U.S. Could Get 10% Renewable Energy by 2020, If Money, Policy Line Up Behind It

Studies claiming that renewable energy could supply a much larger portion of the nation's power needs – if the money and policies can be built to support it – are all the rage these days.

The latest arrived Monday, projecting that The United States could get 20 percent of its power from renewable energy (excluding hydropower) using today's technology by 2020, up from its share of about 2.5 percent today.

The report from the National Research Council says that today's technology could get the country to 10 percent non-hydro renewable energy by 2020 and 20 percent by 2035.

To get beyond that, "major scientific advances, and changes to the way we generate, transmit, and use electricity, will be needed," the report said. That includes large-scale grid storage, a "smart grid" that allows two-way communication and fine-tuned management and other improvements.

But even to get to the scenario allowed by today's technology will require the right mix of pubic policy to encourage renewable energy and the politically tricky matter of building massive new transmission lines to carry it to where it's needed, the report said.

The question of transmission is part of the debate over energy legislation now before Congress. Proposals to give the federal government increased power over siting those transmission lines are part of a broader set of policies for boosting renewable energy and putting a price on carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade program (see Draft Legislation a Boon for Solar, Grid and Come Get 'Em: Gov't Plans to Give Freebies Under Cap-and-Trade).

The report notes that "issues of land use and other local impacts (e.g., noise from wind turbines or potential effects on local weather) will become increasingly important as deployment of renewable technologies grow."

States with renewable portfolio standards – mandates that state utilities supply a certain portion of their electricity from renewable sources by a set date – are coming to terms with those challenges.

California, which is proposing that its utilities supply 33 percent of their power from renewable resources by 2020, is one of them. According to a recent report from the California Public Utilities Commission, reaching that new goal will require seven new transmission lines at a cost of about $12 billion – and that's not even counting the cost of building the renewable power plants to supply the electrons (see California Dreaming: Achieving 33% RPS Could Cost $12B in New Transmission).

It isn't yet clear if the state will meet its current RPS of 20 percent renewable by energy by 2010. As of the latest figures available for 2007, the state's three investor-owned utilities – were supplying 12.7 percent of their power from renewables, according to the CPUC.

Still, one can dream – particularly when one's dreams and one's profits coincide.

For example, Greenpeace and two solar industry groups last month made the bold claim that making electricity from the sun's heat could provide a quarter the country's electricity need by 2050.

But then, that would require spending on such solar-thermal plants to increase by $51 billion every year between now and 2030, and by even more after that, to get there. That would be quite a jump from the $2.8 billion or the report said was being put into solar-thermal this year - a welcome prospect, no doubt, to report co-issuers  European Solar Thermal Electricity Association and SolarPaces, but perhaps a long shot.

Still, there is a benefit to thinking big. According to a February report from U.S. grid operators, getting 20 percent of the country's power from wind - up from less than 1 percent in 2007 – would cost $1.1 trillion for the wind farms and an additional $80 billion in transmission lines.

But getting 5 percent of the country's power from wind by 2024 wouldn't be that much cheaper – about $700 billion for the wind farms and $50 billion in transmission, the report said (see Wind Growth Could Cost Eastern U.S. $80B in Transmission Lines).