The document outlines a plan to transition the US to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) powered by renewable energy in order to eliminate dependence on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The key steps are: 1) Transition to PHEVs which use electricity for commuting and liquid fuels for long trips; 2) Build out wind power which could provide 8 quadrillion BTUs and offset half the oil used by PHEVs; 3) Develop cellulosic biofuels which could provide 13 quadrillion BTUs to power vehicles and offset most remaining oil; 4) Add 500 gigawatts of solar power which along with wind could meet all new electricity needs while avoiding new CO2 emissions. The transition could be

1. Success with Energy Prices and
Greenhouse Gases
Senate Briefing November 21, 2008
Ken Zweibel
Director
GWU Institute for Analysis of Solar
Energy

2. Our Key Energy Problems
Foreign Oil
•
Energy Prices
•
Carbon Dioxide
•
Gas prices are less than they were, but do you
•
want to repeat the escalation to $5/gallon and
more?

3. The Plan To Get Rid of Foreign Oil
• What follows removes almost all foreign oil and its
CO2 by 2020‐2025
• Prepares us to remove most CO2 by 2050

4. Step 1: Plug‐in Hybrids
• Get rid of gasoline. Add non‐CO2 electricity
– There will be more electricity, not less
• Re‐tool American auto industry for success

5. Electric Transportation
• Plug‐in hybrids
Commuting – electricity
–
Range – liquid fuel
–
Charging
–
Efficient electric motors (>90%, instead of 30% internal
–
combustion engines)
– At today’s price of electricity, the electric portion of the
operating costs for hybrids is under $1/gallon equivalent
• But the batteries cost a lot
– THIS IS A HUGE OPPORTUNITY FOR CHANGING OUR
ENERGY WORLD!

6. Comparison of Plug‐In Hybrid Options
Estimated CO2 Emissions
of Plug‐in Hybrids (g/mi)
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
Gasoline Solar US
Electric Electric
Hybrid Mix
Hybrid
Not including (1) battery CO2 footprint or (2) refining losses in gasoline, or (3) other noncombustion life-cycle losses in fossil fuels.

7. How Much Electricity?

9. About How Much Electricity?
16.7 Quads go into light vehicles
•
• Need 1800 TWh of non‐
24 Q are imported (2002)
•
CO2 electricity to
70% eliminated by PHEV electricity, 12 Q
•
At 2 Quads for growth during program: 14 Q
•
displace 14 Quads of oil
oil can be displaced
using plug‐in hybrids
14 Q at 290 TWh/Q is 4000 TWh
•
But efficiency of electric motor is at least a
•
• Not enough to displace
factor of 3 better than internal combustion:
4000/3 = 1340 TWh electricity need
all imports
Add for 25% transmission and battery
•
turnaround losses: need 1800 TWh new non‐
CO2 electricity
This should be a conservative number in the
•
sense that less new electricity may be
sufficient (needs more refined analysis)

10. Next 15 Years
• Transition to Plug in Hybrids (PHEV)
• Huge Build‐out of Wind
– 20% of US electricity (800 TWh) – DOE goal
– Mostly nighttime charging
– “Not so dumb” grid
• Pings accessibility of electricity before charging
• Meets almost half the potential electricity demand to eliminate 14
Q of oil (i.e., 6 Q offset)
• Where’s the rest to come from?

11. Step 2
• More (more‐expensive) wind
– 200 TWh more
• Solar
• Cellulosic biofuels

12. Biofuels
• For
– Chemical feedstocks
– PHEV liquid fuels
– Planes and Trucks
• How much?
– Estimates about 10‐20 Quads of accessible
cellulosic feedstock
• Offset 13 Q of oil (“soft” estimate)
• See “Billion Ton Vision” Perlack et al. 2005

13. Where Are We
• Wind powered PHEV: 8 Q oil offset
– Over half of PHEV potential of 14 Q
• Cellulosic biofuels: 13 Q
– For PHEV range and key liquid fuels
• 21 Quads (70% of imported oil goal)
• Next, solar

14. There’s Plenty of Solar
1 day of unconverted US
solar energy: 48,000
TWh
1 year of US
electricity: 4000 TWh

15. Let’s Remind Ourselves that Solar
Already Exists

19. Solar and New Nighttime Demand?
Huh?
• Commuters will charge at night
• But others will charge day or night
– Not everyone has a garage
• We meet most demand for charging with wind and more
fossil fuels at night
• But with solar, we displace the fossil fuels we add at
night and meet some daytime charging
• NO NET NEW FOSSIL FUELS ARE ADDED, AND ALL NEW
ELECTRICITY COMES FROM WIND AND SOLAR!

