The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future

by Laurence C. Smith

  Wind and solar, in contrast, are the fastest-growing energy sectors today. Although wind power provides barely 1% of the world’s electricity, that number hides enormous differences around the globe. Nearly 4% of electricity in the European Union, and nearly 20% in Denmark and the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island, comes from wind.152 This has partly to do with geography—the mid to high latitudes are windier than the tropics, for example—but much of it is driven by investment.

  The wind power trend kicked off in the 1980s in California and in the 1990s in Denmark. Today, Germany, the United States, and Spain are aggressive wind developers and presently lead the world in total installed power capacity, each with fifteen thousand megawatts or more (a typical coal-fired power plant is five hundred to a thousand megawatts; a thousand megawatts might power one million homes). India and China are close behind with six to eight thousand megawatts. Canada, Denmark, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom all have installed capacities of one thousand megawatts or more. Altogether, at least forty countries worldwide are now developing wind farms,153 and all of these numbers are growing quickly.

  The reasons for this rapid growth are many. To start, wind is free. Wind turbines are relatively cheap, consume no fuel or water, emit no greenhouse gases, and, aside from the permitting process, can be installed quickly. Because wind farms are comprised of many turbines, it is possible to start small, then grow capacity over time. At present, wind power is one of the cheapest renewable energies, averaging around $0.05 per kilowatt-hour,154 putting it closest to conventional fossil-fuel electricity prices ($0.02-$0.03/ kWh). The main concerns with wind power are bird and bat deaths, conflicts over land use, and aesthetics. Most wind farms today are on land, but offshore installations are also gathering investors’ interest. While it’s harder to install turbines and grid connections in the ocean, offshore winds are stronger, so they produce more electricity, and there is less competition for the space. In 2010 the Obama administration approved the United States’ first offshore wind farm near Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

  The wind power industry has a thirty-year legacy and is now reaping double-digit growth. Depending on the choices we make,155 our global wind power capacity is expected to grow anywhere from tenfold to over fiftyfold by the year 2050, cornering 2%-17% of the world’s electricity market.

  That leaves solar energy. The Sun, in principle, offers us more inexhaustible clean power than we could ever possibly use. One hour of sunlight striking our planet contains more energy than all of humanity uses in a year. It absolutely dwarfs all other possible energy sources, even if we add up all of the world’s coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, hydropower, wind, and photosynthesis combined. It is nonpolluting, carbonless, and free. Panels of solar photovoltaic cells have been powering satellites for over half a century, and we see their familiar shape all around us—encrusted on streetlights, garden lamps, and pocket calculators. Why, then, is our total world production of solar photovoltaic electricity equivalent to that of just one very large coal-fired power plant?

  For all its largesse, sunlight has a fundamental problem. Although vast in total, its energy density is low. Unlike a power-packed coal nugget, sunlight is diffuse, low-grade stuff. Getting significant power out of it requires covering a large area, either with mirrors to focus the Sun’s rays, or with panels of photovoltaic (PV) cells that directly convert solar photons into electricity. Both are expensive (especially photovoltaics) and efficiencies are low.

  Theoretically,156 PV cells can convert sunlight to electricity with efficiencies as high as 31%, but most are considerably lower, around 10%-20%. If that sounds pathetic to you, then consider that the efficiency of plant photosynthesis, after three billion years of evolution, is just 1%. Nonetheless, a typical silicon-based solar photovoltaic panel, with 10% efficiency and a manufacturing cost of around three hundred dollars per square meter, produces electricity that costs around thirty-five cents per kilowatt-hour. That’s seven to seventeen times greater than coal-fired electricity. So sunlight, despite being far and away the world’s biggest energy source, is also the most expensive.

  Finding a cheaper way to hijack sunlight is thus the single greatest barrier to the widespread use of solar power. Most photovoltaic panels are made of sliced wafers of extremely pure silicon that are highly polished, fitted with electrical contacts, sealed into a module, and encased in transparent glass. They are heavy, cumbersome, and expensive to make, and become even more costly when the price of silicon goes up. As ardent renewable-energy enthusiast Chris Goodall points out, installing large solar panels on the roof of his Oxford home costs about £12,000, yet the total market value of the electricity they produce after four years is just £300. While it makes sense for governments to subsidize such investments initially, eventually the technology must become competitive with fossil fuels in order to take hold.

