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Charting a renewable future for U.S. Salazar says renewable energy development needed to reduce dependence on foreign oil, create U.S. jobs and reduce carbon emissions Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Candidate Obama said it during his presidential campaign; President Obama has repeated it since taking the oath of office; and now the Obama administration has picked up the refrain: The United States needs an energy plan involving major renewable energy development to achieve energy independence while also reducing carbon dioxide emissions in a rapidly warming world.
“For the Department of the Interior it means that it is time that we change direction in how we do business,” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar told a summit of 25X’25 America’s Energy Future on April 2. “It means that having a one-pathway forward to energy development for oil and gas is not the only way forward.”
The 25X’25 group is promoting the reduction of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, with a target of meeting 25 percent of U.S. energy demand through renewable sources by 2025, a target that the U.S. Senate set in a 2007 resolution.
And new renewable energy industries can help turn around the flagging U.S. economy, said Salazar, who as senator for Colorado had been the lead sponsor of the Senate 25X’25 resolution.
“We know that there are millions of clean-energy jobs here at home and that we must finally take the moon shot on energy independence. … We know that the economic engine that renewable energy brings to this nation is only beginning to be tapped,” he said.
Thousands of jobs An upsurge in renewable energy development in the past few years has resulted in 85,000 jobs in the wind power industry and more than 80,000 jobs in the solar energy industry, Salazar said.
“There’s been $27 billion of investment just put into wind power and that means that we have more than 70 new wind turbine manufacturing facilities in the United States,” he said.
The development of the renewable electrical power generation capacity needed to achieve the 25X’25 group’s objective could spur the creation of 300,000 U.S. jobs, while also saving consumers about $64 billion in energy costs, Salazar said.
The United States is now importing almost two-thirds of its oil, while more and more of the world’s oil is coming under the control of nationalized oil companies that enable governments to exert geopolitical pressure on their neighbors.
“Our dependence on foreign oil is as much a dependence on the countries that directly supply our oil as it is a dependence on the markets and forces that can, in a six-month period, drive the price of oil up to $147 a barrel … and then down again to $45 a barrel,” Salazar said.
This situation requires the U.S. military to keep oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz and has created an unsustainable dependence on environmentally damaging carbon, while also pouring petro-dollars into organizations that are fighting U.S. troops.
So the Obama administration has made the development of a comprehensive energy plan a top priority, to move towards the use of a broad array of U.S. energy sources.
“The realities of climate change are upon us and for too long we have ignored the true costs of the energy we use,” Salazar said. “And the American people know that without a comprehensive energy and climate change program we will fall behind in the 21st century. We will lose the strength that has made America the greatest nation in history.”
Renewable potential Salazar said that federal lands enjoy vast renewable energy resources, with potential for solar energy in the Southwest; potential for wind energy offshore in the Atlantic and Pacific, and onshore in the Great Plains; and geothermal potential at specific locations in regions such as the western United States and Louisiana.
A potential 170,000 megawatts of wind resource on federal land amounts to more than the electricity usage in the entire power grid of the western United States, while solar energy on federal land could generate another 3.3 million megawatts of power, Salazar said. But after screening out locations deemed unsuitable for power generation, taking into account factors such as environmental sensitivities, there remains about 42,000 megawatts of wind-power potential and 51,000 megawatts of potential solar power in appropriate zones on federal land, he said.
“One of the things that we’re working on is essentially looking at these energy-potential zones around the country and trying to map them out in terms of where the best sites are,” Salazar said.
But, in addition to selecting suitable sites for power generation it will be necessary to extend the U.S. power grid, to enable the transmission of power from those sites to where the power is needed. That will require a national electricity transportation system, an electronic superhighway concept that is being promoted by several cabinet members in the Obama administration, Salazar said.
“In the western United States what we have mapped out already is 6,000 miles of new transmission lines,” Salazar said. “... We are working on developing this mapping program for the rest of the continental United States.”
There may also be some crossover transmission lines into Canada, he said.
Oil and gas So, where does the euphoria about renewable energy leave traditional energy sources such as oil and gas that currently meet the vast majority of the U.S. energy demand?
Salazar’s speech came on the same day as the publication of a U.S. Minerals Management Service and U.S. Geological Survey report on the status of data pertaining to energy resources on the U.S. outer continental shelf, a report that the Department of the Interior had instructed the agencies to prepare as the starting point in an extended public review of a new MMS five-year OCS oil and gas leasing program.
The United States will continue to develop oil and gas resources on the outer continental shelf in places where it is appropriate to do so, Salazar said.
There is significant potential for further OCS oil and gas development, especially in the Gulf of Mexico, he said. However, there are large regions, such as the Atlantic region, where much more information on oil and gas resources is needed, he said. Salazar did not mention the possibility of oil and gas development in the Alaska OCS.
The MMS-USGS report places the Gulf of Mexico at the top of the OCS petroleum province league table of estimated oil and gas resources, with Alaska trailing somewhat in second place — according to the report, the Gulf of Mexico may hold undiscovered technically recoverable resources of 86 billion barrels of oil equivalent, compared with 50 billion barrels of oil equivalent for Alaska.
Atlantic wind energy The report includes a comprehensive analysis of the renewable energy resources on the U.S. outer continental shelf.
When it comes to offshore renewable energy, the Atlantic region has wind power potential of perhaps 1 million megawatts, a power generation capacity that could supply one quarter of total U.S. electricity needs, Salazar said. And this power generation would be located in close proximity to major eastern U.S. population centers such as New York and Boston, thus avoiding the power transmission problems that would be associated with renewable energy locations elsewhere.
The MMS-USGS report says that the Alaska OCS has significant potential for renewable energy production but discounts the possibility of developing these Alaska resources in the foreseeable future.
“Alaska has significant ocean energy resource potential in the form of offshore wind, wave, and tidal power,” the report says. “There are several reasons these resources may not be developed on the OCS in the near-term, however. Harsh weather conditions, untested and unproven technologies, significant distance from high-energy demand centers, and more readily accessible locations in other parts of the country are some of the challenges that developers may face in this area.”
But Salazar concluded his speech by reiterating the Obama administration’s determination to tackle U.S. and world energy issues, spurred by the need to create new U.S. jobs, improve national security and address climate change.
“The debate about climate change is over. … That impels us to move forward to grasp this new energy future, much of which is going to be based on the renewable energy revolution,” Salazar said.
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