The Great Transition, Part II: Building a Wind-Centered Economy

By Lester R. Brown 

http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2012/update108

Earth Policy Release

Plan B Update

October 31, 2012

In the race to transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy and avoid runaway climate change, wind has opened a wide lead on both solar and geothermal energy. Solar panels, with a capacity totaling 70,000 megawatts, and geothermal power plants, with a capacity of some 11,000 megawatts, are generating electricity around the world. The total capacity for the world’s wind farms, now generating power in about 80 countries, is near 240,000 megawatts. China and the United States are in the lead. 

Over the past decade, world wind electric generating capacity grew at nearly 30 percent per year, its increase driven by its many attractive features and by public policies supporting its expansion. Wind is abundant, carbon-free and nondepletable. It uses no water, no fuel, and little land. Wind is also locally available, scales up easily, and can be brought online quickly. No other energy source can match this combination of features.

One reason wind power is so popular is that it has a small footprint. Although a wind farm can cover many square miles, turbines occupy only 1 percent of that area. Compared with other renewable sources of energy, wind energy yield per acre is off the charts. For example, a farmer in northern Iowa could plant an acre in corn that yields enough grain to produce roughly $1,000 worth of fuel-grade ethanol per year, or he could use that same acre to site a turbine producing $300,000 worth of electricity each year.

Because turbines take up only 1 percent of the land covered by a wind farm, ranchers and farmers can, in effect, double-crop their land, simultaneously harvesting electricity while producing cattle, wheat or corn. With no investment on their part, farmers and ranchers can receive $3,000 to $10,000 a year in royalties for each wind turbine on their land. For thousands of ranchers on the U.S. Great Plains, wind royalties will one day dwarf their earnings from cattle sales.

Wind is also abundant. In the United States, three wind-rich states—North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas—have enough harnessable wind energy to easily satisfy national electricity needs. Another attraction of wind energy is that it is not depletable. The amount of wind energy used today has no effect on the amount available tomorrow.

Unlike coal, gas, and nuclear power plants, wind farms do not require water for cooling. As wind backs out coal and natural gas in power generation, water will be freed up for irrigation and other needs.

Perhaps wind’s strongest attraction is that there is no fuel cost. After the wind farm is completed, the electricity flows with no monthly fuel bill. And while it may take a decade to build a nuclear power plant, the construction time for the typical wind farm is one year.

Future wind complexes in the Great Plains, in the North Sea, off the coast of China or the eastern coast of the United States may have generating capacity measured in the tens of thousands of megawatts. Planning and investment in wind projects is occurring on a scale not previously seen in the traditional energy sector.

One of the obvious downsides of wind is its variability. But as wind farms multiply, this becomes less of an issue. Because no two farms have identical wind profiles, each farm added to a grid reduces variability. A Stanford University research team has pointed out that with thousands of wind farms and a national grid in a country such as the United States, wind becomes a remarkably stable source of electricity.

In more densely populated areas, there is often local opposition to wind power— the NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) response. But in the vast ranching and farming regions of the United States, wind is immensely popular for economic reasons. For ranchers in the Great Plains, farmers in the Midwest or dairy farmers in upstate New York, there is a PIMBY (“put it in my backyard”) response.

Farmers and ranchers welcome the additional income from having wind turbines on their land. Rural communities compete for wind farm investments and the additional tax revenue to support their schools and roads.

One of the keys to developing wind resources is building the transmission lines to link wind-rich regions with population centers. Perhaps the most exciting grid project under development is the so-called Tres Amigas electricity hub, a grid interconnection center to be built in eastern New Mexico. It will link the three U.S. electricity grids — the Eastern, Western, and Texas grids. Tres Amigas is a landmark in the evolution of the new energy economy. With high-voltage lines linking the three grids where they are close to each other, electricity can be moved from one part of the United States to another as conditions warrant. By matching surpluses with deficits over a broader area, electricity wastage and consumer rates can both be reduced. Other long distance transmission lines are under construction or in the planning stages.

We know that rapid growth in wind generation is possible. U.S. wind generating capacity expanded by 45 percent in 2007 and 50 percent in 2008. If we expanded world wind generation during this decade at 40 percent per year, the 238,000 megawatts of generating capacity at the end of 2011 would expand to nearly 5 million megawatts in 2020. Combined with an ambitious solar and geothermal expansion, along with new hydro projects in the pipeline, this would total 7.5 million megawatts of renewable generating capacity, enabling us to back out all of the coal and oil and most of the natural gas now used to generate electricity. (See data.)

