Emrgy is expanding America’s hydropower portfolio with an exciting new twist on reliable, affordable, modular hydropower. The company has innovated hydropower to reduce new builds’ capital and regulatory challenges by making its turbines smaller and more modular.
This op-ed was originally published by The Hill on June 10, 2022. Click here to read the entire piece.
COVID-19 and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine have demonstrated the fragility of global supply chains. While America’s industrial base has shown strong resilience, a more enduring threat to our clean energy supply chains continues to grow: dependence on materials and manufacturing controlled by the Chinese government.
On June 6, the Biden administration invoked the Defense Production Act to accelerate the domestic manufacturing of solar panels and other technologies for which America is import-reliant. This builds on the administration’s goal, announced last year, for solar to supply 40 percent of U.S. electricity by 2035, up from 4 percent today.
While solar power certainly has a role to play, the U.S. should avoid overreliance on any one form of energy and instead embrace a diverse portfolio of affordable, reliable and clean energy technologies.
Conservative policymakers are advancing a comprehensive strategy to support a broad range of domestic energy sources. Last week, U.S. House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), House Select Committee on Climate GOP leader Garret Graves (R-La.), and others from their Energy, Climate and Conservation (ECC) Task Force rolled out part one of a six-part plan to tackle the ongoing energy crisis and the global climate challenge.
The GOP task force pillars include policies to unlock America’s abundant energy resources, promote technological innovation and empower American entrepreneurs to build with a modernized permitting process — all of which are necessary to defeat China and Russia and restore U.S. energy dominance.
Click here to read the full article
North Carolina utility, Duke Energy announced a bold plan to decrease carbon emissions 50 percent by 2030 and ultimately be net-zero by 2050. This means the company would be among the first major investor-owned U.S. utilities to set forth an ambitious plan to transition to clean energy.
After demonstrating that clean resources are market-competitive energy solutions for customers, the path to achieve emissions reductions is more clear and a long-term commitment to clean generation was needed. The company’s 24 million customers across six states have already seen a 31% percent reduction in emissions since 2005 by receiving more of their energy from cost-effective carbon-free power — primarily nuclear, hydro, natural gas, wind and solar.
We applaud Duke’s plan to utilize all clean energy sources to reach their commitment and their intention to lean in on energy innovation to create the new technologies needed to achieve their goal. Their plan notes that they know how to achieve a 50% reduction in emissions with existing clean technologies but also recognizes the need for new technologies to emerge to ensure a clean and affordable path to a net-zero power system by 2050. This is a realistic perspective that underscores the need for innovation in the sector and we are glad Duke is making innovation a priority.
Further, the natural gas revolution right here in the United States has already lowered power prices AND cut grid emissions by 20% single-handedly. Duke recognizes that natural gas infrastructure will be required to fuel this transition to a low-carbon future and will be deploying natural gas to maintain reliability while also expanding energy storage, energy efficiency and infrastructure capacity.
There are exciting options for new zero-emission natural gas plants, such as the NET Power pilot plant near Houston, TX which will allow using our natural gas abundance well into a clean energy future. NET Power LLC is a Durham, North Carolina-based company owned by 8 Rivers Capital LLC and they have pioneered new technology to capture all carbon dioxide air emissions that can then be safely buried underground or used to great products like building materials or carbon fiber. A generous new federal tax incentive for carbon capture signed into law last year might make the clean fossil fuel route Duke’s best bet for affordable 24/7 power.
While Duke is planning to invest $10 billion to double their wind and solar portfolio by 2030 if not before, they will also continue to operate their existing carbon-free technologies, including nuclear and hydro. Nuclear power produces carbon-free energy, runs 24/7 and is incredibly resilient in the face of increasing natural disasters. This is particularly important as Duke’s nuclear fleet creates more than 11,000 megawatts of carbon-free generation in the Carolinas — enough energy to serve 8.8 million homes. Keeping these plants open also helps support innovation in the nuclear space in North Carolina – which is home to many start-ups that are focused on fourth generation nuclear power plants.
Hydropower is the renewable source with the best track record of reducing emissions in the U.S. and abroad. It’s clean, safe, and dispatchable when we need it. The U.S. hydropower fleet produces enough clean electricity to power more than 20 million households each year, making it the fourth largest electricity source after natural gas, coal and nuclear. In the North Carolina, hydro produces 10% of clean electricity generation in the state.
