The Past, Present, and Future of Alternative & Renewable Energy
by Marshall Joy and Dan Carracino
One of the core goals of Congressional Communities is to create a space where people of all political persuasions can gather to exchange ideas with members of their community. We do our best to present the information without bias, based on reliable sources and currently available facts.
Because the subject of climate change appears to present the American people with a somewhat stark, binary choice, it may seem like there is no way to address this subject without choosing sides. As with most things presented in “us versus them” terms, we have found that once you start digging a bit, things aren’t quite that black and white.
For instance, we have read several U.N. reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While these reports have been presented by both sides of the political aisle in clearly partisan terms, we have found the actual text to be not only credible but noticeably non-partisan. Regardless of where you yourself fall on the political spectrum, we invite you to read the material to see if our assessment of the neutrality of the presentation isn’t correct.
Enough with disclosures. Let’s start by defining some terms central to this issue.
Alternative Energy: An energy source other than fossil fuels.
Renewable Energy: From a source that can be replenished. Not all renewable energy sources are clean.
Clean Energy: Energy produced in ways that do not pollute the atmosphere. The primary sources of clean energy are solar energy, hydro energy, and wind energy.
Fossil Fuels: Coal, natural gas, petroleum.
Decarbonization: Reducing the use of carbon-based energy sources like fossil fuels.
Carbon Capture/Sequestration: Collecting carbon emissions before they’re released into the atmosphere/Burying those collected emissions.
Greenhouse Effect: Allows life to exist on Earth by keeping us warm. “… carbon dioxide [or CO2] absorbs infrared radiation. Most of the energy that escapes Earth’s atmosphere comes in this form, so extra CO2 means more energy absorption and an overall increase in the planet’s temperature.” Figure 1 explains the cycle.
The Scientific Consensus
A big reason why we’re talking about this issue is because our community thinks it is important. That tracks pretty well with the nationwide opinion. Figure 2 shows the percentage of Americans “very” or “somewhat” worried about global warming. It is broken up by political affiliation, but we want to focus on the black line, all Americans. In just over 5 years, the percentage of people worried has gone from 53 to 69%.
Now let’s address the evidence. NASA has some really interesting data. Figure 3 shows carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the corresponding Antarctic temperature, dating back 800,000 years.
That trend line has held for nearly a million years. But over the last hundred years or so, we have seen CO2 concentrations spike well outside the long-term norms. An overwhelming percentage of scientists agree that human activity is the cause for this rapid increase in greenhouse gases.
Ever since the Industrial Revolution began in the mid-1800’s, people discovered they could use coal and, later, petroleum to power their ships, trains, and all sorts of devices using the combustion engine. Over the next 170 years or so, fossil fuel usage skyrocketed. And, not surprisingly given the fact that CO2 is a byproduct of combustion, so did the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (Figure 4). Surpassing 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the first time in eight millennia is not something that happened by chance. It is the direct result of large scale burning of fossil fuels.
Global temperatures have been up and down year-to-year, but create a trend line with those temperatures, put it next to the graph of carbon dioxide emissions over that same time period, and the data looks pretty convincing in favor of the causation hypothesis. Increased atmospheric CO2 levels lead to increased temperatures (Figure 5).
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
In 1988, the U.N. commissioned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This panel brought the world’s top climate scientists together in order to establish the global goals necessary to reduce global warming.
The U.N. had dealt with environmental issues before, such as its role in hosting the Vienna Conference in 1985 and the Montreal Convention in 1987. The purpose of these meetings between dozens of countries was to reduce ozone layer depletion by phasing out the chemicals causing it. Encouragingly, industrialized nations around the world, seeing the irrefutable fact that holes had developed in the ozone and were caused by identifiable compounds, signed the Montreal Protocol of 1987 banning the use of ozone-depleting chemicals and have, for the most part, abided by that agreement.
In 1992, the U.N. hosted a meeting in Rio, the first to acknowledge the detrimental impact of the increasingly high concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. The document that emerged from the two-week meeting, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, had as its main goal the “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human-induced) interference with the climate system.” It was signed by 154 countries in the first month.
In 1997, in an extension to the Framework, the Kyoto Protocol was agreed upon by U.N. member states. The key difference was that the protocol established legally binding goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which were scheduled to go into force in 2005. Currently, only four nations have not signed the Protocol — the U.S., Canada, Andorra, and South Sudan.
When the treaty was drafted, the U.S. President signed it. However, the Senate passed a resolution unanimously opposing it.
The Kyoto Protocol was followed up by the Copenhagen Accord in 2005, and the Paris Agreement in 2015. Both agreements set specific goals for greenhouse gas emissions for every country in the world.
