80% NEW ENERGY BY 2050 – DOE SEC CHU

Chu, ex-DOE official see potential for 80% penetration of renewables in US by 2050

Jonathan Crawford, August 17, 2012 (SNL)

“Renewable energy could reach an 80% level of penetration in the U.S. by 2050, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Arun Majumdar, former director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, wrote in an article published Aug. 15 in the scientific journal Nature…Chu and Majumdar said current and projected ‘learning curves’ for wind and solar energy show that renewable energy will become increasingly affordable on a global scale…

“…[ Chu and Majumdar cited] reports showing that by 2020 the levelized costs of electricity for wind at some sites will drop below $60 per MWh…[They] indicated a ‘growing confidence’ that module costs will attain a goal of hitting a cost of 50 cents per watt by 2020…[because spot market prices of silicon solar modules for immediate delivery fell from $4 per watt to about $1 per watt [between 2008 and 2012]…”

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“Additional price declines are expected through engineering and manufacturing innovations as well as improvements in power-conversion electronics [in solar]…[comparable to] significant improvements in the design of turbines, blades and gearboxes, as well as an increase in the height of wind towers, which have led to cost declines [in wind]…

“The authors said scaling up the deployment of carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS, technology will require a carbon price…[and despite] issues over safety, waste storage and cost, nuclear power is needed to limit the worst risks of climate change, Chu and Majumdar said…”

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