20. Does this make sense?
• Can this be done within the constraint of not
adding new conventional electricity
generation?
– To avoid new CO2

21. How Much Solar?
• If 1000 TWh/yr of this is wind…
• Then we need another 800 TWh/yr of solar to fully
offset the 14 Q of oil we can offset with PHEVs
• At solar output of 1.6 kWh/W‐yr installed (slightly
higher than US average sunlight), this is about 500 GW
of new solar capacity
• Does this mix of wind and solar meet our needs?
– Remember, we may need a lot of new energy at night
– The biofuels address the other portion of PHEV fuels

22. Notional Mix of Sources To Meet
Charging Needs While Subtracting CO2
7 8
7
6
Wind
6
5
Solar
Wind 5
4
4 Conventiona
Solar
3
3 l
Convention
2 2 Nighttime
al
1 demand met
1
by wind &
0
0 shifting
Total from conventional
Day Night
Day Night
conventional sources
sources
Now 2020
unchanged
One unit is 444 TWh

23. Aren’t there some devilish details?
Land for solar
•
Cost
•
Solar and wind intermittency
•
Transmission
•
Speed of adoption
•

24. How Much Land Is 500 GW Solar?
• Ignore rooftops to get a “worst case” land use
• About 13,000 km2 (114 km on a side)
– Assuming 40 W/m2 of land use
• Less than 0.2% of US “lower 48” land area (8
million km2)
• Is this a lot?

26. Land Use is a Strength for Solar
Conventional Solar
Hydro Hydro lakes over 1% US land 0.2% US land is 800 TWh/yr
7% electricity (20% US electricity)
300 TWh/yr 16 times less land than
hydro per kWh
Coal About the same as solar With solar, the land is not
when strip mining included destroyed
Biomass Plant efficiency less than Efficiency and land use
0.1% after conversion to about 40 times better than
useful work biomass (and no water or
food issues)

27. Growth of PV from 5 GW
@50%/yr Growth, 1/3 in US
Can We Do This
Quickly? 4000
•Current world PV GW World Annual PV
3500
production is about 5
GW US Annual
GW/yr 3000 Installed PV
US PV Installed
•Typical growth rate of PV GW Cumulative US
2500 Installed PV
about 50% TWh/yr in US SW
2000
•At that growth rate, and
assuming 1/3 goes to the 1500
US, we accumulate 500
GW installed and 800 1000
TWh/yr in the US in 2018 800 TWh in 2018
500
(10 years)
0

28. Where Does This Put Us?
8 Q from wind
•
13 Q from liquid fuels from biomass
•
6 Q from solar
•
27 Q of displaced oil
•
– 14 if biofuels completely fails
• More than we currently import
– Stop oil price rises dead in their tracks

29. Timeframe?
• Solar can do it in under 15 years
– PV alone or PV and CSP
• Wind can do it in the same timeframe
• Biofuels unproven, but we don’t have to wait for them
• PHEV fleet may be gating item
– How fast are we willing to change?
– Probably can stabilize prices just by starting, but not
stabilize CO2 unless we finish what we started

30. How Much Would It Cost To
Eliminate 14 Quads of Oil?
Ignoring Biofuels

31. What Are the Major Costs?
• Solar:
– $1.5 trillion (~$3/W for 500 GW)
– Today’s best solar is $4/W and with volume and
technology learning, $3/W seems valid
• Wind:
– $0.6 trillion (400 GW of wind at $1.5/W)
• Transmission and grid upgrades
– $0.5 trillion
• Operating costs ($50 B/yr)
• Plug‐in hybrids instead of gasoline‐powered cars
• 13 other Q from biofuels (will not discuss)

32. How Much Does the Electricity Cost?
Annual Annual Capital Annualized Cost of solar
electricity operating cost investment for capital cost of and wind
produced by of solar, wind, solar, wind, solar, wind, electricity
solar and wind transmission transmission transmission (operating +
(Principal and loan divided by
Interest, 30 output)
year 6% loan)
1800 TWh $50B $2.6 trillion $200 billion 13 c/kWh
By that time, we may be paying more than 13 c/kWh for
conventional electricity, especially if we use it for plug-in
hybrids
Simplified levelized cost of electricity, ignoring taxes
and depreciation. After loan paid off, solar electricity
operating cost drops to almost zero (not included in analysis).

