The Solar Energy Transition

Implementation And Policy Implications

Daniel Rich, Jon M Veigel, Allen M Barnett, John Byrne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367295882
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000305579
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Solar energy is considered by many an attractive and practical option for America's energy future, one that is technically and commercially feasible as well as socially and environmentally desirable. Sun-generated power could meet upwards of 20 percent of U.S. energy needs by the year 2000—but only if there is a concerted national effort to use this energy option. The issues of implementation and the public and private initiatives needed to facilitate a transition to extensive use of solar energy are the focus of this volume. The solar transition is addressed from the diverse perspectives of the many necessary participants: industries and small businesses; local, state, regional, and federal governments; public utilities; policy analysts; and solar advocates. The contributors assess the extent to which solar alternatives can replace and augment other energy forms, the pace and pattern for solar commercialization, and the roles of public and private institutions in carrying out the transition. A consensus becomes apparent: Although the transition to solar energy is technically and commercially viable, its success depends on concerted public and private efforts to promote innovation and diversification in energy production and distribution and to institute major changes in public policy related to energy use.

1. Environmental Benefits of a Solar World

Denis Hayes

Solar energy is the cleanest, safest, most environmentally gentle energy option we have. While claims to the contrary persist, they have been recently rebutted so convincingly that the issue must, for now, be considered settled. Moreover, the environmental advantages that adhere to solar energy are increasingly perceived as matters of surpassing importance. Environmental problems associated with conventional fuels may severely limit, or even halt, their future contribution to our energy supplies. A solar energy transition offers a viable and environmentally beneficial alternative path.

Environmental Limits on Conventional Fuels

The most extreme and controversial environmental limits on continued use of conventional fuels could theoretically come to pose an absolute brick wall to their continued development. For example, a few years ago world reserves of coal and oil shale were believed to be bountiful. Today, however, mainstream scientific thought holds that much of this fuel possibly will never be burned because the resulting carbon dioxide could cause catastrophic changes in the world's climate. A few years ago, problems of nuclear reactor safety, radioactive waste disposal, and the proliferation of weapons-grade materials were generally thought to have solutions. Today, those solutions remain elusive and worldwide nuclear opposition has acquired a formidable momentum. Nuclear growth has slowed to a near standstill in this country, and unless credible solutions--especially to the proliferation problem--are forthcoming, fission technologies may have no future. Other categories of environmental problems may assert themselves in more subtle ways. For example, many forms of pollution could be dealt with cheaply and easily when energy demand was modest, but their control is now growing increasingly difficult and costly. While a 90 percent effective control might be sufficient for a small source of pollution, a 99 percent effective control may become necessary when the source grows tenfold. But the incremental cost of each additional degree of control increases disproportionately; to capture the last few percent can cost many times as much as to capture the first 90 percent. Moreover, merely capturing pollutants does not necessarily solve the problem. Most of what passes for pollution control does not recover resources in a useful form. It merely places them in a different location, and perhaps in a different condition, than they were before. Air pollutants, for example, are often converted into water pollutants or into solid waste.

Displacement of pollutants is generally better than doing nothing, but the net resulting benefits are sometimes small after all costs are considered. For example, scrubbing sulfur dioxide from the effluent of a 1,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant might require a capital investment of $100 million, consume more than 3 percent of the electricity generated by the plant, and produce 40,000 cubic feet of sludge per day. Up to 90 percent of the sulfur dioxide in the stack gases may be removed, but the resulting sludge could eventually become a serious source of water and ground pollution. Microbial action on the sludge might even convert the sulfur into hydrogen sulfide, thus making it again a source of air pollution. A mountain of sludge from power plant scrubbers may hold marked advantages over an airshed loaded with sulfur dioxide and sulfates. Yet a mountain of sludge hardly constitutes a solution. It merely means that an acute hazard has been traded for a persistent ill.

The process of solving one problem by creating another shows signs of becoming increasingly expensive. Thus, coal-fired power plants now produce about 60 million tons of solid waste each year as products of air pollution control. This material is currently disposed of in pits, ponds, and landfills for about $2 a ton. About 13 percent of all fly-ash captured during the burning of the coal is used directly in civil engineering projects--mostly road building. These wastes contain a broad assortment of heavy metals, sulfates, and carcinogenic hydrocarbons. If this material is classified as hazardous waste by the EPA, as now seems quite possible, the cost of disposal will soar to about $90 a ton, and direct use in road building will be prohibited. The cost of disposal would then nearly equal the cost of the fuel. Even if the wastes are not deemed hazardous, the cost of disposal is expected to rise to about $10 per ton, just to meet current disposal standards.

