Energy Independence Demands Innovation
Highly-efficient gallium nitride solar cells. Carbon nanotube electrodes. Tidal power. Ultracapacitors. These technical strides are all hopeful signs we’re winning the renewable energy battle. But are we really weaning ourselves off expensive liquid fuels, particularly big oil?
A glance at the headlines is heartening. Across the board, wind, solar, generation are all growing or poised to grow. Earlier this month, R&D Daily reported on the sharp rise in wind power generation in the U.S. Last year alone, production grew by 45% to 48 billion kWh, enough to power 4.5 million homes. That’s a significant number. Big utilities like Florida Power & Light are building solar collection plants that dwarf old oil-fired generators in megawatt output, and efficient coal gasification technology is rapidly coming to fruition.
But dig deeper, and the news is less inspiring. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), petroleum consumption in America is at 20.7 million barrels a day. But that agency last reported data in July 2007, when a barrel of crude was still around $60. Current estimates place consumption at 21.3 million barrels a day, despite crude oil prices climbing past $100 a barrel and a recession looming.
The good news in EIA’s newly-released U.S. energy consumption forecast is that by 2030 usage of renewable energy will nearly double. The bad news, however, is that it will remain a fraction of oil consumption which, the EIA says, will hit 24.9 barrels a day in 2030. High costs are narrowing the gap, but not quickly enough. Only continued technological breakthroughs will rapidly narrow this gap.
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