MIT: how to integrate more renewables

The MIT Energy Initiative is holding a free webinar March 12, broadcast from a live seminar at MIT. The event will discuss the results of the MITEI symposium on how to leverage renewable power sources without relying on storage:

Briefing on the Final Report of the Symposium on Managing Large-Scale Penetration of Intermittent Renewables
Monday, March 12, 2012 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM (Eastern Time)
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The focus of the symposium was on how renewable energy standards affect power system capacity planning and operations, assuming affordable, scalable electricity storage options will not be available for at least a decade, and probably more. Until such breakthroughs materialize, capacity planning and implementation are still required.

Currently, 29 US states and 27 EU countries have renewable energy standards. As countries increasingly embrace intermittent renewable resources, they will confront the operational challenges this poses for baseload power generation and generators. The results of the symposium, including commissioned white papers and other submitted technical papers, will be included in the report that will be available at the event.

The website for the April 2011 symposium has nearly 30 papers or presentations about how to combine renewable energy with traditional sources to level out electricity supplies — in lieu of relying solely on baseload generation.

I am looking forward to the presentation, which I hope will discuss the forest rather than the trees. Trying to make sense of the papers individually seems like trying to understand a forest from its constiuent leaves and twigs.

In looking up the earlier symposium, I also ran across another MIT study released in December that looks at the impact of renewable energy generation upon the electricity distribution grid. This MIT team concluded that federal preemption is the only way the US will get enough transmission lines necessary to carry this renewable energy.

The MIT press release quotes the study director, former Sloan School dean Dick Schmalensee:

While the grid is not in any imminent danger, he says, “the current regulatory framework, largely established in the 1930s, is mismatched to today’s grid.” Moreover, he adds, today’s regulations are “highly unlikely [to] give us the grid of the future — a grid that by 2030 will support a range of new technologies and consumer services that will be essential for a strong and competitive U.S. economy.”
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While the grid’s performance is adequate today, decisions made now will shape that grid over the next 20 years. The MIT report recommends a series of changes in the regulatory environment to facilitate and exploit technological innovation. Among the report’s specific recommended changes: To enable the grid of the future — one capable of handling intermittent renewables — the United States will need effective and enhanced federal authority over decisions on the routing of new interstate transmission lines. This is especially needed, the report says, in cases where power is produced by solar or wind farms located far from where that power is to be used, requiring long-distance transmission lines to be built across multiple regulatory jurisdictions.

“It is a real issue, a chicken-and-egg problem,” says John Kassakian, a professor of electrical engineering at MIT and the study’s other co-chair. “Nobody’s going to build these new renewable energy plants unless they know there will be transmission lines to get the power to load centers. And nobody’s going to build transmission lines unless the difficulty of siting lines across multiple jurisdictions is eased.”

Currently, when new transmission lines cross state boundaries, each state involved — and federal agencies as well, if federal lands are crossed — can make its own decisions about permission for the siting of these lines, with no centralized authority.

“There are many people who can say no, and nobody who can say yes,” Schmalensee explains. “That’s strategically untenable, especially since some of these authorities would have little incentive ever to say yes.”

In other words, the MIT technocrats concluded that we need a national policy to address the NIMBY problems that have plagued both solar farms and distribution grids in California. It sounds like a good idea, but (as in the the solar farm example) requires resolving the conflict between RE-loving environmentalists and NIMBY environmentalists.

The one and only century of fossil fuels

In doing research for a paper, I came across a really helpful review paper by Vaclav Smil, published in 2000, that summarizes the trends of mankind’s energy consumption in the 20th century.

The abstract (accurately) promises a broad overview:

Civilization’s advances during the twentieth century are closely bound with an unprecedented rise of energy consumption in general, and of hydrocarbons and electricity in particular. Substantial improvements of all key nineteenth-century energy techniques and introduction of new extraction and transportation means and new prime movers resulted in widespread diffusion of labor-saving and comfort-providing conversions and in substantially declining energy prices.

The paper was published at a time when concerns about depleting natural resources and polluting the environment were long established, but before the recent emphasis on renewable energy sources and reducing carbon emissions.

Smil offers a particularly vivid illustration about how changes in our lifestyle have changed per capita energy consumption

In 1900 even a well-off Great Plains farmer holding the reins of six large horses while plowing his wheat field controlled—with considerable physical- exertion while perched on a steel seat and often enveloped in dust—sustained delivery of no more than 5 kW of animate power. A century later his counterpart driving a large tractor effortlessly controls more than 250 kW while sitting in the air-conditioned and stereo-enlivened comfort of his elevated cabin.

