Cleaner Emerging Energies

Renewable technologies are making some strides in the electricity and transportation sectors, and there have been recent advances in technologies that leverage existing fossil fuels infrastructure such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)1 and integrated combined coal gasification (ICCG).

Alternatives and Renewable Energy

Renewable energy is drawn from resources that replenish naturally and are "virtually inexhaustible in duration."2 For more than three decades, the world's proportion of renewable energy production has increased from a small base. It is estimated that renewables make up 13-18 percent of the world's energy supply, depending on the calculation method. These percentages include non-commercial energy, such as energy from traditional biomass such as firewood and dung.34 Renewables fueled 18 percent of global electricity production in 2004, with 90% of that share coming from hydropower plants.5

As energy companies, governments and the investment community continue to invest in opportunities to develop renewable energy sources, they are learning more about the challenges with bringing these sources to market, including issues related to infrastructure, economies of scale, unequal subsidies and taxes, market failure to value hard-to-quantify public benefits and market barriers.6 For more discussion on how renewable energies can become cost competitive and provide a greater share of the world’s energy mix, refer to the Renewables discussion topic on willyoujoinus.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asserts that existing technologies already in use or in pilot stages can be sufficiently scaled up to stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentrations at the desired levels. Some alternative technologies that are showing promise include:

• Solar power has been a rapidly expanding area of investment and innovation as a result of state incentives, federal tax credits and long-term electric contracts. But, low fossil fuel prices are likely to slow solar's growth
• Wind power has quickly become an economically competitive alternative, not just in affluent parts of the world but also in rapidly expanding economies. Impediments to growth of wind generating capacity include low fossil fuel prices, uncertainties related to tax subsidies, local concerns about landscape impacts, natural conditions such as the intermittent nature of wind, the need for areas where wind speeds are sufficient to efficiently drive turbines, and the infrastructure challenge of linking produced energy into the grid.7
• Researchers and investors are developing biofuels, including ethanol and green diesel, for blending into the fuels used in vehicles.8 Further investment, innovation, and market access are needed to ensure environmental benefits and commercial viability.9 For additional discussion on the viability of biofuels, refer to the Biofuels discussion topic on willyoujoinus.
• As a transportation fuel, hydrogen offers very long term promise as it can be made from a variety of conventional and renewable energy sources and is a clean source of energy.10 Fuel cells convert hydrogen efficiently into electricity, and the only byproduct of this chemical process is pure water. The challenge with hydrogen is that it is not found freely in nature: it must be extracted from other substances. As a result, there are substantial technical hurdles to producing, storing, and distributing hydrogen.
• Other key renewables technology under development include hydro (from moving water), geothermal (the earth’s heat), biomass (landfill gas, agricultural methane gas and plant material), ocean thermal (temperature differences), wave action (the rise and fall of waves) and tidal action (moving water mass from tides).

Carbon Sequestration

Carbon sequestration, also known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), involves separating out carbon produced during fossil fuel fired power generation and storing it deep underground in existing geological formations such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs.11 A recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report found that "carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is the critical enabling technology to help reduce CO² emissions significantly while also allowing coal to meet the world's pressing energy needs."12 However, policy action will be needed to encourage power providers to build plants that are capable of CCS; government support for full scale CCS projects as well as a legal and regulatory framework that is conducive to CCS are still lacking.13 Another possible route for preventing CO2 from entering the atmosphere is CO² transformation; this 'end-of-pipe' technology would remove carbon dioxide from flue gas in pipes.

