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“Harnessing Wind, Solar, and Geothermal Energy” from World on the Edge (2011)

Lester Brown

Editors’ Introduction

Rethinking energy consumption and sources is a cornerstone of sustainable urbanism. The first (and most cost-effective) priority is usually to conserve energy and improve the efficiency with which we use it. But beyond that, a variety of renewable energy sources are coming into their own to help power the twenty-first- century metropolis.

In this selection, Lester Brown surveys renewable energy technologies and options worldwide. Brown is the founder of two influential nonprofit research organizations: the Worldwatch Institute and Earth Policy Institute. Since the 1970s he has taken a uniquely global approach to analyzing development trends through many publications. Recently he has focused on preparing a set of “Plan B” policy options for a sustainable global society. His books include Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity (New York: Norton, 2012), Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: Norton, 2009), and the book from which this selection is taken, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse (New York: Norton, 2011).

As fossil fuel prices rise, as oil insecurity deepens,

and as concerns about climate change cast a shadow

over the future of coal, a new world energy economy

is emerging. The old energy economy, fueled by

oil, coal, and natural gas, is being replaced with an

economy powered by wind, solar, and geothermal

energy. Despite the global economic crisis, this

energy transition is moving at a pace and on a scale

that we could not have imagined even two years ago.

The transition is well under way in the United

States, where both oil and coal consumption have

recently peaked. Oil consumption fell 8 percent

between 2007 and 2010 and will likely continue fall-

ing over the longer term. During the same period,

coal use also dropped 8 percent as a powerful

grassroots anti-coal movement brought the licens-

ing of new coal plants to a near standstill and began

to work on closing existing ones.

While U.S. coal use was falling, some 300-wind

farms with a generating capacity of 21,000 mega-

watts came online. Geothermal generating capacity,

which had been stagnant for 20 years, came alive.

In mid-2010, the U.S.-based Geothermal Energy

Association announced that 152 new geothermal

power plants were being developed, enough to

triple U.S. geothermal generating capacity. On the

solar front, solar cell installations are doubling every

two years. The dozens of U.S. solar thermal power

plants in the works could collectively add some

9,900 megawatts of generating capacity.

Wheeler, S. M., & Beatley, T. (Eds.). (2014). Sustainable urban development reader. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from asulib-ebooks on 2020-08-19 19:18:14.

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L E S T E R B R O W N206

This chapter lays out the worldwide Plan B goals

for developing renewable sources of energy by 2020.

The goal of cutting carbon emissions 80 percent

by 2020 is based on what we think is needed to

avoid civilization-threatening climate change. This

is not Plan A, business as usual. This is Plan B – a

wartime mobilization, an all-out effort to restructure

the world energy economy. To reach the Plan B

goal, we replace all coal- and oil-fired electricity

generation with that from renewable sources.

Whereas the twentieth century was marked by the

globalization of the world energy economy as coun-

tries everywhere turned to oil, much of it coming

from the Middle East, this century will see the

localization of energy production as the world turns

to wind, solar, and geothermal energy.

The Plan B energy economy, which will be

powered largely by electricity, does not rely on

a buildup in nuclear power. If we used full-cost

pricing – insisting that utilities pay for disposing of

nuclear waste, decommissioning worn-out plants,

and insuring reactors against possible accidents

and terrorist attacks – no one would build a nuclear

plant. They are simply not economical. Plan B also

excludes the oft-discussed option of capturing and

sequestering carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal-fired

power plants. Given the costs and the lack of inves-

tor interest within the coal community itself, this

technology is not likely to be economically viable

by 2020, if ever. Instead, wind is the centerpiece

of the Plan B energy economy. It is abundant, low

cost, and widely distributed; it scales up easily and

can be developed quickly. A 2009 survey of world

wind resources published by the U.S. National

Academy of Sciences reports a wind-generating

potential on land that is 40 times the current world

consumption of electricity from all sources.

For many years, a small handful of countries

dominated growth in wind power, but this is

changing as the industry goes global, with more

than 70 countries now developing wind resources.

