About the Future of Energy Policy

In This Article:

- Energy Challenges and Policy actions to strengthen Nation's  economical competitiveness 

Energy, concerns and strategies are on many peoples minds these days, and rightly so. I recently had the pleasure to see Steven Koonin's, former under Secretary for Science of the DOE, presentation about the use and future of energy from his perspective. In paving the way for future policies, technology developments and societal change, it is quite clear that three major targets for energy shall be met:

1. Energy - Security
2. Energy - Competitiveness
3. Energy - Environmental Impacts

The first one, Security, targets the independence of the U.S. from other countries' energy supply, like raw-oil from the middle east, or sand-oil from Canada for instance. So, do we not produce enough oil to satisfy our demand? Answer no (see Fig. 1). As we can see about one quarter of our energy demand is imported, corresponding to $1B every day leaving the country. The second target, competitiveness, addresses efficiency improvements leading to economical stability and leadership, and ensures our competitive edge in the future. Lastly, we aim to achieve these by keeping an eye on the environmental impacts such that our grandkids can enjoy this planet as well. 

Fig. 1 | Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration,
Annual Energy Review 2010, Table 1.1 (October 2010)

The big-picture goal with these three sectors is to gain Energy Independence. Why? Because  Energy independence means Price independence, thus economical and ultimate political freedom and flexibility. 

From history we can often learn a lot. Taking a look at Nation's changing Energy portfolio over time, we see that it typically takes tens of years for a new energy source to have an meaningful impact (Fig.2). This also means  that if we want to changintroiduce changes, we should start early. Interestingly, if we break down the energy demand into the two sectors Transportation and Stationary  we find that the majority (67%) are Stationary energy uses such as in buildings and industry. 

Fig. 2 | U.S. Energy source use over time showing a
rate of change of tens of years. Thus, if new and
clean energy sources are to be introduced, we must
start now since the lead time might be 30+ years.  

Steven Chu, DOE's Secretary for Energy, said: "We are at a crossroad". One direction is to walk the 'green' energy path, the other would business-as-usual. Bringing these two choices into global context is is obvious that many nations (Europe probably being the leader) are heavily investing into clean technologies. The question is, will the U.S. use its innovation competitiveness to it's advantage to met the energy challenge head-on or not? Since clean technologies also mean high efficiency, new jobs, higher standard of living, a sustainable future, it is clear that we must lead the development of clean energy. The goal is to ensure that policies that guide this process ensure an impactful and efficient economical future. So, the question is how should the government, in particular the DOE, choose among the many technical possible activities?

To this end the Quadrennial Technology Review (QTR) were introduced, with the main focus on accelerating transformational change of Nations energy systems to meet the challenges of energy demand. Furthermore the QTR optimize the DOE's activities and lay out feasible roadmaps, discuss inter organizational  processes towards improving Nations long term effectiveness. The QTR not only limits it's  discussion to the governmental agencies, but actively joins forces with the private sector. This makes a lot of sense, since the latter holds most of the utilities and expertise on the technical implementations of potential future energy portfolios. Most interestingly the QTR asks for the citizens' input on guiding these discussions, by encouraging to submit opinions. This public engagement was part of the Obama Administration's committeemen to an 'Open Government'. I strongly welcome such political crowed sourcing since it helps citizens to become active and engaged in the policy process - hence it's a way to make people care, which will reduce the reluctance of supporting the country through rightful taxes.    

  

What were the results or findings of these QTR discussions? The report mentions six key strategies to focus on towards strengthening nations competitiveness and protect the climate at the same time. These six factors are:

1. Increasing Vehicle Efficiency
2. Electric Vehicles
3. Alternative carbon-hydro fuels (aka. alternatives to classical gasoline)
4. Increasing Building Efficiency
5. Modernizing the Grid
6. Deploy Clean Electricity

I believe these technological sectors are good choices towards meeting the energy challenge. However, new technologies can only get us so far. Another, often overlooked, significant factor towards driving change (energy source change), is to look at societal pulling factors. Thus, questions about energy perception, awareness, acceptance and adoption, trust, risks, , and regulatory influences are areas we typically ignore in the energy discussion. For instance not much efforts have been placed on economics modeling that attempt to include behavioral factors of society, such as best practices for incentives.  

In conclusion, it would be interesting to fuse the research fields of sociology with economics, public policy and engineering to lower thinking barriers and view this energy challenge holistically towards creating a strong economical future with green solutions leading the way. 

The Energy Challenge - Experience & Analysis

In This Article:

- Two Looks into the Energy Future: ex-DOE Under Secretary & Google.org

Raymond L. Orbach, the director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas is not an unknown figure in the field of Energy and Public Policy. Spending 40 years in research and administrative fields at the University of California system made him an ideal candidate to take on the in 2005 newly established position of Under Secretary of the DOE department of Science.


Analyzing the finalized budget, it is obvious that the Congress' support for R&D is sustained and did not suffer the feared strong cuts, so far the good news. Mr. Orbach was asked whether he sees the long-term goal of sustainable energy security conflicting with the more near-to-mid term challenges of a weak economy and national security. Interestingly, he does not see a conflict at all between these two goals and argues that we should use our technology R&D to 'green' fossil energies. 

This argument seems rather 'retro' in spirit   and would buy us some time at best. I think that delaying pure low-to-zero emission technologies will (i) slow down R&D efforts and SBIR momentum built up by the DOE, and (ii) not to help enable a 'green' industry and public awareness. In fact a recent Google.org study found that "Delaying Innovation = Delaying Benefits" (see left Figure). The full report can be freely downloaded here. The Google.org team's analysis found that if a clean energy breakthrough scenario would be delayed by only 5 years the accumulated economical loss from now until 2050 would be about $2.3-3.2 Trillion in unrealized GDP gains, which is an equivalent to about 1.3 million net jobs lost. Moreover, it would put 8-28 unnecessary gigatons of avoidable greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere. Going back to Mr. Orbach, one wonders how exactly he wants to avoid  the GHG emissions from the combustion of tar oil from Canadian sand, which he speaks so highly of?
    

The figure on the left summarizes the  Google.org team's findings painting a sunny outlook if energy innovation shall come through. In such a scenario the jobs will be created, the GDP raised, GHG emission spared, and energy security increased - all at the same time. 


Regarding PV Mr. Orbach and Google's report see a similar future; that is the  large-scale installation of PV at a cost effective way. Towards this aim the teaming of DOE's support (especially the Sun Shot and Sun Shot Incubator programs) and Google's close to $1 Billion dollar investments, many of which for PV, are good indicators that this goal can be reached.


However, the Ex-Legislator and Google's analysis seem to disagree on what technology can be defined as 'Clean Power' in the first place. While Orbach argues that radiation damage and gas storage should be improved alongside renewables the Mountain View company strictly considers PV, concentrated solar, wind, geothermal and retrofit carbon capture & sequestration (CSS) in their 'Clean Power Breakthrough' scenario.

Aligned are both parties again when it comes to implementations of future green power. Here Orbach sees that "good policy must be based on good science", and Google's analysis showed a clear correlation between the number of created jobs and GDP raise if  incentivizing policy legislations were added to the future scenario (see left Figure). 

In conclusion, it is foreseeable, that the global energy appetite is climbing and that we must address it. So, lets's be 'smart' and quick in the way we implement this energy revolution.