In assessing America's energy future, it's impossible to ignore the role that projected population growth and population distribution will play. U.S. population, currently 306 million, is projected to rise to 373 million by 2030 and to 438 million by 2050, with much of that growth expected to occur in the West and the South.
Currently, the United States is the world's leading consumer of oil at 20.6 million barrels per day and the second highest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. Given U.S. population projections and consumption patterns, how realistic is it to talk of eliminating America's dependence on foreign oil in the next few decades or reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050? That was the topic of a Capitol Hill roundtable that the Pension Rights Center hosted on January 13, 2009, and the answers were sobering, if not alarming, particularly with respect to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Jeff Stewart, the Program Leader for the Western Region Energy Analysis Consortium at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, gave a PowerPoint presentation that showed U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, given current population and consumption patterns, are expected to increase by 25% to 8 Gt (gigatons) per year by 2030, and by 2050, population growth drives projected carbon dioxide emissions to an estimated 9.19 Gt per year. Stewart's analysis indicated that to reduce our carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050, as many have suggested, would require revolutionary changes to each energy producing and end use sector. In one scenario he illustrated the magnitude of changes that would need to take place, doubling auto efficiency and mpg, vastly improved power plant efficiency, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) at all coal-fired plants, tripling the number of nuclear power plants to 300, capturing the equivalent of the entire wind energy potential of North Dakota, and a massive conversion of automobiles to hydrogen fuel.
On the question of U.S energy dependence, Paul Holtberg, representing the Energy Information Agency, unveiled the government's latest revised energy projections for 2030. According to EIA's latest forecast, even with a very substantial increase in biofuels, the U.S. will remain heavily dependent on foreign oil by 2030, with foreign oil still providing 41 percent of our total liquid fuel consumption.
Robert Hirsch, a "peak oil" expert with MISI, painted an even more alarming picture of America's energy future, suggesting that global oil production has peaked, or will soon peak at about 87 million barrels per day and will begin, in a few years, a gradual decline of up five percent a year. If Hirsch's peak oil analysis is even close to being accurate, it suggests that America's energy future is substantially bleaker than the government estimates provided by EIA and it increases the challenge faced by lawmakers as they attempt to meet the energy needs of an expanding U.S. population.
Another presenter, Robert Gramlich of the American Wind Energy Association, suggested that wind could make a major contribution to meeting future U.S. energy needs, but realizing the potential of wind energy will require more than windmills. Much of the wind power that will be generated in the decades ahead will occur in rural parts of the West, far from the fast growing urban centers in places like California, Arizona, and Florida. To make use of wind power, America will have to make a major investment in new transmission lines to get the power to where it needs to go.
Nate Gorence, of the National Commission on Energy Policy, gave the audience an overview of the energy legislation likely to be debated in the new Congress, everything from new fuel economy standards, to energy tax subsidies, to investments in "green energy" technology. If Members of Congress do nothing else in this Congress but debate and act on energy-related legislation, it looks like it could be a very full legislative calendar. That makes it all the more imperative that Members of Congress look down the barrel of America's energy future before proceeding any further. It's not an encouraging picture.
[For each of the presenters at our January 13, 2009 energy roundtable, PowerPoint presentations are available].