Between 2000 and 2010, world wind electric gener-

ating capacity increased at a frenetic pace from

17,000 megawatts to nearly 200,000 megawatts.

The United States, with 35,000 megawatts of

wind generating capacity, leads the world in

harnessing wind, followed by China and Germany

with 26,000 megawatts each. Texas, long the lead-

ing U.S. oil-producing state, is now also the nation’s

leading generator of electricity from wind. It has

9,700 megawatts of wind generating capacity

online, 370 megawatts more under construction,

and a huge amount under development. If all of

the wind farms projected for 2025 are completed,

Texas will have 38,000 megawatts of wind generat-

ing capacity – the equivalent of 38 coal-fired power

plants. This would satisfy roughly 90 percent of the

current residential electricity needs of the state’s

25 million people.

In July 2010, ground was broken for the Alta

Wind Energy Center (AWEC) in the Tehachapi Pass,

some 75 miles north of Los Angeles, California. At

1,550 megawatts, it will be the largest U.S. wind

farm. The AWEC is part of what will eventually be

4,500 megawatts of renewable power generation,

enough to supply electricity to some 3 million

homes.

Since wind turbines occupy only 1 percent

of the land covered by a wind farm, farmers and

ranchers can continue to grow grain and graze

cattle on land devoted to wind farms. In effect,

they double-crop their land, simultaneously harvest-

ing electricity and wheat, corn, or cattle. With no

investment on their part, farmers and ranchers

typically receive $3,000–10,000 a year in royalties

for each wind turbine on their land. For thousands

of ranchers in the U.S. Great Plains, wind royalties

will dwarf their net earnings from cattle sales. In

considering the energy productivity of land, wind

turbines are in a class by themselves. For example,

an acre of land in northern Iowa planted in corn

can yield $1,000 worth of ethanol per year. That

same acre used to site a wind turbine can produce

$300,000 worth of electricity per year. This helps

explain why investors find wind farms so attractive.

Impressive though U.S. wind energy growth is,

the expansion now under way in China is even

more so. China has enough onshore harnessable

wind energy to raise its current electricity consump-

tion 16-fold. Today, most of China’s 26,000 megawatts

of wind generating capacity come from 50- to

100-megawatt wind farms. Beyond the many other

wind farms of that size that are on the way, China’s

new Wind Base program is creating seven wind

mega-complexes of 10 to 38 gigawatts each in

six provinces (1 gigawatt equals 1,000 megawatts).

When completed, these complexes will have a

generating capacity of more than 130 gigawatts.

This is equivalent to building one new coal plant

per week for two and a half years. Of these 130

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gigawatts, 7 gigawatts will be in the coastal waters

of Jiangsu Province, one of China’s most highly

industrialized provinces. China is planning a total

of 23 gigawatts of offshore wind generating capa-

city. The country’s first major offshore project, the

102-megawatt Donghai Bridge Wind Farm near

Shanghai, is already in operation.

In Europe, which now has 2,400 megawatts of

offshore wind online, wind developers are planning

140 gigawatts of offshore wind generating capacity,

mostly in the North Sea. There is enough harness-

able wind energy in offshore Europe to satisfy the

continent’s needs seven times over.

In September 2010, the Scottish government

announced that it was replacing its goal of 50 per-

cent renewable electricity by 2020 with a new goal

of 80 percent. By 2025, Scotland expects renew-

ables to meet all of its electricity needs. Much of

the new capacity will be provided by offshore wind.

Measured by share of electricity supplied by wind,

Denmark is the national leader at 21 percent. Three

north German states now get 40 percent or more

of their electricity from wind. For Germany as a

whole, the figure is 8 percent and climbing. And

in the state of Iowa, enough wind turbines came

online in the last few years to produce up to 20

percent of that state’s electricity.

Denmark is looking to push the wind share of

its electricity to 50 percent by 2025, with most

of the additional power coming from offshore. In

contemplating this prospect, Danish planners have

turned conventional energy policy upside down.

They plan to use wind as the mainstay of their

electrical generating system and to use fossil-fuel-

generated power to fill in when the wind dies down.

