depths 30 m or less. Small wind turbines are on the
verge of operating cost-effectively in most of the rural areas of
the U.S. and more than 15 million homes have the potential to
generate electricity with small wind turbines.”
“With a further maturing of the market, costs will be lowered to
compete directly with retail rates for homeowners, farmers, small
businesses, and community-based projects,” it notes.
“Strategic research is needed to enable a transition from current
reliance on fossil fuels to a portfolio that includes significant
renewable energy sources, with a shift in infrastructure to allow
for a more diverse mix of technologies,” it concludes. “Research in
materials and composites will lead to improved wind energy systems
by enabling larger blades on wind turbine systems leading to lower
unit costs for wind power and the economic use of wind turbines with
low-speed wind resources.”
The CCTP strategy envisions that, ultimately, “societies could see
extensive adoption of low emissions infrastructure and communities,
low emissions intelligent transport systems, wide-spread adoption of
renewable energy and nuclear power, large scale adoption of zero
emission power plants with carbon sequestration, fusion power
plants, and high levels of management of emissions of non-CO2 GHGs,”
it explains.
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