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Will there be renewable energy in the future? |
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Written by Jonathan Drew, asap
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Monday, 21 May 2007 |
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The notion of power generated by dams, windmills and other renewable sources demands a significant share of the public consciousness thanks to the global-warming debate.
But the combined growth of those forms is expected to lag that of less-clean coal as an energy source over the next two decades and account for less than one-tenth of the world’s energy consumption by 2030, the Energy Department said Monday.
The forecast by the Energy Information Administration projects that renewable energy — including solar, wind and hydroelectric power — will grow at an average yearly rate of 1.9 percent between 2004 and 2030, the same as natural gas; while coal will be the fastest-growing energy source at 2.2 percent. The poll assumes no major changes to existing energy policies and regulations.
Over the period, the report projects that the renewable sources — excluding liquid biofuels — will grow to account for 8 percent of the world’s energy consumption from 7 percent; coal growing to 28 percent from 26 percent; and natural gas growing to 24 percent from 23 percent. The EIA expects the share of overall energy use from oil and other liquids to fall to 34 percent from 38 percent during that time.
Power plants that run on renewable fuels tend to be more expensive to build than those that fire on coal or natural gas, the report said, slowing the environmentally friendly category. Meanwhile, the high price of oil and natural gas has made coal an attractive energy source to countries where the rock is abundant, such as the U.S., India and China.
Also, “developing countries are going to use a lot more coal. There is no other fuel that can keep up with their economic growth,” said Sarma V. Pisupati, associate professor of Energy & Geo-Environmental Engineering at Penn State University.
Linda Doman, an international energy analyst for the administration, also pointed out that the forecast doesn’t take into account energy sources that aren’t connected to the power grid — such as solar panels that are used to power a single home.
The director of the Sierra Club’s Global Warming and Energy program, Dave Hamilton, said he expects the actual distribution of energy sources in 20 years to look different from the government’s projection — but stopped short of predicting green energy will leapfrog fossil fuels.
“We have seen so much movement on understanding the problem, activism and advocacy on doing something about it.”
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