Spain, which has 19,000 megawatts of wind-

generating capacity for its 45 million people, got

14 percent of its electricity from wind in 2009. On

November 8th of that year, strong winds across

Spain enabled wind turbines to supply 53 percent

of the country’s electricity over a five-hour stretch.

London Times reporter Graham Keeley wrote from

Barcelona that “the towering white wind turbines

which loom over Castilla-La Mancha – home of

Cervantes’s hero, Don Quixote – and which domi-

nate other parts of Spain, set a new record in wind

energy production.”

In 2007, when Turkey issued a request for pro-

posals to build wind farms, it received bids to build

a staggering 78,000 megawatts of wind generating

capacity, far beyond its 41,000 megawatts of

total electrical generating capacity. Having selected

7,000 megawatts of the most promising proposals,

the government is issuing construction permits.

In wind-rich Canada, Ontario, Quebec, and

Alberta are the leaders in installed capacity. Ontario,

Canada’s most populous province, has received

applications for offshore wind development rights

on its side of the Great Lakes that could result in

some 21,000 megawatts of generating capacity. The

provincial goal is to back out all coal-fired power

by 2014. On the U.S. side of Lake Ontario, New

York State is also requesting proposals. Several of

the seven other states that border the Great Lakes

are planning to harness lake winds.

At the heart of Plan B is a crash program to

develop 4,000 gigawatts (4 million megawatts) of

wind generating capacity by 2020, enough to cover

over half of world electricity consumption in the

Plan B economy. This will require a near doubling

of capacity every two years, up from a doubling

every three years over the last decade. This climate-

stabilizing initiative would mean the installation of

2 million wind turbines of 2 megawatts each.

Manufacturing 2 million wind turbines over the next

10 years sounds intimidating – until it is compared

with the 70 million automobiles the world produces

each year. At $3 million per installed turbine, the

2 million turbines would mean spending $600 billion

per year worldwide between now and 2020. This

compares with world oil and gas capital expendi-

tures that are projected to double from $800 billion

in 2010 to $1.6 trillion in 2015.

The second key component of the Plan B energy

economy is solar energy, which is even more ubi-

quitous than wind energy. It can be harnessed with

both solar photovoltaics (PV) and solar thermal

collectors. Solar PV – both silicon-based and thin

film – converts sunlight directly into electricity. A

large-scale solar thermal technology, often referred

to as concentrating solar power (CSP), uses reflec-

tors to concentrate sunlight on a liquid, producing

steam to drive a turbine and generate electricity.

On a smaller scale, solar thermal collectors can

capture the sun’s radiant energy to warm water, as

in rooftop solar water heaters.

The growth in solar cell production can only be

described as explosive. It climbed from an annual

expansion of 38 percent in 2006 to an off-the-chart

89 percent in 2008, before settling back to 51 percent

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in 2009. At the end of 2009, there were 23,000

megawatts of PV installations worldwide, which

when operating at peak power could match the

output of 23 nuclear power plants.

On the manufacturing front, the early leaders –

the United States, Japan, and Germany – have

been overtaken by China, which produces more

than twice as many solar cells annually as Japan.

Number three, Taiwan, is moving fast and may

overtake Japan in 2010. World PV production has

roughly doubled every two years since 2001 and

will likely approach 20,000 megawatts in 2010.

Germany, with an installed PV power generating

capacity of almost 10,000 megawatts, is far and

away the world leader in installations. Spain is

second with 3,400 megawatts, followed by Japan,

the United States, and Italy. Ironically, China, the

world’s largest manufacturer of solar cells, has an

installed capacity of only 305 megawatts, but this

is likely to change quickly as PV costs fall.

Historically, photovoltaic installations were

small-scale – mostly residential rooftop installations.

Now that is changing as utility-scale PV projects

are being launched in several countries. The United

States, for example, has under construction and

development some 77 utility-scale projects, adding

up to 13,200 megawatts of generating capacity.

Morocco is now planning five large solar generat-

ing projects, either photovoltaic or solar thermal

or both, each ranging from 100 to 500 megawatts

in size.