Seeing private industry take big bold steps with market based solutions that will also make sense for consumers is the right path to take us through this transition. But we should also continue advocating for sound public policy at the federal and state levels that advances technology and innovation. This includes longer-lasting battery storage, new nuclear technologies and effective ways to capture carbon emissions.
Duke Energy is Committed to Net Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050
With their bold commitment to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, Duke continues to lead in American power. Market signals like these demonstrate that transitioning to clean energy can be as positive for affordability and reliability as it is for addressing climate change.
We look forward to working alongside Duke to encourage federal investments in clean technology. Innovations in advanced nuclear, carbon capture for coal and gas, and battery storage will ensure this clean path is affordable for consumers.
View more news on power company commitments to lowering emissions:
National Journal: Power-Sector Climate Pledges Revive Debate Over Clean-Energy Mandates
Colorado Springs Gazette: GUEST COLUMN: Xcel taking a bold step into the unknown
View more of Our Take and let us know what you think at jaylistens@clearpath.org.
The U.S. has upended the global oil and gas market thanks to the domestic shale revolution. We can dominate the clean energy market in the same vein, but to do it we need innovation and a long-term vision.
2018 is the year we can turn the corner. And we have to. Energy is the largest market in the world. Oil and gas is the now. But clean energy, including capturing carbon from fossil production, is the future. And a $1 trillion-plus market the U.S. can lead.
China’s booming investment in nuclear, solar, grid-scale storage and other advanced technologies threatens to leave the U.S. far behind in the global clean energy race.
2017 did have its fair share of successes towards growing U.S. clean power leadership.
1. Biggest carbon capture coal plant opens on time and on budget: Petra Nova, the world’s largest post-combustion carbon capture facility, located near Houston, got up and running in January on time and on budget, showing definitively that this technology works. Subsequently, the system reached the “1 million tons of carbon dioxide for use in enhanced oil recovery” milestone in late October.
2. The U.S. recommitted to nuclear power: The Trump administration launched a comprehensive review of policies impacting the sector led by the White House. Both the Office of Nuclear Energy and ARPA-E released advanced nuclear energy funding opportunities. A DOE proposal to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was intended to help nuclear earn its true value as one of our most resilient power sources. And the administration stepped in to help secure the future for Georgia Power’s Vogtle plant, which the Georgia Public Service Commission subsequently unanimously decided to continue building.
Watch: How ARPA-E Can Modernize Nuclear Power
3. Solar breakthroughs beyond silicon: DOE announced awards to breakthrough Perovskite solar technology, thin solar panels that you can print like newspapers. Having announced success on their 2020 SunShot cost target through silicon panels, DOE is now focusing on a 2030 vision for three-cent solar with next-generation technology like Perovskites, while Republican House energy appropriators encouraged them to focus on this type of breakthrough. Perovskite technology kept up with the hype breaking records for higher efficiency and record stability.
4. TerraPower and China: One of the most unheralded clean energy developments was China completing a joint venture agreement with the Bill Gates-funded Terrapower to develop a world-first highly advanced nuclear reactor using the spent fuel of other nuclear reactors. The joint venture will build and commercialize a travelling wave reactor, one of the most promising new advanced nuclear technologies.
But by stretching its lead in the global clean energy race through such actions as the joint venture with Terrapower, China also underscored how much we in the U.S. need to step up our game this coming year.
While the U.S. struggles to build two AP1000 reactors and is closing plants, China is capitalizing on our technologies. They are currently constructing 22 reactors, and have a plan for 136. China is commandeering advanced nuclear technology we never commercialized or have otherwise abandoned. They are about to commission the first high temperature gas reactors in decades globally, and just began construction of their first commercial scale sodium fast reactor.
And with Russia and China exporting nuclear tech to Iran and Pakistan, it’s a security risk for the U.S. to abandon the industry, as we have in the last few decades. In short, there is much more to be done.
1. Congress must expand and extend key tax incentives – including 45Q for carbon capture and 45J for advanced nuclear
2. DOE’s budget must refocus on truly revolutionary clean energy technologies, establishing “moonshot” goals for our nation’s laboratories and creating a pathway for the the private sector to develop and commercialize these breakthroughs.