In addition to the shift to renewable sources of energy, there are two other critical components of this climate stabilization plan: rapidly increasing the energy efficiency of industry, appliances, and lighting, and restructuring the transportation sector, electrifying it as much as possible while ramping up public transit, biking and walking. (With this latter component, we would be able to back out much of the oil used for transportation.)

This energy restructuring would require roughly 300,000 wind turbines per year over the next decade. Can we produce those? For sure. Keep in mind that the world today is producing some 70 million cars, trucks, and buses each year. Many of the wind turbines needed to back out fossil fuels in electricity generation worldwide could be produced in currently idled automobile assembly plants in the United States alone. The plants would, of course, need to be modified to shift from automobiles to wind turbines, but it is entirely doable. In World War II, Chrysler went from making cars to tanks in a matter of months. If we could do that then, we and the rest of the world can certainly build the 300,000 wind turbines per year we now need to build the new energy economy and stabilize the climate.

For the first time since the Industrial Revolution began, we have an opportunity to invest in alternative sources of energy that can last as long as the Earth itself. The choice is ours. We can stay with business as usual, or we can move the world onto a path of sustained progress. The choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on Earth for all generations to come.

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Adapted from “Exciting News About Renewable Energy,” by Lester R. Brown, in the October/November 2012 issue of Mother Earth News.

Lester R. Brown is President of Earth Policy Institute and author of Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity.

Data and additional resources at www.earth-policy.org. 

Feel free to pass this information along to friends, family members, and colleagues!

Media Contact: Reah Janise Kauffman (202) 496-9290 ext. 12 | rjk@earthpolicy.org

Research Contact: Janet Larsen (202) 496-9290 ext. 14 | jlarsen@earthpolicy.org

U.S. Carbon Emissions Down 7 Percent In Four Years: Even Bigger Drops Coming

By Lester R. Brown

Earth Policy Institute

Between 2007 and 2011, carbon emissions from coal use in the United States dropped 10 percent. During the same period, emissions from oil use dropped 11 percent. In contrast, carbon emissions from natural gas use increased by 6 percent. The net effect of these trends was that U.S. carbon emissions dropped 7 percent in four years. And this is only the beginning.

The initial fall in coal and oil use was triggered by the economic downturn, but now powerful new forces are reducing the use of both. For coal, the dominant force is the Beyond Coal campaign, an impressive national effort coordinated by the Sierra Club involving hundreds of local groups that oppose coal because of its effects on human health. 

In the first phase, the campaign actively opposed the building of new coal-fired power plants. This hugely successful initiative, which led to a near de facto moratorium on new coal plants, was powered by Americans’ dislike of coal. An Opinion Research Corporation poll found only 3 percent preferred coal as their electricity source -- which is no surprise. Coal plant emissions are a leading cause of respiratory illnesses (such as asthma in children) and mercury contamination. Coal burning causes 13,200 American deaths each year, a loss of life that exceeds U.S. combat losses in 10 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

The campaign’s second phase is dedicated to closing existing coal plants. Of the U.S. total of 492 coal-fired power plants, 68 are already slated to close. With current and forthcoming U.S. Environmental Protection Agency air quality regulations on emissions of mercury, sulfur, and ozone precursors requiring costly retrofits, many more of the older, dirtier plants will be closed. 

In August, the American Economic Review -- the country’s most prestigious economics journal -- published an article that can only be described as an epitaph for the coal industry. The authors conclude that the economic damage caused by air pollutants from coal burning exceeds the value of the electricity produced by coal-fired power plants. Coal fails the cost-benefit analysis even before the costs of climate change are tallied. 

In July 2011, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a grant of $50 million to the Beyond Coal campaign. It is one thing when Michael Brune, head of the Sierra Club, says that coal has to go, but quite another when Michael Bloomberg, one of the most successful businessmen of his generation, says so. 

The move to close coal plants comes at a time when electricity use for lighting will be falling fast as old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs are phased out. In compliance with the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, by January 2012 there will be no 100-watt incandescent light bulbs on store shelves. By January 2014, the 75-watt, 60-watt, and 40-watt incandescents will also disappear from shelves. As inefficient incandescents are replaced by compact fluorescents and LEDs, electricity use for lighting can drop by 80 percent. And much of the switch will occur within a few years. 

The U.S. Department of Energy projects that residential electricity use per person will drop by 5 percent during this decade as light bulbs are replaced and as more-efficient refrigerators, water heaters, television sets, and other household appliances come to market. 

