Life After
Oil and Gas
Published: March 23, 2013
WE will need fossil fuels like
oil and gas for the foreseeable future. So there’s really
little choice (sigh). We have to press ahead with fracking for
natural gas. We must approve the
Keystone XL pipeline to get Canadian oil.
This mantra, repeated on TV ads and in
political debates, is punctuated with a tinge of inevitability and
regret. But, increasingly, scientific research and the experience of
other countries should prompt us to ask: To what extent will we really
“need” fossil fuel in the years to come? To what extent is it a choice?
As renewable energy gets cheaper and machines
and buildings become more energy efficient, a number of countries that
two decades ago ran on a fuel mix much like America’s are successfully
dialing down their fossil fuel habits. Thirteen countries got more than
30 percent of their electricity from renewable energy in 2011, according
to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, and many are aiming
still higher.
Could we? Should we?
A
National Research Council report released last week concluded that
the United States could halve by 2030 the oil used in cars and trucks
compared with 2005 levels by improving the efficiency of
gasoline-powered vehicles and by relying more on cars that use
alternative power sources, like electric batteries and
biofuels.
Just days earlier a team of
Stanford engineers published a proposal showing how New York State —
not windy like the Great Plains, nor sunny like Arizona — could easily
produce the power it needs from wind, solar and water power by 2030. In
fact there was so much potential power, the researchers found, that
renewable power could also fuel our cars.
“It’s absolutely not true that we need natural
gas, coal or oil — we think it’s a myth,” said Mark Z. Jacobson, a
professor of civil and environmental engineering and the main author of
the study, published in the journal Energy Policy. “You could power
America with renewables from a technical and economic standpoint. The
biggest obstacles are social and political — what you need is the will
to do it.”
Other countries have made far more concerted
efforts to reduce fossil fuel use than the United States and have some
impressive numbers to show for it. Of the countries that rely most
heavily on renewable electricity, some, like Norway, rely on that old
renewable,
hydroelectric power. But others, like Denmark, Portugal and Germany,
have created financial incentives to promote newer technologies like
wind and
solar energy.
People convinced that America “needs” the oil
that would flow south from Canada through the Keystone XL pipeline might
be surprised to learn that Canada produced 63.4 percent of its
electricity from renewable sources in 2011, largely from hydropower and
a bit of wind. (Maybe that is why Canada has all that oil to sell.) The
United States got only 12.3 percent of its electricity from renewables
in 2011. Still, many experts say that aggressively rebalancing the
United States’ mix of fossil fuel and renewable energy to reduce its
carbon footprint may well be impractical and unwise for now.
“There is plenty of room for wind and solar to
grow and they are becoming more competitive, but these are still
variable resources — the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t
always blow,” said Alex Klein, the research director of IHS Emerging
Energy Research, a consulting firm on renewable energy. “An industrial
economy needs a reliable power source, so we think fossil fuel will be
an important foundation of our energy mix for the next few decades.”
Fatih Birol, chief economist at the 28-nation
International Energy Agency, which includes the United States, said that
reducing fossil fuel use was crucial to curbing global temperature rise,
but added that improving the energy efficiency of homes, vehicles and
industry was an easier short-term strategy. He noted that the 19.5
million residents of New York State consume as much energy as the 800
million in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) and that, even
with President Obama’s automotive fuel standards, European vehicles were
on average more than 30 percent more fuel efficient than American ones.
He cautioned that a rapid expansion of
renewable power would be complicated and costly. Using large amounts of
renewable energy often requires modifying national power grids, and
renewable energy is still generally more expensive than using fossil
fuels. That is particularly true in the United States, where natural gas
is plentiful and, therefore, a cheap way to generate electricity (while
producing half the carbon dioxide emissions of other fossil fuels, like
coal). Promoting wind and solar would mean higher electricity costs for
consumers and industry.
Indeed, many of the European countries that
have led the way in adopting renewables had little fossil fuel of their
own, so electricity costs were already high. Others had strong
environmental movements that made it politically acceptable to endure
higher prices in order to reduce emissions.
But Dr. Birol predicted that the price of wind
power would continue to drop, while the price of natural gas would rise
in coming years, with the two potentially reaching parity by 2020. He
noted, too, that countries could often get 25 percent of their
electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar without much
modification to their grids. A few states, like Iowa and South Dakota,
get nearly that much of their electricity from renewable power (in both
states, wind), while others use little at all.
e landscape, much of America continues to regard
renewable power as a boutique product, cool but otherworldly. When I
tell colleagues that Portugal now gets 40 percent of its electricity
from renewable power, the standard response is “Portugal is windy.” But
many places in America are, too. When I returned from Kristianstad,
Sweden, and marveled at how that city uses waste from farms, forestry
and food processing plants to make
biogas that supplies 100 percent of its heat, the response is
likewise disbelief. But I’d venture that a similar plan could work fine
in Milwaukee or Burlington, Vt., cities that also anchor rural areas.
MAPPING studies by Dr. Jacobson and colleagues
have concluded that America is rich in renewable resources and (unlike
Europe) has the empty space to create wind and solar plants. New York
State has plenty of wind and sun to do the job, they found. Their
blueprint for powering the state with clean energy calls for 10 percent
land-based wind, 40 percent offshore wind, 20 percent solar power plants
and 18 percent solar panels on rooftops — as well as a small amount of
geothermal and hydroelectric power.
Dr. Jacobson said that careful grid design and
coordination of power sources would ensure a stable power supply,
although a smidgen of natural gas would be needed for the 0.2 percent of
the time that renewables failed to generate sufficient electricity. The
report claims that the plan would create 58,000 jobs in New York State
(which now imports much of its power), create energy security and
ultimately stabilize electricity prices.
The authors say the substantial costs of
enacting the scheme could be recouped in under two decades, particularly
if the societal cost of pollution and carbon emissions were factored in.
The team is currently working on an all-renewable blueprint for
California.
Sounds good on paper, but even Europe is
struggling a bit with its renewable ambitions at the moment.
Germany, which got 20.7 percent of its
electricity from renewable energy in 2011, is re-evaluating the
incentives it provides to increase that share to 35 percent by 2020,
because of worries that its current approach will drive up power prices
inordinately at a time of economic uncertainty. It has had trouble
ramping up transmission capacity to carry the wind power generated in
the blustery North to the industrial South, where it is needed.
Dr. Birol said that natural gas and renewable
energy could ultimately be “a good couple” for powering New York State,
and elsewhere. But in what mix? If, in 20 years, cars are 50 percent
more efficient and New York State could get much of its electricity from
wind and solar, should we be more measured in making fossil fuel
investments? As Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo considers the boundaries of
hydraulic fracturing in New York State and as Secretary of State John
Kerry decides the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline, how much we really
“need” fossil fuels is worth pondering.
Elisabeth Rosenthal is a reporter on environment and
health for The New York Times.
© 2013 The New York
Times Company
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