In 1900 an engineer operating a powerful locomotive pulling a transcontinental train at a speed close to 100 km/h commanded about 1 MW of steam power, the maximum rating of main-line machines permitted by manual stoking of coal. In 2000 a pilot of a Boeing 747-400 retracing the same route 11 km above the Earth’s surface merely supervises computerized discharge of up about 120 MW at a cruising speed of 900 km/h.

He notes that the shift to fossil fuels actually only happened late in the 19th century, and supplanted biomass only in the 1890s: “The twentieth century was thus the first era dominated by fossil fuels, and the 16-fold rise of their use since 1900 created the first high-energy global civilization in human history.”

No matter what happens on RE policy, global warming and related issues, it’s clear that the relative (if not absolute) contribution of fossil fuels to the operation of society will be considerably diminished at the end of the 21th century. Since I won’t be around to see it, I can only speculate on what Smil’s successor will write in 2100.

Worst case, we’ll run out of energy (or it will become so expensive) that our standard of living crashes to 19th century levels or below. Best case, we both reduce per capita consumption (through insulation, online meetings, transportation improvements) and increase our supply of renewable electricity and fuels that a larger fraction of mankind enjoys a high standard of living while the total consumption of fossil fuels falls dramatically.

Dr. Smil is a prolific author on energy and the environment, with 22 books to his name. I’ve already purchased one book from Barnes & Noble (for my NookColor) and will look into others.

References
Vaclav Smil (2000) “Energy in the Twentieth Century: Resources, Conversions, Costs, Uses, and Consequences,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, Vol. 25 (2000) pp. 21–51. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.energy.25.1.21

Natural gas: the cleanest practical alternative

The bad news for adoption of renewable energy generation is that natural gas is increasingly cheap and requires relatively small capital investments.

The good news is that natural gas is increasingly cheap and requires relatively small capital investments.

A great discussion of the latter perspective can be found in the fall newsletter of the MIT Energy Institute. In summarizes “The Future of Natural Gas,” a report summarizing a two-year MITEI study.

Some excerpts of the newsletter article:

“Much has been said about natural gas as a bridge to a low-carbon future, with little underlying analysis to back up this contention. The analysis in this study provides the confirmation—natural gas truly is a bridge to a low-carbon future,” said MITEI Director Ernest J. Moniz in introducing the report.

Moniz further noted, “In the very long run, very tight carbon constraints will likely phase out natural gas power generation in favor of zero-carbon or extremely low-carbon energy sources such as renewables, nuclear power, or natural gas and coal with carbon capture and storage. For the next several decades, however, natural gas will play a crucial role in enabling very substantial reductions in carbon emissions.”

To cut to the quick, the best way to reduce carbon emissions is to find a way to retire the dirtiest coal-powered electric plants, and the only way to do that in the near term is to replace them with natural gas. The MIT researchers assume the switch will be complete by 2050.

The price of natural gas has been quite volatile over the past 40 years, so let’s hope for the sake of the economy — and the environment — that it remains cheap enough to enable such widespread adoption.

California has already gone down this path, with (according to 2008 EIA statistics) natural gas accounting for a majority (57.7%) of the state’s electricity generation. For the rest of the country, coal accounts for the plurality (48.2%). Unlike our current fiscal fiasco, this is one case where California remains a model for the rest of the country.

Apollo metaphor: crash and burn

The Merc’s website (but not the dead tree paper) had a story Thursday afternoon about the California branch of the Apollo Alliance, a lobbying effort by “business, labor, community and environmental leaders” for policies to support cleantech companies and cleantech jobs. The story wasn’t picked up by other outlets because there isn’t much new: the Apollo Alliance is based in San Francisco, already had a rollout effort in California in October 2008, and the group issued a press release three weeks ago supporting AB32 and attacking Prop 23.

The Merc story highlighted the support of cleantech businesses, but the website and the group’s publications suggest that the Apollo Alliance is more of a political group run by an alliance of labor and environmentalists. The New Apollo Program manifesto lists a 14-member board chaired by longtime legislator (later state treasurer) Phil Angelides, and the board also includes the head of three environmental groups, two labor unions and noted environmental activists Van Jones and Robert Redford.

While the Alliance seems intended to win clout through its big name backers, it seems an otherwise unremarkable example of the three factions to lobby for government regulation and spending to support cleantech companies and onshore jobs. For example, the Merc story says:

"We've seen energy policies stall at the federal level, and it makes what's happening in California all the more important," said Cathy Calfo, executive director of the Apollo Alliance. "It's important to have a comprehensive strategy to move toward a clean energy future."

