Should the US Energy Future Depend on Cheap Solar Imports?

The pending administration decision on whether to impose a tariff or other fee on US imports of solar equipment from China raises serious concerns. The right choice in this case is less obvious than suggested by the jobs and free-trade arguments from the main US solar trade association (SEIA) or the Wall St. Journal's editorial page. Solar power generates less than 2% of US electricity today. However, if it is to grow as experts forecast and advocates claim is essential, then considerations such as long-term energy security can't be ignored, while near-term job losses from a new tariff would be more than offset by subsequent growth.

Last October the US International Trade Commission issued its recommendations in favor of the complaint by two US manufacturers of solar panel components. I usually favor low tariffs and open access, especially when the markets in question are functioning smoothly and the principal impacts from trade are the result of "comparative advantage" in production or extraction between countries. However, there is little about the market for solar equipment, including the photovoltaic (PV) cells and modules at issue here, that qualifies as free.

The production and deployment of solar energy hardware has depended since its inception, and from one end of its value chain to the other, on significant government interventions. In the case of China-based PV manufacturing, these have included low-interest government loans, preferential access to land, and minimal environmental regulations. China-based PV manufacturers were also able to take advantage of extravagantly generous European solar subsidies in the 2000s to scale up their output, drive down their costs, and ultimately send much of the EU's solar manufacturing industry into bankruptcy.

On the US end, both solar manufacturing and deployment (installation) have benefited greatly from federal tax credits, cash grants from the US Treasury, and a web of state quotas for aggressively increasing utilization of renewable energy sources. Justified on grounds of energy security, "green jobs", and climate change mitigation, these measures have strongly promoted solar power and  delivered an extraordinary 68% compound annual growth rate in US solar installations since 2006. On a per-unit-of-energy basis, these supports are also at least an order of magnitude more valuable to the solar industry than the federal tax benefits received by the oil and gas industry.

One of the factors that makes this decision so difficult and politically sensitive is that a whole industry has apparently grown up around cheap solar imports, to the point that the main solar benefit to the US economy today is from installation, not manufacturing. US companies and their employees build solar panel racks and other "balance of system" gear, finance rooftop and other solar projects, and construct these installations.

These companies could be at risk of losing business and shedding jobs, if a large tariff were imposed on imported solar cells, modules and panels. Those impacts might be less than feared, though, because the cost of the actual sunlight-converting PV hardware now makes up less than a third of total solar project costs. In other words, a tariff that doubled effective PV cost would drive up total solar costs to a much smaller degree, and least of all for residential solar, which has the highest total costs per kilowatt.

There's another important aspect of this debate that hasn't received much attention. If solar power is as important to our future energy diet as many think, then it should be no more desirable to become heavily reliant on China for our supplies of PV components than it did to depend on growing imports of Middle East oil. That was the main energy security issue for the US for the last 30 years, until the shale revolution unexpectedly reversed that trend. Relying on solar imports from China in the long run will be nothing like depending on Canada for the largest share of the petroleum the US still imports.

It also makes sense to address this situation now, before solar power has grown to 20% or 30% of the US electricity mix, and with the US economy near full employment, when those workers that did lose their jobs would have the best chance to replace them quickly.

From the start, the complaint of unfair competition lodged by Suniva Inc. and Solar World Americas--Chinese- and German-owned, respectively--has been derided as an effort to prop up a couple of marginal players at the expense of the much larger US solar-installation sector. That ignores the position of First Solar (NASDAQ:FSLR), a US-based PV manufacturer with $3 billion in global sales. The company is on record supporting the trade complaint. Of course they aren't a disinterested party; they stand to benefit from a tariff that would raise the cost of competing PV gear from China and elsewhere.

That's precisely the point of the complaint: strengthening US solar manufacturers, so that the growth of solar energy in this country doesn't end up like TV sets and other consumer electronics. There's more at stake, because PV isn't TV. If solar power becomes a major part of US energy supplies by mid-century, it will actually matter if we have a robust manufacturing base to drive its deployment, rather than relying on any one country or region for its key building block.

Are Renewables Set to Displace Natural Gas?

• Bloomberg's renewable energy affiliate forecasts that wind and solar power will make major inroads into the market share of natural gas within a decade. 
• This might be a useful scenario to consider, but it is still likelier that coal, not gas, faces the biggest risk from the growth of renewables. 

A recent story on Bloomberg News, "What If Big Oil's Bet on Gas Is Wrong?", challenges the conventional wisdom that demand for natural gas will grow as it displaces coal and facilitates the growth of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. Instead, the forecast highlighted in the article envisions gas's global share of electricity dropping from 23% to 16% by 2040 as renewables shoot past it. So much for gas as the "bridge to the future" if that proves accurate.

