Colorado Can Play Key Role in Defining Power Sources of Tomorrow

Energetic Future; Colorado Can Play Key Role in Defining Power Sources of Tomorrow

Jul 13 - Rocky Mountain News

America's - and Colorado's - energy system is the very lifeblood of our economy and our daily lives. Energy is at the heart of our national security and survival. However, terrorism and war and years of power shortages and price volatility have triggered changes in how the nation values energy and how it thinks about energy issues. In my view, energy security is national security.

Our industries, which serve us by providing jobs, goods and services, need to be supplied with energy and raw materials on a continuous basis. We need energy to light our way, to heat and cool our individual environments and to transport us from place to place.

Energy affects the balance - or imbalance - of our economy, our health and safety, and the protection and improvement of our precious environment. And new technologies, combined with new thinking, afford the nation - and especially Colorado - with some enormous opportunities for leadership and investment.

The energy technology equation is changing before our eyes. We have turned our imagination into reality in so many ways: from modern automobiles to powered flight, from constructing cities on Earth to exploring our moon and planets, from building the interstates to creating the Internet, and today we're bringing the sky and nature's gifts and engineering all together. We are learning to harness nature's renewable resources to power the future - and it starts right here in Colorado.

The United States, in fact, most of the developed world, consumes far more energy than we produce. Why? In part to sustain an embedded lifestyle that we have worked hard to create and work harder to maintain.

And just as natural gas and oil began as a sliver at the beginning of the 20th century and then became dominant, renewable energy is appearing at the dawn of the 21st century.

Energy use is not just a demand for electricity. In Colorado and across America, turning raw materials into consumer goods requires extensive energy delivery systems. Transporting these goods to market demands transport facilities, vehicles and, of course, the energy to power them. And our utilization of land has taken us to a very low-density, dispersed society, creating a demand for extended transportation, delivery and support systems. So transportation is a special case, the key artery in our economic system.

A look at the growth of the number of cars and trucks on the American road per thousand people over the past century makes the point. Today that number is about 800 vehicles per thousand people - it actually is above 1,100 per thousand people of driving age. It's also interesting to look at how many are on the road in other regions - for example, Western Europe has about the same number as the U.S. had in 1970. It's also startling to see that China has the same as we did before 1915.

I chaired a Defense Science Board study recently on the advantages of increased fuel efficiency of weapons systems - land, sea and air. One of the important findings, to the nearest percent, was the global ranking of nations' known oil reserves compared to consumption. We could spend a lot of time on the implications of this data, with the U.S. having just over 2 percent of the reserves but consuming 26 percent of the total - more than the next five countries combined.

This enormous consumption of energy - principally transportation and electricity using fossil fuels - has not come without an environmental price. This is demonstrated by a thousand- year history of greenhouse gases in the Earth's upper atmosphere recorded in ice-core samples and more recently by direct measurement.

Looking ahead, we must ask, "What's going to happen next?" To answer that, we need to examine the principal driver behind the continued increase in energy demand - global population growth.

We just passed the 6 billion mark in global population, and most experts believe that world population will level off in the coming century or so between 9 billion and 11 billion, with much more crowded conditions. But it's very important to remember that this growth is occurring in the developing world. These people see our standard of living and want it for themselves, but the energy and negative global environmental implications of this growth can be simply staggering, especially if they obtain their energy as we did - through the burning of fossil fuels.

In spite of all the conflicts, in spite of the prodigious investment involved, we all want the same thing. In a world where energy based on fossil sources is continuously diminishing - where pollution or waste disposal from power generation and transportation may become too much to bear - it is natural that we must emphasize continued science and engineering in pursuit of multiple alternatives for future societies.

I'm lucky to be involved in just such a pursuit here in Colorado. Today, I lead the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, known as NREL, located in Golden. The lab is filled with one of the most unique collections of scientists, engineers and economists in America, whose mission is to help find the key to this transformation and make it available and attractive to markets and investors everywhere.

Wind energy is leading the way as the most commercially mature renewable energy source. This is true for both small and very large turbines, and offshore developments are on the way. During the past two decades at NREL's National Wind Technology Center, through a unique collaboration with the DOE, stakeholders and research institutions worldwide, we have pioneered new blade shapes and introduced aerospace principles to blade composition, resulting in tremendous gains in efficiency, stability and longevity - not to mention very large cost reductions. These advances have led to a new DOE program to advance wind turbine design in low-wind-speed regimes, previously neglected but abundant areas that may hold the key to increasing our wind resource many-fold. We are advancing technology in such a way that wind energy is now on a par with competitive sources such as natural gas.

These are complex machines. About 1980, commercial wind turbines produced about 50 kilowatts with turbine diameters of 10 meters. By the year 2000, turbines sold on the market were delivering 750 kilowatts with diameters of 60 meters, and at the turn of the century, the projections were that by 2010, 5-megawatt turbines with diameters approaching 100 meters would be the market. But these projections of commercial viability were quickly outstripped. New American wind farms today are routinely being populated by GE Wind 1.5-megawatt turbines, and GE is operating 3.6-megawatt prototypes offshore.

One of the newest and most competitive commercial wind farms in the world is operating near Lamar, with a generating capacity of 162 megawatts. In addition, Xcel Energy has recently filed a proposal with the Public Utilities Commission to develop an additional 500 megawatts in the state.

The world of alternative energy is moving to integrate more than wind power into the grid of the future. For example, since President Bush's emphasis in the State of the Union address two years ago, we've all heard a lot about hydrogen and fuel cells.

Many energy experts envision hydrogen to be the hallmark of our energy destination. In public-private partnerships involving the national laboratories, commercial companies and universities, we are researching breakthrough technologies for producing, delivering, storing and using hydrogen. And while early hydrogen production will come mostly from fossil fuels, much research is currently directed toward producing hydrogen from renewables.

Here in Colorado, NREL has been doing hydrogen research throughout its history and has recently been assigned a new mission of building a capability of independent systems integrations and analysis for the program. This is very appropriate considering the large number of companies and industries that must succeed for the eventual hydrogen economy to be realized. Because it is so cross- cutting, hydrogen will eventually blur the distinctions among the electricity, natural gas and transportation industries, requiring an integrated strategy that avoids looking for solutions for each industry in isolation.

NREL also is involved in research across the renewables spectrum, such as solar, bioenergy and geothermal, and in energy efficiency, such as electric infrastructure - buildings - and advanced transportation. Although wind is the first commercially competitive renewable technology, these others are coming, and Colorado has a potential play in all of them.

In my personal view, our energy future, and therefore our society that depends on it, is at a crossroads. All the critical energy actors need to be integrated together to provide a clearer path and make social goals more achievable. The contributions of energy technology, public policy and markets over the past century and more pale to what is demanded on the road ahead.

At NREL we are working, with our academic and commercial partners, to integrate all three, by providing the technological edge and leadership for markets to expand and offer choices that promote competition. We are providing the impetus for new policy choices for federal, state and local governments that will result in more informed choices.

But more than that, we are providing a tool kit for a world hungry for alternative choices and means of controlling costs while still providing critical services. Access to energy is the tie that binds and the key that unlocks the door to unlimited human innovation and potential.

As the president said, "Many challenges, abroad and at home, have arrived in a single season." One of these is clearly our future energy lifeblood, which I am convinced will be profoundly affected by science, much of which is being performed right here.

Colorado has the opportunity to be among the first to redefine the national energy future, paving the way for the integration of renewable energy working side by side with our traditional resources. Let's not let this unique moment pass.

For far more extensive news on the energy/power visit: http://www.energycentral.com .