Even as coal plants are closing, the use of wind, solar, and geothermally generated electricity is growing fast. Over the last four years, more than 400 wind farms -- with a total generating capacity of 27,000 megawatts -- have come online, enough to supply 8 million homes with electricity. (See data at www.earth-policy.org.) Nearly 300,000 megawatts of proposed wind projects are in the pipeline awaiting access to the grid.

Texas, long the leading oil-producing state, is now the leading generator of electricity from wind. When the transmission lines linking the rich wind resources of west Texas and the Texas panhandle to the large cities in central and eastern Texas are completed, wind electric generation in the state will jump dramatically. 

In installed wind-generating capacity, Texas is followed by Iowa, California, Minnesota, and Illinois. In the share of electricity generation in the state coming from wind, Iowa leads at 20 percent. 

With electricity generated by solar panels, the United States has some 22,000 megawatts of utility-scale projects in the pipeline. And this does not include residential installations. 

Closing coal plants also cuts oil use. With coal use falling, the near 40 percent of freight rail diesel fuel that is used to move coal from mines to power plants will also drop. 

In fact, oil use has fallen fast in the United States over the last four years, thus reversing another long-term trend of rising consumption. The reasons for this include a shrinkage in the size of the national fleet, the rising fuel efficiency of new cars, and a reduction in the miles driven per vehicle. 

Fleet size peaked at 250 million cars in 2008 just as the number of cars being scrapped eclipsed sales of new cars. Aside from economic conditions, car sales are down because many young people today are much less automobile-oriented than their parents. 

In addition, the fuel efficiency of new cars, already rising, will soon increase sharply. The most recent efficiency standards mandate that new cars sold in 2025 use only half as much fuel as those sold in 2010. Thus with each passing year, the U.S. car fleet becomes more fuel-efficient, using less gasoline. 

Miles driven per car are declining because of higher gasoline prices, the continuing recession, and the shift to public transit and bicycles. Bicycles are replacing cars as cities create cycling infrastructure by building bike paths, creating dedicated bike lanes, and installing sidewalk parking racks. Many U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C., Chicago, and New York, are introducing bike-sharing programs. 

Furthermore, when people retire and no longer commute, miles driven drop by a third to a half. With so many baby boomers now retiring, this too will lower gasoline use. 

As plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars come to market, electricity will replace gasoline. An analysis by Professor Michael McElroy of Harvard indicates that running a car on wind-generated electricity could cost the equivalent of 80-cent-a-gallon gasoline. 

With emissions from coal burning heading for a free fall as plants are closed, and those from oil use also falling fast -- both are falling faster than emissions from natural gas are ramping up -- U.S. carbon emissions are falling. 

We are now looking at a situation where the 7 percent decline in carbon emissions since the 2007 peak could expand to 20 percent by 2020, and possibly even to 30 percent. If so, the United States could become a world leader in cutting carbon emissions and stabilizing climate.

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Data and additional resources available at www.earth-policy.org.

Lester R. Brown is president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of World on the Edge.

Feel free to pass this information along to friends, family members, and colleagues!

http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2011/update101

Geothermal power heating up world wide

By J. Matthew Roney

Earth Policy Institute

In 1904, Italy's Prince Piero Ginori Conti became the first person to use thermal energy from within the earth to turn on the lights—five of them, to be precise. Now, more than a century after his experiment, 24 countries are using geothermal power. The 10,900 megawatts of capacity installed worldwide generate enough renewable electricity to meet the needs of more than 6 million U.S. homes. Geothermal power has grown at just 3 percent annually over the last decade, but the pace is set to pick up substantially, with close to 9,000 megawatts of new capacity projected for 2015. Some 350 projects are under development in dozens of countries.

The energy source for geothermal electricity generation is the tremendous heat flowing from the Earth's core and mantle and from radioactive isotopes decaying in the Earth's crust. Developers drill wells to reach porous and permeable rock containing reservoirs of hot water or steam that is then brought to the surface to drive a turbine and generate electricity. Historically, this required a water temperature of 150 degrees Celsius (302 degrees Fahrenheit) or more, which is found in abundance in countries along the Pacific Ring of Fire—including Chile, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States—as well as in Africa's Great Rift Valley region. Recent technology improvements, however, have made power generation using lower-temperature resources possible, enabling Germany, Hungary, and others to begin harnessing their geothermal power potential. 