Several points in the story leave room for doubt. For starters, this projection from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), the renewables-focused analytical arm of Bloomberg, would leave coal with a larger share of power generation than gas in 2040, when it has renewables reaching 50%. That might make sense in the European context on which their forecast seems to be based, but it flies against the US experience of coal losing 18 points of electricity market share since 2007 (from 48.5% to 30.4%), with two-thirds of that drop picked up by gas and one-third by expanding renewables. (See chart below.)

It's also worth noting that the US Energy Information Administration projected in February that natural gas would continue to gain market share, even in the absence of the EPA's Clean Power Plan, which is being withdrawn.

Natural gas prices have had a lot to do with the diverging outcomes experienced in Europe and the US, so far. As the shale boom ramped up, average US natural gas spot prices fell from nearly $9 per million BTUs (MMBTU) in 2008 to $3 or less since 2014.  Meanwhile, Europe remains tied to long-term pipeline supplies from Russia and LNG imports from North Africa and elsewhere. Wholesale gas price indexes in Europe reached $7-8 per MMBTU earlier this year.

But it's not clear that the factors that have kept gas expensive in Europe and protected coal, even as nuclear power was being phased out in Germany, will persist. The US now exports more liquefied natural gas (LNG) than it imports. US LNG exports to Europe may not push out much Russian gas, but along with expanding global LNG capacity they are forcing Gazprom, Russia's main gas producer and exporter, to become more competitive.

Then there's the issue of flexibility versus intermittency. Wind and solar power power are not flexible; without batteries or other storage they are at the mercy of daily, seasonal or random variation of sunlight and breezes, and in need of back-up from truly flexible sources. Large-scale hydroelectric capacity, which makes up 75% of today's global renewable generation and is capable of supplying either 24x7 "baseload" electricity or ramping up and down as needed, has provided much of the back-up for wind and solar in Europe, but is unlikely to grow rapidly in the future.

That means the bulk of the growth in renewables that BNEF sees from now to 2040 must come from extrapolating intermittent wind and solar power from their relatively modest combined 4.5% of the global electricity mix in 2015 to a share larger than coal still holds in the US. The costs of wind and solar technologies have fallen rapidly and are expected to continue to drop, while the integration of these sources into regional power grids at scales up to 20-30% has gone better than many expected. However, without cheap electricity storage on an unprecedented scale, their further market penetration seems likely to encounter increasing headwinds as their share increases.

BNEF may be relying on the same aggressive forecast of falling battery prices that underpinned its recent projection that electric vehicles (EVs) will account for more than half of all new cars by 2040. As the Financial Times noted this week, battery improvements depend on chemistry, not semiconductor electronics. Assuming their costs can continue to fall like those for solar cells looks questionable. Nor is cost--partly a function of temporary government incentives--the only aspect of performance that will determine how well EVs compete with steadily improving conventional cars and hybrids.

I also compared the BNEF gas forecast to the International Energy Agency's most recent World Energy Outlook, incorporating the national commitments in the Paris climate agreement. The IEA projected that renewables would reach 37% of global power generation by 2040, or roughly half the increase BNEF anticipates. The IEA also saw global gas demand growing by 50%, passing coal by 2040. That's a very different outcome than the one BNEF expects.

Despite my misgivings about its assumptions and conclusions, the BNEF forecast is a useful scenario for investors and energy companies to consider. With oil prices stuck in low gear and future oil demand highly uncertain, thanks to environmental regulation and electric and autonomous vehicle technologies, many large resource companies have increased their focus on natural gas. Some, like Shell and Total, invested to produce more gas than oil, predicated on gas's expected role as the lowest-emitting fossil fuel in a decarbonizing world. If that bet turned out to be wrong, many billions of dollars of asset value would be at risk.

However, it's hard to view that as the likeliest scenario. Consider a simple reality check: As renewable electricity generation grows to mainstream scale, it must displace something. Is that likelier to be relatively inflexible coal generation, with its high emissions of both greenhouse gases and local pollutants, or flexible, lower-emitting natural gas power generation that offers integration synergies with renewables? The US experience so far says that baseload facilities--coal and nuclear--are challenged much more by gas and renewables, than gas-fired power is by renewables plus coal.

The bottom line is that the world gets 80% of the energy we use from oil, gas and coal. Today's renewable energy technology isn't up to replacing all of these at the same time, without a much heavier lift from batteries than the latter seem capable of absent a real breakthrough. If the energy transition now underway is indeed being driven by emissions and cleaner air, then it's coal, not gas, that faces the biggest obstacles.

Withdrawal Exposes Weakness of the Paris Climate Agreement

When President Trump announced last week that the US would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, he unleashed a flood of condemnation. Foreign leaders, US politicians, corporate executives, and environmental groups all roundly criticized the move. It also hasn't polled well.