More and more countries, states, and provinces

are setting solar installation goals. Italy’s solar

industry group is projecting 15,000 megawatts of

installed capacity by 2020. Japan is planning 28,000

megawatts by 2020. The state of California has set

a goal of 3,000 megawatts by 2017. Solar-rich Saudi

Arabia recently announced that it plans to shift

from oil to solar energy to power new desalination

plants that supply the country’s residential water.

It currently uses 1.5 million barrels of oil per day

to operate some 30 desalting plants.

With installations of solar PV climbing, with costs

continuing to fall, and with concerns about climate

change escalating, cumulative PV installations could

reach 1.5 million megawatts (1,500 gigawatts) in

2020. Although this estimate may seem overly

ambitious, it could in fact be conservative, because

if most of the 1.5 billion people who lack electricity

today get it by 2020, it will likely be because they

have installed home solar systems. In many cases,

it is cheaper to install solar cells for individual

homes than it is to build a grid and a central power

plant.

The second, very promising way to harness

solar energy on a massive scale is CSP, which first

came on the scene with the construction of a

350-megawatt solar thermal power plant complex

in California. Completed in 1991, it was the world’s

only utility-scale solar thermal generating facility

until the completion of a 64-megawatt power plant

in Nevada in 2007.

Two years later, in July 2009, a group of 11

leading European firms and one Algerian firm, led

by Munich Re and including Deutsche Bank,

Siemens, and ABB, announced that they were going

to craft a strategy and funding proposal to develop

solar thermal generating capacity in North Africa

and the Middle East. Their proposal would meet

the needs of the producer countries and supply

part of Europe’s electricity via undersea cable. This

initiative, known as the Desertec Industrial Initiative,

could develop 300,000 megawatts of solar thermal

generating capacity – huge by any standard. It is

driven by concerns about disruptive climate change

and by depletion of oil and gas reserves. Caio

Koch-Weser, vice chair of Deutsche Bank, noted

that “the Initiative shows in what dimensions and

on what scale we must think if we are to master

the challenges from climate change.”

Even before this proposal, Algeria – for decades

an oil exporter – was planning to build 6,000 mega-

watts of solar thermal generating capacity for

export to Europe via undersea cable. The Algerians

note that they have enough harnessable solar

energy in their vast desert to power the entire world

economy. This is not a mathematical error. A

similar point often appears in the solar literature

when it is noted that the sunlight striking the earth

in one hour could power the world economy for

one year. The German government was quick to

respond to the Algerian initiative. The plan is to

build a 1,900-mile high-voltage transmission line

from Adrar deep in the Algerian desert to Aachen,

a town on Germany’s border with the Netherlands.

Although solar thermal power has been slow to

get under way, utility-scale plants are being built

rapidly now. The two leaders in this field are the

United States and Spain. The United States has

more than 40 solar thermal power plants operating,

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under construction, and under development that

range from 10 to 1,200 megawatts each. Spain has

60 power plants in these same stages of develop-

ment, most of which are 50 megawatts each.

One country ideally suited for CSP plants is

India. The Great Indian Desert in its northwest

offers a huge opportunity for building solar thermal

power plants. Hundreds of large plants in the

desert could meet most of India’s electricity needs.

And because it is such a compact country, the

distance for building transmission lines to major

population centers is relatively short.

One of the attractions of utility-scale CSP plants

is that heat during the day can be stored in molten

salt at temperatures above 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The heat can then be used to keep the turbines

running for eight or more hours after sunset. The

American Solar Energy Society notes that solar

thermal resources in the U.S. Southwest can satisfy

current U.S. electricity needs nearly four times over.

At the global level, Greenpeace, the European

Solar Thermal Electricity Association, and the

International Energy Agency’s SolarPACES program

have outlined a plan to develop 1.5 million mega-

watts of solar thermal power plant capacity by

2050. For Plan B we suggest a more immediate

world goal of 200,000 megawatts by 2020, a goal

that may well be exceeded as the economic poten-

tial becomes clearer.