Such "technical fix" strategies make little economic sense in most cases. Uncontrolled pollution can entail substantial costs to human health, physical property, agricultural production, and so forth. These costs are often borne by institutions and peoples who derive no benefit from the polluting processes. Occasionally, those who pay the price do not even reside in the same nation as those who do the polluting. When polluters are forced to pay for pollution control, the costs borne previously by outsiders are internalized in the production process. The expense of pollution control is then passed on to the consumer in higher prices for products, effectively transferring to the consumer the real costs that were previously experienced by the general public as ill health and property damage.

Unfortunately, many of the costs and benefits of pollution control are difficult to quantify. The effects of the pollution on human health and on property are just beginning to be assessed. Only scanty information is available on the impact of pollution upon such natural "free goods" as forests and fish, although it is known that the stunting effect can be very serious. Forest growth in parts of Sweden and California has been reduced by nearly half; game fish have entirely disappeared from many lakes in the Adirondacks. As little as is known about the effects of pollution upon nature's goods, even less is known about its impact on nature's services. These services--including the degradation of organic waste, the fixation of solar energy, the maintenance of atmospheric gas balances, the cycling of nutrients--are essential to a healthy biosphere.

When a pollutant causes obvious harm to humans, the calculations become still more difficult. For example, when a pollutant causes premature human death, what should the price tag cover--the unrealized earnings of the dead people or the cost of hospitalization and health care prior to death? Is a healthy middle-aged executive worth more than an elderly asthmatic on welfare? Should a premium be charged for suffering? For such questions, there are no good answers. Yet decisions must be made. Explicitly or implicitly, regulators have assigned values to the costs of pollution and have mandated various degrees of pollution control. Only in this way can society determine how much control is enough.

Such an approach holds no promise, however, for pollutants that are not amenable to technical fixes. More surprisingly, it has been rather unsatisfactory for many pollutants that can be controlled with current technology. Time and again, a controllable contaminant of some sort has been found to have an ecological impact that was not anticipated. For the most part, these occurrences can be traced to particular characteristics of the pollutants that had not been given adequate attention when the pollution-abatement policies were decided upon. Sometimes there is no mystery about the harmful effects of a pollutant. Exposure to carbon monoxide from an automobile exhaust pipe can cause brain damage and then death within a few minutes. Its toxic qualities are thus rather obvious, and safety standards are comparatively easy to establish. This is not always the case with other pollutants, however. The problem posed by lag time is probably most common with regard to cancer. Many carcinogens take their toll only two or more decades after the time of exposure. It is difficult to predict what the eventual impact on humans will be through tests conducted over briefer periods on other species. Many pollutants are very long-lived, with some posing a danger for hundreds of thousands of years, or even forever. The ill effects to be felt in the distant future are often severely discounted or even ignored by analysts who make decisions with only the short-term outcome in mind.

In assessing the impact of a particular pollutant, analysts tend to ask only, "What damage will this particular unit of pollution do?" But other pollutants in the air and water may have a synergistic or a catalytic effect on the one under consideration. And the current discharge is part of a constant stream that, over the years, may have a cumulative effect. The amount of acid rain that strikes the Parthenon this year is unlikely to cause unacceptable damage; over the years, however, the structure has been severely defaced. In any one year, the carbon dioxide emitted by fossil fuel consumption will have a negligible effect upon the global climate; once emitted, however, much of the CO₂ will remain in the atmosphere for a very long time, and after a few decades enough could build up to cause a dramatic alteration in the temperature and rainfall patterns of the world. In the case of carbon dioxide, this gradual process may be masked by the oceans acting as a huge thermal flywheel. Deep ocean waters may be absorbing large amounts of heat from the surface layers of large subtropical gyres. This would slow down the rate of atmospheric heating, but it would also make it far harder to alter a higher global thermal equilibrium once it is attained.

Fossil Fuels and the Challenge of Carbon Dioxide Pollution

Environmental problems are widely accepted as important, but it is difficult to persuade people that they are urgent. Most policy makers are forced by circumstances into shortsightedness. Corporate managers are governed by annual profit-and-loss statements; politicians have a time horizon that extends to the eve of the next election. Indeed, even the economic literature that dominates policy analysis so emphasizes present value and discounts future costs that it becomes difficult to pay serious attention to the long-term ill effects of today's decisions. For environmental impacts that are--for all intents and purposes--irreversible, it is the very long term that matters most. Probably no pollutant better demonstrates this difficulty than carbon dioxide.

