Yesterday President Obama said we need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and produce more "clean energy." That may be so, but what are the chances that the federal government can cause a major shift to renewable energy by the end of the President’s second term—assuming he is reelected?
Consider these facts. The federal government has been pushing energy conservation and a shift to renewable energy since the OPEC oil embargo in 1973. There has been some progress, but it doesn’t amount to much. According to Wikipedia, renewable sources account for just 3.4% of electricity generated worldwide.
It gets worse. The vast majority of today’s renewable energy comes from hydroelectric plants—a technology that wreaks havoc with the environment—and biomass—a scientific euphemism for wood-burning stoves. Solar, wind, and geothermal energy barely register a blip on the global energy radar screen.
Having done some work in the solar energy field in the early 1990s, I am baffled by those who think we can switch to solar energy by decree. Today, solar energy is simply too inefficient, unreliable and expensive to meet our energy needs. People have been working on solutions to these problems for decades with only meager results. And contrary to reports in some science magazines, there’s little evidence that we are on the verge of a breakthrough. Today’s research could bear fruit in five years or fifty years. Or something unexpected might intervene, causing us to change course entirely.
I did some consulting work for a solar energy company called Midway Labs. The company’s founder, the late Paul Collard, wisely focused on developing a solution for small villages in Africa and Asia. Collard’s unique solution employed light concentrating optics and solar cells designed to withstand high temperatures. The system could generate enough electricity to meet a small village’s basic requirements, but it required a mechanical system for tracking the sun as it traveled across the sky. It also required a large bank of storage batteries to take over at night and on cloudy days. The cold, hard fact is that a gasoline-fueled generator is more efficient, more reliable, and less expensive.
What’s almost completely missing from the public debate about renewable energy is informed discussion about the manufacturing, distribution and maintenance challenges. We can build wind farms all across the U.S., but what’s the cost to build and maintain enough of them? How much energy will be lost transporting electricity from rural areas to population centers? What's the environmental impact of large-scale deployment? Similarly tough questions apply to solar electricity and rechargeable batteries.
As one skeptic observed, renewable energy sources must be subsidized to create demand, while the fossil fuel industry is profitable despite being heavily taxed.
Like the fiber-to-the-home technology in telecom, expect several impressive showcase deployments. But the mass market evolves according to its own timetable and logic.
UPDATE June 17, 2010: Today's IEEE Spectrum Tech Alert was dominated by bad news about renewable energy and CO2 emissions reduction. Both stories (
California's Geothermal Plans in Trouble and
Why Carbon Capture Won't Work) concern projects that depend on access to scarce water supplies.
