Solar Energy Production

According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), all of the electricity generating capacity added to the grid last month was attributable to solar power.  This was the first time this had ever happened.  All other sources of electricity generation remained constant for the month while seven solar installations were brought online.  The full monthly report provides details on the location of each new installation - states that had installations come online include Hawaii, California, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, and New Jersey.

It is important to remember that solar is still a small part of our energy mix - but it is growing.  In 2011 it accounted for less than 1% of all electricity generation while wind accounted for approximately 23% of electricity generation and hydro power, the largest source of renewable energy, accounted for 63% of electricity generation.
 

Industrial Energy

In an earlier post (March 20, 2013) about the ways that energy is used (residential, commercial, industrial, transportation), perhaps the most striking feature is the fact that total energy used in the industrial sector has been relatively stagnant since the mid-1970s while all other sectors have experienced clear growth in energy usage.

This should not be taken to mean that industrial or manufacturing output has been stagnant.  Just the opposite - the value added to the economy from manufacturing has grown consistently over the past 25 years with the exception of the Great Recession which saw a slowdown in all economic activity.  The chart below is based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and shows inflation-adjusted value added of manufacturing from 1987 through 2012.

From this we can infer that manufacturers have found more energy efficient ways to produce an increasingly valuable output.

Cities and Energy

As of the 2010 Census 80.7 percent of U.S. residents lived in urban areas according to the Census Bureau.  The U.S. has experienced a long trend of urbanization as have other developed countries and similar patterns are observed in developing countries.  In fact more than half of the world's 7 billion people now live in urban areas.

This has important implications for energy use.  Ed Glaeser, an economist at Harvard, has studied this issue and shown that households in urban areas use less energy and therefore have lower carbon emissions.  In addition to this, within urban areas households that live in the central city are more efficient compared with those in suburban areas.  The research examines four sources of energy and emissions: home heating, electricity, driving, and public transportation.  The main drivers of the findings are the facts that urban households are characterized by smaller living spaces, higher population densities, and less reliance on the automobile.

The geography of economic and residential activity is an important part of understanding our energy use.  As the world continues to urbanize it is important to understand how this could influence energy use patterns across the globe.  The chart below from the UN provides a snapshot of the global urbanization trend.

Climate and Energy

Last week at the annual meeting of the Southern Regional Science Association in Arlington, VA the Director of the National Climate Assessment, Kathy Jacobs, presented an interesting overview of the work being done on the project.  The National Climate Assessment provides a tool to observe changes in the climate, evaluate the current state of the climate, and to anticipate potential future changes in climate.

One of the areas examined specifically is energy supply and use.  The report provides the following key messages on the interaction between climate and energy supply and use.

1. Extreme weather events are affecting energy production and delivery facilities, causing supply disruptions of varying lengths and magnitudes and affecting other infrastructure that depends on energy supply. The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are expected to increase.

2. Higher summer temperatures will increase electricity use, causing higher summer peak loads, while warmer winters will decrease energy demands for heating. Net energy use is projected to increase as rising demands for cooling outpace declining heating energy demands.

3. Both episodic and long-lasting changes in water availability will constrain different forms of energy production.

4. In the longer term, sea level rise will affect coastal facilities and infrastructure on which many energy systems, markets, and consumers depend.

5. As new investments in energy technologies occur, future energy systems will differ from today’s in uncertain ways – depending on the character of changes in the energy mix, climate change will introduce new risks as well as opportunities. 

Future posts will examine these impacts in more detail as they are likely to alter the ways in which we consume and produce energy.

Energy Lecture Series

Jeffrey Ball, scholar-in-residence at Stanford's Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, will be visiting campus next week as part of the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow program.

Mr. Ball will present a lecture entitled "Power Grab: Sharp Fights and Hards Lessons in the Global Race for Cleaner Energy" Monday, April 8 at 7:00pm in the Yost Auditorium inside the Howard J. Burnett Center.  As always the lecture is free and open to the public.

In addition, Mr. Ball will be visiting classes and student organizations throughout his week on campus.

Energy Summit at W&J

This Thursday, April 4, the 2nd Annual Energy Summit will be held here on campus at Washington & Jefferson College.  The focus of the event is U.S. Energy Security: How Do We Get There?

The keynote speaker will be Gen. Charles F. Wald (retired USAF), Director, Deloitte Services, Deloitte's Department of Defense Practices.  Gen. Wald's talk is entitled "Energy Security: America's Best Defense."

In addition, two panel discussions will include a number of experts discussing the implications of increased domestic production of oil and natural gas for energy security.  Limited spots are still available for the event.

Electricity in the 1970s

Electricity generation in the 1970s showed an interesting pattern of changing generation sources.

With increased air quality and smog concerns (Clean Air Act of 1970) and relatively low oil prices electricity was increasingly generated using petroleum during the late 1960s through the 1970s.  This meant that the proportion of electricity generated using coal dropped considerably during this time period.

The Oil Crisis of 1979 and rising oil prices put an abrupt stop to this pattern.  Amid the fears of oil price shocks and supply disruptions there was an intentional shift to electricity generation from coal and a build-up of coal-fired power plants.  Since this time petroleum has constituted a small and declining share of electricity generation.

This pattern can be clearly identified in the Washington & Jefferson College Energy Index.

• In 1965 coal accounted for 21.5 percent of primary energy consumption while petroleum accounted for 43 percent in the same year.  
• By 1978 coal had fallen to 17.2 percent of all energy consumed while petroleum had climbed to 47.6 percent of usage.  
• In 1985 (following the 1979 oil crisis) coal had rebounded to account for 23 percent of primary energy consumption and petroleum had fallen to 40.5 percent of energy used.

The energy index values from this time period are telling.

• In 1965 the value was 90 as domestic coal was used to produce electricity.
• In 1978 the value had fallen to 77.5 as oil that was increasingly used for electricity production was sourced outside the US.
• In 1985 the value was back to 85.6 with the shift back to domestic coal usage.

In later posts we will cover a similar situation that is occurring now as electricity is increasingly generated using natural gas as the primary energy source.