New technology necessary to meet utility decarbonization goals, experts warn

New technology necessary to meet utility decarbonization goals, experts warn

• At the National Clean Energy Week conference, industry leaders and executives warned that in order to completely decarbonize the electric grid, we will need continued advances in crucial areas like long-duration energy storage.
• According to executives on a Tuesday afternoon panel discussion at the conference, legislation before Congress, including the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, could provide a crucial boost to various clean energy and other technologies needed to get the electric grid over the last hump.
• Public sector financing and tax credits are needed to finance research into new energy technology. This will help new sectors to be profitable in the United States against foreign competition. Eric Dresselhuys, CEO of ESS, Inc., said this at a recent conference.

Dresselhuys, CEO of ESS Tech and a member of Tuesday’s panel discussing government policies needed to support breakthroughs in clean energy, estimated that current technology could get the utility sector very close to its goal of a carbon-free grid over the coming decades.

According to him, new advances in the sector - especially in the area of long-term energy storage - will be essential to capturing the potential of renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

“Long-duration storage will be key to making the transition happen,” Dresselhuys said.

The CEO of ESS said that the key to making this happen is a proposed, stand-alone tax credit for the energy storage sector. The tax credit is part of a $3.5 trillion package that Democrats are pushing in Congress, though Dresselhuys said there is support among both Democrats and Republicans for a stand-alone measure focused solely on the tax credit.

Gerry Anderson, an executive chair of DTE Energy and the chair of the Edison Electric Institute, said that current technology can take the utility sector 80% of the way to being carbon-free.

Emerging energy technologies like green hydrogen, carbon capture and sequestration, and advanced nuclear reactors will be necessary to provide the last 20% of the energy needed by the industry. Solar, wind, nuclear energy, hydroelectricity and natural gas can provide most of what is needed, but these additional technologies will be necessary to fill in the gaps.

With the help of federal funding and policies, the utility sector should be ready to use new energy sources by 2030, Anderson said.

As it stands now, the nation’s utility companies already generate a lot of their power from sources that don't produce carbon emissions like nuclear, wind, hydro and solar.

Anderson said that the electrification of transportation, now the country's largest carbon emitter, will also be crucial. He pointed to the utility sector's support of initiatives like the rollout of charging stations across the country to support growing EV vehicle production and sales.

We believe that with the right policies and technologies in place, a net zero future is possible. We think that wind and solar energy, as well as energy storage, can get us close to this goal. However, we will also need nuclear energy and natural gas to help us get there faster.

Tom Dower, vice president for public policy at LanzaTech, said he supports increased public research funding for clean energy technologies. However, he does not want the federal government to favor certain technologies over others.

Rather, Dower said the government should set goals for carbon reduction and then let companies compete.

“We are supportive of a tech neutral outcome” in which “the government is not picking specific winners and losers, but there are goals which are mostly about carbon reduction,” Dower said.

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