This put up is a part of an ongoing “What Is” collection from Power Innovation that solutions a few of as we speak’s most urgent local weather coverage questions. The primary on this collection answered the query–What’s Web-Zero?, and the second answered the query What’s The Inflation Discount Act?.
What’s Clear Power?
Combating local weather change is the problem of our time—slicing emissions on the pace and scale science deems needed will decide the way forward for practically all dwelling issues on the planet for generations. It’s an overarching downside that impacts each nook of our society and economic system, and it requires.
Nevertheless, as sophisticated as the issue appears, the answer to cleansing up local weather air pollution is easy: Use clear power to make electrical energy and use that clear electrical energy to energy gear like autos, factories, and home equipment that presently burn fossil fuels.
However what counts as clear power?
The reply to that query varies relying on who’s responding, muddying the panorama, diverting assets from the perfect options, and costing treasured time within the effort to chop local weather air pollution. However the backside line is obvious – power isn’t clear if it generates greenhouse fuel emissions or air air pollution.
To set the file straight, right here’s a information that walks by means of the clearly clear power applied sciences and people requiring extra nuance.
The plain candidates: Renewable power
Renewables—wind, photo voltaic, geothermal, and hydropower—are universally acknowledged as clear power. To generate electrical energy, they harness pure processes like wind, the solar’s rays, the earth’s warmth, and the stream of water. And since they don’t burn any feedstock like coal or pure fuel, they emit no air or local weather air pollution, qualifying them as clear power. These sources presently generate about 20 p.c of U.S. electrical energy.
Renewables are a bedrock local weather answer, they’re the most cost effective type of energy as we speak and can hold getting cheaper over time, and we all know how one can reliably handle an electrical grid with a excessive share of renewable power.
Clear however not pollution-free: Nuclear energy
Nuclear energy presently provides 20 p.c of the USA’s electrical energy, making it certainly one of our largest sources of energy free from local weather air pollution. Nuclear vegetation can present around-the-clock zero-carbon energy, that means they’re an essential a part of a clear grid. Whereas developing new nuclear vegetation is a well timed and costly course of, sustaining the working nuclear fleet is crucial to assembly local weather targets, as a result of in the event that they aren’t on-line, fossil gasoline energy might fill that required technology capability.
We contemplate nuclear energy to be “clear” on the premise that it doesn’t emit air pollution, though it have to be acknowledged nuclear vegetation do create nuclear waste, which has sophisticated storage necessities and might be hazardous. The dearth of greenhouse fuel emissions is the important thing distinction on this evaluation.
Hydrogen: It’s sophisticated
Hydrogen has lengthy been mentioned as a possible local weather answer, and it has sure use instances the place it is going to be wanted to supply power free from local weather air pollution in a means electrified processes can not like metal manufacturing, aviation, and long-haul maritime transport.
Rating hydrogen’s decarbonization prospects by end-use sector from wonderful to horrible.
Nevertheless, regardless that burning hydrogen solely emits water vapor, it’s sophisticated from a local weather perspective. Hydrogen by itself scarcely exists in nature—usually it have to be separated from different molecules utilizing energy-intensive gear known as electrolyzers. If electrolyzers are powered by fossil fuels, the hydrogen they produce isn’t thought of clear, since air pollution happens throughout the creation of that hydrogen, even when it solely water vapor is emitted when the hydrogen itself is subsequently burned.
To be thought of clear, hydrogen have to be produced by electrolyzers powered by one other clear power supply, ideally wind or photo voltaic. That is known as inexperienced hydrogen.
Carbon seize and storage (CCS): Theoretically clear, absent in the actual world
CCS entails burning fossil fuels at a facility like a coal energy plant or metal mill, after which sequestering the ensuing local weather air pollution in an underground geologic formation or substance like limestone. Whereas theoretically attainable, this course of isn’t and has not been used anyplace on the earth at scale. Failures and price overruns have plagued CCS demonstration initiatives. And whereas CCS captures carbon dioxide, it doesn’t seize conventional air air pollution like soot, NOx, or Sox, all of which harms human well being.
Pure fuel: A bridge to nowhere
Many business teams have labored for years to model pure fuel as clear with the narrative of fuel as a “bridge gasoline” to a clear power future usually pushed by fossil gasoline curiosity teams. However that is resoundingly false. Though pure fuel emits half the carbon dioxide of coal, it nonetheless generates substantial quantities of local weather air pollution when burned.
And pure fuel wells, pipelines, and home equipment usually leak methane, a rather more potent greenhouse fuel when it comes to trapping warmth within the ambiance than carbon dioxide and is accountable for an estimated 20-30 p.c of world warming because the Industrial Revolution.
There is no such thing as a credible state of affairs by which pure fuel might be thought of clear from a local weather perspective.
How coverage can carry extra clear power on-line, sooner
Due to clear power’s superior economics, state and federal coverage, and company local weather targets, practically all new additions to the U.S. electrical grid at the moment are clear.
In 2024, 96 p.c of the brand new capability added within the U.S. will encompass wind, photo voltaic, storage, and nuclear, all free from local weather air pollution. Whereas this can be a hopeful growth, we’re nonetheless not including clear power quick sufficient.
Headwinds corresponding to excessive rates of interest, native siting challenges, provide chain constraints, and lengthy wait occasions to hook up with the grid are among the many components including sand to the gears of the clear transition. Instituting sensible coverage might help ease the friction, together with:
- Bettering regional and interregional transmission planning.
- Accelerating interconnection by decreasing the necessities on interconnection research to solely these needed to attach the undertaking to the grid.
- Upgrading transmission traces utilizing inexpensive know-how to get large capability will increase briefly timelines.
- Implementing state and nationwide clear electrical energy requirements to mandate the transition to wash power.
- Bettering regional sharing of electrical energy to enhance reliability and resiliency.
- And enabling demand-side options to fulfill peak masses rapidly and affordably.
Clear power is foundational to the combat in opposition to local weather change—different options like electrification of transportation, buildings, and business will solely attain their fullest potential if clear power provides the electrical energy these applied sciences run on, reasonably than coal and pure fuel.
Subsequently, it’s essential that policymakers, regulators, advocates, and companies perceive what power sources are actually clear and that are imposters. In any other case, they threat providing incentives, investments, and assist to the unsuitable applied sciences which may solely make our local weather progress worse.