Watch: Rich Powell testifies before House subcommittee on moonshot goals
3. NETPower fires up. The 50-MW zero-carbon gas plant in Texas should be running in early 2018. The revolutionary technology uses carbon (rather than steam) to turn the turbine to make electricity, and can cheaply capture all the carbon from coal or gas. If this works as promised, it will be the biggest energy breakthrough since fracking, changing the world and expanding clean energy.
Watch: The Carbon Capture Game Changer
4. Battery storage starts competing with peaker plants. Falling costs of lithium-ion batteries mean that utilities may soon choose to build a big battery instead of a gas peaker plant, to run on just the highest demand days of the year. Minnesota sees this as economic in a couple more years, while California is seriously considering a battery peaker right now.
2017 may have been merely a crossroads for U.S. global clean energy dominance, but 2018 has the potential to be a truly banner year.
With your help, we at ClearPath intend to make that potential a reality.
Onward,
Jay and Rich
View more of Our Take and let us know what you think at jaylistens@clearpath.org.
The future of U.S. hydropower no longer looks like the Hoover Dam – but more like your bathroom sink.
There are new ways of creating electricity from existing flows of water, be it pipes in municipal systems or an irrigation canal on a ranch.
These systems harness the same force of flowing waters that is used by dams and large hydro projects via turbines, such as those designed by Oregon-based Lucid Energy, Washington-based Soar Hydro and Georgia-based Emrgy.
The umbrella term for these projects is “conduit” or “energy-recovery” hydropower.
The reality is that big, conventional hydropower has stalled for the past two decades, leaving a giant hole for small hydro to fill. No large hydropower projects have been built in the United States for decades because the prime dam locations have been developed. In terms of capacity, 76 times more hydropower was built in the 1960s than in the 2000s.2
Despite the slowdown, the Department of Energy found that the industry could realistically grow by 50% by 2050 with advanced hydropower technologies that don’t rely on new dams.4
There is a growing realization broadly in the Trump administration and Congress that we need to do more to tap hydropower (pun intended) due to its huge potential, high reliability and low cost. President Trump has said hydropower is a “great, great form of power,” but “we don’t even talk about it because the permits are virtually impossible.”
That’s about right. But that also may about to change. Here’s why the reason may center less on the bigger projects and more about what many of us can do on our own land.
The potential
There is enormous potential in small hydropower projects.
The U.S. has 1.2 million miles of water supply mains.5 Within these water pipes alone, there are thousands of hydro generation opportunities. According to an estimate by the Department of Energy, the potential of energy-recovery hydropower projects could be more than all the new conventional hydropower projects built in the USA over the past decade (1.7GW of conventional vs. up to 2GW of energy-recovery hydropower potential).6,7
The tens of thousands of U.S. water and wastewater systems are among the country’s largest energy consumers (½ as much electricity we all use for lighting8, which is A LOT), most of which is used to power pumps that move water around.9 We can turn many of them from being purely power consumers to generators. And fully tapping conduit hydropower potential could translate to more than 10,000 new jobs.10
Environmentally-friendly
Energy-recovery hydropower is environmentally friendly – there are no fish in our pipes and the water would be transported anyway. Not only does it create clean electricity, it also makes use of energy that would have been otherwise wasted.
These are the prime reasons environmental groups, notably American Rivers, rallied behind streamlining the permitting process behind these types of projects a few years ago. Let that sink in.
Congress overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan hydropower bill in 2013 to speed up the approval of energy-recovery hydro projects. But lawmakers are now looking to go even further.
A bill from Reps. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) and Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) would cut the federal review process in half for small energy-recovery projects. FERC Deputy Associate General Counsel John Katz, at a House hearing, actually went a step further, suggesting that the review period should be cut by 75%.
That’s right, a regulator proposed a change that would speed up review times. Must be a good idea.
Streamlining permits
When putting a small pump in an irrigation canal to get water to their fields, ranchers don’t need to go to the federal government to get approval. Yet, a conduit hydro device the size of a pool pump must receive permission from the government. We can’t illustrate this enough: this is private land, private electricity use and private man-made systems. And it still needs federal approval despite having virtually zero environmental impact.
