The Clean Electric Economy

David Kaplan

In this column, David Kaplan, a grid technologist at Snohomish County PUD, discusses the need to electrify our energy system. 

The science says we must act decisively to avoid catastrophic climate change. Keeping atmospheric CO2 below dangerous levels requires that we steadily decrease human-induced carbon emissions. Achieving this goal requires significant changes in how we generate, distribute and consume energy. Unfortunately, we face a bewildering array of choices for how to go about it. Vocal advocates promote different paths, each claiming sustainability in the name of a favored resource or technology, often obscuring basic facts.

To make sense of all this, let’s focus on the most robust measures – those that apply across the broadest range of sustainable energy futures.

Perhaps the most important measure is to massively electrify our energy system. Because all available carbon-free energy sources – hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear – are delivered primarily as electricity, any sustainable energy system must be predominantly electric.

Trends toward electrification are already underway. The IEA World Energy Outlook 2010 predicts that world electricity demand will “continue to grow more strongly than any other form of final energy,” reflecting electricity’s flexibility at meeting human needs. Further, because electricity is resource-neutral, electrification can proceed while needed analysis continues on the difficult question of whether to expand use of nuclear power. 

Despite its promise, the electric transformation has barely begun, and much challenging work lies ahead. About 80 percent of today’s energy use comes to us not as electricity but by direct combustion of (mainly fossil) fuels. Only 20 percent of our energy is delivered through the electric grid and even this grid-energy is today more than two-thirds fossil-fueled. To reach our carbon targets and support new demands such as electric transportation, we must grow our grid-energy ratio to at least 50 percent by 2050, and 80 percent or more by 2100. We must also add clean power sources to lower the grid’s carbon intensity to about 20 percent by 2050. And, we must simultaneously upgrade our aging grid infrastructures, a measure long overdue on its own merits, independent of the need to meet climate goals.

Fortunately, these processes can happen in parallel, and they’re often synergistic with one another. For example, unlike conventional fuel vehicles, electric vehicles become cleaner over time as the grid itself gets cleaner.

These trends are already producing major academic and commercial opportunities, including research and development toward:

• Monitoring and control technologies that let power system operators accommodate clean-but-variable resources, such as wind and solar power.
• Technologies to manage both existing and emerging demand (water and space heating, air conditioning, EV charging) without adding to grid stress.
• Energy storage technologies, including the potential for scalable electricity storage appliances.
• Information technology applied to all aspects of power system operation, especially the distribution grid.
• Microgrid technologies, letting subsections of the grid operate autonomously to increase efficiency and reliability, or enabling basic access to electricity for the 1.4 billion people who lack it today, most of whom live beyond the reach of developed power systems.

Economics, along with science, must play a key role in the electric transformation. Energy efficiency and conservation should be encouraged with business models and rate structures designed to increase customer participation in reducing demand. The least-cost megawatt is often the one not generated.

Promising energy resources such as wind, solar (both electric and hot water), low-impact hydro, geothermal and ocean power deserve support calibrated to their current states of development. Each should be encouraged in targeted ways, for example, to address wind and solar power variability, promote solar financing mechanisms or assess tidal power scalability.

Energy storage is particularly important because it can be used to balance clean-but-variable energy sources. Lithium-ion batteries are already finding markets in both transportation and the grid. Advanced lead-acid batteries, while inappropriate for EVs, are feasible for some grid support applications. New battery chemistries under development appear likely to pick up where current-generation technologies leave off. These and other promising storage mechanisms deserve support commensurate with their state of maturity.

Information technologies, especially those that accommodate variability and increase power system flexibility, should be encouraged with real-world deployment incentives from utilities and other power sector participants.

A clear understanding that our future is electric will lead to better prioritization of public and private sector investments, based on sound scientific, technological and economic analysis. 

Electrification will bring massive change and open substantial investment opportunities. More important, the electric transformation will be key to achieving the clean, sustainable future which humanity and our planet demand.

David Kaplan is Grid Technologist at Snohomish County PUD, a public power provider serving citizens and businesses of Snohomish County, Wash. He is also entrepreneur-in-residence at the University of Washington Center for Commercialization. David founded and built V2Green, which pioneered smart charging of electric vehicles, and previously worked at Microsoft, where he helped to create SQL Server, Access and Microsoft’s web services platform.