A Global Shift to Renewable Energy
As fossil fuel prices rise, as oil insecurity deepens, and as
concerns about climate change cast a shadow over the future of coal,
a new energy economy is emerging. The old energy economy, fueled by
oil,
coal, and
natural gas, is being replaced by one powered by
wind,
solar, and
geothermal energy. Despite the global economic crisis, this
energy transition is moving at a pace and on a scale that we could
not have imagined even two years ago. And it is a worldwide
phenomenon.
Consider Texas. Long the leading U.S. oil-producing state, it is
now also the leading generator of electricity from wind, having
overtaken California in 2006. Texas now has 9,700 megawatts of wind
generating capacity online, 370 more in the construction stage, and
a huge amount in the development stage. When all of these wind farms
are completed, Texas will have 53,000 megawatts of wind generating
capacity—the equivalent of 53 coal-fired power plants. This will
more than satisfy the residential needs of the state’s 25 million
people, enabling Texas to export electricity, just as it has long
exported oil.
Texas is not alone. In South Dakota, a wind-rich, sparsely populated
state, development has begun on a vast 5,050-megawatt wind farm (1
megawatt of wind capacity supplies 300 U.S. homes) that when
completed will produce nearly five times as much electricity as the
810,000 people living in the state need. Altogether, some 10 states
in the United States, most of them in the Great Plains, and several
Canadian provinces are planning to export wind energy.
Across the Atlantic, the government of Scotland is negotiating with
two sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East to invest $7 billion
in a grid in the North Sea off its eastern coast. This grid will
enable Scotland to develop nearly 60,000 megawatts of off-shore wind
generating capacity, close to the 85,000 megawatts of current
electrical generating capacity for the United Kingdom.
Credit: Frances Moore
2008 |
We are witnessing an embrace of renewable energy on a scale we’ve
never seen for fossil fuels or nuclear power. And not only in
industrial countries. Algeria, which knows it will not be exporting
oil forever, is planning to build 6,000 megawatts of solar thermal
generating capacity for export to Europe via undersea cable. The
Algerians note that they have enough harnessable solar energy in
their vast desert to power the entire world economy. This is not a
mathematical error. A similarly remarkable fact is that the sunlight
striking the earth in just one hour is enough to power the world
economy for one year.
Turkey, which now has 41,000 megawatts of total electrical
generating capacity, issued a request for proposals in 2007 to build
wind farms. It received bids from both domestic and international
wind development firms to build a staggering 78,000 megawatts of
wind generating capacity. Having selected some 7,000 megawatts of
the most promising proposals, the government is now issuing
construction permits.
In mid-2008, Indonesia—a country with 128 active volcanoes and
therefore rich in geothermal energy—announced that it would develop
6,900 megawatts of geothermal generating capacity, with Pertamina,
the state oil company, responsible for developing the lion’s share.
Indonesia’s oil production has been declining for the last decade,
and in each of the last five years the country has been an oil
importer. As Pertamina shifts resources from oil into the
development of geothermal energy, it could become the first oil
company—state-owned or independent—to make the transition from oil
to renewable energy.
These are only a few of the visionary initiatives to tap the earth’s
renewable energy. The resources are vast. In the United States,
three states—North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas—have enough harnessable
wind energy to run the entire economy. In China, wind will likely
become the dominant power source. Indonesia could one day get all
its power from geothermal energy alone. Europe will be powered
largely by wind farms in the North Sea and solar thermal power
plants in the North African desert.
The goals for developing renewable sources of energy by 2020 that
are laid out in my book
Plan
B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization are based not on
what is conventionally believed to be politically feasible but on
what I think is needed. This is not Plan A, business as usual. This
is Plan B—a wartime mobilization, an all-out response that is
designed to avoid destabilizing economic and political stresses that
will come with unmanageable climate change.
Implementing Plan B entails cutting net carbon dioxide (CO2)
emissions
80 percent by 2020. This would keep atmospheric CO2
levels from exceeding 400 parts per million (ppm), up only modestly
from 387 ppm in 2009, thus limiting the future rise in temperature.
To make this ambitious cut, the first priority is to replace all
coal- and oil-fired electricity generation with renewable sources.
Whereas the twentieth century was marked by the globalization of the
world energy economy as countries everywhere turned to oil, much of
it coming from the Middle East, this century will see the
localization of energy production as the world turns to wind, solar,
and geothermal energy.
This century will also see the electrification of the economy.
The transport sector will shift from gasoline-powered automobiles to
plug-in gas-electric hybrids, all-electric cars, light rail
transit, and
high-speed intercity rail. And for long-distance freight, the
shift will be from diesel-powered trucks to electrically powered
rail freight systems. The movement of people and goods will be
powered largely by electricity. In this new energy economy,
buildings will rely on renewable electricity almost exclusively
for heating, cooling, and lighting.
Can we expand renewable energy use fast enough? I think so. Recent
trends in the adoption of mobile phones and personal computers give
a sense of how quickly new technologies can spread. Once cumulative
mobile phone sales reached 1 million units in 1986, the stage was
set for explosive growth, and the number of cell phone subscribers
doubled in each of the next three years. Over the next 12 years the
number doubled every two years. By 2001 there were 961 million cell
phones—nearly a 1,000-fold increase in just 15 years. And now there
are more than 4 billion cell phone subscribers worldwide.
Sales of personal computers followed a similar trajectory. In 1980
roughly a million were sold, but by 2008 the figure was an estimated
270 million—a 270-fold jump in 28 years. We are now seeing similar
growth figures for renewable energy technologies. Installations of
solar cells are doubling every two years, and the annual growth in
wind generating capacity is not far behind. Just as the
communications and information economies have changed beyond
recognition over the past two decades, so too will the energy
economy over the next decade.
There is one outstanding difference. Whereas the restructuring of
the information economy was shaped only by advancing technology and
market forces, the restructuring of the energy economy will be
driven also by the realization that the fate of civilization may
depend not only on doing so, but on doing it at wartime speed.
Adapted from Chapter 5, “Stabilizing Climate: Shifting to Renewable
Energy,” in Lester R. Brown,
Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), available on-line at
www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4