Crib Sheet: Renewable Energy

It’s time to switch to reusable resources.

By Mario Sanchez, University of Texas at Austin

What is renewable energy?

Due to the rise of oil and natural gas prices in recent years and growing concern about the dangers of global warming and pollution, renewable energy has recently gotten a lot of attention. So what is renewable energy, and what has been done to increase its role in solving the current energy problem that plagues our nation?

Renewable energy is produced from continuously available natural processes that do not involve the consumption of exhaustible resources such as fossil fuels. Currently it provides 6.1 percent of the nation’s total energy. (Non-renewable petroleum is the leading source, at 40 percent.) The five main types of renewable energy are hydroelectric, geothermal, solar, wind, and biomass resources. Until recently, enthusiasm for renewable energy was limited to the environmentally-conscious, but a number of factors, including instability in the Middle East, uncertainty over future supplies of crude oil, concern about global warming, and high gas prices, have dramatically changed policymakers’ outlook.

In his 2006 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush lauded the potential of renewable energy to “make dependence on Middle East oil a thing of the past.” Bush has since committed research and development funds for various government-sponsored renewable energy projects. Last year, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which Bush signed into law. The act ordered that the amount of renewable fuels consumed each year should reach 7.5 billion gallons by 2012, but some farm advocates are more ambitious, confident that farms, forests, and ranches can provide 25 percent of the country’s energy needs by 2025.

While the president and congress took steps in the right direction, some potential sources of renewable energy remain under-funded. Also, substantial tax cuts and subsidies to the oil industry have undercut the president’s stated goal of providing energy security and ending America’s addiction to oil.

Hydroelectric and Geothermal Energy

The largest supply of renewable energy is produced by conventional hydroelectric power, which accounted for 45 percent of all renewable energy sources in 2005. In addition to the well-established hydroelectric systems used in dams, hydroelectric power is also produced using tidal and wave power, which are relatively new technologies. Wave energy is a vast, largely untapped reserve that is held in ocean surface waves. Producing tidal energy involves building dams to trap water in a tidal basin during high tides, in conjunction with conventional hydroelectric methods that generate electricity as the tides recedes.

Geothermal energy has been used in the United States since the 1960’s, and provides 6 percent of all U.S. renewable energy. Geothermal energy is produced by converting the earth’s own thermal energy, from geysers or deep taps, into usable energy. The geothermal source can be used to heat and evaporate a fluid to run a generator and produce electricity, or where feasible, to directly heat a building or home.

While new advances in both hydro and geothermal energy generation have the potential to replace more than 150 medium-size coal-fired power plants or 50 nuclear power plants, the Bush administration has decided to close out research and development funding for both resources. In its fiscal year 2007 Congressional Budget Request, the Department of Energy stated that it plans to transfer work from the geothermal and hydroelectric programs to industry and the private sector, claiming both resources as “mature technologies.” This move has left both industries befuddled, as the total savings from cutting the programs amount to $23.5 million, a tiny drop in the DOE’s $23.5 billion budget request. Without funding, the high cost of researching and developing emerging geothermal and hydroelectric technologies makes it more likely that companies who depend on government dollars will fail. The Senate has moved to restore funding to geothermal and hydroelecrtic power, but the House has not shown much support, leaving the future of these two renewable resources in doubt.

Solar and Wind Energy

After the oil crisis and price shocks of the 1970s, the Carter administration funded research to develop conservation technologies and alternative-energy sources, such as solar and wind energy. But there were massive cuts in research and funding during the Reagan administration. With the return of high oil and gas prices, the interest and investment in wind and solar power has increased, which now provide 2.5 and 1 percent, respectively, of the nation’s total renewable energy.

Demand for wind and solar power has also increased as several states have adopted renewable energy portfolio requirements, which set minimums for the amount of renewable energy electricity utilities must buy. According to government studies, the winds of Kansas, North Dakota, and Texas alone are in principle sufficient to meet the entire nation’s electricity needs.