After Paris, the IPCC warned that the current goal of preventing a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels may not be enough to curb disastrous effects and have suggested a more aggressive goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The reports states, for example, “Coral reefs would decline by 70–90 percent with global warming of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2°C” That more aggressive goal, however, means nations must accelerate the actions they’re taking to reduce carbon emissions, such as decarbonizing the energy sector, investing in alternative energies that do not produce greenhouse gases, and overall conservation of existing energy. The reductions in greenhouse gas emissions needed to stay below the different temperature thresholds are briefly explained in Figure 6.
Where Are We With Those Goals?
Like much of the rest of the world, the United States has a ways to go. Figure 7 illustrates how the U.S. is roughly on the right path, but additional spikes in emissions will add years to the process. Some good news: while the original estimates showed an increase of 3.4%, the 2018 increase was closer to 2.7%
That is where the U.S. is. You may wonder how that compares to the rest of the world. Figure 8 shows the varying degrees of success countries are having with their goals in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Currently, most of the world is “insufficient” or below. The transition is progressive, allowing for a ramp-up period before stricter regulations and more ambitious goals are set every five years or so. The question is whether countries will actually ramp-up and meet their goals in future years or if they will continue to lag or even fall behind further.
The U.S. Energy Sector
As mentioned earlier, when fossil fuels were introduced, usage exploded. Figure 9 demonstrates a snapshot of the evolution of the nation’s mix of energy sources, starting from the founding of the country in 1776 all the way to 2017.
You’ll notice the early Americans burned only wood until applications for coal to fuel steamships and locomotives were discovered. The first year that coal shows up in the mix is 1851 (accounting for 10% of energy consumption), and in 50 years, it grows to 70%, dominating the market share. Since the introduction of natural gas and petroleum, coal has declined in market share.
You’ll also see that in 2017, hydroelectric and “other renewables” account for less than 10%. Let’s look more closely at those “other renewables.” Figure 10 presents the same information as above, but with a more detailed look at the types of renewable energy used.
What this pie chart makes clear is that the U.S. still gets 80% of its energy from fossil fuels, all of which produce greenhouse gases. The chart also helps tell the story of where the other 20% of our energy comes from. So let’s look at those two slices of the pie now.
Nuclear Electric Power (9%)
Nuclear Energy does not produce greenhouse gases, but it does produce radioactive waste. To date, all reactor designs have been for fission reactions, where heavy elements (primarily uranium) are split. It is a sector with a troubled past and an uncertain future. The Three-Mile Island accident in 1979 left many in the United States fearful of the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear meltdown and fearful of nuclear energy as a whole. In the aftermath of the accident, nuclear power plant production in the U.S. came to a virtual standstill, with only two plants coming online in the decades since.
Popular anxiety was further heightened by the Chernobyl accident in Russia just seven years later, in 1986; and more recently, with the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011. Despite these devastating events, nuclear energy is seen by some climate scientists as being a necessary component in helping nations reach the requisite greenhouse gas emission targets.
Of some promise — if significant public and political opposition can be overcome — are new Gen 4 designs that are less expensive to build (but still expensive); can use spent fuel rods as a source for fuel; and, most importantly, because of their design, cannot meltdown. There are still important technological hurdles to overcome as well.
Of even greater promise, are fusion reactors that produce energy from light, abundant elements like hydrogen and produce very little radioactive waste. It is not impossible that in the latter part of this century most of the world’s energy will be produced this way. The question is how to generate energy in the meantime.
Renewable Energy (11%)
Biomass Energy makes up 45% percent of renewable energy consumption, and 5% of overall energy consumption.
An important distinction of biomass from other forms of renewable energy is it uses carbon. You extract energy out of biomass products by burning them, which produces greenhouse gases. Because biomass energies like wood and ethanol (distilled from corn) can be regrown, they are considered ‘renewable,’ but they are not clean. Compared to other technologies like solar and wind energy, biomass energy has a much larger carbon footprint. It’s debatable how much better, if at all, biomass energy is than traditional fossil fuels when it comes to environmental impact.
Biomass fuels also uses a lot of resources. Consider ethanol. 40% of corn grown in the U.S. is used for its production. To visualize just how much that is, the farmland used to grow corn for ethanol is slightly larger than the entire state of New York.
The promise of ethanol to reduce our reliance on petroleum is real, in part because a gallon of ethanol burns a third less CO2 than a gallon of gasoline does. However, because of its chemical makeup, the more ethanol in the blend, the worse your gas mileage, and the more of it you need to go the same distance. This is because you “get 3% to 4% fewer miles per gallon on E10 (90% gasoline, 10% ethanol) and 4% to 5% fewer on E15 than on 100% gasoline.” The virtue of using ethanol and other biofuels may be better realized with advancements in production, especially shifting to non-food sources “such as tree trimmings, … wheat straw, and fast growing grasses.”
