Can Energy Production Scale

1
Can Energy Production Scale?

• Choices and Challenges for the Current Century

Our Waveform of Consumption
2
Three Main Challenges

• Electricity Production ? per capita consumption
  is increasing faster than energy efficiency
• Electricity Distribution ? Aging grid already at
  capacity
• Fuel Usage ? 3.5 Billion gallons a day (would be
  more if not refinery limited) ? 400 million
  gallons a day in the US

3
Production and Consumption on the Century
Timescale
4
A Century of Change (1900 (1) vs 2000)

• Industrial Output 40
• Marine Fish Catch 35
• CO2 Emissions 17
• Total Energy Use 16
• Coal Production 7
• World Population 4

No More Fish by 2100 at this rate of Consumption
5
Resultant Global Inequities

• Global Consumer Energy Density Map

6
Waveforms of Consumption
7
The Terrawatt Power Scale

• Currently we are a 14.5 TW Planet

8
The Earth Limited Scale

• Scaling from the last century leads to the
  absurd 235 TW of required Power
• 40,000 more of the largest concrete structure in
  the US
• 50 Million of these requiring a total of 75
  billion tons of Steel (not that much left)
• 10 Million Sq. km of these
• 10 Billion of these (1 per person?)

9
More Earth Limitations

• Total fuel cell production limited by amount of
  accessible platinum on the planet 500 million
  vehicles ? lithospheric exhaustion in 15 years
• Higher efficiency PVs limited by accessible
  amount of Cadmium or Gallium or Indium
• Conventional Transmission media limited by
  available new Copper
• Clear need for Carbon based materials (fiber,
  nanotubes) to overcome this.

10
Business As Usual Scenario

• Population stabilizes to 10-12 billion by the
  year 2100
• Total world energy use from 2000 to 2100 is 4000
  Terra Watt Years (Current world use is about 14.5
  TW years)
• 40 TWyr is compromise between current 14.5 TWyr
  and scaled 235 TWyr

11
Ultimately Recoverable Resource

• Conventional Oil/Gas
• Unconventional Oil
• Coal
• Methane Clathrates
• Oil Shale
• Uranium Ore
• Geothermal Steam - conventional

• 1000 TWy (1/4 need)
• 2000
• 5000
• 20,000
• 30,000
• 2,000
• 4,000

12
Other Possibilities

• Breeder Reactors
• Hot Dry Rock
• Sunlight/OTEC
• Wind Energy
• Gulf Stream
• Global Biomass

• 2,000,000 TWy
• 1,000,000
• 9,000,000
• 200,000
• 140,000
• 10,000

In Principle, Incident Energy is Sufficient ? but
how to recover and distribute it in the most cost
effective manner?
13
Dollars Per Megawatt per unit Land use per unit
Material Use

• 20 KW power buoy
• 5 MW Wind Turbine
• LNG closed cycle
• Wind Farm
• PV Farm
• Stirling Farm
• Pelamis Farm

• 850 Tons per MW
• 100 Tons per MW
• 1500 MW sq km
• 600 MW sq km
• 50 MW sq km
• 40 MW sq km
• 30 MW sq km

14
The US in milli-Chinas

• Steel Use 1992 (1400) 1998 (1120) 2004 (320)
• Coal Use 1992 (923) 1998 (780) 2004 (670)
• Oil Use 1992 (5600) 1998 (3600) 2004 (2500)

China Adding 1 new 1000 MW coal fired power
plant every 10 days China Will exceed US GHG
Emissions Summer 2008 China Private Vehicle
Fleet growing at least at 10 per year
15
The Need for BioFuels
16
India/China Growth ? New Fuels Required
17
Total Possible Yield

• 10 kg of corn 1 gallon of ethanol
• 1 ideal acre of corn 850 gallons ? but we need
  200 billion gallons annually
• 1 practical acre 2/3 of an ideal acre
• Required acreage is 350 million acres of crop
  land
• 450 million acres in the US so 78 needed for
  this enterprise ? not feasible for grain based
  ethanol

18
100 Billion Gallons by 2050

• Switchgrass as cellulosic ethanol Current
  average yields are five dry tons per acre.
• With improved breeding techniques this could
  increase to 15 dry tons per acre
• 88 Million acres is then needed to produce the
  equivalent of 100 billion gallons of gasoline

19
Requirements/Expectations

• 1 billion dollar annual investment in research
  and testing needed to get to 15 tons per acre
• 0.6 0.9 production cost per gallon by 2015
  (compared to about 1.30 now for crude oil)
• If fuel economy improves to 50 mpg by 2030 and if
  we devote 10 of available crop land to grow fuel
  on then just about ½ of our fuel requirements
  will be met with switchgrass

20
The Necessary New Smart Grid
21
Electricity Distribution

• Electricity is an energy carrier like Hydrogen
• US presently operates 250,000 km of gt 230KV
  transmission lines
• Transmission line costs are excessive
• Superconducting cable transmits 15 times more
  current per cross-sectional area as conventional
  transmission lines
• Transmission Losses are now at about 10 per year

22
Electricity Storage

• Electricity is difficult to store ? new storage
  methods mandatory
• 50 GWH battery ? stores 10 of US demand for 1
  hour
• 100 Million KG of Advanced Batteries (1 Billion
  KG of AAs)
• 300,000 grid connected fused silica flywheels of
  radius 1 meter and width 0.25 meters

23
Choices and Estimated Costs

• Pumped Hydro
• Li-Ion
• Flywheels
• CAES
• SMES
• Ultracapacitors

• 800 /KW 12 /KWH
• 300 /KW 200 /KWH
• 350 /KW 500 /KWH
• 750 /KW 12 /KWH
• 650 /KW 1500 /KWH
• 300 /KW 3600 /KWH

24
The Smart Grid

• Improved transmission, capacity, grid control and
  stability
• Better management of peak loads
• Fully distributed each node (household) can
  potentially buy, sell, or store electricity
• Merger with network protocols
• Scale 1 billion transactions per minute ? good
  modeling problem!

25
(No Transcript)
26
Summary

• Remember, we once went to the moon
• The scale of this challenge is large (50 TWyr)
  and requires 20-30 year implementation timescale
• Think seriously about using Hydrogen as a proxy
  for transmission of electricity (Aleutians OTEC)
• Significant Increased fuel economy is absolutely
  essential (50 mpg pods)
• No one technological solution (e.g. fusion) yet
  exists ? need Network of regionally based
  alternative energy facilities