The pace of solar energy development is

accelerating as the installation of rooftop solar

water heaters – the other use of solar collectors –

takes off. China, for example, now has an estimated

1.9 billion square feet of rooftop solar thermal

collectors installed, enough to supply 120 million

Chinese households with hot water. With some

5,000 Chinese companies manufacturing these

devices, this relatively simple low-cost technology

has leapfrogged into villages that do not yet have

electricity. For as little as $200, villagers can install

a rooftop solar collector and take their first hot

shower. This technology is sweeping China like

wildfire, already approaching market saturation in

some communities. Beijing’s goal is to add another

billion square feet to its rooftop solar water heating

capacity by 2020, a goal it is likely to exceed.

Other developing countries such as India and

Brazil may also soon see millions of households

turning to this inexpensive water heating tech-

nology. Once the initial installment cost of rooftop

solar water heaters is paid back, the hot water is

essentially free.

In Europe, where energy costs are relatively

high, rooftop solar water heaters are also spreading

fast. In Austria, 15 percent of all households now

rely on them for hot water. As in China, in some

Austrian villages nearly all homes have rooftop

collectors. Germany is also forging ahead. Some

2 million Germans are now living in homes where

water and space are both heated by rooftop solar

systems.

The U.S. rooftop solar water heating industry

has historically concentrated on a niche market –

selling and marketing 100 million square feet of

solar water heaters for swimming pools between

1995 and 2005. Given this base, the industry was

poised to mass-market residential solar water and

space heating systems when federal tax credits were

introduced in 2006. Led by Hawaii, California, and

Florida, annual U.S. installation of these systems has

more than tripled since 2005. The boldest initiative

in the United States is California’s goal of installing

200,000 solar water heaters by 2017. Not far behind

is one launched in 2010 in New York State, which

aims to have 170,000 residential solar water systems

in operation by 2020.

Solar water and space heaters in Europe and

China have a strong economic appeal, often paying

for themselves from electricity savings in less than

10 years. With the cost of rooftop heating systems

declining, many other countries will likely join Israel,

Spain, and Portugal in mandating that all new build-

ings incorporate rooftop solar water heaters. The

state of Hawaii requires that all new single-family

homes have rooftop solar water heaters. Worldwide,

Plan B calls for a total of 1,100 thermal gigawatts

of rooftop solar water and space heating capacity

by 2020.

The third principal component in the Plan B

energy economy is geothermal energy. The heat

in the upper six miles of the earth’s crust contains

50,000 times as much energy as found in all of the

world’s oil and gas reserves combined – a startling

statistic. Despite this abundance, as of mid-2010

only 10,700 megawatts of geothermal generating

capacity have been harnessed worldwide, enough

for some 10 million homes.

Roughly half the world’s installed geothermal

generating capacity is concentrated in the United

States and the Philippines. Most of the remainder

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is generated in Mexico, Indonesia, Italy, and Japan.

Altogether some 24 countries now convert geothermal

energy into electricity. El Salvador, Iceland, and the

Philippines respectively get 26, 25, and 18 percent

of their electricity from geothermal power plants.

The geothermal potential to provide electricity,

to heat homes, and to supply process heat for

industry is vast. Among the geothermally rich coun-

tries are those bordering the Pacific in the so-called

Ring of Fire, including Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico,

the United States, Canada, Russia, China, Japan,

the Philippines, Indonesia, and Australia. Other well-

endowed countries include those along the Great

Rift Valley of Africa, including Ethiopia, Kenya,

Tanzania, and Uganda, and those around the Eastern

Mediterranean. As of 2010, there are some 70 countries

with projects under development or active consider-

ation, up from 46 in 2007.

Beyond geothermal electrical generation, up

to 100,000 thermal megawatts of geothermal

energy are used directly – without conversion into

electricity – to heat homes and greenhouses and

to provide process heat to industry. For example,

90 percent of the homes in Iceland are heated with

geothermal energy.

An interdisciplinary team of 13 scientists and

engineers assembled by the Massachusetts Institute

of Technology in 2006 assessed U.S. geothermal

electrical generating potential. Drawing on the

latest technologies, including those used by oil and

gas companies in drilling and in enhanced oil

recovery, the team estimated that enhanced geo-

thermal systems could help the United States meet

its energy needs 2,000 times over.

