Deloitte: Utility "Decarbonization" Not Even Close w/o Big NG Cuts, Large-Scale Grid Integration

[hatrack]

U.S. utilities can’t reach their ambitious decarbonization goals unless they reduce their planned reliance on natural gas, find ways to “baseload” solar and wind power with long-duration storage or substitute zero-carbon fuels, and radically expand energy efficiency, demand response and the power and flexibility of customer-owned distributed energy resources.

So says a new report from Deloitte highlighting the known, yet often underappreciated, challenges faced by utilities across the country promising to zero out their carbon impact by midcentury. “The math doesn’t yet add up,” the report finds, citing “significant gaps” between the decarbonization targets of major utilities and their current plans for retiring fossil-fuel plants.

That’s not news to those who’ve been closely tracking plans to reach net-zero carbon from major U.S. utilities such as Duke Energy, Dominion Energy, Southern Company and Xcel Energy. Each still plans to build new natural-gas power plants in the near term, despite the additional emissions they will cause. And each relies on as-yet-uneconomical technologies, such as long-duration energy storage, net-carbon-neutral fuels to replace fossil natural gas, and carbon capture and storage, to reach the final goal.

The U.S. electric grid relies on fossil fuels for 63 percent of its generation, and according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, current trends will reduce but not eliminate those emissions by 2050, the report states. To fix this, Deloitte suggests a three-stage approach, centered on technologies and approaches that will be cost-effective for the decade they’re targeted for — a vital consideration if decarbonization isn’t to lead to skyrocketing electricity costs and popular backlash. This chart indicates the carbon-abatement values of different technologies compared to replacing coal plants, indicating how utilities might want to stage their deployment over the next 30 years.

EDIT

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/math-doesnt-yet-add-up-for-u.s-utility-decarbonization-goals

[hunter]

1. Solar and wind alone will not support the high energy industrial consumer economy...

... many affluent people now enjoy.

If fossil fuels were banned today I think many people would embrace nuclear power.

Bill Gates’ Nuclear Startup Unveils Mini-Reactor Design Including Molten Salt Energy Storage

Nuclear power is the Immovable Object of generation sources. It can take days just to bring a nuclear plant completely online, rendering it useless as a tool to manage the fluctuations in the supply and demand on a modern energy grid.

Now a firm launched by Bill Gates in 2006, TerraPower, in partnership with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, believes it has found a way to make the infamously unwieldy energy source a great deal nimbler — and for an affordable price.

The new design, announced by TerraPower on August 27th, is a combination of a "sodium-cooled fast reactor" — a type of small reactor in which liquid sodium is used as a coolant — and an energy storage system. While the reactor could pump out 345 megawatts of electrical power indefinitely, the attached storage system would retain heat in the form of molten salt and could discharge the heat when needed, increasing the plant’s overall power output to 500 megawatts for more than 5.5 hours.

“This allows for a nuclear design that follows daily electric load changes and helps customers capitalize on peaking opportunities driven by renewable energy fluctuations,” TerraPower said.

--more--

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2020/08/31/bill-gates-nuclear-firm-says-new-reactor-can-backstop-grid-with-molten-salt-storage/#79ceb3ee5e65