Hydroelectric Energy is the single largest source of clean renewable energy in the nation. Accounting for 25% of renewable energy consumption and a little less than 3% of overall energy, hydropower is one of the oldest forms of renewable energy. The first major dams in the nation were built as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal federal works projects, with the most recent dam completed in 1985. Even though they produce a lot of power, they come with their own set of concerns. Disrupting local river ecosystems is principle among them. Their large investment and construction costs make it unlikely that more dams will be built in the near future.
There are, though, smaller-scale solutions within hydroelectric energy. Tidal barrages, tidal turbines, and wave power are being tested and researched. These technologies have the potential to make entrance into the hydroelectric production market more accessible and cost-effective than new large-scale dam projects.
Wind Energy is just below hydroelectric in terms of usage. It makes up 21% of renewable sources, but just 2.2% of overall energy. Wind energy has one of the smallest carbon footprints of any energy production method, producing 30–50 times less greenhouse gas emissions than natural gas and 70–90 times less than coal.
Wind is already being generated throughout the U.S, with four midwestern states accounting for more than half of the nation’s wind generation, and another five bringing the total to over 70%. It is not without its challenges, though.
A huge problem with wind energy is that it, like most solar, is not dispatchable. This means it cannot be turned on and off as demand increases or decreases, a requirement to sell in energy markets. As you probably know, wind turbines only work when the wind is blowing, so to overcome the dispatchability problem, a potential solution is to develop better batteries to store the energy when the wind is blowing and dispatch it when needed. Another big obstacle is the ‘not in my backyard’ (NIMBY) phenomenon, where people do not want big wind turbines installed near their homes for fear of ruined views or depreciated property values, among other adverse effects.
Solar Energy accounts for 6% of renewable energy, and just 0.6% of overall energy consumption. This low figure usually surprises people, given the big push towards solar arrays on rooftops. Part of the problem is yield. It takes about 20 residential solar array systems to equal the amount of energy produced by a single wind turbine.
There are two main types of solar: photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP). Solar panels on rooftops are photovoltaic. CSP is a more utility-scale method. It essentially reflects light and heat to a central point in order, ultimately, to drive a turbine, much like the way nuclear power plants work.
The important difference between PV and CSP is that CSP is dispatchable.
History of Legislation
Energy policy as we know it today was shaped in large part by the 1973 Oil Embargo. The United States began to realize how reliant our energy sector was on foreign nations over whom we had no control. From then on, energy independence (mining our own resources for energy) and conservation of the energy we use became policy goals. The Dept. of Energy was created in 1977 to enforce U.S. energy policy.
The 1978 National Energy Act was among the first pieces of legislation the newly-created Dept. of Energy was given to implement. This bill established tax incentives for alternative fuel users, disincentivized ‘gas guzzler’ vehicles, set mandatory energy efficiency standards for some electric devices such as appliances, and created the first programs to encourage use of renewable energy such as wind or solar. The 1980 Energy Security Act echoed the original bill, with more renewable energy incentives, as well as government loan guarantees for small-scale biomass projects.
By the 90’s and 2000’s, biomass projects that were small-scale a decade or so earlier had taken off. The 2002 Farm Security and Rural Investment Act (Farm Bill) established a program for government procurement of bio-based products. The 2005 Energy Policy Act reinforced this move towards biomass by increasing the required amounts of renewable fuel in gasoline sold in the U.S.
While this timeline of energy policy was playing out, something not as obvious but nonetheless important was coevolving with policy, the state of the energy markets. This started with a rule in the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 which “require[d] electric utilities to purchase electric energy from … small power production facilities.” Prior to this ruling, energy market share was dominated by a state’s largest producer of inexpensive energy, many times a subsidiary or descendent of the same company that first set up electricity in the area.
Then, in 1992, the Federal Energy Resources Commission (FERC) was given the authority to “provide open access for all electricity suppliers to the U.S. power transmission grid.” California became the first state to allow a competitive wholesale electricity market in April 1998. These Orders were meant to dismantle the natural monopoly some utility companies were enjoying. Figure 11 shows resident rates for electricity in regulated and deregulated states.
In the years covered — 1997 to 2018 — both regulated and non- regulated states have had a 3.8 cent per kilowatt hour (kWh) increase. Since the deregulated states started at a lower price, their percentage increase has been higher.
One very important bill to mention here that is related to Alternative and Renewable Energy is the 1963 Clean Air Act. This law, which has been amended a number of times, is the primary federal bill used to address the issue of reducing greenhouse gases. Groups opposed to the use of this bill initiated a lawsuit that led to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that found the EPA was justified in using the Act to designate greenhouse gases, including CO2, as pollutants.
