The Future of Energy: The Power and The Glory
Author: The Economist
Submitted: Wed, 07/02/2008 - 18:17
Edited: Thu, 07/10/2008 - 20:49
Published in: The Economist on June, 19th 2008
Copyright Status: Free to View Link to source material: Full Article Here Description:
Numerous technological advancements over the past five years have produced a broad portfolio of potential energy alternatives. Wind power is becoming a cost competitive alternative to coal, while solar energy is increasingly less expensive. The promise of second and third generation biofuels that can be processed from feedstocks grown on marginal lands is swiftly becoming more of an economic reality. Hydrogen remains in the mix, along with geothermal, solar thermal, hydro electric, and nuclear power. The conversation has moved from when renewable energy will be broadly deployed to which technology should be selected. The tools for many proposed ideas currently exist and improvements are being made monthly, but cost remains a limiting factor to wide scale deployment. Before many new technologies will prove viable, either the price of petrol would need to continue to increase as it has, subsidies that favor fossil fuels would need to be removed, or the true cost of carbon-based fuels would have to be met with a carbon tax. If such a tax were implemented ($40 per ton of CO2), many alternative technologies could become cost competitive overnight.
The Economist offers a readable overview of the recent advancements in the renewable energy industry along with some of the barriers that exist to the wide scale deployment of new technologies. We suspect that some of the information in the article is overestimated greenwashing, and far too journalistic to adopt as a truly reliable source of specific numbers or projections. It is clear that a lot of research went into the article, however this analysis is merely a primer to what obstacles the industry faces over the next 10 years. More of the conversation should have been directed at addressing the logistical challenges faced with scaling-up lab proven technologies to the level required to produce 50% of our nations energy from renewables by 2050.
While we know that economies of scale decrease production costs, we are relatively shortsighted in our understanding of the cost and availability of the materials required for our transition to renewable energy. Technological fixes require resources (high grade silicon, highly conductive alloyed metals, carbon fiber composites, advanced battery materials, chemical and biological catalysts, etc). Where will these resources come from, are they abundant, how much will they cost, how will we extract and refine them, what are their carbon footprints? Little discussion of these questions exists, and the importance of conducting Life Cycle Assessments of proposed technologies should be a priority to ensure that all of the hidden factors are properly accounted for.
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