While geothermal projects require significant up-front capital investments, especially for exploration, drilling, and power plant construction, the typically low operation cost—including zero expense for fuel—means that over their lifetimes geothermal power plants are often cost-competitive with fossil fuel or nuclear power plants. Another plus is that geothermal plants can provide round-the-clock baseload power, requiring no backup from non-renewable fuel generation. 

With 3,100 megawatts installed in nine western states, the United States is the unrivaled leader in geothermal power capacity. (See data at www.earth-policy.org.) Half of this is located at The Geysers, a complex of 17 plants in northern California that is the world's largest geothermal development. 

In the last 20 years, less than 330 megawatts of new geothermal power has been installed in the United States. But thanks to recent government incentives—including loan guarantees, production tax credits, and cash grants—today the U.S. geothermal industry is booming. More than 120 confirmed projects representing close to 1,400 megawatts are under development in 14 states. Most of this activity is in the West, especially in established geothermal havens like California and Nevada, but projects are also emerging to the east in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. More than 750 megawatts of new capacity are slated for completion by 2015. 

While the United States ranks highest in geothermal power generating capacity, nowhere is geothermal energy more pervasive than in Iceland. With 575 megawatts of installed capacity, a figure that could double by 2015, geothermal power provides one quarter of Iceland's electricity. Its state-owned electric utility is even considering building a 1,170-kilometer (727-mile) undersea cable to export geothermal and hydropower to Scotland. 

But above and beyond generating electricity from the Earth's heat, Icelanders use geothermal's heat energy directly. Residents have used natural hot springs for bathing for centuries, and in more modern times they have geothermally heated greenhouses and fish farms. Most impressively, some 90 percent of Iceland's residential space heating comes from geothermal. Nearly 80 other countries also use geothermal heat directly. 

In the Pacific, the Philippines is another nation taking advantage of geothermal resources. Ranking second in the world, with 1,900 megawatts of installed capacity, the Philippines gets 17 percent of its electricity from geothermal. It plans to reach 2,550 megawatts in the next four years. 

But it is Indonesia that has the most ambitious geothermal power goals in the world. The country currently has the third greatest amount of installed geothermal power capacity—some 1,200 megawatts. Most of these plants are operated by Pertamina Geothermal Energy, a subsidiary of the state oil and gas company. As the government looks to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and increase the reliability of its power sector, it plans to more than triple geothermal installations by 2015. By 2025, Indonesia intends to reach 12,000 megawatts of geothermal power, enough to meet more than 70 percent of current electricity needs. While this would allow the country to back out nearly all coal and oil in the power sector, it would exploit only two fifths of Indonesia's estimated geothermal resource. 

Japan is another country with enormous geothermal resources, but so far just a small fraction—less than 540 megawatts—has been developed. Japan's 80,000 megawatts of potential capacity using conventional technologies could meet half of its current electricity demand. With the government's recent pledge to emphasize renewable energy and energy efficiency over nuclear power, a renewed commitment to geothermal may be imminent. 

In Latin America, Mexico's 958 megawatts of installed geothermal power capacity make it number four on the list of geothermal leaders. Mexico's geothermal capacity currently exceeds that of all other countries in the region combined, but there is enormous potential waiting to be harnessed in many other Latin American countries. A 1999 report from the U.S.-based Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) identified 39 countries, now with a combined 800 million people, whose geothermal resources could meet 100 percent of their electricity needs. Nine of these, including Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Peru, are in Central and South America. El Salvador's 6 million people already obtain 26 percent of their electricity from geothermal; the share for Costa Rica, with 5 million people, is 13 percent. 

Thirteen of the countries identified in the GEA report are in East Africa, with many of these located along the tectonically and volcanically active Great Rift Valley stretching from Eritrea in the north to Mozambique in the south. Only Ethiopia (with 7 megawatts) and Kenya (with more than 200 megawatts) have yet begun to tap their geothermal potential. But other countries, including Rwanda and Uganda, are actively pursuing development. 

Kenya started geothermal exploration in the 1960s, and it now gets some 20 percent of its electricity from geothermal. If the nation achieves its ambitious targets of 2,300 megawatts by 2020 and 5,000 megawatts by 2030, Kenya could within a matter of years meet all its electricity needs with geothermal energy and begin exporting the surplus. 

Beyond the current boom in conventional resource development, the emergence of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) technology promises to fundamentally alter the geothermal landscape. EGS enables energy recovery in parts of the Earth's crust with limited permeability and porosity, dramatically increasing estimated resource potential. For example, a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report estimated that EGS could multiply U.S. geothermal potential 13-fold over conventionally available resources. EGS technology is still being developed, but if demonstration projects under way in Australia, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom produce favorable results in the next few years, rising investment interest could accelerate geothermal power growth even more than current projections indicate. 