Even before this exciting new technology is

widely deployed, investors are moving ahead with

existing technologies. For many years, U.S. geother-

mal energy was confined largely to the Geysers

project north of San Francisco, easily the world’s

largest geothermal generating complex, with 850

megawatts of generating capacity. Now the United

States has more than 3,000 megawatts of existing

geothermal electrical capacity and projects under

development in 13 states. With California, Nevada,

Oregon, Idaho, and Utah leading the way, and with

many new companies in the field, the stage is set

for a geothermal renaissance.

In mid-2008, Indonesia – a country with 128

active volcanoes and therefore rich in geothermal

energy – announced that it would develop 6,900

megawatts of geothermal generating capacity;

Pertamina, the state oil company, is responsible

for developing the lion’s share. Indonesia’s oil pro-

duction has been declining for the last decade, and

in each of the last five years it has been an oil

importer. As Pertamina shifts resources from oil to

the development of geothermal energy, it could

become the first oil company – state-owned or

independent – to make the transition from oil to

renewable energy.

Japan, which has 16 geothermal power plants

with a total of 535 megawatts of generating cap-

acity, was an early leader in this field. After nearly

two decades of inactivity, this geothermally rich

country – long known for its thousands of hot

baths – is again building geothermal power plants.

Among the Great Rift countries in Africa, Kenya

is the early geothermal leader. It now has 167 mega-

watts of generating capacity and is planning 1,200

more megawatts by 2015, enough to nearly double

its current electrical generating capacity from all

sources. It is aiming for 4,000 geothermal mega-

watts by 2030.

Beyond power plants, geothermal (ground

source) heat pumps are now being widely used for

both heating and cooling. These take advantage of

the remarkable stability of the earth’s temperature

near the surface and then use that as a source of

heat in the winter when the air temperature is

low and a source of cooling in the summer when

the air temperature is high. The great attraction of

this technology is that it can provide both heating

and cooling and do so with 25–50 percent less

electricity than would be needed with conventional

systems. In Germany, 178,000 ground-source heat

pumps are now operating in residential or com-

mercial buildings. At least 25,000 new pumps are

installed each year.

Geothermal heat is ideal for greenhouses in

northern countries. Russia, Hungary, Iceland, and

the United States are among the many countries

that use it to produce fresh vegetables in winter.

With rising oil prices boosting fresh produce trans-

port costs, this practice will likely become far more

common. If the four most populous countries

located on the Pacific Ring of Fire – the United

States, Japan, China, and Indonesia – were to

seriously invest in developing their geothermal

resources, it is easy to envisage a world with thou-

sands of geothermal power plants generating some

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200,000 megawatts of electricity, the Plan B goal,

by 2020.

As oil and natural gas reserves are being depleted,

the world’s attention is also turning to plant-based

energy sources, including energy crops, forest

industry byproducts, sugar industry byproducts,

urban waste, livestock waste, plantations of fast-

growing trees, crop residues, and urban tree and

yard wastes – all of which can be used for electri-

cal generation, heating, or the production of auto-

motive fuels.

The potential use of energy crops is limited

because even corn – the most efficient of the grain

crops – can convert only 0.5 percent of solar energy

into a usable form. In contrast, solar PV or solar

thermal power plants convert roughly 15 percent

of sunlight into electricity. And the value of elec-

tricity produced on an acre of land occupied by

a wind turbine is over 300 times that of the corn-

based ethanol produced on an acre. In this land-

scarce world, energy crops cannot compete with

solar-generated electricity, much less with wind

power.

Yet another source of renewable energy is

hydropower. The term has traditionally referred to

dams that harnessed the energy in river flows, but

today it also includes harnessing the energy in tides

and waves as well as using smaller “in-stream”

turbines to capture the energy in rivers and tides

without building dams. Roughly 16 percent of the

world’s electricity comes from hydropower, most

of it from large dams. Some countries, such as

Brazil, Norway, and the Democratic Republic of

the Congo, get the bulk of their electricity from

river power.