Despite the large opportunity, the industry is still at a standstill with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission only approving a few dozen projects per year. At this rate, it would take about 200 years to tap all of our energy-recovery hydropower potential. Municipal water owners and farmers, with no experience in dealing with FERC, are understandably wary of engaging in the process on their own. And hiring a regulatory compliance consultant can increase project costs by 30%.
The 2013 bill trimmed a years-long federal process to just months, yet the obvious question remains – why should these small conduit projects need federal approval at all?
The hydropower industry is not looking for a government handout, it’s just looking for government to get out of the way.
View more of Our Take and let us know what you think at jaylistens@clearpath.org.
At ClearPath, we work on conservative clean energy policy. Wait, what? What is conservative clean energy? By that, we mean two things:
Few approach these issues in exactly the way we do. So how the heck did we settle on this approach? Here are the top 10 reasons we work on conservative clean energy:
1. Having lots of clean energy options globally is REALLY important
Clean energy is a global priority and an inevitability. The future carbon-constrained world is evidenced by the energy-producing nations that have engaged in the Paris Agreement and by major fossil fuel and utility companies that already factor carbon into their energy production choices. The 100’s of global CEOs who make up the World Economic Forum have pegged climate change as the biggest global risk for years to come.
Energy CEOs understand that we need a broad portfolio of technologies at low costs to accelerate this transition to clean energy. Not every country has great renewable energy resources. Not every country has low-cost natural gas. And efficiency efforts in many countries won’t come close to outpacing demand that is still growing. HUGELY.
2. We don’t yet have the technologies we need for the world to go 100% clean
For 100% clean energy, you need baseload, dispatchable low-carbon resources that do not currently exist. Many liberals endorse Whole Foods clean energy ideas – niche, local, expensive, and requiring sacrifice. What we need is Walmart-style global clean energy:
Cheap, highly scalable, easy and quick to build virtually anywhere and not picky about keeping the energy “local.”
3. We believe in American innovation
The U.S. has an enormous role to play in this global picture. We’re the global energy technology superpower – our Energy Department and national lab system have been the envy of the world. WE created nuclear power. WE created the shale gas revolution. WE perfected the internal combustion engine. If these miracle low-cost, highly scalable, highly dispatchable technologies ever do get created, chances are high that they’ll be created in an American national laboratory in collaboration with the American private sector. But our energy innovation investments don’t match the level of potential impact. We’re leading the world in both energy and medical research, another area rife with enormous challenges but also rewards. But despite both sectors contributing the same 8% to our GDP, we’re spending far more on health than energy R&D.
4. We believe in American leadership
Not only have private American firms and smart government-to-government partnerships supplied the world with energy innovation for over a century, but we’ve been essential to ensuring the safe development of that energy. See the Nuclear Regulatory Commission – the gold standard of global nuclear safety. Countries around the world look first to us, and what our NRC says about a technology, before saying those technologies are ready for their own people. As a result of our dominance in nuclear energy, roughly half the nuclear reactors in the world are based on American designs from Westinghouse.
5. Many of these technologies could be unleashed with very little government support, if government could just get out of the way
See hydropower, the world’s largest baseload and dispatchable renewable energy source available right now. It can take decades just to relicense an existing dam, much less build new ones or import that power from Canada. This is some of the lowest cost energy available – clean or otherwise – and yet strangling red tape holds back its potential. According to a recent Department of Energy study, United States hydropower capacity can grow another 50% by 2050.
6. We believe energy diversity is strongly in the American interest
There is risk in monoculture. Energy systems that rely on very few sources tend to see great spikes in price from time to time and low reliability. There will always be shortages or price spikes, whether for natural gas or nuclear. Diversity is how we deal with these risks, and hedge our bets for the long term. Diverse energy systems, like those maintained by the regulated utilities in the Southeast U.S., tend to have low, stable prices and very high system reliability.
