In order to meet the Renewable Portfolio Standards of states, utilities will need to add an aggregate of nearly 40 gigawatts of clean energy generation by 2030. And to get all that power to customers, a total investment of as much as $2 trillion into transmission and distribution networks will be required, according to a report released today by energy consultancy The Brattle Group.
To maintain grid reliability with so much new, intermittent and far-flung renewable energy generation, our national electricity grid needs a serious upgrade. In fact, the Brattle report estimates that more money might have to be invested in the grid than in actual renewable energy generation.
Another report released today by the energy regulatory group North American Electric Reliability (NERC), identified the lack of investment in transmission infrastructure as a major obstacle for green energy deployment. “Inadequate attention to the transmission grid will undermine all efforts to address climate change while endangering our electric reliability, and thereby our national security,” Michael Heyeck, senior V-P of transmission at utility American Electric Power, says in the report.
In an op-ed yesterday, Al Gore called for an investment of $400 billion over 10 years to build a national smart grid needed to connect renewable energy in remote locations to the cities where people will use it. Gore said the $400 billion cost “pales in comparison with the annual loss to American business of $120 billion due to the cascading failures that are endemic to our current balkanized and antiquated electricity lines.”
Both the Brattle and NERC reports highlight cleantech’s favorite low-hanging fruit, energy efficiency programs, as a way to reduce the costs of integrating renewable energy. NERC identifies demand-side controls as critical for giving the grid the needed flexibility to grow while the Brattle Group estimates energy efficiency programs can reduce the need for new energy generation by as much as 48 percent by 2030.
But energy efficiency and demand response alone can only partly quell America’s appetite for energy and more generation capacity will be needed. In order to deliver power from the mega-wind farms and solar plants being built in remote locales, NERC says a new, extra high-voltage transmission backbone will be required. This “transmission superhighway” would be overlaid on the existing grid to allow green energy to head directly to population centers.
NERC says new climate change regulations must support the development of new transmission lines. President-elect Obama has said he plans to invest in our electrical infrastructure on the scale that Eisenhower pumped public funds into the interstate highway system. That highway system cost U.S. taxpayers, in inflation-adjusted terms, more than $2.8 trillion in the first 20 years. Hopefully we’ll be able to muster the necessary funding in the coming 20 years needed to create an interstate transmission superhighway.
Graph courtesy of the Brattle Group.
We spoke about this topic at the LA Tech Week panel on Clean energy Technologies, for us to meet our clean energy goals as a nation we must reinvest into our infrastructure. Our electric grid is over 100 years old, its time to upgrade and reinvest money into a failing grid. Just reinvesting in our grid can stimulate the economy more than an economic stimulus check would ever do.
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[...] A Reliable Green Grid Could Need $2 Trillion In order to meet the Renewable Portfolio Standards of states, utilities will need to add an aggregate of nearly 40 gigawatts of clean energy generation by 2030. And to get all that power to customers, a total investment of as much as $2 trillion into transmission and distribution networks will be required, according to a report released today by energy consultancy The Brattle Group. [...]
I think eliminating America’s dependence on fossil fuels should be a number one priority, and if we need to build another couple of nuclear power plants before the whole Green infrastructure is up and running I think it would be a small price to pay.
[...] utilities in the U.S. are set to add nearly 40 gigawatts of clean energy generation by 2030, spurred by state mandates, the grid will need an upgrade to withstand the change. A recent report [...]
[...] not just a collection of individually controlled grids. Yes this is going to cost a lot of money which as Craig Rubens at the Earth2Tech blog points out will cost $2 trillion for a fully green power grid In order to meet the Renewable Portfolio [...]
[...] technology. Stabilizing power grids that have newly added clean power, is a serious concern — according to a report from the Brattle group the national electricity grid could need a $2 trillion investment to maintain stability from the [...]
[...] technology. Stabilizing power grids that have newly added clean power is a serious concern — according to a report from The Brattle Group, the national electricity grid could need a $2 trillion investment to maintain stability from the [...]
[...] technology. Stabilizing power grids that have newly added clean power is a serious concern — according to a report from The Brattle Group, the national electricity grid could need a $2 trillion investment to maintain stability from the [...]
[...] allow integration of renewable energy projects into the national electricity grid. As we’ve noted before, energy consulting firm The Brattle Group anticipates that more investment — as much as $2 [...]