{"id":724,"date":"2011-02-11T15:33:47","date_gmt":"2011-02-11T20:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=724"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:58:31","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:58:31","slug":"moores-law-and-the-future-of-renewable-energy-or-why-we-cant-get-to-80-percent-clean-energy-in-2035-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/02\/11\/moores-law-and-the-future-of-renewable-energy-or-why-we-cant-get-to-80-percent-clean-energy-in-2035-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Moore\u2019s Law and The Future of Renewable Energy, or Why We Can\u2019t Get to 80 Percent Clean Energy in 2035: Part 2\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Harrow<\/em><\/p>\n

2. The Challenge
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the second post in a multi-part series. In Part 1, available\u00a0here<\/a>, I explained the idea of Moore\u2019s Law, which states that computer technology gets about twice as good, for the same price, every two years. In this Part, I explain that it will deceptively difficult to get to 80% clean energy in 2035. Feedback is welcome to\u00a0<\/em>Jason.harrow@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

In last month\u2019s\u00a0State of the Union<\/a>, President Obama told Americans that the \u201cfuture is ours to win.\u201d He then listed a number of incredible American innovations, reminding us that \u201cwe\u2019re the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook.\u201d Calling this our \u201cSputnik moment,\u201d his paean to innovation ended with a bold green technology initiative: his goal is that \u201cby 2035, 80 percent of America\u2019s electricity will come from clean energy sources.\u201d Cue thunderous applause.<\/p>\n

President Obama properly noted that innovation is inherently unpredictable, and so he offered little detail about how we go about revolutionizing our energy use. \u201cSome folks want wind and solar,\u201d he said. \u201cOthers want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all.\u201d But although he\u2019s right that no one can predict the exact shape of the next great innovation, the rate of improvement of some technologies can show remarkable stability, as demonstrated in\u00a0Part 1 of this series<\/a>.\u00a0In the computer industry, that rate of change has been remarkably steep. \u00a0But the green revolution will not be like the digital computer revolution. Change does not and cannot happen in this sector nearly as quickly. Accordingly, barring a remarkable technological breakthrough \u2014 always a possibility, of course \u2014 we will not hit 80% clean energy by 2035, and we should instead focus on crafting a policy that takes better account of medium-term technological realities. This post explains why in some level of detail.<\/p>\n

\n

Where We Are Now<\/em><\/p>\n

First, we have to understand the scope of the challenge. How far are we from 80% right now? In a\u00a0fact sheet<\/a>\u00a0released after the State of the Union, the Administration claims we are halfway there because our electricity grid is at 40% \u201cclean\u201d energy. Doubling our \u201cclean energy\u201d in 25 years \u2014 that makes the task seem quite manageable.<\/p>\n

But things are not as they seem. For one thing, it\u2019s impossible to come up with 40% by looking at the\u00a0actual numbers<\/a>\u00a0compiled by the Energy Information Administration. Really. If you take a look at the latest data from the EIA below, you\u2019ll only be able to find 30.6% \u201cclean\u201d energy \u2014 that\u2019s the total from nuclear, hydroelectric, and \u201cother renewables,\u201d which essentially means wind and solar.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on? It turns out that the Administration hasn\u2019t publicly said anything about this that I can find. But those in the industry understand that what\u2019s happening is that the Administration is counting natural gas as \u201c50%\u201d clean \u2014 so the 20% share for natural gas becomes the additional 10% \u201cclean\u201d energy output. As I explain below, being able to include natural gas in \u201cclean\u201d energy won\u2019t really make much of a difference in our ability to get to 80%, but let me briefly digress to say that this is a dubious move. The day before the State of the Union, a coalition of environmental leaders published an\u00a0open letter<\/a>\u00a0noting that although gas may \u201cburn \u2018cleaner\u2019 than coal on the short term . . . just like coal, natural gas is unsustainable and damaging to the climate and the environment.\u201d (Curiously, despite the fact that the President of Public Citizen signed that letter condemning the government support of natural gas, the organization a week\u00a0later called<\/a>\u00a0the President\u2019s proposal \u201ctotally doable and relatively modest.\u201d)<\/p>\n

But even though giving natural gas half-credit as \u201cclean\u201d energy is not exactly a wonderful policy move at the outset, let\u2019s assume that will be the case and dig somewhat deeper into the data. The key data point in the graph above is the tiny sliver of pie for the \u201cother renewables\u201d \u2014 that is, renewable sources like solar, wind, and geothermal, but not hydroelectric or nuclear power. The\u00a0latest data<\/a>\u00a0shows that in the 12 months ended in October 2010, America generated about 162 million megawatthours of electricity from those \u201cother renewables\u201d \u2014 out of 4\u00a0billion<\/em>\u00a0megawatthours overall. That\u2019s about 4% of our total energy output from those sources. In 2000, that number was about 80 million megawatthours, for about 2% of our total energy output. In other words, in a decade, we\u2019ve been able to about double the amount of energy we generate in America from the \u201cinnovative\u201d sources that President Obama emphasized in his talk.<\/p>\n

Even counting natural gas as 50% clean, those \u201cother renewables\u201d must be the key to his plan. That\u2019s because we\u2019ve essentially maxed out all the hydroelectricity we can generate, and we actually produce about 100 million megawatthours\u00a0less<\/em>\u00a0hydro now than we did 15 years ago. The other major clean energy category, nuclear, remains controversial, and building new nuclear power sources is difficult and takes a very long time. This amazing graph, from a recent\u00a0DoE report<\/a>\u00a0about new energy sources, shows about all you have to know about the prospects of nuclear being a major part of the solution: [editor’s note: due to internet archive issue, the graph disappeared<\/em>.]<\/p>\n