A 2011 Pike Research report projects that even without new pro-geothermal policies, global investment in this energy source will more than double from $3 billion in 2010 to $6.8 billion in 2020. Add to this that the number of countries using geothermal power is expected to jump from 24 at present to 46 in 2015, and geothermal power seems poised for an impressive expansion. The possibilities are almost limitless: the estimated 4.6 million megawatts of potential geothermal capacity worldwide, including from EGS and underwater hydrothermal sources, could power the entire world economy nearly two times over. 

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Data and additional resources at www.earth-policy.org

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Saying good-bye to nuclear (Germany)

By Spiegel Online International

Merkel takes first steps toward a future of renewables

When Angela Merkel declared a moratorium on nuclear energy after the recent disaster in Japan, critics accused her of playing politics. Now she appears to be serious. A national summit in Berlin has laid out a six-point plan to move Germany away from nuclear power.

The pledge came quickly. Just days after the earthquake and tsunami decimated Japan's northeastern coast on March 11 -- and triggered the ongoing nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima power plant -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised to bring an end to nuclear power in Germany and accelerate the switch to renewables. Now, Merkel is taking initial steps toward that goal.

On Friday, Merkel met with governors of Germany's 16 states and two other cabinet ministers in Berlin. "I think we all want to move away from nuclear energy as quickly as possible and switch to renewables," she told the summit. She laid out a six-point plan and said one of the country's most important efforts over the next decade would be heavy investment in more efficient energy grids.

Germany currently relies on nuclear plants to cover 23 percent of its energy demand. Merkel's predecessor, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, passed a law in 2002 to shutter these plants gradually, with the country to be nuclear free by 2022. But Merkel -- controversially -- reversed this phase-out last autumn.

Now, she is scrambling to reverse the reversal. She would like to see all nuclear plants in Germany shut down within 10 years. "Nuclear energy has no future in Germany," David McAllister, Merkel's party ally and the governor of the state of Lower Saxony, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. "It's clear we need to implement the exit if we don't want to lose people's confidence."

Shares in leading energy firms like E.ON and RWE fell in advance of the meeting, against the trend of a rising stock market.

'True Energy Consensus'

Seven of Germany's oldest power plants were already taken off line last month, the result of a moratorium announced by Merkel in the wake of the growing problems at Fukushima. An eighth -- the problematic newer facility at Krümmel -- was also shut down. The capacity lost by those shutdowns is not to be replaced by increased activity at other plants.

Germany's opposition Social Democrats, led by Sigmar Gabriel, told SPIEGEL ONLINE on Friday that a true change in national policy would require "the participation of the parliament, all the states, the environmental movement, the business community, consumers, and the labor unions." What was important, he said -- and what Merkel is well aware of lacking -- was a "true energy consensus."

Economy Minister Rainer Brüderle told German radio on Friday that the new phase-out plan would cost consumers and taxpayers between €1 billion and €2 billion per year. Criticisms that it might actually cost up to €3 billion a year were dismissed by Brüderle as being "speculative."

Merkel's broad six-point plan, presented at the meeting on Friday, includes:

1. Expanding renewable energy. Investing in more wind, solar, and biomass energies will try to raise the renewable-energy share of Germany's total energy use -- from a baseline of 17 percent in 2010.
2. Expanding grids and storage. Building a much larger storage and delivery network for electricity -- particularly wind energy, which can be generated in the north but must be carried to the south -- will be a main focus.
3. Efficiency. The government hopes improve the heating efficiency of German buildings -- and reduce consumption -- by 20 percent over the next decade.
4. "Flexible power." The government wants to build more "flexible" power plants that can pick up slack from wind or solar energy when the weather fails to generate enough electricity during peak demand. The obvious source of "flexible power" for now, besides nuclear energy, is natural gas.
5. Research and development. The government will increase government support for research into better energy storage and more efficient grids to a total of €500 million between now and 2020.
6. Citizen involvement. The government wants to involve its sometimes-recalcitrant citizenry due to ongoing resistance against wind generators and the installation of an efficient new power line grid in some regions.

"Of course there will still be disagreements," Merkel told her state governors Friday. But by the end of the meeting she promised that her administration would bring a package of new firm proposals to parliament by the middle of June.

msm, with wires and reporting by Philipp Wittrock