Purpose:
The clean energy vision sketch plan for the western states will demonstrate the viability of transforming the
West from a fossil based, carbon heavy economy that threatens land, species and ecosystems to a vibrant clean energy economy that makes steady progress toward reducing carbon emission by at least 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. The energy vision will present a set of alternative futures to show how a clean energy economy can:
- Reduce electricity consumption and maximize grid utilization;
- Replace high carbon resources with new services and technologies;
- Improve local and system electric service reliability;
- Preserve biodiversity and ecosystem function;
- Expand long term employment opportunities; and
- Equitably address the up-front cost of electric system transformation.
The purpose of this sketch plan is to propose plausible clean energy futures that show steady progress toward and ultimately meet the 2050 climate challenge.
Background:
The sketch plan will begin where the WRA Central Station Renewable Energy Need Assessment (“WRA Assessment”) for the west leaves off. The WRA Assessment leverages the work of Kevin Sweeney and NRDC to demonstrate that energy efficiency and distributed renewable energy generation are essential but limited components of building a western clean energy economy by 2050. Given the need for central station renewable energy to meet climate goals, the WRA Assessment also provides plausible estimates of the number of gigawatt-hours of renewable energy production, the gigawatts of capacity and the footprint of that capacity for several renewable resource portfolio alternatives. The purpose of the WRA Assessment is to provide land, wildlife and environmental advocate communities and the public with a feel for the magnitude of the renewable generating capacity and acres of land footprint needed to meet climate goals so that are equipped to weigh the net land, wildlife and resource benefits of developing central station renewables.
The sketch plan will compile data, information and findings from existing sources into a public data base, and build simple models with intuitive graphics to convey the nature, performance and plausibility of clean energy futures. The data and models will be built in consultation with Western Clean Energy Advocate members and stakeholders to ensure clear communication and to accumulate support. Important sources of information will include the Western Governors Association (WGA) efforts (Western Renewable Energy Zone (WREZ), Clean and Diversified Energy Initiative (CDEI)), studies by the national labs (NREL, ORNL, PNNL and LBNL) and DOE (such as 20% wind by 2030 and the 80% renewable energy future study), consumption and production data compiled by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) for the west (the Transmission Expansion Planning and Policy Committee (TEPPC) data base), state and sub-regional studies (such as the Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI)), and studies produced by NGOs and consulting firms (the McKinsey reports on Energy Efficiency and Distributed Resources, the American Solar Energy Society 2007 emissions reduction analysis, the Google 2030 plan, the UCS Climate 2030 plan, the NRDC Economic Blueprint, and WRA’s Balanced Energy Plan for the West).
Careful citation to data and results from other studies will build credibility and will result in data and models that can stand up to external scrutiny. Using existing work will also allow the effort on this study to be focused on effective communication with a broad and diverse audience. The modeling will be technically sound and will be produced in a collaborative fashion that supports stakeholder learning and leaves them with information and insights they can use to form judgments and make arguments.
The exercise of demonstrating the viability of a clean energy economy is often approached as an accounting problem, one of adding resources to met estimated loads. This oversimplifies the challenge of transitioning to a clean energy economy and misses the fact that the clean energy transformation is a systems problem. The transformation will not occur simply through the action of market forces and will require supportive policy and frameworks and new business practices by utilities. The components of a clean energy economy include increased grid utilization, improved energy efficiency, expanded distributed clean energy production, expanded central station clean energy production and declining fossil energy production. These components are not “plug and play.” Technological change affects each of the components and the relative pace of change of the respective components is uncertain. And the components exist within a social, economic, environmental, engineering, regulatory and political institutional system that is evolving over time. These complications suggest a computing analogy may be more appropriate than an accounting analogy.
In a computing analogy the components of clean energy solutions could be characterized as “hardware” and the rules of institutional system within which the hardware operates is “software.” The accounting analogy is limited because while it describes the hardware at a point in time, it cannot describe how the hardware is evolving over time. Presuming an accounting paradigm precludes dealing with the complex, evolving rules of the electric industry institutional system and thus an accounting analogy misses the institutional transformation that must occur to build a clean energy economy. In other words, there is a lot of “software” that needs to be written to accommodate the hardware and the accounting paradigm assumes the reprogramming away.
New software for the clean energy economy includes fundamental changes in local and regional electric system cooperation and operation, integrated evaluation of environmental, land and species considerations explicitly into electric system planning, adoption and diffusion of new technologies, capital investment incentives to promote building the necessary consumption, generation, distribution and transmission infrastructure, workforce training for expanding trades and professions, and creative institutional change that aligns private sector incentives with clean energy outcomes.
We expect to release the final report at the end of January 2011.