The Rundown – Here’s How This Congress Can Boost Energy Storage
Welcome to your Friday Rundown, for the week ending Jan. 25. I’m your driver, ClearPath Communications Director Darren Goode. Anything we missed? Let me know at goode@clearpathaction.org. Thanks for reading.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR ENERGY STORAGE?
With wind and solar an ever-increasing percentage of our power generation (see more on that below), lawmakers and the Trump administration have a even-greater need to set additional policy changes and smart investments toward next-generation grid-scale energy storage and batteries.
Last Congress, bipartisan House and Senate bills were introduced to establish “moonshot” goals for energy storage at DOE in order to prioritize R&D efforts. Language was signed into law that would direct federal dollars towards these goals.
However, Congress still should pass language giving broad authorization to direct the DOE to set and meet moonshot storage goals. These more direct goals would help create lower-cost and more durable grid-scale storage, including batteries.
Congress can also use authorizing language to define storage as a useful asset to all aspects of the grid. Doing so could open up a truly free storage market and prohibit regions from defining storage solely as a generating source, when its benefits could be much bigger for the grid.
“No one technology type will meet our storage needs,” ClearPath policy analyst Faith Smith said at a Capitol Hill energy storage briefing hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation this week. “Increased R&D in a diverse set of long-duration solutions is needed to fill a variety of needs across different regions.”
So what is the current state of energy storage technologies?
Faith and ClearPath production designer Mitch Kersey have put together a handy explainer detailing the types of technologies – thermal, chemical and mechanical – that make up the current crop, new promising technologies and the broader role energy storage may play.
There is a need particularly to move beyond lithium ion for energy storage and batteries, due both to their lack of long-term durability and their inclusion of cobalt, which is mined mainly under the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s dubious safety and child labor laws.
EIA: U.S. RENEWABLE, GAS POWER ON THE RISE
Long-term storage solutions will be essential as renewable power continues to be added to the grid.
Wind and solar projects are the fastest growing source of new U.S. power generation for the next two years, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts in a new outlook this week.
Solar generation is projected to grow by 10% in 2019 and 17% in 2020, while wind would grow 12% and 14% over the next two years as well.
Coal-fired generation, which contributed 45% of the U.S. power generation in 2010, is expected to fall to 24% by 2020, according to EIA.
Meanwhile, natural gas contributed 35% of total U.S. power generation in 2018, up from 24% in 2010, EIA noted. Natural gas generation is expected to further grow to 37% by 2020, EIA forecasts.
CHINA POWER DEMAND IS ALSO GOING UP
Power demand in China – which hasn’t shied from using coal and natural gas – has grown massively, the energy consultancy group Wood MacKenzie has found.
Chinese power demand increased 8.7% in the first 10 months of last year, much higher than expectations.
This global power demand – including for fossil fuels – and emissions reality puts increased onus on the need to expand commercialized carbon capture technologies. That includes the Petra Nova retrofitted coal plant outside Houston, and the revolutionary Allam Cycle technology being demonstrated nearby at NET Power’s 50MW pilot gas-fired plant.
DOE, CLEARPATH OFFICIALS TAPPED AS NUCLEAR LEADERS
Former senior George W. Bush DOE officials and ClearPath’s Managing Director for Policy Jeremy Harrell have ascended to leadership positions at top nuclear power industry efforts.
Former Under Secretary of Energy Bud Albright is the new chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council, while Jeremy has been elected vice chair by US NIC’s board. Albright, also a former House Energy and Commerce Committee staff director and counsel to the Departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Affairs, is currently CEO of the government relations firm Albright Strategies.
Jeremy joined ClearPath in April 2017 to direct our policy team and was an aide to Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Michael Turner (R-Ohio).
Meanwhile, former Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell has been named CEO of advanced nuclear reactor developer X-energy. Sell was also special assistant to Bush and was a senior aide on the Senate Appropriations Committee and for Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas). X-energy is working on a design for a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor that could be built faster, use factory-produced parts and be walk-away safe without operator intervention.
TUESDAY DOE and ClearPath sponsor the next Atomic Wings nuclear power policy lunch, featuring discussion on microreactors. Speakers include Reps. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) and Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), DOE Office of Nuclear Energy’s Tom Miller, Nuclear Energy Institute’s Marc Nicol, George Washington University’s Joseph Cascio, OKLO Co-Founder and CEO Carolyn Cochran and ClearPath Executive Director Rich Powell. RSVP