However, there is the matter of the name. To the question of “Why do we call it the Apollo Alliance?” the group’s website says:

Like JFK’s Apollo Project, which put a man on the moon in under a decade, an Apollo project for energy freedom must be big, bold and fast. Here’s the speech President Kennedy gave when he announced his Apollo project at Rice University in Houston, September 12, 1962 …

The problem is, renewable energy or energy efficiency are not suited to an Apollo-like project. That’s not my conclusion, but that of three of the world’s leading innovation economists — David Mowery of Berkeley, Dick Nelson of Columbia and Ben Martin of SPRU — in an article they wrote just to rebut such policy silliness, who share the goals of the Apollo Alliance but explicitly reject its policy metaphor (if not its specific policies).

As they begin:

Many supporters of government action argue that the problem is so great, the need for new environmentally friendly technologies so urgent, and the time remaining for implementation of solutions so limited, that a “Manhattan Project” or an “Apollo Program” is needed.

and then note how the two metaphors have been around for more than a decade. From that, they summarize four reasons why the metaphors not only are wrong, but will lead to policies that won’t work

We emphasize at the outset that we share the broad concern of these authors about the immense risks of global climate change, and we agree that strong, well-resourced government technology policy is part of the solution. However, proposals to model such a policy explicitly on the Manhattan or Apollo projects are, as this paper will argue, wrongheaded, and if adopted could waste resources and limit the prospects for success. Although the prospect of global warming raises technical and economic issues that are, if anything, even more daunting than those posed by a lunar landing or the crash wartime program to develop an atomic bomb, the nature of these challenges is quite different. Most importantly, both the Apollo and Manhattan projects were designed, funded, and managed by federal agencies to achieve a specific technological solution for which the government was effectively the sole “customer”.

By contrast, technological solutions to global climate change must be deployed throughout the world by many different actors, and these deployment decisions will require huge outlays of private as well as public funds. Both the industries developing and producing these solutions and the sectors in which the technologies will be deployed comprise a very heterogeneous group, ranging from wind power to internal combustion and from electric-power generation to dairy farming. …

Another point of contrast between the R&D programs that will be needed to combat global warming and these earlier federal “models” is the relatively high degree of administrative centralization in both the Manhattan and Apollo projects. As we note below, the tension between centralization and decentralization in large-scale R&D programs is an important issue in program design for which broad prescriptions are likely to be unrealistic or vacuous. But government R&D programs to combat global warming will involve numerous organizations, and consequently mechanisms for the coordination of priorities, resource allocation, and performance evaluation will be essential.

Lastly, unlike the development of an atom bomb or of a manned space vehicle, halting or reversing global warming almost certainly cannot be achieved solely through ‘supply-side’ policies and the development of technological ‘solutions’. Indeed, one of the largest dangers created by the Manhattan or Apollo metaphor is that it may be adopted by politicians seeking to avoid the far more painful demand-side policies aimed at changing human behavior and halting the ever growing demand for energy previously regarded as a prerequisite of ‘human progress’.

I can’t possibly summarize a 14,000 word research article in a brief blog post, and I encourage people to read the article in its original — either the official version at the Research Policy or the working paper published by Britain’s equivalent of NSF.

However, this is yet another reminder (as if we needed another one) that innovation policy is too important to be left to politicians or lobbyists, but instead needs to be handled by people who know something about the subject.

Can we win the clean energy race? Should we?

Browsing the WSJ.com website, I found an advertorial that proclaimed

China Becomes “Clean Energy Powerhouse”

China, determined to be on the forefront of green technology, “is emerging as the world’s clean energy powerhouse,” according to a recent study from The Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent non-profit organization based in Washington, DC

For the first time ever, China topped all nations last year in investments in low-carbon energy like wind and solar power. Over the past five years, environmentally friendly energy finance and investments in China grew from $2.5 billion to $34.6 billion, almost double the $18.6 billion in investments attracted by the United States.

And that is only one part of the country’s growing emphasis on environmentally friendly products and practices. Along with ambitious targets for wind, biomass and solar energy, China aims to spend 34 percent of its $586 billion stimulus package on green projects.

The advertorial, sponsored by Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific, went on to note the airline’s involvement in carbon offsets and the other customary forms of greenwashing used by big businesses. (I don’t take the dead tree WSJ anymore, so I didn’t see when/if it ran in the real paper.)

Pew is an environmental advocacy group that got a lot of coverage when their study of G-20 countries (entitled “Who's Winning the Clean Energy Race?”) came out in March. A well-orchestrated PR campaign — tied to legislative hearings in Congress — brought the issue back to the forefront last month.

