Displacing Our Corner of 97.3 Quadrillion

For me, national energy trends are often too big to comprehend. The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) tells me the country used 97.3 quadrillion Btu in 2011, 82% of which was from fossil fuel sources, 9% from renewable, and 8% was nuclear-electric power (1). Unfortunately, a number that large is meaningless to me. Even after I calculated* that 97.3×10^15 Btu is enough energy to allow every person on Earth to surf Facebook every hour of every day of their lives, I still could not genuinely grasp the magnitude of America’s energy consumption. So I checked Facebook instead.

It may help to narrow our search and put things in more familiar units. Indiana ranks tenth in the country for both total energy consumption (8.41×10^14 kWh/year) and per capita energy consumption (130,000 kWh/year)**. Why do Hoosiers use so much? Well, unsurprisingly, we rank 49th in price paid per unit of energy (2). Also, the EIA (2012) reports: “Indiana's industrial sector, which includes manufacturers of aluminum, chemicals, glass, metal casting, and steel, consumed more energy in 2010 than the residential and commercial sectors combined.” Where is our electricity coming from? According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, “Indiana's coal-fired power plants… produce 95% of the state’s electricity” (3). The state has 24 coal-fired power plants, including the country’s largest, the Gibson Generating Station operated by Duke Energy. The facility, located across the Wabash from Mount Carmel, Illinois, is rated at 3,145 MW and is the country’s fourth-largest producer of CO2 emissions (4). Because we’re such intense users of coal, our state is one of the largest polluters in the country. Even though Indiana comprises 2% of the U.S. population, its electric power production facilities produce 4.9% of national CO2, 7.1% of national SO2, and 4.8% of national NO (the state is ranked 4th or 5th in the nation for all of these emissions) (1, 2). 

U.S. energy consumption by type, 1949-2011

But regardless of how much coal Indiana burns today, and no matter how much politicians kick and scream, there’s a transition in sight. Federal regulations continue to increase the cost of burning coal. Although recent price dives in natural gas may delay the transition to renewables for some time, the overall trend, in my opinion, is bending away from fossil fuels. Recent evidence even has me thinking that – take a deep breath before I say this – some of the hype over hydraulic fracturing is… hype (Ok, ok, the danger to water resources is real, but the main issue is the waste fluids, and I feel like this is a problem with relatively easy technical and regulatory solutions) (5). Despite a significant decline in recent U.S. energy consumption due to economic recession, renewables have grown considerably, mostly due to a boom in the wind industry (6).

As a thought experiment, I tried to imagine an Indiana University without fossil fuels. It is hard to do, because as we are learning in this class, our communities are designed around automobiles and cheap energy. But here it goes:

To accomplish this, we first need to assume that all of the conservation recommendations presented in the Integrated Energy Master Plan are taken, thus reducing overall annual energy usage (assuming modest reductions of 15-20%) to around 230 million kWh of electricity (but still generated in coal-fired power plants), 1.3 million MMBtu of natural gas (they replaced the coal boilers in my scenario with natural gas, and only use fuel oil in emergencies), and around a hundred million gallons or so of gasoline and diesel fuel (7).

First, everyone driving needs plug-in electric vehicles. Upon parking on campus, these would be connected to the local power grid for both charging and selling power during peak energy demand. Vehicles that cannot be adapted to this model can instead run on cellulosic biofuels. Second, the university has to invest in massive biomass combustion technology to provide steam. Our neighbors at Eastern Illinois University have already done this. The rest of our heating needs (or when the grid can't take steam far enough) would be met by on-site geothermal applications. Third, we need to fill our intermediate demand and a significant portion of our baseload electricity demand with wind and solar electricity production. Obviously not all of this can take place in Bloomington, so the university would have to play a major role in developing solid partnerships with independent power producers. On-site solar installations, however, would shave peak demand when the demand occurs during daytime, especially in the summer (when do we air condition?). Fourth, baseload electricity could be supplemented by running biogas through a distributed system of microturbines. The biogas would be created by the anaerobic digestion (see West Lafayette's digester, pictured below) of our wastewater, food scraps, and other organic wastes.

Of course this is an unlikely picture since it would require massive capital investment from the university. But perhaps one day, which I'm confident will look something like this, we'll look back and wonder why, when the technology was there, we instead decided to keep borrowing from our future.

The West Lafayette Wastewater Treatment Plant's anaerobic digester, turning raw sewage and Purdue's food scraps into electricity. 

* Assuming 1 Btu is equivalent to 0.29 Wh, laptops rated at 65 W, and 8,760 hours in a year. 

** 1 Btu = 0.000293 kWh 

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Sources:
1. eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec1.pdf
2. eia.gov/state/state-energy-profiles.cfm?sid=IN
3. nrdc.org/energy/renewables/indiana.asp
4. sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071114163448.htm
5. epa.gov/hydraulicfracture/
6. eia.gov/renewable/annual/trends/

7. masterplan.indiana.edu/iub/IEMP%20Report.pdf