Tidal power holds a certain fascination because

of its sheer potential scale. The first large tidal

generating facility – La Rance Tidal Barrage, with a

maximum generating capacity of 240 megawatts –

was built 40 years ago in France and is still

operating today. Within the last few years interest

in tidal power has spread rapidly. South Korea, for

example, is building a 254-megawatt project on its

west coast that would provide all the electricity for

the half-million people living in the nearby city of

Ansan. At another site to the north, engineers are

planning a 1,320-megawatt tidal facility in Incheon

Bay, near Seoul. And New Zealand is planning a

200-megawatt project in the Kaipara Harbour on

that country’s northwest coast.

Wave power, though a few years behind tidal

power, is also now attracting the attention of both

engineers and investors. Scottish firms Aquamarine

Power and SSE Renewables are teaming up to build

1,000 megawatts of wave and tidal power off the

coast of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Ireland

is planning 500 megawatts of wave generating

capacity by 2020, enough to supply 8 percent of

its electricity. Worldwide, the harnessing of wave

power could generate a staggering 10,000 gigawatts

of electricity, more than double current world elec-

tricity capacity from all sources.

We project that the 980 gigawatts (980,000

megawatts) of hydroelectric power in operation

worldwide in 2009 will expand to 1,350 gigawatts

by 2020. According to China’s official projections,

180 gigawatts should be added there, mostly from

large dams in the southwest. The remaining 190

gigawatts in our projected growth of hydropower

would come from a scattering of large dams still

being built in countries like Brazil and Turkey, dams

now in the planning stages in sub-Saharan Africa,

a large number of small hydro facilities, a fast-

growing number of tidal projects, and numerous

smaller wave power projects.

The efficiency gains . . . more than offset projected

growth in energy use to 2020. The next step in the

Plan B 80-percent reduction of carbon emissions

comes from replacing fossil fuels with renewable

sources of energy. In looking at the broad shifts from

the reference year of 2008 to the Plan B energy

economy of 2020, fossil-fuel-generated electricity

drops by 90 percent worldwide as the fivefold growth

in renewably generated electricity replaces all the

coal and oil and 70 percent of the natural gas now

used to generate electricity. Wind, solar photovol-

taic, solar thermal, and geothermal will dominate

the Plan B energy economy, but as noted earlier

wind will be the centerpiece – the principal source

of the electricity to heat, cool, and light buildings

and to run cars and trains.

The Plan B projected tripling of renewable

thermal heating generation by 2020, roughly half of

it to come from direct uses of geothermal energy,

will sharply reduce the use of both oil and gas to

heat buildings and water. And in the transportation

sector, energy use from fossil fuels drops by some

70 percent. This comes from shifting to all-electric

and highly efficient plug-in hybrid cars that will run

almost entirely on electricity, nearly all of it from

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L E S T E R B R O W N212

renewable sources. And it also comes from shifting

to electric trains, which are much more efficient

than diesel-powered ones.

Each country’s energy profile will be shaped by

its unique endowment of renewable sources of

energy. Some countries, such as the United States,

Turkey, and China, will likely rely on a broad base

of renewables – wind, solar, and geothermal power.

But wind, including both onshore and offshore, is

likely to emerge as the leading energy source in all

three cases.

Other countries, including Spain, Algeria, Egypt,

India, and Mexico, will turn primarily to solar thermal

power plants and solar PV arrays to power their

economies. For Iceland, Indonesia, Japan, and the

Philippines, geothermal energy will likely be the

mother lode. Still others will likely rely heavily on

hydro, including Norway, Brazil, and Nepal. And

some technologies, such as rooftop solar water

heaters, will be used virtually everywhere.

As the transition progresses, the system for

transporting energy from source to consumers will

change beyond recognition. In the old energy

economy, pipelines and tankers carried oil long

distances from oil fields to consumers, including a

huge fleet of tankers that moved oil from the

Persian Gulf to markets on every continent. In the

new energy economy, pipelines will be replaced by

transmission lines.