Government Subsidies
As is often the case, Congress legislates in two ways. The first, of course, are the bills they pass that get signed in to law. The second and less obvious method is through the budget. Whether it be subsidies such as grants or tax cuts to energy generators, the energy sector relies in part on the yearly federal budget for some percentage of their revenue. Figure 12 illustrates the share of the $15 billion in subsidies and support that went to each generation source in fiscal year 2016.
The allocations here seem to show Congress directing most energy subsidies to renewable energy. However, biomass energy like ethanol gets a substantial portion of the renewable energy budget, leaving about a quarter of the total amount for clean energy initiatives. Also, this graph does not take into account an estimated $81 billion per year that goes to protecting global oil supplies. That is over five times as much as the $15 billion spent on subsidies and support for the entire energy sector at home.
If greenhouse gas emissions are an issue that two-thirds of Americans are worried about, investing even more into clean renewable energy technology and energy market unification/coordination would seem to help. As of this writing, Congress has not addressed this in a comprehensive way.
Patchwork Approach to Climate Legislation
Though the U.S. has no comprehensive national climate policy, there has been legislation that has affected greenhouse gas emissions.
The first we’ve already mentioned — The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (part of the National Energy Act of 1978)—which promoted the use of renewable energy and set federal regulations for generation and conservation. However, it was left to individual states to implement the policies as they saw fit. Many states did nothing.
Among the states that did take action, many adopted different forms of a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), requiring a percentage of the state’s electricity to come from renewable energy. They vary in ambition, as Figure 13 shows.
The most recent effort we’ll talk about is the Clean Power Plan of 2015, an ambitious, comprehensive and controversial executive policy aimed to reduce carbon emissions to the levels and in the timeframe established in the Paris Agreement. The policy set targets for the states and offered them flexibility in meeting their goals. Given the scope of the policy, it met serious challenges, which essentially argued that this was executive branch overreach, and that it was up to Congress to legislate the issue. The policy was never implemented due to court challenges and the election of a new administration opposed to legislation and policies limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
What About Jobs?
In June 2017, when the newly elected administration announced the United States would be withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, industry executives from twenty-five major American companies took to Twitter and news media to argue the decision would be detrimental. The companies included Amazon, Disney, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, and Shell, among others.
This relationship between the environment and industry is an interesting one. In defense of the withdrawal, the administration asserts “the decision to exit the deal was made to protect American jobs.” Scientists have challenged this rationale, summarized by this observation: “… on average, more jobs are created for each unit of electricity generated from renewable sources than from fossil fuels.”
So what do the job numbers actually tell us? The Union of Concerned Scientists found that in 2016, the solar industry employed about 260,000 people, whereas the coal industry employed 160,000. That’s about 5 jobs in the solar industry for every 3 jobs in the coal industry. The U.S. Energy Information Association estimates the 2016 ratio to be more than 4 to 1, solar to coal (Figure 14). This employment ratio so favorable to solar is true even though solar accounts for less than 1% of energy consumption and coal accounts for 13%. That’s a pretty good indicator that a switch to solar would be a job creator.
The Impact of Vehicles
Figure 15 divides U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by economic sector. That large red strip on the top is emissions from transportation. Cars are ubiquitous in America today and they contribute a great deal to greenhouse gas emissions. For example, when you gas up, every gallon you buy will eventually be converted through combustion into about 19 lbs of CO2.
To reduce greenhouse gas-emissions from vehicles, a growing number of people and auto manufacturers are moving to electric vehicles. It’s important to address some common myths surrounding the electric car.
First, you may have heard that electric cars produce just as much CO2 as conventional automobiles. It is true that the production of electric cars require about 1,000 more pounds of greenhouse gases than conventional cars due to the CO2 generated in creating the batteries used in electric vehicles. However, this is only true during the production phase of the vehicle. Over its lifetime, after factoring in both the battery and the source of the energy to recharge the car, an electric vehicle produces less than half of what a gas driven car produces. Here’s a short, fun little video that explains the science behind these outcomes.
Second, it is false that the use of ‘rare earth’ elements in the production of electric cars limits the availability of more electric cars in the future. Simply put, there are enough resources to build a much larger volume of electric cars than currently in production. There are issues with how these minerals are mined, but the minerals are abundant.
Lastly, and this isn’t so much a myth as a misunderstanding — driving an electric car does not mean there is no CO2 footprint. The car has to be recharged, and 80% of electricity is still produced with some form of fossil fuels. In other words, electric cars are only as clean as the grid they are connected to.
Conclusion
Global warming is an issue that 7 out of 10 Americans are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ worried about (see Figure 2, above). Yet Congress has shown little ability to agree on legislation that would reduce greenhouse gases. It’s important to remember that scientists are urging nations to move towards cleaner energy sources quickly because they see procrastination only making the problem more difficult to solve.
*This article is an expanded version of a presentation we made to our Laguna Beach, California Congressional Community. To learn more about Congressional Communities and what we’re trying to build, please visit our website.
