With limited engineering talent, construction companies, and materials available, a huge U.S. buildout of nuclear power is not likely to be completed within the next two decades, said a government expert.
Meanwhile, demand for energy—electricity in particular—is slated to increase worldwide.
Carl O. Bauer, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), told an MIT audience that electricity shortfalls leading to seasonal brownouts and blackouts in California, Texas, and New England by 2016 are just some of the challenges facing decision makers tackling America’s energy future.
Bauer’s February 26 colloquium, “Energy Supply and Demand, Economics, and Greenhouse Gas Management: Are They Related?” was sponsored by the MIT Energy Initiative.
“I happen to believe we’re right on the cusp of a huge energy buildout because we have no choice,” Bauer said, but pointed out that the dearth of nuclear plant construction in past decades has led engineers to turn to other fields and construction companies to commit their resources to building plants overseas.
In facing the big energy picture, decision makers, he said, must juggle three “co-dependent” entities: the economic sustainability of energy sources; energy supply and security; and the effect of solutions on the environment and climate change. “Too often, we divorce the circles and make a decision in policy that we can’t live with,” he said.
Coal, natural gas, and oil use will remain largely unchanged in the U.S. over the next two decades, projections show, while the use of renewables is likely to increase from 6 to 9 percent of the total. Nuclear is slated to remain constant at 8 percent because old plants will shut down and new plants can’t come on line fast enough to make a big dent in usage patterns by 2030.
While U.S. energy use is expected to increase by 25 percent in that time frame, worldwide energy demand is expected to leap 50 percent. “Do we think the oil supply can grow by 50 percent? The challenge for increasing the oil supply is increasingly onerous, and many believe peaking will happen in this decade,” Bauer said. We will become increasingly dependent on coal and natural gas, which have their own supply and production problems, he said.
A state-by-state North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) long-term reliability assessment questioned states’ capacity to generate electricity for the hottest days of summer in coming years.
Besides possible peak-usage brownouts and blackouts, the shortfall could bump up electricity prices in states neighboring high-demand regions by 30 to 40 percent.
While alternatives such as wind look promising, even the country’s windiest states—such as North Dakota and South Dakota—don’t have enough consistently windy days to meet high demand. Nights—when demand is down for air conditioning—tend to be windiest.
Managing public electricity use—limiting use during peak times or setting allowances—could become a reality.
If so, Bauer predicted that Americans may be in for some unfamiliar discomfort. “How much are we willing to sweat or shiver?” he said. “How much are we going to allow someone to manage our own use through a meter on our house to control the flow of electricity and shut us down if demand goes too high?”