33. Cost to the Driver (no biofuels)
Price of Annual loan Annual cost Annual cost Cost of fuel Plug‐in
gasoline per payment on of electricity of gas for for gasoline hybrid
gallon $10k added for hybrid hybrid (125 vehicle @ savings
hybrid cost (10k miles gallons to 20 mpg
(6 yr, 6%) @ 3 drive 2500
mi/kWh & mi @ 20
13 c/kWh) mpg)
$2 $2000 $400 ($3400)
$250 $1250
$3 $2000 $400 ($900)
$375 $1875
$4 $2000 $400 ($400)
$500 $2500
$5 $2000 $400 $100
$625 $3125
$6 $2000 $400 $600
$750 $3750
-Breakeven at about $5/gallon gasoline
-Highly dependent on cost of batteries
-Highly dependent on financing and tax considerations
-Not very dependent on price of electricity

34. What Solar Issues Are Left?
• Intermittency
• Distant resources
• Short answer: the same solutions as work for
wind, work for solar

35. Solutions
• Solar variability can be overcome at the
regional and national levels when they are
aggregated
• Short term, at low usage, solar is invisible (like
demand fluctuations)
• As solar becomes larger, the grid can be
altered to compensate

36. Grid Responses
• Traditional back‐up power (natural gas) for smoothly varying gaps in
solar and wind (weather fronts and filling in when solar is naturally
less than midday)
• Aggregated transmission
– Smoothes renewable output, allows diverting power more
responsively
• Reverse flow from plug‐in hybrid batteries
– Can be used as source for the small amount of power needed to
fill sudden intermittency shortfalls
• Smarter grid
– Turns on/off some insensitive demand
• More storage as needed (compressed air, CAES)

38. Where do we install the solar?
• Like wind, solar economics benefit from using the
most intense resource
– Making solar electricity is about 50% cheaper in the US
Southwest
– But losses from transmission eat up about half that
difference for distant loads (North East)
• Most likely distribution?
– 40%‐80% in the Southwest
– 20%‐60% distributed throughout the country

39. 70
CO2 reduction
60
50
CO2 now CO2 later
Q as proxy for CO2
40
30
20
10
0
Don’t turn off electricity,
Turn off Gasoline !

40. Denoument
• Instead of thinking of shutting down existing coal plants,
we should be thinking of eliminating foreign oil and using
our existing fossil fuel plants to backup solar and wind
– But no need for new ones
• This will avoid the issue of abandoned assets (which still
have to be paid for), while solving our key problems – oil
prices and carbon dioxide emissions
• Then we can move on to the next level of CO2 reduction
post 2020

41. Government Role: Resources, Focus,
Facilitation
Implement plug‐in hybrids
•
– Re‐tool Detroit
– Lower cost batteries
Catalyze existing solar and wind
•
Improve grid and long‐distance transmission
•
Develop cellulosic ethanol
•
Manage hyper growth
•
– Avoid pinch points and shortages
– Properly schedule new capacity with demand
– Favor lower prices
– Assure local content
– Short‐circuit financial manipulation

42. Thanks

43. Transmission Opportunities

44. The Sun Is Always Shining: Siemens HV
DC Vision
12,000 mile transmission, about equivalent to storage losses (0.9720>0.5)
Can balance night/day (east-west) and seasons (north-south)
Siemens 2007, EPRI, DC_Solutions_EPRI_Conference_09-07_V_1b, slide 47

45. International Transmission
• Could be cheaper than storage (capital plus losses)
• Removes sudden peaks and valleys due to geographic
distribution (avoids correlated cloud events)
• East – West
– Extends daylight hours
– Eventually could be “24 hour”
• North – South
– Ameliorates seasonal solar variations (always about the
same output)
• Someone with world unification ideas could run with
this one…

46. First Solar PV Modules
Module Manufacturing Cost Reduction Roadmap
$1.29/W
100% 16‐18%
15‐17%
7‐8%
4% $0.65 ‐ .70/W
3%
50‐55%
Q1 07 Efficiency Low Cost Spending Throughput Plant Scale 2012
Cost/Watt Location Cost/Watt
Target

47. First Solar Balance of System
Roadmap
1/3 of the total balance of
~$1.56 /W
system cost savings are driven
100% 6‐8% by our roadmap to achieve at
least 12% conversion efficiency
12‐14%
2‐4%
5‐7%
6‐8% ~$1.00/W Target
69‐59%
2007 BoS Inverter Mech. Elect. Project OH 2012 BoS
Install Install Costs Target

48. Roadmap Result
• $1.75/W installed systems cost
• With margin, $2/W system price
• Well below the $2.5/W goal to make solar
equivalent to coal for a 12‐year program