Can clean energy completely replace fossil fuels at some point?
The probability is low. And the reason for that, excluding the existing
infrastructure, and the power of infrastructure momentum, is you have an issue with what’s called base load power and then variable power. Base load power means that you need to always be able to have a certain amount of electricity generation that is constantly available should you need it. And then occasionally you have peaks or dips in that energy demand from your grid. The grid being all people using the electricity that’s connected to the power supply. Most of the existing forms of renewable, or clean energy have problems producing a consistent base load power. So solar is variable with the sunlight. Wind is variable with wind conditions. Hydroelectric is the only true form of base load that we have. Now the nuclear option is that we can use nuclear energy as a base load, and a lot of people are trying to work with that problem of how do we use non fossil fuels as our base load power? But that’s where people kind of lose motivation because our whole system of billions of dollars of infrastructure are designed around fossil fuels. So instead, I think most people as they look towards the future are trying to decrease the impact of fossil fuels while increasing the impact of renewable energy as opposed to eliminating fossil fuels altogether.
So lately we’re hearing a lot about the Green New Deal. What are your thoughts on the green new deal?
I haven’t read it so I can’t say. But I am encouraged that there now is a political slogan that puts climate change and energy issues directly in the mind of the voting public. But I worry to the effect in the past has been. As soon as you attach a scientific idea to one political party then you see a greater degree of polarization in the public. So my concern with the Green New Deal is because the Democrats, and even the more liberal faction of the Democrats has taken ownership of that, that it will definitely alienate Republicans and especially the more conservative faction of the Republicans.
There are a lot of Republicans who are skeptical about climate change. Do you think it’s just because Democrats are more pro environment, so Republicans just refuse to get on board, or do you think there’s more to that.
It’s a good question. And in this one I think what the data would suggest is it, and let me say this as concisely as possible, climate change represents a failure of the free market system. And so the solution usually when you have a failed free market system is to increase government involvement and oversight of business activities. And that is where you see a fundamental line in the sand for conservatives and for liberals, or Republicans and Democrats. And so the narrative of climate change is that the industry has failed us, and we need government oversight, which falls in line with what Democrats are predisposed to believe. And because of that, Democrats have kind of latched on to climate change as a scientific mechanism of bolstering their political argument. When they do tests of peoples understanding, even though Democrats are more inclined to believe climate change than Republicans, their depth of understanding of the topic shows no significant difference at all. People are arguing not based on an understanding of the science, but based on a motivation to justify their political position.
Do you see an area of disruptive innovation in terms of renewable energy?
Solar probably has the highest probability that it will continue. The price associated with solar electricity has been dropping linearly which is weird, normally things kind of decay. So the slope of the trajectory starts to get shallower and shallower, and with solar we really haven’t seen that yet. So the potential for solar is not just solar panels. Now we’re looking at solar windows and solar roads, so solar has the highest probability of being a significant game changer. Wind has some interesting options as well, especially if we can solve some of the ecological problems. The best places to put windmills are often coupled with migration patterns. Birds and other animals migrate up those corridors because of the wind patterns and we’re putting the windmills right where they want to migrate.
With hydroelectric plants they require the water to fall a certain number of feet in order to generate any electricity out of that. And it’s a huge number so you have to have this massive dam. And then you have allow the water to fall a long way. Well they’re starting to come up with ways of generating electricity off of a much smaller height drop of the water. But I think that the next issue would be a kind of a coupled system where you combine multiple systems together so that when one system is not operating the other system can turn on. I think that helps solve the base load problem that I mentioned earlier.
Do you see an area where we should concentrate on the most?
That’s a great question. So I think most of the experts suggest a portfolio approach. But that’s when dealing with a nation’s energy needs. Now if you’re thinking local, then you can become more specialized in one particular energy source. And I think solar has a lot of potential. Although the wind farms in Ririe Idaho have been working quite well. So locally I think wind farms, especially given all of the farmland we have, and that wind farms can actually run on land while operating farm work is still occurring. But if I were to put all of my money into one basket it would be solar.
What is your overall opinion on nuclear energy?
The consensus position of the scientific community is that we absolutely have to incorporate nuclear power. Within the United States we have some real problems logistically with nuclear power, mostly because the interstate transport of nuclear waste has produced real problems. We are not able to collectively streamline our nuclear waste disposal system in the United States because the individual states are reluctant to come up with kind of a shared approach to that. So given that environment, and the associated red tape that we have in the United States for the US nuclear, it’s probably not going to be a productive option in the near or even decade out future.
I went to the Center for Advanced Energy Studies (CAES) in Idaho Falls. The Idaho National Lab has a division there. They do a lot of work with nuclear power and they invited a representative of the Navy nuclear program. He actually is in charge of the maintenance and upkeep of a lot of the existing United States nuclear facilities, and his talk was essentially an obituary for the nuclear program in the United States. I was surprised. It was his job to advocate for it, and he was not really trying to advocate it at all. He was saying that our moment has passed. We’re unlikely to see anything, and that surprised me, but I think that is probably a fair analysis of where the situation currently stands.
If you had to pay 35 cents a kilowatt for green or 9 cents for fossil which choice would you make?
That’s a tough question and the answer is I think I’d have to pay 9 cents. One is the impact of a single individual is so minimal in this problem that my moral stance to pay extra for electricity really wouldn’t create a net benefit to society as a whole.
Well to put some real context to this, there is a blue-sky program that I think rocky mountain power does. There is a program I signed up for a couple of years ago that I pay I think it’s one or two cents more per month for my electricity bill. I’m guaranteed that that money will be used to increase the clean energy portfolio for my power provider. When I did that I thought to myself, I would pay up to 14 maybe 17 cents per kilowatt-hour.
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