How Will We Fill Future Energy Needs?

At the rate countries are developing, the world will need twice the energy it currently does by 2050 and three times by the end of the century, said George Crabtree, senior scientist, division director, material science division at Argonne National Laboratory.

“That is quite an increase and quite a challenge,” Crabtree said. “We actually don’t know where that energy’s going to come from.”

Crabtree and three other Argonne scientists - James Miller, Argonne Distinguished Fellow, chemical science, engineering division; Seth Snyder, section leader, chemical and biological technology; and Michael Thackeray, senior electrochemical engineer and senior technical advisor - are searching for answers, from new types of batteries, to fuel cells, to biofuels, to more efficient solar energy use. They spoke at the Midwest Alternative Energy Venture Forum November 29 at the Charles M. Harper Center.

Panel moderator, Shez Bandukwala, partner at ThinkEquity, cited factors to emphasize the need for green technology and alternative energy: climate change, high coal and natural gas prices, reliance on costly foreign oil sources, a consumer push toward “green living,” and a deteriorating electric grid and aging coal plants in the United States.

Bandukwala,  who heads ThinkEquity’s alternative energy/green technology investment banking sector, explained that from 40 percent to 50 percent of the U.S. electrical grid needs retrofit or replacement.  “This is a huge issue,” he said. “The electrical grid is at capacity today.”

Also, 90 percent of the nation’s coal plants are 30 years old or older, he said.

In 2006, 74 percent of U.S. electricity from renewable sources came from hydropower, and 0.1 percent from solar power, he said; in the future, more will come from wind, solar, and geothermal sources.

“The absolute cheapest form of alternative energy is more efficiently utilizing what we have today,” he said. “There are an amazing number of companies out there that are getting real traction, both on the supply side and demand side, on more efficiently using electricity.”

Venture capitalists invested $3 billion in the green tech industry in 2006, up 78 percent from the previous year, according to Bandukwala. In the first two quarters of 2007, 60 such individual investments were made, totaling $1.5 billion, with best performance in solar and wind industries, he said.

Germany, with its economic policy, subsidies, and tax incentives, leads the world in the solar market. “The U.S. is still significantly lagging” in that regard, Bandukwala said.

Crabtree said the United States has the opportunity to sell the next generation of energy technology to the developing world.

Sunlight provides “effectively an inexhaustible supply” of potential energy, he said. The solar energy industry is growing 30 percent to 40 percent a year. If solar energy were less expensive, it would penetrate the electricity market more effectively, he said, noting that solar energy currently costs 30 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to 5 cents per kilowatt-hour for fossil-fuel generated electricity.

Construction and installation account for half the solar energy cost, Crabtree said. Ways to bring costs down include making solar cells of higher efficiency, making cheaper but less efficient solar cells, or building solar cells directly onto roofs or walls when houses or buildings are constructed, he said.

Thackeray noted that after alternative energy is generated, “one of the key things is going to be the capture and storage of energy,” no matter the source. But both fuel cell and battery technologies are not yet effective, he said.

While the hydrogen battery economy has drawn attention in past years, it is still “a little bit far off,” Thackeray said. Scientists are getting better results with lithium batteries, he said, such as the kind used successfully in the Mars Rover.

“The beauty of lithium batteries is that they’re extremely versatile,” he said. Their voltage can be tuned and their solid parts replaced with other solids. Lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries have very high voltages relative to other kinds of batteries.

“Despite the fact that conventional lithium ion has a very low theoretical capacity because of the high voltage, it does give us by far the most attractive theoretical energy that we can use in practice,” Thackeray said.

The lithium battery market started 10 to 15 years ago and has grown to $6 billion.

But it hasn’t been problem-free. Thackeray showed a photo of a laptop on fire, a problem he attributed to demand for increasing energy in the systems. Because of the demand, major Japanese battery companies shaved off electrolytes and electrode thickness, making the batteries “inherently unsafe,” Thackeray said. The batteries were recalled.

