An interesting take on the politics of renewable energy geography:
Geothermal is the Mercedes of renewable energy: it’s expensive but top quality. Íslandsbanki (the Icelanders are experts on this) give the capital cost per kw capacity at $4,000, against $2,600 for solar PV and $1,900 for wind.
Since the big cost in geothermal is drilling, a mature technology, geothermal costs aren’t likely to come down as fast as those of its rivals are doing. However, with hot dry rock fracking , there is orders of magnitude more recoverable geothermal energy than used to be thought. It’s technically beautiful: reliable (95% capacity factor, beating everything else), safe, frugal with land.
As we push the load management envelope with cheap but variable wind and solar, geothermal will compete with storage for the high-cost zero-carbon baseload. This is no longer a a research field but a buzzing baby industry, complete with boosterism, takeovers, stock-market warnings, and talk about “plays”.
Take my three resources, together more than enough to meet all US energy needs. The overall picture is clear. Colorado has everything. South and West of Colorado has solar. North-East of Colorado (the Plains) has wind. The Rockies have geothermal. The Northeast has nothing apart from offshore wind (which generates temporary construction jobs but not rents).
Speculations on the implications:
Take my three resources, together more than enough to meet all US energy needs. The overall picture is clear. Colorado has everything. South and West of Colorado has solar. North-East of Colorado (the Plains) has wind. The Rockies have geothermal. The Northeast has nothing apart from offshore wind (which generates temporary construction jobs but not rents).
Speculations on the implications:
- The transmission costs of electricity, on a par with those of oil and gas, are low enough that price differentials are unlikely by themselves to drive settlement patterns. But the concentration won’t do anything to stop the demographic and economic shift to the Sunbelt.
- The concentration of renewable resources in largely Republican regions may help explain the relatively slow take-up of renewable energy in the USA compared to other developed countries, and the continuing opposition to carbon taxes. However, their rapid development will erode this opposition.
- If the Democrats play this right (especially ensuring that landowners and local communities benefit) and the Republicans wrong (following denialists rather than Schwarzenegger), the situation offers an opportunity for the Dems to erode Republican support in its heartland.
- The politics of the national electricity grid, making very slow progress, are made much more difficult by the regional divides. It’s only essential to the North-East.
