Jan. 23, 2000

THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY

After I wrote recently about Peter Huber's new book on ecology, "Hard Green," I got a call from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., inviting me to come visit and see what they are up to.

The energy economy is shifting in favor of renewable energy, they believe, as efficiency improves and costs decline. Oil companies that want to stay in the energy business are planning for a shift away from fossil fuels to hydrogen, and auto companies are developing hybrid cars powered by fuel cells whose only waste product is water.

The trick is to figure out a pathway from where we are to where they envision we could go. No one will buy hydrogen-fueled cars, for instance, if there's no place to refuel them, but no one will build a network of refueling stations if no one is driving cars that need them. Hybrid cars can bridge that gap.

"Hydrogen is the future," said senior scientist John Turner. "It was part of the nuclear future, using power to separate hydrogen. We'll still use a nuclear reactor, only it's 93 million miles away and its wastes are nicely sequestered."

Sunlight is the ultimate resource, and they think there is plenty of it.

The efficiency of solar cells at converting sunlight into electricity is pushing 30 percent, said Roland Hulstrom, assistant director of the National Center for Photovoltaics.

Assuming only 10 percent efficiency, in fact, the United States could meet its entire current energy need from a square 100 miles on a side.

That would take up a big chunk of Nevada, to be sure, but it wouldn't have to be all in one place, and it wouldn't have to be all new land; some could be on existing buildings or even highway rights-of way. In fact, there are approximately 45,000 square miles of the country under paved roads, so using 10,000 square miles for power is not inconceivable. If Kansas and Iowa can farm wheat and corn, why shouldn't Nevada and Arizona farm power?

I asked whether they could pave the roads with solar cells. It's being done.

They have sample roof shingles, which look pretty much like regular roof shingles from a few feet away. One day, when it's time to replace your roof, you'll be able to go to Home Depot and buy them.

Once the roof is done, you have an electrician hook it up and you're pretty much off the grid.

The cost, now, is about 30 cents a kilowatt-hour, over the lifetime of an installation. That's not competitive yet in Colorado, but some places, like Hawaii, it's getting close.

Most of the market is overseas, Hulstrom said, in remote places where the cost of hooking up to the grid is very high or there isn't a grid to hook up to. Photovoltaics can electrify one dwelling at a time, at a cost of $500.

Oumar Dia of Senegal, who was murdered in Denver in November 1997, was saving to buy an electrical system for his family. Lab staff donated one after his death.

Turner said he attended a conference last year and was surprised to see a panel on "women and renewable energy."

In developing countries, he learned, women may spend up to 80 percent of their time gathering fuel, wood or dung. When the fuel is burned indoors, pollution levels are 400 times worse than ours.

If they are taught to make and use solar cookers, both their economic prospects and their family's health improve.

"Energy is the path out of misery," an official from India told the conference.

When Hulstrom started at the lab, which was then called the Solar Energy Research Institute, "Everybody said, 'You should do this because it's clean,' but it would cost 10 times as much."

Now, he says, "Our thinking is, everything is down to cost. Once the price comes down, the market is huge."

No dreamy romantics, these guys. The lab's mission is first to develop clean-energy technology and second to move it into the marketplace.

And you know what? I bet they're hard-headed enough that even Huber would approve.

(673 words)