This put up is a part of an ongoing “What Is” collection from Vitality Innovation that solutions a few of in the present day’s most urgent local weather coverage questions. The primary on this collection answered the query–What’s Internet-Zero?, and the second answered the query What’s The Inflation Discount Act?.
What’s Clear Vitality?
Combating local weather change is the problem of our time—reducing emissions on the velocity and scale science deems mandatory will decide the way forward for almost all residing issues on the planet for generations. It’s an overarching downside that impacts each nook of our society and financial system, and it requires.
Nevertheless, as sophisticated as the issue appears, the answer to cleansing up local weather air pollution is simple: Use clear vitality to make electrical energy and use that clear electrical energy to energy gear like automobiles, factories, and home equipment that at the moment burn fossil fuels.
However what counts as clear vitality?
The reply to that query varies relying on who’s responding, muddying the panorama, diverting assets from one of the best options, and costing treasured time within the effort to chop local weather air pollution. However the backside line is evident – vitality isn’t clear if it generates greenhouse fuel emissions or air air pollution.
To set the report straight, right here’s a information that walks via the clearly clear vitality applied sciences and people requiring extra nuance.
The apparent candidates: Renewable vitality
Renewables—wind, photo voltaic, geothermal, and hydropower—are universally acknowledged as clear vitality. To generate electrical energy, they harness pure processes like wind, the solar’s rays, the earth’s warmth, and the circulation of water. And since they don’t burn any feedstock like coal or pure fuel, they emit no air or local weather air pollution, qualifying them as clear vitality. These sources at the moment generate about 20 p.c of U.S. electrical energy.
Renewables are a bedrock local weather resolution, they’re the most cost effective type of energy in the present day and can maintain getting cheaper over time, and we all know how you can reliably handle an electrical grid with a excessive share of renewable vitality.
Clear however not pollution-free: Nuclear energy
Nuclear energy at the moment provides 20 p.c of the US’s electrical energy, making it certainly one of our largest sources of energy free from local weather air pollution. Nuclear crops can present around-the-clock zero-carbon energy, which means they’re an vital a part of a clear grid. Whereas establishing new nuclear crops is a well timed and costly course of, sustaining the working nuclear fleet is important to assembly local weather targets, as a result of in the event that they aren’t on-line, fossil gasoline energy might fill that required technology capability.
We take into account nuclear energy to be “clear” on the idea that it doesn’t emit air pollution, though it should be acknowledged nuclear crops do create nuclear waste, which has sophisticated storage necessities and might be hazardous. The dearth of greenhouse fuel emissions is the important thing distinction on this evaluation.
Hydrogen: It’s sophisticated
Hydrogen has lengthy been mentioned as a possible local weather resolution, and it has sure use circumstances the place it will likely be wanted to offer vitality free from local weather air pollution in a manner electrified processes can’t like metal manufacturing, aviation, and long-haul maritime transport.
Rating hydrogen’s decarbonization prospects by end-use sector from wonderful to horrible.
Nevertheless, regardless that burning hydrogen solely emits water vapor, it’s sophisticated from a local weather perspective. Hydrogen by itself scarcely exists in nature—typically it should be separated from different molecules utilizing energy-intensive gear referred to as electrolyzers. If electrolyzers are powered by fossil fuels, the hydrogen they produce isn’t thought-about clear, since air pollution happens in the course of the creation of that hydrogen, even when it solely water vapor is emitted when the hydrogen itself is subsequently burned.
To be thought-about clear, hydrogen should be produced by electrolyzers powered by one other clear vitality supply, ideally wind or photo voltaic. That is referred to as inexperienced hydrogen.
Carbon seize and storage (CCS): Theoretically clear, absent in the actual world
CCS entails burning fossil fuels at a facility like a coal energy plant or metal mill, after which sequestering the ensuing local weather air pollution in an underground geologic formation or substance like limestone. Whereas theoretically attainable, this course of is just not and has not been used wherever on this planet at scale. Failures and value overruns have plagued CCS demonstration initiatives. And whereas CCS captures carbon dioxide, it doesn’t seize conventional air air pollution like soot, NOx, or Sox, all of which harms human well being.
Pure fuel: A bridge to nowhere
Many business teams have labored for years to model pure fuel as clear with the narrative of fuel as a “bridge gasoline” to a clear vitality future typically pushed by fossil gasoline curiosity teams. However that is resoundingly false. Though pure fuel emits half the carbon dioxide of coal, it nonetheless generates substantial quantities of local weather air pollution when burned.
And pure fuel wells, pipelines, and home equipment typically leak methane, a rather more potent greenhouse fuel by way of trapping warmth within the ambiance than carbon dioxide and is liable for an estimated 20-30 p.c of worldwide warming because the Industrial Revolution.
There isn’t a credible situation through which pure fuel might be thought-about clear from a local weather perspective.
How coverage can convey extra clear vitality on-line, quicker
Due to clear vitality’s superior economics, state and federal coverage, and company local weather targets, almost all new additions to the U.S. electrical grid at the moment are clear.
In 2024, 96 p.c of the brand new capability added within the U.S. will include wind, photo voltaic, storage, and nuclear, all free from local weather air pollution. Whereas it is a hopeful improvement, we’re nonetheless not including clear vitality quick sufficient.
Headwinds similar to excessive rates of interest, native siting challenges, provide chain constraints, and lengthy wait instances to hook up with the grid are among the many components including sand to the gears of the clear transition. Instituting good coverage might help ease the friction, together with:
- Enhancing regional and interregional transmission planning.
- Accelerating interconnection by decreasing the necessities on interconnection research to solely these mandatory to attach the venture to the grid.
- Upgrading transmission strains utilizing reasonably priced expertise to get large capability will increase briefly timelines.
- Implementing state and nationwide clear electrical energy requirements to mandate the transition to scrub vitality.
- Enhancing regional sharing of electrical energy to enhance reliability and resiliency.
- And enabling demand-side options to satisfy peak hundreds shortly and affordably.
Clear vitality is foundational to the struggle in opposition to local weather change—different options like electrification of transportation, buildings, and business will solely attain their fullest potential if clear vitality provides the electrical energy these applied sciences run on, somewhat than coal and pure fuel.
Subsequently, it’s essential that policymakers, regulators, advocates, and companies perceive what vitality sources are really clear and that are imposters. In any other case, they danger providing incentives, investments, and help to the unsuitable applied sciences which may solely make our local weather progress worse.
