Energy Biz - March/April 2008 - (Page 34) Tucson Electric Power has ample land available for future solar power expansions and caverns suitable for compressed air storage near its existing facility in Springerville, Ariz. PhOTO cOurTEsy OF TucsOn ELEcTric POWEr This would be the result of economies of scale and continued technology improvement. How do we propose to incentivize this progress? Europeans have shown the way via a production-related payment to solar electric generators. They pay a fixed price for 20 years that is sufficient to induce solar installations. The utility pays the wholesale price at the going rate; the public pays the rest. An electricity production incentive such as the feed-in tariff builds in accountability of solar manufacturers to solar power plant owners. We do not have a specific regimen yet. How to best structure a 60-year financial package is an open question. Policy makers will play a crucial role in facilitating access to land in the Southwest for solar arrays and for radiating spokes of long-distance high-voltage direct current transmission lines from there to other regions. Developing national, integrated HVDC electricity transmission is critical if the United States is to fully exploit its massive Southwest solar resource. These are controversial needs, but we believe that solar will make a strong case. Indeed, we will design our systems to leave the least-lasting footprint on the desert. Turning to transportation, what role can solar play? Is the transition to an 80 percent electric transportation sector even technically feasible? We believe the pressure to use electricity will be significant, since oil prices may continue to rise and our imbalance of payments for foreign oil may be economically and politically unsustainable. We also believe the car companies see the handwriting on the wall. How will the liquid fuels portion be met? We don’t know, but speculate that fossil fuels, biomass, and eventually hydrogen from biomass and solar-electric water splitting will each play a role. Thankfully, with 80 percent of transportation coming from electricity, this won’t be anywhere near as challenging as meeting the need with biofuels alone. STakEhOldER aCTIONS Developing the potential of solar requires the help of utilities, car makers, environmentalists, policy gurus, private investors, the public and scientists. We need their collective foresight to address climate change and energy bottlenecks right now. We are far from the kind of political critical mass that moves solar to center stage. Right now, people are PROPOSal only beginning to accept global warming as an Solar would provide 69 percent of electricity and issue and possible energy 35 percent of U.S. energy by 2050 shortages as more than REqUIREMENTS an irritant. Few make 100,000-500,000 miles of high-voltage direct any connection between current transmission grid tying the Southwest electricity and transporwith the entire United States tation. Few know that solar and renewables 2,940 gigawatts of photovoltaic generation can meet the need, and 558 gigawatts of concentrated solar power do so economically. We 535 billion cubic feet of compressed air storage need the participation of the policy and energy communities in a highenergy debate about solar and its feasibility. Are there other grand plans? Yes. We can consider a nuclear plan with 5,000 nuclear power plants to meet the same electricity demand. Or we could pump underground an unheard of amount of CO2 from coal. Each is fraught with challenges. If solar could work economically, most people would choose it. But most people don’t even know there is a solar alternative. They have bought the view that solar is “boutique power,” not the biggest resource on the planet. And they don’t know that solar in the desert is close to cost-competitive today. Ken Zweibel is president of Primestar Solar in Golden Colo., James Mason is director of the Solar Energy Campaign and the Hydrogen Research Institute, and Vasilis Fthenakis is head of the Photovoltaic Environmental Research center at Brookhaven National Laboratory. 34 E n E rgyB i z March/April 2008
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