The proposed segments of what could eventu-

ally become a national U.S. grid are beginning to

fall into place. Texas is planning up to 2,900 miles

of new transmission lines to link the wind-rich

regions of west Texas and the Texas panhandle to

consumption centers such as Dallas–Fort Worth

and San Antonio. Two high-voltage direct current

(HVDC) lines will link the rich wind resources of

Wyoming and Montana to California’s huge market.

Other proposed lines will link wind in the northern

Great Plains with the industrial Midwest.

In late 2009 Tres Amigas, a transmission com-

pany, announced its plans to build a “SuperStation”

in Clovis, New Mexico, that would link the country’s

three major grids – the Western grid, the Eastern grid,

and the Texas grid – for the first time. This would

effectively create the country’s first national grid.

Scheduled to start construction in 2012 and to be com-

pleted in 2014, the SuperStation will allow electricity,

much of it from renewable sources, to flow through

the country’s power transmission infrastructure.

Google made headlines when it announced in

mid-October 2010 that it was investing heavily in

a $5-billion offshore transmission project stretching

from New York to Virginia, called the Atlantic Wind

Connection. This will facilitate the development of

enough offshore wind farms to meet the electricity

needs of 5 million East Coast residents.

A strong, efficient national grid will reduce

generating capacity needs, lower consumer costs,

and cut carbon emissions. Since no two wind farms

have identical wind profiles, each one added to the

grid makes wind a more stable source of electric-

ity. With the prospect of thousands of wind farms

spread from coast to coast and a national grid,

wind becomes a stable source of energy, part of

baseload power.

Europe, too, is beginning to think seriously of

investing in a supergrid. In early 2010, a total of

10 European companies formed Friends of the

Supergrid, which is proposing to use HVDC under-

sea cables to build the European supergrid offshore,

an approach that would avoid the time-consuming

acquisition of land to build a continental land-based

system. This grid could then mesh with the pro-

posed Desertec initiative to integrate the offshore

wind resources of northern Europe and the solar

resources of North Africa into a single system that

would supply both regions. The Swedish ABB

Group, which in 2008 completed a 400-mile HVDC

undersea cable linking Norway and the Netherlands,

is well positioned to help build the necessary trans-

mission lines.

Governments are considering a variety of policy

instruments to help drive the transition from fossil

fuels to renewables. These include tax restructuring,

lowering the tax on income and raising the tax on

carbon emissions to include the indirect costs of

burning fossil fuels. If we can create an honest

energy market, the transition to renewables will

accelerate dramatically.

Another measure that will speed the energy

transition is eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. At

present, governments are spending some $500 billion

per year subsidizing the use of fossil fuels. This

compares with renewable energy subsidies of only

$46 billion per year. For restructuring the electricity

sector, feed-in tariffs, in which utilities are required

to pay set prices for electricity generated from

renewable sources, have been remarkably success-

ful. Germany’s impressive early success with this

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T W O

measure has led to its adoption by some 50 other

countries, including most of those in the European

Union. In the United States, 29 states have adopted

renewable portfolio standards requiring utilities to

get up to 40 percent of their electricity from renew-

able sources. The United States has also used tax

credits for wind, geothermal, solar photovoltaics,

solar water and space heating, and ground-source

heat pumps.

To achieve some goals, governments are simply

using mandates, such as those requiring rooftop

solar water heaters on all new buildings. Governments

at all levels are adopting energy efficiency building

codes. Each government has to select the policy

instruments that work best in its particular economic

and cultural setting.

In the new energy economy, our cities will be

unlike any we have known during our lifetime. The

air will be clean and the streets will be quiet, with

only the scarcely audible hum of electric motors. Air

pollution alerts will be a thing of the past as coal-

fired power plants are dismantled and recycled and as

gasoline- and diesel-burning engines largely disappear.

This transition is now building its own momen-

tum, driven by an intense excitement from the

realization that we are tapping energy sources that

can last as long as the earth itself. Oil wells go dry

and coal seams run out, but for the first time since

the Industrial Revolution, we are investing in energy

sources that can last forever.

Data, endnotes, and additional resources can be

found on Earth Policy’s website, at www.earth-policy.org.

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