Sustainable Energy Transitioner
Ushering in a Climate Responsible Energy Future
Exploring the Vast Potential of US Solar
A recent Scientific American article laid out a plan to scale up solar power’s contribution to our nation’s energy from less than .5% to 35% by 2050. Authors Zweibel, Mason and Fthenakis focus their proposal on producing electricity where the sun shines the most and the brightest, in the Southwest, and delivering it via direct current transmission to neighboring regions. They believe it would take subsidies on the order of $400 billion through 2020 and then solar is expected to be cost-effective without significant government support. The investment would pay off enormously by lowering the trade deficit and reducing energy insecurity largely caused by oil imports.
The plan calls for some 30,000 square miles to be converted into 3,000 GW of solar farms in the deserts of California, Arizona, Nevada, and others in the region. This is enough to provide 69% of our electricity needs, including powering 344 million PHEVs. To even out the intermittency of generation from solar, energy would be stored in compressed-air facilities in geological formations nationwide. Such an area seems gigantic, but is less than that needed to generate an equal amount of power from coal including both the mining facilities and the plants. The grand plan was presented with conservative assumptions that no further technological and cost improvements would be made beyond 2020, and they still found that by 2100 essentially all US energy could be powered by renewables, mainly solar.
All this would cost taxpayers less than the current Iraq war and occupation. My hat goes off to the authors, and I hope to help this plan come to fruition over the next few decades as a crucial element of the sustainable energy transition!
About
After undergraduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, five years in the nonprofit sector, and completing the Master in Public Affairs program at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, I am now launching a career in energy and climate change policy. My focus is on oil scarcity and the necessary transition to an efficient use of renewables to strengthen our economy and lower carbon emissions simultaneously.
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2 Comments
Margaret McCarthy
That's a fantastic idea. How likely is it to need significant legislation to implement? Do you think that the first stages could be up and running by 2020?
Dennis Markatos
I think the solar farms will first need to prove themselves for the local Southwest market, and then those states and the region can see exporting the power as a profitable project (along with financing assistance for the transmission from state and federal leaders). If the oil price keeps climbing (and other fossil fuels on its back), then I think solar innovators will continue to progress toward such a plan. First we need to catch up with nations like Germany that has 1% of its electricity from solar (even though their sunshine is often cloaked in clouds as opposed to the relentless Southwest sun). Last year, solar installation additions were 55% higher than in 2006 at 220 MW. If we can continue such rapid growth ~50% per year, we would have 40 GW added per year by 2020 (eight times the large wind capacity growth last year). These are big ifs, but increased innovation, rising prices of other sources of energy, and concern over climate change should support rapid growth at some level at least. We'll see how fast we can make it.