News and views on the coming collapse
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Mackay Miller, Senior Research Analyst at NREL. @mackaymiller
Links
NREL: Renewable Electricity Futures Study (RE Futures) (2012)
NREL: Power Systems of the Future (May 2015)
Nelder: Designing the grid for renewables (2012)
Nelder: Wind to Double and Solar to Triple in 6 Years, Says IEA (2013)
How important is oil to the future of the global economy? The remarkable economic expansion of in the United States and other industrial nations over the past century or more has been fueled by a steadily growing supply of low-cost energy—mostly from fossil fuels—oil in particular which accounts for more global energy consumption than any other source.
But there is growing uncertainty whether this trend will continue as it has in the past. How will shifting trends regarding the cost, demand, and supply for oil affect the global economy and the outlook for investment and economic growth?
Guests:
Key Questions:
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Renewable energy development has taken off in the United States over the past decade. Solar, wind, and other renewable technologies are projected to continue to grow rapidly. But renewables still have a long way to go to replace oil, coal, and natural gas as primary sources of energy. What will it take to reach that threshold and what obstacles and limits do we need to understand as we transition to a truly sustainable energy economy?
We’ll examine these and other key questions regarding the outlook for renewable energy and what it means for America’s future.
Guests:
Key Questions:
Cost: What are the important factors driving the total cost of different renewable technologies—e.g. equipment vs. soft costs? How far will costs continue to decline? Will costs be affordable enough to deploy at very large scale?
Density/Scale: Renewables are generally diffuse and distributed energy sources, how does that aid or hinder their prospects to become a primary source of energy?
Energy Quality/Substitutability: Renewable energy is most commonly used to make electricity, how does that affect its substitutability for uses that are currently non-electric—i.e. thermal heating and transportation?
Storage: How important is storage to the future of renewable energy? Are the oft-cited issues about storage overstated?
Takeaways:
Bullets below summarize remarks by featured guests; they are not definitive statements by The Energy Xchange. In the spirit of discourse, this information may be revised through continued discussion.
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Whatever happened to “peak oil” – the assertion that the rate at which oil is extracted from the Earth is nearing a maximum or peak level? With falling oil and gasoline prices and a boom of new oil development in the United States and elsewhere, concern about global oil supplies have faded from public view.
But have concerns about peak oil really disappeared? What key factors have changed in the oil industry, and what challenges remain? Are we entering a new era of “abundance” or are the risks of the world’s dependence on oil rising?
Guests:
Key Questions:
Cost: What are the trends regarding costs to maintain global oil production now and in the future? Are costs of developing new oil rising or are fracking and other technologies driving production costs down? Do falling prices mean that oil is getting cheaper?
Demand: What are the trends regarding global oil demand? Will oil consumption peak because of a peak in demand as much as supply? How are demand and supply interconnected?
Supply: What is the outlook for global supply? How will trends regarding costs and price volatility affect global supply? How much does price affect the outlook for supply? Do prices need to keep rising to maintain supply?
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