Most lithium battery companies are vying to replace nickel metal hydride batteries for hybrid vehicles, Thackeray said. New materials are being developed to solve potential battery safety problems, he said.

Miller explained fuel cells differ from batteries in that while a battery stores energy, a fuel cell converts energy into electricity; a fuel cell can be compared to a battery that doesn’t run down or need recharging, as long as fuel continues to be supplied,. A fuel cell gives off no emissions and can run at twice the efficiency of an internal combustion engine, he said.

Three fuel cells are used in each space shuttle flight.

More than 260 applications of sulfuric acid fuel cells have been used for commercial heat and power in buildings like hospitals around the world since that technology was developed in the ’90s, Miller said.

“Driving the near-term markets,” fuel cells also are being developed for use in forklifts, telecommunication towers, and as portable power sources, Miller said. The biggest potential fuel cell market, however, is in automotive transportation.

“Every major automotive company in the world has a fuel cell development program underway,” he said.

Massive efforts to make biofuels, mainly ethanol, also are underway.

About 130 biofuel plants are operating in the United States, with 70 more under construction, and 10 undergoing expansion, said Snyder. U.S. capacity stands at 7 billion gallons, with expansions expected to raise that to 13 billion gallons, he said.

“If we think about what 1999-2000 was in the IT-dotcom movement, that’s really where we are in biofuels right now,” Snyder said. “There’s going to be people who will lose a lot of money, but there’s going to be people who will make a lot of money. We had Netscape, but we also had Google. You have to invest smart.”

Out of 40 to 50 companies in the biofuels industry, “a couple will make it and be very successful and the others will be eaten up,” Snyder predicted.

The United States will meet renewable fuel standards set by Congress for 2012 in as early as 2008, Snyder said. “We’re well ahead of the game,” he said.

“What really kickstarted everything was the 2006 State of the Union” in which President Bush called for alternative fuels to make up 30 percent of the fuel supply by 2030, Snyder said. That amounts to about 60 billion gallons of biofuels.

The United States Department of Energy and the United States Department of Agriculture project a peak of about 15 billion gallons of biofuels can be made from cornstarch. But corngrowers predict they will produce up to 30 billion gallons using hybrids, Snyder said.

To reach the 60 billion gallon mark, “we need a lot more (research and development) and investment,” he said.  

Media reports have questioned the energy efficiency of making ethanol compared to making gasoline. Snyder said ethanol is “significantly better than gasoline” in that regard. And while coal and natural gas are needed to make fertilizer for the corn and to run an ethanol plant, “we are displacing petroleum by using corn ethanol” and reducing carbon dioxide output.

The cost of corn energy doesn’t differ much from the cost of fossil fuels, Snyder said. Because one batch of ethanol is like the next with no product differentiation, companies that use more efficient processes and produce a less costly product will win out, he said.

To increase efficiency, ethanol researchers are exploring genetic engineering developed by biomedical industries. They are also looking into making ethanol from plant cellulose, algae, and even wood, Snyder said.

Another issue is a lack of infrastructure: the rail cars, blending stations, barges, and pipelines needed to transport biofuel.

“So we can make (biofuel), but nobody can use it yet,” Snyder said.

Snyder said needed infrastructure will attract investments.

People have vehicles equipped for ethanol use but don’t know it, and only 1000 to 1300 pumps have been installed, but not necessarily located where the vehicles are.
 
While vacationing in Hawaii, for example, all the cars Snyder rented were based on E85, which is 85 percent ethanol, yet “there’s not a single E85 station in the entire state,” he said.

Bandukwala said most ethanol currently is used for blending. The “real growth” is for replacing regular fuel with ethanol. Boosting ethanol production by planting a projected 49 million acres in the United States by 2027 to generate 140 billion gallons of ethanol “would completely eliminate our need to import fuel,” he said.

First-year student Lisa Stefanac called Argonne a “champion” for moving forward with cutting edge research in biotechnology and clean technology energy research.

“I see these challenges not only as exciting but exactly we have to face to survive,” she said.

– Mary Sue Penn