Let me get to the bottom-line. There are four categories of \u201cclean\u201d energy that we have to worry about: nuclear, hydro, natural gas, and \u201cother renewables.\u201d Nuclear is at 20% and is realistically not going anywhere from that number (just ask the EIA, which predicts 17% nuclear in 2035 in its\u00a02011 Energy Outlook<\/a>). Hydro is at 7% and dropping. Natural gas is growing quickly, and half of it counts as clean. But if you do the math, you\u2019ll see that the most natural gas can hit is \u201ctrue\u201d 40% of generation\u00a0 (for an adjusted \u201cclean\u201d proportion of 20%) because then there\u2019s only 60% of our electricity left and that remainder would have to be\u00a0entirely<\/em>\u00a0clean to get to a total of 80% clean overall. So there\u2019s a natural limit to how much we can rely on gas even assuming we could turn off every coal plant in America and generate just from natural gas and other clean sources, and we are more than halfway to that limit for natural gas. (Moreover, as I\u2019ll address next week, there\u2019s no way we can turn off every coal plant in America by 2035, but that\u2019s beside the point for now.)<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s those \u201cother renewables,\u201d currently at a tiny 4% of generation. Assuming nuclear and hydro power hold steady (at 20% and 7% respectively) and that natural gas replaces every coal plant that it can, that would get us to 45-50% \u201cclean.\u201d So the \u201cother renewables\u201d category will have to jump from 4% of our 2010 electricity to 30% of our 2035 electricity. That would mean a jump from 160 million megawatthours to 1.5\u00a0billion<\/em>\u00a0megawatthours. Unless something major happens that changes America\u2019s attitude toward nuclear energy or there is a major breakthrough in carbon capture technology such that existing coal plants can be retrofitted, that is the minimum amount of electricity we\u2019ll need to be generating in 2035 as I see it: 1.5 billion megawatthours, or\u00a0ten times<\/em>\u00a0the amount we\u2019re now generating.<\/p>\n

Oh, and one more thing you may not have heard, since it went unreported by the media as far as I can tell: 2010 saw \u201cthe largest build since 1985\u2033 of capacity of new coal-powered power plants. (See slide 10\u00a0here<\/a>). Not exactly an auspicious start.<\/p>\n

The Slow Pace of Change<\/em><\/p>\n

So we have a long way to go with renewable energy. But I admit that having a long way to go is not an insurmountable problem, because 2035 years is a long time from now. A lot can happen in 25 years. The real problem is how quickly we are innovating with these innovative sources. The pace of change of those critical \u201cother renewables\u201d \u2014 wind and solar, in the main \u2014 is too slow. The curves do not look anything like the escalating curve of Moore\u2019s Law, where prices quickly plummet as quality rapidly increases in the computer sector. The curve is linear, and not exponential.<\/p>\n

Let me give an illustration with solar, the most important of the innovative sources. A\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0from Berkeley Labs, run by the Department of Energy, revealed that the cost of installed, grid-connected solar systems was about $10.50 per Watt in 1998 and about $7.50 per Watt in 2007. That\u2019s a\u00a0nice<\/a>\u00a0savings, but we should recognize that in a decade, the cost-per-Watt did not even halve. Solar thus remains much more expensive than coal, by a\u00a0factor of ten<\/a>\u00a0or more.<\/p>\n

But now contrast that with how quickly costs drop in the computer industry. For instance, as I mentioned in Part 1, one gigabyte of hard disk storage was over $40.00 in 2000, and it is less than a nickel today. It is almost impossible to imagine how cheap storage space will be in 2020. Yet in ten years, solar cells will only be a little bit more efficient.<\/p>\n

I am not the only one who thinks this. The technologist Kevin Kelly has a\u00a0post<\/a>\u00a0containing more data, which shows that the improvement in batteries and in solar panels \u201chas been increasing steadily for two decades\u201d but \u201cnowhere near the rate of computer chips.\u201d Bill Gates isn\u2019t optimistic about finding a Moore\u2019s Law-like curve either,\u00a0telling people<\/a>\u00a0last summer that we\u2019ve been \u201cfooled\u201d by Moore\u2019s Law, but in fact \u201cthere are things that don\u2019t move forward.\u201d As examples, he noted that \u201cbatteries haven\u2019t improved hardly at all\u201d and that \u201cnuclear energy stopped [improving] in the 1970\u2019s.\u201d That\u2019s why Gates is hoping for an \u201cenergy miracle\u201d \u2014 business as usual just won\u2019t be good enough. Bruce Everett, a Professor at Tufts\u2019 Fletcher School,\u00a0believes<\/a>\u00a0the situation is even worse than the numbers indicate, as in his view the recent cost decreases in solar are not due to significantly better technology but due to cheaper Chinese manufacturing. Labor costs surely do not follow Moore\u2019s Law.<\/p>\n

What has happened for the last few decades is not good enough to make solar cheap enough by 2035 so that it makes sense for it to be 30% of our electricity output (wind energy does not follow Moore\u2019s Law but rather cost depends mostly on\u00a0how good the location is<\/a>, and we\u2019ve already taken some of the best, cheapest places to put wind farms). This is the case even if the President gives Berkeley Labs and MIT and lots of other smart people more money for R&D. That influx of money won\u2019t change physics, and I believe Moore\u2019s Law is much more strongly related to the underlying nature of the technologies than to the amount of money or brain power we throw at the problem. (I recognize that this is a controversial claim, and I hope to explain it in more detail in a few weeks).<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s a first pass at the the challenge \u2014 but I\u2019m sorry to say that it gets worse still. In my next post, I\u2019ll explain two other, related factors that work against the 80% goal.fas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Harrow 2. The Challenge This is the second post in a multi-part series. In Part 1, available\u00a0here, I explained […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-bG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}