Why the U.S. Faces a Steep Path to a CO2-Free Grid

by Peter Behr (E&E News) Nearly two dozen states and the District of Columbia have committed to slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with several planning at least an 80% cut. Some Democratic presidential candidates are outlining goals for the majority of electricity to be decarbonized within the next two decades. But how big a lift will that be at the state level?

State agencies and private research firms are only beginning to produce specific numbers — and fuel debate — about whether the scale of the electricity and transportation infrastructure build-out required to dramatically reduce carbon emissions across the economy by midcentury is feasible.

For all the New England states to reach targets of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, generally from a 1990 starting point, electricity output may have to double to charge electric vehicles that must fill the streets and to replace gas heat with electric heat pumps, according to an analysis last year by the Brattle Group consultancy.

The region's generating capacity — now just over 31,000 MW — would have to soar to 160,000 MW, mostly through wind and solar, in one of several future scenarios Brattle calculated.

That's the equivalent of four Walneys and six Solar Star projects a year for the next 30 years in New England.

The idea of replicating those two projects again and again on an assembly line track for decades defines one view of the clean energy summit New England and the rest of the U.S. could have to scale.

"People completely underestimate the scale of the challenge," said Jürgen Weiss, co-author of the Brattle Group study. "In some sense, that was a little bit of the purpose of the study."

"I think we're just on the cusp of a new wave of questions that are emerging that have to be answered," said Emil Dimanchev, senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

"How do we actually build a power system that is mostly wind and solar? We're just starting to look at this, and there are a lot of unanswered questions about how we get there and get there cost effectively, as well," said Dimanchev.

National polls indicate that while public concern over climate change is widely shared, an understanding of future costs of climate action is not.

Roughly half of Americans believe action is "urgently needed" in the coming decade to avoid the worst effects of climate damage, according to a Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation poll in November. But only four in 10 were willing to make "major sacrifices" in response.

Three-quarters of poll respondents said they would oppose a 25-cents-a-gallon tax on gasoline to combat climate change threats, only half of the tax on carbon emissions that some leading economists argue would be needed to tilt the economy away from fossil fuels toward zero-carbon alternatives.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) issued a master plan last month intended to eliminate carbon emissions in the state's energy sector by 2050. Estimates on the costs to ratepayers are to come later this year, officials said. Rutgers University professor Frank Felder warned that the transition would be "expensive and regressive" and predicted a "substantial increase" in residents' energy costs (Energywire, Jan. 28).

New York's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, enacted last July, requires utilities to rely on renewable energy for 70% of the electricity supply by 2030 and to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from man-made sources in the state by 2050.

Rich Dewey, president of the New York Independent System Operator, the state's grid operator, said the organization's top planning priorities this year include how to meet requirements of the climate act and the prospect of a surge in power demand if a large transition to EVs and electricity-based heating happens (Energywire, Jan. 23).

While analysts can estimate the amount of clean energy that state policies require, cost estimates are a moving target, analysts agree, because renewable energy continues to get cheaper.

In Brattle's calculation, the annual investment in wind and solar power needed to meet New England's goals must spurt from nearly 600 MW installed next year to six times that amount in 2030.

"This is not an easy lift by any stretch. The total dollars are quite significant," Weiss said.

General Electric Co. is building 12-MW wind turbines, he said. "It wasn't so long ago it was 2-3 MW. We're seeing a lot of interest from the oil and gas industry supply chain, the companies along the Gulf of Mexico that build offshore oil and gas rigs and maintain them." Companies building rigging vessels and laying pipelines see opportunity in offshore development, he said. READ MORE