Cleaner Fossil Fuels

• For power generation, natural gas has clean-burning properties, lower greenhouse gas emissions and competitive capital costs when compared with alternatives such as coal or nuclear. Infrastructure constraints to deliver natural gas from remote locations to markets are being overcome with large scale investments in liquefied natural gas facilities (LNG is a process of liquefying or condensing the gas for transport in ships). Visit the Natural Gas discussion topic on willyoujoinus.
• Gas-to-liquids, also known as GTL, is a technology that is used to produce clean-burning diesel fuel, liquid petroleum gas and naphtha from natural gas.14 GTL diesel is distinguished by its higher performance and lower environmental impacts as compared with traditional diesel fuels.15 There is currently investment in research and development of GTL technologies; the challenge is to build plants that can streamline the gas-to-liquids process. One of the advantages of GTL is that products are readily transportable once they are refined.16
• The growing demand for transportation fuels has resulted in the development of other fossil sources for liquid fuels, such as unconventional oil (heavy oil and oil sands, with shale oil down the road potentially,) and coal-to-liquids (CTL) technologies. Since these resources are associated with significant C02 emissions, CCS will be an essential part of the story. The National Petroleum Council has found that "CCS can be directly applied to the extraction of unconventional oil and to the CTL process, and has the potential to mitigate the extra CO2 burden beyond that from using these fuels for transportation."17

Nuclear

• Nuclear power plants offer sources of energy with virtually no emissions of carbon dioxide. However, nuclear energy requires economical new plants, assurance of operational safety, a plan for waste storage, and management of uranium security.18 While France has relied on nuclear power for the vast majority of its power generation during the last 20 years, many countries continue to debate safety and security concerns. Visit the Nuclear Energy discussion topic on willyoujoinus.

The graphic below demonstrates that many of the most cost effective CO2 abatement opportunities could be achieved with existing strategies and technologies (e.g. air conditioning, lighting systems).

1. 1 Enkvist, Per-Anders, Tomas Nauclér, and Jerker Rosander, "A cost curve for greenhouse gas reduction", The McKinsey Quarterly, 2007 Number 1. http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/PDFDownload.aspx?L2=3&L3=41&ar=1911
2. 2 "Renewable Energy: Glossary", EIA http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/rea_data/gl.html
3. 3 "Renewables 2007: Global Status Report", Renewable Energy Policy Network, 2007, p.9. http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE2007_Global_Status_Report.pdf
4. 4 "Renewables in Global Energy Supply: An IEA Fact Sheet", IEA, January 2007, p.3. http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2006/renewable_factsheet.pdf
5. 5 "Renewables in Global Energy Supply: An IEA Fact Sheet", IEA, January 2007, p.5. http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2006/renewable_factsheet.pdf
6. 6 "Barriers to the Use of Renewable Energy Technologies", Union of Concerned Scientists http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/renewable_energy_basics/barriers-to-renewable-energy-technologies.html
7. 7 Kammen, Daniel. "The Rise of Renewable Energy", Scientific American, Volume 295 Number 3, September 2006, p.89.
8. 8 Ibid.
9. 9 "Fuel Choices for Advanced Vehicles", American Petroleum Institute. http://www.api.org/aboutoilgas/otherfuels/upload/25132_FUEL_CELL_BROCHURE_FINAL.pdf
10. 10 "Hydrogen", Chevron. http://www.chevron.com/deliveringenergy/hydrogen/
11. 11 Hawkins, David, Daniel Lashof and Robert Williams. "What to do About Coal", Scientific American, Volume 295 Number 3, September 2006, p.70.
12. 12 "The Future of Coal", March 14, 2007, p.11. http://web.mit.edu/coal/
13. 13 Ibid. and, "Facing the Hard Truths About Energy", National Petroleum Council, 2007, p.29. http://www.npchardtruthsreport.org/download.php
14. 14 "Gas-to-Liquids", Chevron http://www.chevron.com/deliveringenergy/gastoliquids/
15. 15 Ibid.
16. 16 Ibid.
17. 17 "Facing the Hard Truths About Energy", National Petroleum Council, 2007, p.237. http://www.npchardtruthsreport.org/download.php
18. 18 "The Future of Nuclear Power", MIT, 2003. http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/
19. 19 "Seven Principles of Addressing Climate Change", Chevron. http://www.chevron.com/globalissues/climatechange/sevenprinciples/. Data based on "Developing a Cost Curve for Gas Reduction", McKinsey Quarterly, 2007 Number 1.