Fossil fuel combustion always adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. A 1,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant emits carbon dioxide at the rate of about 270 kilograms per second, or 16 metric tons a minute. No economically plausible way to capture any significant fraction of this gas has yet been suggested. Carbon dioxide now constitutes about 334 parts per million (ppm) of the atmosphere. In preindustrial times, the CO₂ concentration was less than 290 ppm, so the level today is about 14 percent over the preindustrial base. By the year 2000, atmospheric carbon dioxide is expected to be 30 percent above the 290 ppm figure; and by 2020, assuming a growth in the global usage of fossil fuels, the preindustrial level could double. Such a dramatic increase in global CO₂ will almost certainly result in a significant warming of the earth's atmosphere, with many adverse consequences for life as it now exists. While uncertainties remain, these are mostly over matters of scale and rate, rather than direction. The global climate is influenced by solar flux, cloudiness, CO₂, airborne particles, sea and surface temperature, and the reflectivity of the earth's surface, among other things. Many of these interact in ways that are not entirely understood. Yet at least enough is known about global climatic phenomena to assign ranges of probabilities to various outcomes. All the most widely accepted models of climatic behavior predict that continued growth in atmospheric CO₂ will increase the planet's surface temperature.

It is sometimes argued that sufficient uncertainty characterizes current knowledge of CO₂ that nothing should be done about the problem for the time being. A recent National Academy of Sciences report characterizes the potential consequences of such a non-policy in stark terms: "Unfortunately, it will take a millennium for the effects of a century of use of fossil fuels to dissipate. If the decision is postponed until the impact of man-made climate changes have been felt, then, for all practical purposes, the die will already have been cast." This warming phenomenon is generally referred to as the "greenhouse effect." It is easily understood. Each day, the earth receives an enormous amount of energy from the sun. The planet must radiate an equal amount of energy to avoid growing continuously hotter. The wavelength of any radiation depends upon the temperature of the radiating body. The very hot sun gives off short wavelength radiation, while the much cooler earth radiates energy at longer wavelengths. Carbon dioxide is transparent to short wavelengths but absorbs certain long wavelengths, including those given off by the earth, thus trapping the heat. The CO₂ gas is itself warmed by the absorbed energy, and re-radiates part of this energy back to earth. This increases the overall temperature of the earth's atmosphere. It is believed that this planet would be about 10 degrees Centigrade cooler if there were no CO₂ in the atmosphere.

A doubling of atmospheric CO₂, according to most studies, could lead to an increase in average global temperature of between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Centigrade. At first glance, this might seem to be a rather insignificant change. However, this "average" shift in global temperature would not be uniformly distributed over all regions. In polar regions, for example, the impact would be several times greater than the global average. A look at the world's climatic history places a 3-degree Centigrade shift in better perspective. Between the peak of the last glacial period (20,000 to 16,000 years ago) and the peak of the current, warmer "interglacial" period, the mean temperature of the ocean rose about 2 degrees Centigrade and the mean global temperature warmed about 5 degrees Centigrade. During the last glacial period, the sea level was more than 100 meters lower than it is now. The wide continental shelf that borders the east coast of North America was dry land. When the glacial ice melted, the sea rose. Had cities been built in what were then coastal areas, they would now be submerged. If rising global temperatures in the years ahead cause widespread melting of polar ice, the world's oceans will rise still further, affecting current coastal cities.

There is now an emerging body of opinion that holds that a single doubling of atmospheric CO₂ could result in a rapid deglaciation of West Antarctica. This, in turn, could lead to a 5-meter rise in sea level, covering many low-lying areas, including much of Florida, the Netherlands, and the principal rice-growing river deltas of Asia. An average increase of 5 meters would most likely inundate the major coastal cities and would reduce the earth's land surface at a time when population pressures are calling for more land--not less. Before the world's oceans rise dramatically, an increase in world temperature would affect global food production. Rainfall patterns could shift, regional temperatures could soar, and the world's delicately balanced agricultural system would undergo considerable change. Some land might have to be abandoned, while other land--of unknown quality--would have to be reclaimed. Existing irrigation and drainage systems that cost billions of dollars would have to be changed to reflect new rainfall patterns. In Asia, where over half the world's people live, terraced irrigation systems represent the investment of centuries of human labor. As different crops might be grown in some areas, different infrastructures would be needed to process and to market them. The net global effect is impossible to predict. Some regions would clearly suffer adverse effects; others might find their lot improved. But the process of change itself would be tortuous and costly in terms of human life. The existing agricultural system has very little slack capacity and is closely fitted to the climate that has prevailed for the last several thousand years. Any alteration in climate would be disruptive; large climatic changes could be catastrophic.