7. SOMEBODY has to work on the 60-80% of the solution that’s not efficiency and renewables
There is growing consensus that renewables and efficiency can’t supply our energy needs from either a cost or reliability perspective. Fossil fuels and nuclear need to be a major part of the mix. Without them, studies from the IPCC to JPMorgan show that costs of 100% clean energy double or triple. Why? Solar and wind plants get more expensive as we build more of them. The National Renewables Energy Laboratory has modeled that you start having to waste significant amounts of solar and wind power once they reach 40-60% of the grid. That is because all of those panels and turbines sometimes produce at the same time, oversupplying the grid particularly when power demand is low. That’s why we need clean energy that we can turn on and off whenever we need it.
8. When it comes to energy, BIG is beautiful and America SHOULD re-industrialize
Building on big industries with big supply chains is easier in energy policy than scaling up new things from scratch, because it leverages our existing assets. But big industrial innovation isn’t Silicon Valley innovation. Advanced nuclear isn’t Uber and created by two guys in their garage. Building an energy technology for the first time, the first of its kind, is a bear. It takes 10 years or longer to build out a strong supply chain and only a couple of years of doing nothing to lose it. You are only as good as your supply chain.
9. Baseload, dispatchable clean energy sources offer enormous economic opportunity
Conservative clean energy technologies have attributes that are key for other sectors too, and will be valuable exports abroad. For example: advanced nuclear energy that also produces enormous “process heat” that could unlock entirely new industries. Imagine if clean nuclear generated heat to power coal refineries (that’s right, not oil), melting coal hydrocarbons into valuable products like carbon fiber for ultra-light airplanes. Further, a scale-up of carbon capture technology could unlock enormous U.S. oil production by using carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery.
10. If we don’t, China will get ahead of us on this instead
China is pulling ahead of us on virtually every dimension. They’re building dozens of new nuclear plants while we struggle to finish four. They’re innovating new nuclear designs while we send our entrepreneurs their way. They’re planning and opening new industrial carbon capture facilities throughout the country. They’ve eaten our lunch in so many other industries, and are hungry to do so in energy. We haven’t given up on American energy leadership yet – and we hope others won’t either.
View more of Our Take and let us know what you think at jaylistens@clearpath.org.
Whenever I talk about ClearPath, philanthropy and conservative clean energy, people ask the same question: “Why are you doing this?”
But many still think this is a little strange – and even a tad suspicious. So here’s the long answer, spanning a couple decades of my life, about why I founded ClearPath and why we work on conservative clean energy every day.
I often tell them the short answer: I want conservatives to be leaders on clean energy – from nuclear to hydropower to clean fossil fuels – both to make the environment better and strengthen real conservative leadership.
The Long Answer
After a childhood in Charlotte and graduating from the University of North Carolina, I landed my first job working for a government contractor specializing in the sale of assets of failed savings and loans. Even as a 22-year-old, I realized quickly there were absurd policies dictating how we could sell those properties and allowing the government to get in the way of common-sense solutions. I mean, government could mismanage a two-car parade. That is why a smaller, less-intrusive government is the better conservative choice.
After business school (and a not-so-successful attempt to build a Blockbuster Video franchise in Portugal), I started a small home technology business that morphed into SnapAV. We built Snap into the largest and most disruptive supplier in our industry. It was a fun and wild ride, during which I earned my first real taste of success as an entrepreneur. I also started contributing to conservative candidates even though I largely stayed out of politics.
But four years ago, I got an itch for change. I had been fortunate in my success selling custom gear to audio-visual installers. Now, I wanted to give back in the prime of my life rather than at the end of it. So I convinced the team to sell SnapAV to a large global private equity firm, transferred most of my earnings to a foundation, and made the transition to full-time philanthropist. My daughter named ClearPath.
Why Energy?
I looked at a couple of big issues and settled on energy and the environment. During the little spare time I had while building SnapAV, I became interested in how to protect the environment using free markets.
My best memories with my father growing up were while hunting and fishing in the South Carolina Lowcountry. There I saw how fragile nature can be. I felt the need to steward what we inherited, what I’d enjoyed, so our kids could inherit it too. I contributed money and some time to foster this conservation stewardship, a goal long backed by conservatives from Teddy Roosevelt on down and far removed from many of the major partisan battles of today.
But I’ve also long thought that energy and environmental policy should be a powerful tool for conservatives and believers in small government. Whether it was Roosevelt’s creation of the national parks, Ronald Reagan’s global leadership to fix the ozone hole or George W. Bush’s common-sense energy efficiency and nuclear policies, conservatives over the decades have shown how they can effectively lead in this arena.