The International Energy Agency estimates that solar panels installed on appropriate rooftops could meet 55 percent of U.S. electricity demand. Solar energy shows even more promise when traditional solar panels are joined by solar thermal energy, which uses sunlight to provide heat for buildings.

Biomass

Biomass is plant matter such as trees, grasses, agricultural crops, or other biological material which can be used as a solid fuel, or converted into liquid or gaseous forms, for the production of electric power, heat, chemicals, or fuels. There are several types of biofuels, including ethanol, butanol, biogas, and biodiesel, some of which can be used in normal gasoline-based automobiles.

Ethanol

The most debated and talked about biofuel is ethanol, a form of alcohol, which is made by fermenting carbohydrate-rich plants such as corn and is mixed with gasoline to replace the harmful additive, MTBE. E85, a mix of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, is available at about 850 gas stations across the country, but because cars must be specially engineered to run on the fuel, consumer demand remains relatively low.

Ethanol is not new. In 1896 Henry Ford built his first automobile, the Quadricycle, and ran it on pure ethanol fuel. Ten years later in 1906, Ford began production of the Model T, which was a flexible-fuel vehicle that could run on pure ethanol, gasoline, or a mix of the two, and boasted 25 miles per gallon. But even with these two early successes, ethanol’s market potential would be influenced more by the government’s policies than by homegrown technologies, as cheap gasoline and Prohibition made ethanol fuel impractical.

Another form of ethanol, made with cellulose, shows potential to clear market hurdles. Cellulose is the most abundant form of living terrestrial biomass and is found in plants such as switchgrass, mixed prairie grasses, and woody parts that cost less than corn because they can be grown on marginally productive land and require less fertilizer and pesticides. Studies have shown that corn-based ethanol reduces emissions only by 10 to 20 percent, while cellulosic ethanol reduces greenhouse emissions by between 80 and 90 percent. But processes for converting cellulose to ethanol are still under development, and it may be a full decade before cellulosic ethanol can fully compete with corn-based ethanol and fossil fuels.

Biodiesel

While ethanol may receive the most attention and funding, due in large part to the farm lobby, there are other products that have shown they are capable of making a large impact. One is biodiesel, which can be made from recycled cooking oils and animal fats, and can be used alone or added to regular diesel fuel without engine modifications to reduce emissions. Biodiesel is even more energy efficient than ethanol. These advantages have led various city, state, and federal governments to fuel their vehicles with biodiesel. Willie Nelson has joined the movement, starting a biodiesel fuel company, BioWillie Diesel, using soybeans and other vegetable oils to produce the fuel. Biodiesel fuel, like ethanol, is heavily promoted by farmers, especially soybean growers who now provide about 90 percent of the raw material for biodiesel.

Criticisms of biofuels

Due to the 51 cent per gallon tax credit that ethanol producers receive from the government, ethanol is able to compete with gasoline. Additionally, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 included tax breaks totaling $3.4 billion over 10 years for renewable energy. Ethanol critics and oil companies claim that government handouts are counterproductive and are skewing the energy market. But what these critics and oil companies fail to mention are the larger tax breaks and subsidies extended to the fossil fuel industries. The Energy Policy Act gave oil companies such as Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and other oil and gas producers, who are making record profits, incentives to drill wells in the deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

There have also been arguments that ethanol production may produce more pollution and may consume more energy than it saves, University of Minnesota researchers conducted an extensive research project and concluded that both corn-based ethanol and biodiesel produced from soybeans generate more energy than is needed to produce them. Ethanol yields 25 percent more energy than the energy invested in its production, whereas biodiesel yields 93 percent more. Additionally, relative to the fossil fuels they replace, greenhouse gas emissions are 12 percent lower for ethanol and 41 percent for biodiesel.

Conclusion

We do not know what technology or resource will power our nation in the future, but we must switch our energy production to renewable sources, to avoid catastrophic environmental damage and geo-political unrest. Young people should advocate for more investment in renewable energy sources to build a sustainable economy for their future.

 
Mario Sanchez is a senior at the University of Texas at Austin. This semester he is interning with the Domestic Policy team at the Center for American Progress.

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