Historically, shifts from glacial to interglacial periods have generally occurred over thousands of years. The world is now faced with a doubling of atmospheric CO₂, with its possible attendant climatic shift, in roughly 56 years. And that, theoretically, could be just the beginning. Although the combustion of the world's proven oil and gas reserves would not be likely to cause unacceptable climate changes, coal burning poses a greater threat. If the entire global coal reserves were to be burned, atmospheric CO₂ would increase eightfold. Burning the world shale oil supply could result in a still greater increase. In fact, however, it would be wise to avoid even one doubling. The atmosphere already contains more CO₂ than has ever prevailed since the evolution of Homo sapiens. If it is arbitrarily assumed that the cumulative atmospheric carbon dioxide from human sources should not add more than 50 percent to the preindustrial level of CO₂, then modest worldwide growth in the use of fossil fuels" could continue only through the end of this century, after which fossil fuel combustion must decline rather sharply. Moreover, because of the rather long lead time needed to convert from one energy source to another, a decision to reduce fossil fuel use swiftly after the year 2000 would have to be made today.

A number of disturbingly complacent reports have focused on perceived agricultural benefits in some parts of the world from carbon dioxide. Increased worldwide food production is postulated to follow from longer growth seasons in some countries, possibly increased rainfall and from the fact that plants grow better in an enriched carbon dioxide atmosphere. However, a continuing gamble with carbon dioxide release hardly seems to be justified by any prudent computation of the risks involved.

Environmental Benefits of Solar Energy

How can solar energy solve this carbon dioxide problem? All of the solar energy forms require processed materials for the collection and conversion of the available solar, wind, hydro, or biomass energy. These materials in turn will require fossil energy for their production, with resultant release of carbon dioxide. But the pay-back time for carbon dioxide should be very similar to the pay-back time for energy. Considerable net energy research has shown that this should be on the order of one or two years for solar energy systems. Thus a first generation solar plant that lasts 30 years will release only 3 to 6 percent as much carbon dioxide as an equivalent conventional plant. Even better, second generation solar plants will not require as large a carbon dioxide investment as the first generation. Being increasingly built with solar-derived energy, the carbon dioxide investment of later solar plants will continually drop.

Solar technologies, of course, are not devoid of environmental impact. Although the flow of sunlight to the planet will not be affected by the extent to which we harness it constructively, that harnessing itself will have effects. Dams will be built, wind turbines erected, biomass plantations cultivated, and large surfaces dedicated to devices to harvest sunbeams. All these activities can be undertaken either wisely or foolishly, and if foolishly, negative consequences can result. Ironically, the largest environmental impacts associated with most solar technologies are caused by conventional fuels. For the first generation solar equipment, conventional fuels will be used to extract, refine, and fabricate the basic materials of construction and may be used as a back-up to some solar systems. But, if such equipment is later recycled and solar resources are themselves used to fashion new materials, these already modest environmental costs will fall further.

Solar energy sources--wind, water, biomass, and direct sunlight--hold substantial advantages over the alternatives. They add no heat to the global environment and produce no radioactive or weapons-grade materials. The carbon dioxide emitted by biomass systems in equilibrium will make no net contributions to atmospheric concentrations, since green plants will capture carbon dioxide at the same rate it is being produced. R...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Editors and Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Environmental Benefits of a Solar World
• 2 Planning the Solar Transition
• 3 A National Strategy for Solar Energy: The Role of the Domestic Policy Review
• 4 National Politics and the Solar Energy Transition
• 5 California: Energy Policies and Renewable Energy Strategies
• 6 The Role of Utilities in Promoting Solar Energy: The Case of the TVA
• 7 Industrial Decision-Making for Solar Energy Development
• 8 Small Business Ventures and Solar Energy Development
• 9 Solar Energy Commercialization Strategies
• 10 The Solar Energy Transition as a Problem of Political Economy