  That means the cost of PVs must fall to about one-fifth of what they are today, a huge challenge. It’s a materials-science problem and there is much exciting research under way, particularly in the area of “thin-film” photovoltaics that abandon heavy silicon panels in favor of exotic coatings of semiconductors like cadmium telluride, or even carbon nanotubes.157 The conversion efficiencies of these materials would probably be lower than that of traditional silicon PV cells (8%-12%), but if they could be manufactured cheaply—even printed as shrink-wrap for buildings, for example—the cost of PV electricity would tumble and we could start enshrouding the planet in electricity-making paints and films.

  At the moment, photovoltaic paint lies in the sweat-soaked dreams of nanotech graduate students. A safer bet for 2050 lies in the expansion of so-called concentrated solar thermal power, or CSP, technology. Like wind power it has been around for years, and is already providing economically viable electricity from a handful of pilot installations. Unlike photovoltaics, CSP does not attempt to convert sunlight into electrons directly. Instead, in much the way that kids fry ants with a magnifying glass, CSP relies on mirrors or lenses to focus the Sun’s rays, heating a fluid like water, mineral oil, or molten salt inside a metal tube or tank. The fluid boils or expands, forcing a mechanical turbine or Stirling engine to move, making electricity. Sound familiar? It’s just plain old-fashioned electricity generation158 driven by a new source. And because CSP plants work best on hot, sunny days—a time when millions of air conditioners drive up the price of electricity—their product commands top dollar. Unlike photovoltaics, CSP requires no silicon wafers, cadmium telluride, or other fancy semiconductors, just a great many polished mirrors, the motorized steel racks to mount them on, and a traditional power plant.

  To make the most sense, CSP plants should be located in deserts. Current operations include several in Spain and the U.S. states of California, Nevada, and Arizona. Seventy miles southwest of Phoenix a billion-dollar project is under way to spread mirrors across three square miles of desert, enough to power seventy thousand homes.159 Other projects are operating or planned in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and Libya.160 In terms of sheer untapped potential, these North African countries are the next Saudi Arabia-in-waiting for solar energy (as is Saudi Arabia). The same goes for Australia, much of the Middle East, the southwestern United States, and the Altiplano Plateau and eastern side of Brazil in South America.

  So why, then, haven’t we plastered CSP plants all over our deserts? One reason is that because there are still so few built, the necessary mirrors and other equipment are still specialty products and thus quite expensive. These costs are expected to fall as the industry grows, but at the moment, with electricity prices of at least twelve cents per kilowatt-hour, CSP is still less economical than conventional power plants. Another challenge is the lack of high-voltage transmission lines connecting hot, empty deserts to the places where people actually live. All the electricity production in the world is worthless if it can’t be delivered to customers. This entails running hundreds of miles of high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) power cable,
which suffers lower transmission losses than traditional alternating current (AC) transmission lines. HVDC is already used to transmit electricity over great distances in Africa, China, the United States, Canada, and Brazil but, like all major infrastructure, is quite expensive. An undersea HVDC cable between Norway and the Netherlands cost about a million euros per kilometer in 2008.161 So while doable, channeling solar power from the world’s deserts to cities will require major capital investments in infrastructure.

  One disadvantage that afflicts not just CSP but all forms of solar and wind energy is energy storage. Few of us marvel that a light beam appears with the simple click of a flashlight button. Yet, imagine if the flashlight were powered not by battery but by hand-crank, with no battery storage whatsoever. Use of this flashlight would require constant hand-cranking (I would simply give up and sit in the dark). Furthermore, for maximum efficiency the turning hand would have to exactly match the electricity requirement at all times: Without battery storage, any excess power generated (i.e., beyond the wattage of the bulb) is lost; any deficit causes the bulb to dim.

  Scaling this problem up, we see that meeting society’s volatile electricity needs in a nonwasteful manner poses an enormous challenge. Demand fluctuates by the week, hour, and minute in response to all sorts of things, from business cycles to the commercial breaks of popular television programs. Power utilities must constantly adjust their production of electricity accordingly. Too much capacity wastes money as power plants make unused electricity; too little capacity triggers brownouts or rolling power outages.

