Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
What would it take to make renewable energy reach even greater
heights? h e policy options tend to fall into two categories: those mak-
ing traditional energy more expensive and those seeking to make alter-
native energy cheap. h e i rst category is diverse. It features things like
carbon pricing, cap-and-trade, and clean energy standards, all of which
we encountered in Chapter 4. h eir common hallmark is l exibility:
whatever way of reducing emission is most cost-ef ective is likely to
prevail. But the common problem for renewables is that these sorts of
policies are unlikely to provide a big boost to those sources for many
years.
To see why, we need to do a lit le math. Imagine that a new policy
initially penalizes carbon dioxide emissions at a rate of twenty dollars
for every ton. h is is at the high end of what anyone has seriously
tried to pass in Congress; as we saw in Chapter 4, it's also consistent
with U.S. government estimates of the damages caused by every ton of
greenhouse gas emissions. A kilowat -hour of electricity generated using
a new gas-i red power plant produces about two-i t hs of a kilogram of
carbon dioxide; it would incur a penalty of a lit le less than a penny
as a result.
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h is is far smaller than the dif erence between the cost of
gas-i red and renewable electricity in almost all of the United States,
so it wouldn't tip the balance. If the policy-imposed penalty rose to a
hundred dollars for a ton of carbon dioxide—at the extreme of what
policymakers might try in the next couple of decades, and at the high
end of recent estimates of the damage carbon dioxide emissions cur-
rently do—then natural gas would be hit with a charge of about four
cents for each kilowat -hour. h is is still far from enough to consistently
close the gap between natural gas and either wind or solar (with some
few exceptions). It also implies that, for now, even when one takes the
economic benei ts of avoiding climate damage into account, renew-
able energy is rarely as good a deal as the cleaner fossil fuels. Over
time, though, declining costs for either wind or solar could change the
equation.
A renewable energy standard (RES), in contrast with the other poli-
cies, would more narrowly set goals for raising the amount of renewable
energy generation. By not allowing gas or nuclear to count toward the
target, the standard would ensure that wind and solar grow (assuming
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