But more recently, I watched the conservative movement cede these issues to the left.
Why couldn’t conservatives develop a national energy agenda that grows the economy, lessens our dependence on foreign oil, protects jobs over lizards and reduces carbon emissions? The media obsesses over this last point; they love dissecting exactly how conservatives talk about climate science. But that misses the point.
Look, I think climate change is a problem we should solve. This is not something I will apologize for. I also think it is a global problem and having the U.S. move on solutions that we can’t sell to the rest of the world doesn’t make a lot of sense either.
Regardless of how risky folks think carbon is, I think we can agree on ideas such as enabling advanced nuclear innovation and the importance of clean coal technology. Just look at the advanced nuclear bill that unanimously passed the House and bipartisan legislation being championed by unlikely allies James Inhofe and Sheldon Whitehouse in the Senate. Or read the carbon capture bill Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell is co-sponsoring. The point here is we don’t need to agree on the cause or even extent of the climate problem to agree on conservative clean energy solutions.
Unfortunately, our climate conversation has generated a lot of heat but not much light. The left has put forward big government solutions for carbon emissions and big subsidies for solar and wind, and in the process has hogged the microphone and scared away true conservatives from the topic. The left increasingly treats solar and wind as policy ends in and of themselves, as opposed to a couple of tools in a clean energy toolkit. Meanwhile, the right has been playing defense in the clean energy debate, and quickly losing ground.
Enter ClearPath.
After doing a lot of research and soul searching, I decided to jump in and try to move policies that fit my economically conservative principles.
To be crystal clear, I have no competing motivations or financial self-interest and no higher ambitions other than our mission: accelerate conservative clean energy solutions.
Where is ClearPath now?
After studying the policies from all angles and hiring the smartest people I could find on energy policy, my team found four areas that we thought were crucial to advancing a conservative clean energy platform: nuclear power, hydropower, innovation and clean fossil fuel technologies.
After initially launching as a mainly content-based online public education effort, the strategy and scope has expanded to reflect the realities of improving the public discourse particularly in the nation’s capital. Politics drives policy, and policy drives our heavily regulated energy system. There is good news on energy politics: clean energy is much more important to voters than politicians think. In fact, though clean energy is a low priority issue for most voters, our research found that clean energy swing voters are the more persuadable than other swing voters. There are 29.8 million prospective clean energy voters, making it a top peel-away issue.
We’ve found that innovation for better technologies is the key to abundant, clean and affordable energy. Crazy regulatory structures are holding back that innovation, such as the impossible NRC licensing process that’s inadvertently sending our nuclear energy innovators to China and other countries eager for advanced nuclear.
Cleaner energy means building a more robust American industry, rather than our hollowed-out industrial core today. We need more nuclear plants, upgraded dam facilities and a modernized national grid. That means more steel, more cement and more construction.
Somehow the hard-left environmental movement thinks they can reach their climate goals by hobbling our industry and restricting the building out of our infrastructure. Somehow they claim America should only run on solar and wind, and thereby disagreeing with another “scientific consensus” that variable renewables can affordably be only a portion of our energy mix.
I think they’re wrong.
What’s the master plan?
I get asked a lot about a “Big Solution” for clean energy and lower carbon emissions.
I wish we were hiding a brilliant master plan, but we’re not. It’s hard to predict innovation, and this is an innovation challenge. Like Bill Gates, we don’t believe we have the technologies in place to solve the problem yet.
Major energy transitions have been done not with big government mandates but when newer, better, cheaper and cleaner technologies displaced older and more expensive ones in the market. We must make clean energy cheaper.
ClearPath is not going to figure out the master plan next year – or the year after that. We’re just one group and we are ready to be at the table with industry, policymakers and civic leaders to build an energy agenda that works for everyone.
Of course we bring our current point of view to the table:
I feel very fortunate to be in a position to play a small part in a more informed and forward-looking discussion on America’s energy policy. I am an optimist about America’s ability to be the innovator and leader of the world on its energy future and to reap the benefits.
That’s the story so far.
View more of Our Take and let us know what you think at jaylistens@clearpath.org.