As the initial reaction dies down, it's worth considering how this happened, what it means, and what might come next. The invaluable Axios news site has some noteworthy insights on the latter problem that I will get to shortly.

I am convinced it was a mistake to withdraw. In this I share the view of many current and former business leaders, including the Secretary of State, that the US was better off as a party to the deal and all the future negotiations it entails. Even if the goal was truly to renegotiate the agreement on more favorable terms, signaling withdrawal first seems counterproductive. However, I also see the consequences of our withdrawal in less catastrophic terms than most critics of the move.

As I noted not long after it was concluded, the Paris Agreement is by design much weaker than its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol. Although the 2015 Paris deal was probably the strongest one that could have been negotiated at the time, it still represented a big compromise between developed and developing countries on who should reduce the bulk of future emissions and who should bear the responsibility for the consequences of past emissions. Its text is full of verbs like recognize, acknowledge, encourage, etc., and  the commitments it collected were essentially voluntary.

The agreement was also explicitly negotiated so as to maximize its chances of being enacted under the executive powers of the US president, without his having to refer the agreement to the US Senate for its concurrence. That implied it could be undone in the same way.

In other words, President Obama took a calculated risk that his successor(s) would choose to be bound by his Executive Order endorsing Paris. That was tantamount to a bet on his party winning the 2016 election, since most of the Republicans who had announced at the time were opposed to it, or the Clean Power Plan that was the linchpin of future US compliance with it.

Seeking Senate approval as a treaty would have been a much bigger lift--or required an even weaker agreement--but success would have provided significant political protection for the follow-on to the unratified Kyoto Protocol. Perhaps that explains why President Trump has chosen the much slower exit path--up to three years--provided within the Paris Agreement, rather than the quicker route of pulling out of the umbrella UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Convention was signed by President George H.W. Bush with the bipartisan advise and consent of the Senate in 1992.

Setting politics aside, it's also not obvious that US withdrawal from Paris will put our greenhouse gas emissions on a significantly different track than if we stayed in. Even the EPA's review and likely withdrawal of its previous Clean Power Plan, which underpinned the Obama administration's strategy for meeting the voluntary goal it submitted at Paris, may have only a minor impact on global emissions.

Federal climate policy has not been the main driver of recent emissions reductions in the US power sector. Cheap, abundant natural gas from shale and the rapid adoption of renewable energy under state "renewable portfolio standards", supported by federal tax credits that were extended again in 2015, have been the primary factors in overall US emissions falling by 11% since 2005. These trends look set to continue.

The bigger question is what happens globally with the US out of the Paris Agreement--assuming the administration does not reverse course again before it can issue the required formal notice to withdraw roughly 2 1/2 years from now. 

At least in the short term, I doubt much else will change. For the most part, the Nationally Determined Commitments delivered at Paris reflected what the signatories intended to do anyway. China's NDC is a perfect example. That country's ongoing air pollution crisis provides ample incentive to scale back on energy intensity and coal-fired power plants, which are the main source of its emissions. 

Increasing the role of renewable energy in its national energy mix perfectly suits China's ambitions in renewable energy technology. Exhibit A for that is a solar manufacturing sector that went from insignificance to more than 50% of the global supply of photovoltaic (PV) cells in under a decade, while China's domestic market accounted for 21% of global PV installations through 2015. 

The reactions to last week's announcement surely raised the stakes for other countries that might consider leaving. However, this action has also provided China and other high-emitting developing countries with an ironic mirror image of one of the main arguments on which the US government based its unwillingness to implement the Kyoto Protocol. 

What ought to matter more than any of the domestic and geopolitical maneuvering around the US exit is the actual impact on the global climate. Reporting on Axios, Amy Harder (formerly of the Wall St. Journal) portrayed this as a sort of emperor's clothes moment with a column entitled, "Climate change is here to stay, so deal with it." Monday's main Axios "stream" characterized her piece as a "truth bomb." 

As Harder put it, "The chances of reversing climate change are slim regardless of US involvement in the Paris agreement." That's consistent with recent assessments from the International Energy Agency and others. Citing the Bipartisan Policy Center and the UN, her column suggested a pivot to greater focus on adaptation, the hard and deeply unglamorous work of bolstering infrastructure and systems to withstand changes in the climate, including those that are already baked in. Attributing the source of changes in rainfall and sea level matters less than plugging the resulting physical gaps. That makes adaptation politically less toxic than cutting emissions, though still plenty challenging, fiscally. 

As I have been watching the fallout from last week's news, I keep coming back to comparisons to the Cold War that I made when the idea of pursuing climate policy through executive action was emerging in 2010. Like the Cold War, dealing with climate change requires a similarly enduring bipartisan coalition. Major policy swings every 4 or 8 years are just too costly and ineffective, due to the planning horizons involved.