  It’s hard enough to predict fluctuations on the demand side. Solar and wind sources—because they wither or die on calm days, cloudy days, and at night—add new volatility on the supply side. In a world powered substantially from wind and solar sources, avoiding brownouts will require vast “smart grids,” meaning highly interconnected and communicative transmission networks, plenty of backup capacity from conventional power plants,162 and new ways to store excess electricity for times of deficit.

  Storing excess electricity is challenging. One way is “pumped storage” using water. If excess electricity becomes available, it is used to pump water uphill, from a reservoir or tank, to another one at higher elevation. When electricity is wanted, the water is released from the upper to lower container again, flowing by force of gravity over turbines to make electricity. Pumped storage is relatively efficient, inexpensive, and has been around for a long time, but requires lots of water and reservoirs.163

  An exciting storage idea is to tap into the batteries of millions of parked electric cars whenever they plug into the power grid. By communicating with the grid, car owners can elect to charge up when electricity demand is low, and discharge back into the grid when demand is high. Google Inc. is actively developing such a “V2G” (vehicle-to-grid) technology through their RechargeIt initiative.164 In effect, a city’s entire motor pool becomes a giant collective battery bank, helping to buffer fluctuations in electricity supply and help protect against brownouts. In return, cars earn a profit by buying electricity when it is cheap and selling when it is expensive. Thus, the notion of a “cash-back hybrid.” Jeff Wellinghoff, commissioner of the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Committee, estimates that if millions of cars were made available to the grid, cash-back hybrids could earn their owners up to two thousand to four thousand dollars per vehicle.

  Solar power is an exciting, fast-evolving field, and is positioned for technological breakthroughs on multiple fronts.165 With transmission line investments CSP technology has good potential to bloom in well-placed deserts, for example tapping the northern Sahara to supply electricity to Europe. Globally, the solar power industry is over USD $10 billion per year and growing 30%-40% annually, even faster than wind power. 166,167 Depending on the choices we make,168 world electricity production from solar sources is expected to grow anywhere from fiftyfold to nearly two thousandfold by 2050, cornering some 0%-13% of the world’s electricity market.

  That zero was not a typo. This is all very exciting and will surely inspire many investor fortunes in the stock market. But if you’ve been adding up the numbers as we went along, you’ve already figured something out: Fast-growing as they are, the blunt truth is that the clean, renewable energy sources we’d all love to have—wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, tidal, and (sustainably grown) biomass—are in no position to replace nonrenewable sources by 2050.169

  Despite blistering growth, by 2050 solar energy will just be starting to substantially dent our energy needs. It takes time to grow from a base of near-zero. Our present capacity is so minuscule that a fiftyfold increase of solar power in the next four decades will still supply about 0% of the world’s electricity. Even the most aggressively modeled expansion of solar sources suggests they can meet just 13% of the world’s electricity demand by 2050. So buy the stocks if you wish, but in forty years where will the bulk of the world’s energy be coming from? Very likely from the same sources they come from today. There is simply no realistic way to eliminate oil, coal, and natural gas from the world’s energy portfolio in just forty years’ time.

  Natural Gas versus the Dirty Temptation

  As oil supply tightens we will harden our gaze more than ever upon coal and natural gas, until that distant day when renewable sources can catch up. Both have their handicaps and benefits relative to oil and to each other. Neither approaches the value of oil for making liquid fuels and chemical products. However, these two fossil fuels already dominate the world’s electricity generation, with about 40% coming from coal and 20% from natural gas (in contrast, only 7% of all electricity is generated using oil). A transition to electric cars, therefore, would seem a natural one even without renewable and nuclear sources of electricity.

  Should current trends continue unabated, coal demand will nearly triple by 2050, at which point it would capture 52% of the electricity market. Natural gas demand will more than double, at which point it would capture about 21%. However, nothing is fixed about these “business as usual” projections. Through aggressive conservation measures, and development of natural gas, nuclear, and renewable sources, for example, global electricity production from coal could be as little as a few percent by then.170 There are compelling reasons for the world to work toward this goal, as we shall see shortly.