The numbers in the report compiled by Bloomber New Energy Finance seem accurate. However, the conclusions seem intended to stampede US public sentiment towards greater Federal spending (or mandated ratepayer spending) to subsidize the sale of RE equipment in the US. To quote from the executive summary:

This report documents the dawning of a new worldwide industry—clean energy—which has experienced investment growth of 230 percent since 2005. Demonstrating its strength, the clean energy sector declined only 6.6 percent in 2009 despite the worst financial downturn in over half a century. In 2009, $162 billion was invested in clean energy around the world. …

Within the G-20, our research finds that domestic policy decisions impact the competitive positions of member countries. Those nations—such as China, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain—with strong, national policies aimed at reducing global warming pollution and incentivizing the use of renewable energy are establishing stronger competitive positions in the clean energy economy. …

There are reasons to be concerned about America’s competitive position in the clean energy marketplace.

Relative to the size of its economy, the United States’ clean energy finance and investments lag behind many of its G-20 partners. For example, in relative terms, Spain invested five times more than the United States last year, and China, Brazil and the United Kingdom invested three times more. In all, 10 G-20 members devoted a greater percentage of gross domestic product to clean energy than the United States in 2009. Finally, the Unites States is on the verge of losing its leadership position in installed renewable energy capacity, with China surging in the last several years to a virtual tie.

The U.S. policy framework for reducing global warming pollution and promoting renewable energy remains uncertain, with comprehensive legislation stalled in Congress. On the other hand, America’s entrepreneurial traditions and strengths in innovation—especially its leadership in venture capital investing—are considerable, giving it the potential to recoup leadership and market share in the future.

Policy, investment and business experts alike have noted that the clean energy economy is emerging as one of the great global economic and environmental opportunities of the 21st century. …

Nations seeking to compete effectively for clean energy jobs and manufacturing would do well to evaluate the array of policy mechanisms that can be employed to stimulate clean energy investment. This is especially true for policymakers in the United States, which is at risk of falling further behind its G-20 competitors in the coming years unless it adopts a strong national policy framework to spur more robust clean energy investment.

In other words, the Pew argument is that there is a “race” and the US is losing. This is a proven rhetorical device: The “missile gap” was used during the Eisenhower administration and the Space Race during four administrations to build support for massive Federal spending on aerospace technology.

But perhaps the argument is less effective today. Some of a libertarian bent would argue against Pew by saying (roughly) “if other countries want to waste their money renewable energy, let ’em.” This is probably preaching to the choir — those who buy this argument weren’t going to listen to Pew and vice versa.

My own concern is: is it reasonable to believe that US mandates for RE will create jobs and a self-sustaining US industry? The success of Vesta and other Danish wind turbine companies is the best case. The NYT reported Wednesday about similar hopes by Silicon Valley companies using advanced technology to efforts to keep up with Chinese manufacturing costs.

Worst case is the ongoing collapse of the German solar industry (after years of the world’s best solar incentives). Another is the one-way shift of solar jobs by US designers to Chinese factories — in parallel to most other medium-technology manufacturing moving to China or other offshore locations.

But suppose we can win the race: Should we? The leading academic journal on innovation policy, Research Policy, ran a series of four articles this month on how innovation policy should respond to the global warming threat. The lead article by three of the world’s leading innovation economists emphasized the broad dissemination of clean energy technology to reduce global carbon emissions rather than hoarding to help domestic energy producers:

In recent years, the threat of global climate change has come to be seen as one of the most serious confronting humanity. To meet this challenge will require the development of new technologies and the substantial improvement of existing ones, as well as ensuring their prompt and widespread deployment.
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Combating global warming, as we noted earlier, requires that technological solutions be deployed on a global scale as soon as possible. … Much more than “technology transfer” will be required, although support for the global dissemination of information and, potentially, subsidies for other nations to stimulate the adoption of technological solutions may be important parts of the international scope of such a program.

To put it in plain English: technological solutions to climate change must be shared and perhaps even subsidized for the rest of the world.

So for any US policy, I see at least a four-way tug-of-war of competing goals: helping the business growth and profits of US companies, providing US jobs, spending government (or ratepayer) money most efficiently, and saving the planet. When the US DoD invented the Internet we could have all four, but that outcome seems unlikely for today’s challenges due to both the capital investment and large number of foreign competitors and countries chasing these same clean energy jobs.

I don’t know which goal (or goals) will win out, and without knowing the specifics I can’t personally say which one should win out.

References

David C. Mowery, Richard R. Nelson, Ben R. Martin, “Technology policy and global warming: Why new policy models are needed (or why putting new wine in old bottles won’t work),” Research Policy, Volume 39, Issue 8, (October 2010), Pages 1011-1023. doi: 10.1016/j.respol.2010.05.008

Pew Charitable Trusts, “Who's Winning the Clean Energy Race? Growth, Competition and Opportunity in the World’s Largest Economies,” Pew Charitable Trusts, March 2010