Smart grid

Being aware is a necessity for being smart. Energy users who are hooked up to a smart grid and are able to use a smart meter to monitor their consumption generally use 5-15% less energy than users unaware of their consumption. Smart meters can also communicate the varying market prices to consumers. With these pricing mechanisms, the peak demand for power can be reduced by timing the consumption.

What makes a smart grid truly smart is that it does not require constant human monitoring. For instance, a smart grid responds to sudden drops in voltage not necessarily by increasing production, but by remotely decreasing the energy consumption of millions of household appliances. A smart grid will integrate growing amounts of intermittent renewable production and electric vehicles into it. Once in place, a smart grid could save billions of dollars and millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.

Solar

The Sun is the ultimate source of energy and life on earth. It provides us with a potentially unlimited amount of free, albeit intermittent energy without emitting CO². Until present, exploiting solar energy has not been cost-effective, but rapidly expanding supplies of high-grade silicon, growing production capacity and new advanced technologies are making solar energy a potential option for solving the global energy challenge.

For large-scale generation, concentrated solar plants (CSP) have been the norm but recently multi-megawatt photovoltaic (PV) solar plants have become more common. With technologies suitable for both large and small scale production, solar power may revolutionise our perception of energy.

Carbon Capture & Storage

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) from coal power plants has considerable potential in terms of cutting carbon dioxide emissions, as coal accounts for around 40% of global electricity generation.

Making CCS fully functional still requires lots of work. Challenges in installing CCS include massive costs for building infrastructure, a potential decrease in the efficiency of a plant, an increase in water consumption and finding suitable locations for storage. It is clear that scientists have their work cut out for them in forthcoming years.

Various pilot projects are in the pipeline and the first commercial applications could be seen in 2020.

Electric vehicles

Electric vehicles (EV) can help in solving many problems, but only if the heart – the battery – is strong enough. Electric vehicles with lithium batteries are energy-efficient, increase energy security, reduce emissions (even though most electricity in the grid is created with fossil fuels) and create a virtual storage for energy, which allows us to use more renewables like wind and solar.

Electric vehicles are not perfect yet, however. They are still expensive, and they may replace the addiction to oil with an addiction to lithium. In addition, using the EVs as virtual energy storage will require a billion dollar smart grid.

Biofuels

First-generation biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel are currently produced from crops such as sugar cane, corn and vegetable oils. These energy sources are controversial as the crops can also be used for food and animal feed. Second generation biofuels are produced from a broad range of non-edible feedstocks including the cellulose in energy crops, forestry waste and food by-products.

Biofuels could have a significant role in improving energy security, lowering GHG emissions and supporting rural development. However, it is difficult to assess the impact of related risks, such as deforestation, water management and food security issues. Biofuels are expensive and primarily suitable for the transportation sector.

Wind

The continuous growth of turbine size, development of materials and advances in engineering make wind power a competitive source of energy, especially onshore.

However, the vast majority of the world’s wind potential is located out at sea and developing the optimal floating structures needed to position wind turbines is still a work in progress. The intermittency and the difficulty of forecasting it are also challenging. Yet, wind power is growing rapidly, and global capacity is expected to triple in just three years.