# Presentation: 694249

## Can Energy Production Scale?

- Choices and Challenges for the Current Century

**Our Waveform of Consumption**

## 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

## Production and Consumption on the Century Timescale

## 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

## Resultant Global Inequities

- Global Consumer Energy Density Map

## Waveforms of Consumption

## The Terrawatt Power Scale

- Currently we are a 14.5 TW Planet

## 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?)

## 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.

## 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

## 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

## 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?

## 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

## 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

## The Need for BioFuels

## India/China Growth  New Fuels Required

## 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

## 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

## 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 1⁄2 of our fuel requirements will be met with “switchgrass”

## The Necessary New Smart Grid

## Electricity Distribution

- Electricity is an energy carrier like Hydrogen
- US presently operates 250,000 km of > 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

## 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 AA’s)
- 300,000 grid connected fused silica flywheels of radius 1 meter and width 0.25 meters

## 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

## 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!

## Slide 25

## 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