2035: Clean Energy Will Trump Fossil Fuels

Previously in our "2035" series, we've asked experts to make their best guesses about the next 20 years in the areas of artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles.

This time around, we've invited some earnest conjecture on the matter of renewable energy in the year 2035. Twenty years out is actually a pretty good time frame for asking the obvious question: Will renewable energy sources surpass fossil fuels, globally, as our main source of energy by 2035?

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While it's rather unsatisfying, rhetorically speaking, the most accurate answer is: kinda-sorta.

For non-transportation purposes, clean energy solutions like wind and solar should be firmly established globally by the year 2035, says John Orr, director of the Sustainable Energy Project Center at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

"However, there is nothing on the horizon that, in 20 years, could provide the needed energy density for air transportation and a substantial amount of terrestrial transportation other than liquid fuels," Orr says. "And nothing that in that time period could enable us to make a sufficient volume of synthetic liquid fuels."

In other words, we're likely to still be using gasoline and jet fuel, and a lot of it. So what we're using the energy for will be a major factor on whether renewables surpass fossil fuels. A great deal will also depend on where we're using it -- and who's in charge of public policy in those places.

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"In some countries across the world, renewables are already capturing a significant fraction of the market and impacting the costs associated with conventional generation," says Alexis Abramson, professor of mechanical engineering at Case Western and faculty director of the Great Lakes Energy Institute.

"To avoid catastrophic impact on the economy, some of these countries have changed policies to slow down the market penetration of renewables," Abramson adds. "So I think while the market share of renewables will continue to grow across the world, there will be opposing policy effects that temper that growth … such that by 2035, we will still have a good balance of renewable and non-renewable sources."

George Crabtree, director of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research at Argonne National Laboratory, says that clean energy sources have a good deal of momentum going into the new millennium. "Since 2005, renewables have grown much faster than expected, and the trend is likely to continue," he said.

Source : http://news.discovery.com