A carbon free USA?

A new study from the University of California Berkeley and GridLab says that it will be economically feasible to power a reliable grid mostly with renewables by 2035, while only using natural gas for 10% of annual electricity production. Co-author Amol Phadke said that ‘previous studies concluded either we need to wait until 2050 to decarbonize or the bills will go up if you decarbonize. I think we really need to revisit these conclusions because of the dramatic decline in costs.’ And so, overall, the cost of wholesale electricity would be 13% lower than it is today.

In its ‘90% Clean Energy’ scenario, ‘all existing coal plants are retired by 2035, and no new fossil fuel plants are built. During normal periods of generation and demand, wind, solar, and batteries provide 70% of annual generation, while hydropower and nuclear provide 20%. During periods of very high demand and/or very low renewable generation, existing natural gas, hydropower, and nuclear plants combined with battery storage cost-effectively compensate for mismatches between demand and wind/solar generation. Generation from natural gas plants constitutes about 10% of total annual electricity generation, which is about 70% lower than their generation in 2019’.

As can be seen, the idea is to maintain grid stability by ‘retaining existing hydropower and nuclear capacity (after accounting for planned retirements), and much of the existing natural gas capacity combined with new battery storage’, so that they can help meet U.S. electricity demand dependably (i.e., every hour of the year) with a 90% clean grid in 2035. However, it’s not clear if the inflexible nuclear plants would help much with that and battery storage wont help much to deal with with long-term renewable lulls. Given that there will at times be surplus power from the very large renewable capacity, converting some of this to hydrogen for grid balancing and other purposes might be a better idea, and allow nearer to 100% to be attained, although perhaps not by 2035. It will take time to build up the necessary capacity. As GTM noted, just to get to 90% clean status, the U.S. would have to build 1,100 GW of new wind & solar capacity in the next 15 years, the study found. That averages to roughly 70 GW worth of deployments per year, more than triple the combined wind and solar additions completed in any one year to date’. 

How likely is it to be tried? Mike O’Boyle, director of electricity policy at Energy Innovation told Grist that ‘you need some sort of policy lever that is encouraging or mandating that utilities transition away from fossil fuels towards clean energy sources more quickly’. However, under Trump, Congress hasn’t taken up any significant national clean energy legislation. Although some states do have mandates in place, they offer a patchwork of different goals and requirements. It might nevertheless be possible to do in stages. The report says that an ideal nationwide clean energy standard would start at 55% in 2025, increase to 75% in 2030, and reach 90% by 2035. O’Boyle said this would push all states onto an equal footing and help those who are lagging behind catch up.

A bit less ambitiously, four leading US renewable energy associations have already declared a joint goal to provide ‘more than half’ of the US’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030. The Energy Storage Association (ESA) Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), National Hydro Association (NHA), and American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) have pledged to work together to ‘build a more efficient, reliable, sustainable and affordable grid; achieve carbon reductions; advance greater competition through fair market rules; and actively collaborate across industry segments’.   They look to solar and wind growing from 3% and 7% of energy output in 2019 to 20% apiece by 2030, with hydro 9% and other renewables 2%, making a total of 51% renewable energy in the US. It currently totals just 19%. Battery and mechanical storage was expected to grow from just 1GW in 2019 to 85GW by 2030, with hydro storage growing from today’s 23GW to 40GW by then.

Progress is certainly being made in the US, despite polices from Trump which are generally  pro-coal and pro nuclear and mostly hostile to green energy development, and the US has moved up to No1 in EY’s biannual global ranking of investor ‘attractiveness index’ for renewable energy, in part since it is now pushing ahead with offshore wind. The driver of course is that costs are falling.  The resultant boom in renewables has helped cut emissions, although so has the switch from coal to shale gas.  

What next? Total US wind power capacity is now 105 GW, and PV was at 62 GW at the end of 2019, and, although the Covid-19 crisis and weakened economy may slow things, renewables seem certain to expand rapidly in the US. However,  in terms of its impacts globally the story is not so good. The US government is pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement in a withdrawal that will formally take effect on 4 November – the day after the US Presidential election.  Will that exit be reversed? 

Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Bidden backs renewables, but also nuclear (SMRs) and  Carbon Capture and Storage. Bernie Sanders has stood down from the Presidential run up, and the Green New Deal plan he and others backed, with nuclear and CCS excluded and renewable ramped up fast to the maximum, may be replaced by a new plan from the majority Democrats on the Congress Select Committee on the climate crisis. It has its backers, but is arguably less radical that the Sanders Green New Deal. It does aim get to zero net emissions from the power sector by 2040 and net-zero emissions across the board by 2050, with renewables playing a major role, but it also includes nuclear as part of its programme, arguing that ‘nuclear power is a zero-carbon source of electricity’.

That seems rather odd. The realty is that making nuclear fuel is energy and carbon intensive, but the Committees report does not mention this, or the economic problems that face nuclear. It proposes to continue with upgrades of old plants and the development of new technology like Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). However, it does note the problems with nuclear waste and also that, in December 2019, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposed a rule to weaken emergency planning for SMRs and non-light-water reactors, a rule change which Commissioner Jeff Baran called a ‘radical departure from more than 40 years of radiological emergency planning.’

Although nuclear power may not be a central issue in the US just now, the climate issue seems certain to be important in the US upcoming elections, with the pro and anti climate action lobbies usually lining up along pro and anti renewables lines, and also anti and pro nuclear lines. That’s despite the efforts of the likes of pro-nuclear Michael Shellenberger.  But the reality is that both main parties in the US election are now pro-nuclear. Biden is pushing renewables quite hard. In his latest $2 Trillion climate plan he talks of making the power sector emissions-free by 2035,  5 years earlier than in the Congress Democrats plan, but like that and the UCD scenario looked at above, his approach also includes a commitment to existing and new nuclear. Like Covid 19, it seems hard to shake off!