Law & Disorder / Civilization & Discontents

Al Gore’s call for renewable energy sets us up for a useful failure

Al Gore's call for an electrical grid without carbon emissions can't be …

Last Thursday, former presidential candidate and Nobel Laureate Al Gore gave a speech in which he called for a national effort to get the entire US electric grid operating on a carbon-neutral basis within a decade. In its aftermath, much of the attention has been focused on whether the idea is actually achievable—Gore says it is; many say otherwise. To a large extent, however, this may not be the most important question. Even if the plan is destined for failure, it's worth considering where it would leave the country if we actually tried it.

Going green is inevitable

A grid based on a combination of renewable and nuclear energy is pretty much inevitable. Fossil fuels are a finite resource, and the world will ultimately run short on them; demand may make their price prohibitive well before that happens. Supplies of coal, which provide roughly half of the US electrical generating capacity, will last a bit longer than other fuels, suggesting we may wind up increasing our reliance on it.

But coal has several disadvantages, starting with the fact that it produces the most pollutants per unit of energy. Domestic coal is now relatively inexpensive, but that's partly a function of eased mine safety enforcement and environmental standards that allow it to be obtained by mountaintop removal. Changes to these policies could greatly increase its cost, as could any carbon tax; there will also be increased competition for the supply as global energy demand increases. The net result is that even coal doesn't look appealing in the long term.

So, the question is not so much whether there are advantages to going carbon-neutral—we will do it anyway, eventually—but rather what the advantages of getting there fast are. This being Al Gore, one of the advantages he noted was a reduced impact on the climate. Gore would have done well to mention ocean acidification as an additional problem; the scientific community's conclusions on the climate remain controversial in some circles, but there have been far fewer questions raised about the potential impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on the oceans, and clear and accessible examples of its effects on aquatic organisms are now available.

Gore moved past the environmental concerns rapidly, however, and focused on economics. Here, his arguments echoed those of politicians who are promoting green power sources, namely that renewable power will create jobs in the US, and that's something our economy could use. Here, the benefits are a bit oversold, given that China's probably as capable of producing solar panels and wind turbines as anyone else, but the renewable facilities themselves will be run and maintained in the US.

Gore also argues that costs for renewable power will go down, while fossil fuels will only get more expensive. Again, this is generally right, but probably an oversimplification. Costs for the silicon used in solar panels have gone down but, should we undertake a massive expansion in photovoltaic capacity such as the one Gore proposes, demand may cause them to shoot up again for a while. At the same time, if renewables successfully cut the demand for fossil fuels, the prices of those fuels may drop. Still, the long-term trends are inevitable: the supply of renewable energy is unlimited and the technology used to obtain it should become cheaper and more efficient with time.

Can we do this in a decade?

Probably not. To get a sense of the scale of the problem, consider the project just announced by Texas: $5 billion for 18.5 Gigawatts worth of electric grid, designed to get wind power from the Texas panhandle to its population centers. It will take five years to construct, and that doesn't include the cost or time of putting the generating capacity in place. Similar issues face states with solar potential, given that the best areas for solar, like the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, are sparsely populated and thus largely off the grid.

Building both the generation and transmission capacity, and the manufacturing capacity behind them, will be difficult enough to accomplish in 10 years, and are likely to strain the markets for the raw material involved (thus raising costs). We'll have to build a parallel capacity for storing power to smooth out the low points in renewable generating systems, then build replacements for our aging nuclear capacity. Things will go wrong, won't be finished in time, and won't work to planned capacity.

To make matters more challenging, Gore is proposing that the economics of renewable power will get so good, and capacity increase so rapidly, that gasoline use would drop as plug-in hybrids and battery-powered cars take over. Thus, the electric supply would not only have to meet future needs extrapolated from today's usage patterns, but add significant additional capacity in order to power a portion of the country's commuter vehicles.

Even if the US could summon the political will to engage in this project, finishing it in a decade is almost certainly not going to happen. But that doesn't necessarily mean that trying to do it is a bad idea.

Why Gore's plan may be a useful failure

On a practical level, building some renewable facilities will be essential simply to understand how a renewable grid will work. Without starting the process, it can be difficult to tell which approaches—which form of storage, which type of photovoltaic installment, etc.—will scale and make the most sense for wide deployment. We'll also need to know whether we can reach the sort of excess generation capacity that can make Gore's goal of electric vehicles possible, or if we should be looking elsewhere (say, to biofuels) for our future transportation needs.

But right now, the lack of a clear, short-term goal for renewable power is inducing paralysis. Licensing of new nuclear plants remains a baroque process, and there has been little effort put towards finding a long-term solution to the processing and storage of nuclear wastes. The Bureau of Land Management is so indifferent that it temporarily stopped accepting new applications for solar facilities. Clean coal remains as elusive as nuclear fusion, and the project intended to be a pioneering technology demonstration now appears unlikely to be built. A pilot solar thermal project in California is apparently held up because of concerns that the electric grid that will connect it may disrupt the habitat of an endangered species.

The government is not only failing internally, but it's failing to send any signals to the business community. The development of renewable power industries is being approached with some hesitancy by private industry, as fears persist that there will be a repeat of the events of the 80s, where fossil fuel prices dropped and a lack of a long-term energy policy helped kill the startups that had formed in the wake of the energy problems of the 70s. Long-term planning is impossible for any such business, as there has been no direction provided about future carbon restrictions at the national level, leaving the companies facing a patchwork of state and regional planning and legislation.

Thus, the lack of any goal for the short term is contributing to a paralysis that not only leaves the nation in no position to move towards a renewable future, but hinders the ability of businesses or the public to take even the smallest steps in this direction. Adopting Gore's proposal, if nothing else, should force the federal government to streamline the approval process for renewable and nuclear generation facilities, and it will give businesses a better sense of how the future will develop.

It might also force the public to deal with some uncomfortable truths. Nuclear power will be an essential bridge to a renewable future, but the public has rarely come to terms with the presence of nuclear facilities. Even wind turbines have famously been subject to "not in my back yard" complaints. Similarly, the public wants a safe, reliable, and organized power grid, but is remarkably reluctant to pay the cost of building, maintaining, and inspecting one. Even if we reject a grand, national program, the debate may force the US public to come to terms with its internally inconsistent desires.

In short, we're going to be renewable eventually, and there are some distinct advantages to starting down that road sooner, rather than later. But, right now, neither the government nor the public appears to even know where to begin. Going renewable in a decade may not be achievable either on the practical or political levels, but simply considering what might need to be done to get there will be essential for us to make any progress at all.

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