The Myths Of The Four Imperatives

Andy Ferris
Energy, Technology and Policy
Spring 2014
April 8, 2014
Word Count: 1,481 + 500

The Myths of the Four Imperatives
Robert Bryce poses some interesting solutions to the US energy industry. With the recent growth in production of natural gas, and the clear benefits of nuclear energy it is easy to see why he might come to the conclusion that those two energy resources should dominate the energy industry of the future. However the premise on which his ideas are built is severely flawed. Robert Bryce seems to believe that the only possible outcomes are extreme scenarios. He makes this clear through his emphasis on what he refers to as the Four Imperatives; power density, energy density, cost and scale. Using these criteria
he attempts to destroy all merits of renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar, in order to defend traditional fossil fuels and present his case for a natural gas to nuclear (N2N) solution. The mistakes in his analysis of the Four
Imperatives are obvious when simple logic and research are implemented to counter his arguments. Throughout Bryce’s analysis of the renewable energy technologies of today,
Bryce claims that the advantage of fossil fuels in power density is too great to overcome and will ultimately doom zero emission technologies. He shows figures and graphs explaining the amount of land that is necessary for wind and solar to produce equal amounts of power to nuclear, natural gas and coal power plants. He paints a pretty scary picture. However he does not acknowledge distributed generation solar as a potential solution to this issue. He focuses exclusively on utility scale solar installations.
Obviously installing a coal plant on rooftops is not possible, however many consumers have shown willingness and desire to install solar panels and take advantage of a previously untapped resource to meet their energy needs. This is a significant area that will otherwise go to waste, which casts doubt on this Imperative the way Bryce has positioned it. Figure 1 uses some basic math to show that the untapped potential of rooftop solar power is very significant.
Total rooftop solar potential
712.5 GW
Average hours of sunlight/day
10 hours
Average days of sun/year
200 days
Total potential DG solar generation
1,425,000 GWh
Total electric power sector generation
3,955,000 GWh
Potential power offset by DG solar
36%
Figure 1: potential power offset by distributed generation rooftop solar1
1

http://helixrecruiting.com/helix-recruiting-solar-david-anthony

As you can see, the power density of solar is grossly misrepresented by Robert Bryce as the potential for utilizing otherwise wasted space is significant even when compared to the massive scale of US electricity demand.
Bryce’s narrative would also lead you to believe that the amount of infrastructure, transmission lines, and land that is necessary to implement solar and wind resources is immense and counterproductive to environmental concerns. However, what he fails to identify is the potential disturbance to eco systems and land that will be realized through climate change and extreme weather events that are a result of widespread use of fossil fuels and carbon emissions. Incidents of landslides, hurricanes, tornadoes, tropical storms and blizzards have dramatically increased in recent years, not to mention the long term impacts of glacial retreats, rising sea levels and flooding. These outcomes result in major overhauls to landscapes on a wide scale and have impacts far greater than the installation of static power lines, solar panels and wind turbines. For these reasons, the disadvantage in power density of renewable energy technologies can be overcome by utilizing currently unutilized space.
The energy density imperative is used as a tool to show that the energy content of fossil fuels is unrivaled and renewables do not come close due to a lack of power storage capabilities. While the chemical properties of fossil fuels make that argument hard to argue with currently, Bryce sweeps aside any potential for improvement in technology and instead implies that current technologies have maxed out their potential.
Common sense would tell us that this is a severely flawed position. Researchers here at the University of Texas, as well as across the country are working to develop improved battery technology that would allow efficient and large scale storage of power. Betting against human ingenuity has proved to be a dangerous proposition in the past. Many researchers believe that competitive utility scale power storage is years away, better than the implied timeline of “never” that Bryce assumes. Large storage capacity will allow renewables to overcome the intermittancy problem that Bryce accurately points out, and will significantly impact the problem of power demand spikes and consumption curves. These technological advances are inevitable, and no industry stands to gain more from this progress than wind and solar.
The current economic landscape in the energy sector would seem to indicate that the heavy financial burden that comes with implementation for renewables is a major hurdle to widespread adoption. This is a fair assessment of the current energy landscape. However the position taken by Bryce is flawed due to the information that is conveniently ignored. Bryce acknowledges that climate change is real, and that there are threats and costs associated with current rates of CO2 emissions however he fails to tie those costs directly to the source: fossil fuels. Even if policy makers and world leaders do not want to tie the costs of climate change to carbon emissions, shouldn’t any detailed analysis do so anyways as they are obvious opportunity costs associated with one course of action compared with the other? Obviously these figures are hard to quantify exactly due to global carbon emissions, and uncertainty over the true cause of any one extreme weather event as well as other large inherent costs that are difficult to attribute directly to climate change. These added costs must be taken into account

when evaluating the energy future of the US as well as other countries. Adding these costs only improves the competitive position of zero-emission power sources like Solar and Wind.
These added costs do nothing to reduce the high capital costs currently associated with renewable sources. However, human ingenuity and market forces are currently taking care of that. Solar technology has decreased by over 60%2 in the last three years with an additional 45%-65% price reduction in the next 5 years3. Utilizing proprietary data from SunPower Corporation in the utility scale solar industry, Figure 2 shows the results of this expected price reduction.
NPV of 30MW Houston Solar Plant without Tax Credit
$15,000,000.00

$12,722,201.27

$10,000,000.00
$5,000,000.00
$-

NPV Today

NPV in 5 years

$(5,000,000.00)
$(10,000,000.00)
$(15,000,000.00)
$(20,000,000.00)

$(17,540,462.04)

Figure 2: Effect of price trends on solar installations
These cost trends represent a huge net impact on the renewable energy industry, and it’s a trend that is largely ignored by “Power Hungry.” Similar trends are observed in the wind sector, which seems to indicate that both areas will be financially competitive with fossil fuels within the next decade.
Once that point is crossed, fossil fuels will be at a severe disadvantage as the low operating costs and zero fuel costs associated with these technologies will represent lower risk financial investment than their alternatives.
The final Imperative of “Power Hungry” is Scale. This is where Bryce’s extremism really comes to light. The massive levels of consumption of power within the US and abroad is made explicitly clear throughout the book. Those levels of consumption are only expected to increase. However Bryce appears to be of the opinion that if one solution cannot possibly meet the entire energy need, then it has no place in the energy industry what so ever. This is an absurd position as reliance on so few single power sources increases the risk of your overall energy portfolio exponentially. The solution going forward is obviously a hybrid approach incorporating traditional fossil fuels, renewable sources, high potential nuclear energy as well as yet-to-be developed energy
2
3
http://theenergycollective.com/eliashinckley/315371/solar-industry-red-hot-will-it-get-hotter http://www.rmi.org/SolarPVBOS technologies.
It has already been demonstrated that solar has the potential to meet a significant portion of energy demand. In addition, growth in battery technology and further expansion of transmission lines will allow wind to overcome one of the main obstacles to widespread adoption. Finally, the historical trend to decarbonize fuel sources leads to the obvious conclusion that renewables have a bright future in the energy industry. Bryce seems to want to throw out these technologies by discrediting a
100% renewables solution that most would agree is infeasible anyways. Solutions are never black and white, and Bryce seems to overlook the grey.
Because of the flawed premise on which Robert Bryce builds his vision of the energy future, it is challenging to accurately assess the conclusions that he reaches.
Certainly natural gas and nuclear have applications going forward, and will for many years to come. However, when Bryce implements his Four Imperatives to discredit any potential that renewable sources have he overlooks many key facts. Using arbitrary criteria to discredit these technologies is ill-advised when the energy industry of the future will require all available resources to be utilized in a responsible and efficient
manor.