  Demand for natural gas is projected to more than double between now and 2050, and it is difficult to imagine any scenario in which we will not be aggressively pursuing it (and oil) between now and then. Natural gas is widely used for heating, cooking, and industrial purposes. It comprises about one-fourth of all energy consumption in the United States. It has a growing niche as a gaseous transportation fuel, and various gas-to-liquid technologies have good potential for providing liquid fuels. It is the prime feedstock for making agricultural nitrogen fertilizers. Of the big three fossil hydrocarbons, natural gas is by far the cleanest, with roughly one-tenth to one-thousandth the amount of sulfur dioxides, nitrous oxides, particulates, and mercury of coal or oil. When burned, it releases about two-thirds as much carbon dioxide as oil and half as much as coal. There is also considerable room to improve the efficiency of natural-gas-fired plants, mainly by replacing gas-fired steam cycles with more efficient combined-cycle plants.

  The biggest drawback of natural gas, of course, is that it’s a gas. Unlike coal and oil, which can be simply dumped into tankers or a train car, it isn’t very portable. Getting natural gas from wells to distant markets requires either an intricate pipeline system or construction of a special refinery to chill it into liquefied natural gas (LNG). Because LNG takes up only about one six-hundredth the volume of natural gas, it can then be transported using tankers. At present, LNG comprises only a tiny fraction of world gas markets, but its use is growing fast. It is especially appealing for remote gas fields that would otherwise be uneconomic to develop. However, this does not come cheaply. A joint LNG venture begun in 2010 by Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Shell off the coast of Australia, for example, was expected t
o cost roughly USD $50 billion. The project will tap offshore gas fields for Asian markets and, together with other LNG projects, could make Australia the world’s second-largest LNG exporter after Qatar, with revenues in excess of USD $24 billion per year by 2018.171

  A second drawback of natural gas, similar to a big drawback of oil, is that most of it is concentrated in a handful of countries. The world’s largest reserves, by far, are controlled by the Russian Federation (about 1,529 trillion cubic feet or 23.4% of world total), followed by Iran (16.0%), Qatar (13.8%), Saudi Arabia (4.1%), the United States (3.6%), United Arab Emirates (3.5%), Nigeria (2.8%), Venezuela (2.6%), Algeria (2.4%), and Iraq (1.7%).172 China and India, projected to be the first- and third-largest economies by 2050, have only 1.3% and 0.6% of world reserves of natural gas, respectively. These countries will require aggressive imports of foreign gas to meet their needs.

  Like oil, gas fields are finite, so our transition to natural gas is something of a bridging solution to our long-term energy problems. But, as the cleanest-burning fossil fuel, with lowest greenhouse gas emissions and greatest room for efficiency improvements, it is by far the most environmentally appealing of the three. There are substantial world reserves remaining, a long history of exploitation, and additional markets for fertilizers and perhaps hydrogen feedstocks. In the coming decades natural gas will be an elite commodity, highly prized wherever it is found. There seems little doubt that natural gas, like oil, is a raw resource we shall pursue to the last corners of the Earth.

  Coal, in contrast, is plentiful and found all over the world. Proved reserves of natural gas have R/P life-index lifetimes of only around sixty years, but for coal they are at least twice as long, often up to two hundred years.173 The largest reserves are in the United States (238.3 trillion tons, or 28.9% of world reserves), Russia (19.0%), China (13.9%), and India (7.1%), but coal is mined all over the planet. Coal fueled the Industrial Revolution and, despite popular perceptions, is the world’s single largest electricity source today. Half of all electricity in the United States comes from more than five hundred coal-fired power plants. In China it’s 80%, and the country is building about two new plants per week, equivalent to adding the entire United Kingdom power grid every year. 174 Coal can even be gasified to make synthetic natural gas (SNG) or liquid diesel and methanol transport fuels. South Africa has been doing this since the 1950s and currently makes nearly two hundred thousand barrels of liquid coal fuel every day.175 Under our current trajectory, world coal consumption is projected to grow 2%-4% annually for many decades, surpassing oil to become the world’s number one energy source. Should current trends continue unabated, coal demand will nearly triple by 2050.