NATO may be going through a difficult moment, but it is approaching its 70th year. After seeing its key weakness exposed, can anyone honestly look at the framework of the Paris Agreement and conclude that it is likely to last as long? Yet if climate change is as serious as many suggest, those are exactly the terms in which we should be thinking.

US Energy Under Trump

• President-Elect Trump and his appointees plan a major policy and regulatory shift for energy, focusing more on economic benefits and less on environmental impacts.
• Obama-era regulations most at risk of roll-back are those justified mainly on climate concerns not shared by Mr. Trump and his team.
• Emissions are still likely to fall in the next four years as shale and renewable energy output grow. 

Next week's presidential inauguration will trigger the biggest policy and regulatory shift for the US energy industry in at least ten years. That's how long it has been since energy policy was set by a Republican president and Congress. Donald Trump is a different kind of Republican, though, and his goal does not seem to be a return to scarcity and high energy prices. What should we expect, instead?

To gauge how sharply the energy polices of the incoming Trump administration will diverge from those of the last eight years, we need to understand what motivates both leaders. The Obama administration's approach was driven by a deep, shared conviction that climate change is the most important challenge the US--and world--faces. The cost of energy and its impact on the economy became secondary concerns, subordinated by the belief that the added cost of climate policies would be offset in whole or part by the benefits of the green investment they unleashed--remember "green jobs"?

We saw this in President Obama's first year in office. Amid a deep recession he worked with Congress to attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions by means of an economy-wide cap-and-trade system, on which he had campaigned. The House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey bill (HR.2454), a veritable dog's breakfast of economic distortions. Yet despite a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in 2009, Waxman-Markey and every subsequent cap-and-trade bill died there.

That failure set in motion the agenda that the Obama administration has pursued ever since, to achieve via regulations the emissions reductions it could not deliver through comprehensive climate legislation. Last year's publication of the EPA's final Clean Power Plan was a key component of an effort that seems set to continue until just before Inauguration Day.

The transformation of energy regulations under President Obama was dramatic enough that a transition to any Republican administration would be a big change. The transition now in prospect will be even more jarring. Mr. Trump's rhetoric and his choices for key administration positions point to a concerted effort to unravel as many of the Obama-era regulations affecting energy as possible. That isn't just based on philosophical differences over regulation and markets. For President-Elect Trump the economy and jobs are paramount, so the Obama energy regulations must look like an unjustifiable threat to the fossil fuel supplies that still meet 81% of the nation's energy needs.

Despite that, it is unlikely the new administration will go out of its way to target renewable energy or the tax credits that have driven its growth to date. Renewables are becoming increasingly popular with conservatives. However, because Mr. Trump sees climate change as, at best, a secondary issue that may not be amenable to human intervention, his administration's won't put renewables on a pedestal as the Obama administration has done.

The biggest challenge for renewable energy may come from tax reform intended to make US companies and factories more competitive globally and shrink the incentive for them to relocate to lower-tax countries. This appears to be a high priority for the new White House and Congress, and one on which they broadly agree. If corporate tax rates drop, the value of the tax credits renewables enjoy is likely to fall, too, making wind, solar and other such projects less attractive and less competitive.

It remains to be seen how many of the Obama energy regulations can be rolled back. The most recent regulations might be averted through legislation like the Midnight Rules Relief Act, or the REINS Act, both of which would update the Congressional Review Act, a rarely used 1990s law intended to limit what presidents could impose by last-minute executive actions. Other regulations may eventually stand or fall as the courts rule. The stakes are high, particularly for regulations affecting the production of oil and gas from shale by means of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.

Energy independence was a touchstone of Mr. Trump's candidacy. Despite his campaign's focus on coal, it is fracking, as hydraulic fracturing is more commonly known, that holds the key to achieving that goal in the foreseeable future. It has been the main driver of the growth in US energy production since 2010.

The latest long-term forecast from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) puts energy independence within reach--in the sense of the US becoming a net exporter of energy--by 2026 or sooner. However, the recent flurry of regulations affecting such things as drilling on federal land, and putting large portions of US waters off-limits for offshore drilling would not have been part of that projection. As EIA Administrator Adam Sieminski remarked at a briefing on the forecast, "If you had policy that changed relative to hydraulic fracturing, it would make a big, big difference to everything that's in here."

That's a key point, because most past notions of energy independence assumed that energy prices would have to be very high to promote lots of efficiency and conservation and stimulate large amounts of expensive new supply. The shale revolution changed that.

However, the global context is also changing. OPEC is attempting to reassert its control over the oil market, with help from non-OPEC countries like Russia. Two years of low oil prices shrank global oil and gas investment budgets by around a trillion dollars, and the International Energy Agency has warned of coming oil price spikes as a result. Forestalling tighter US regulations on fracking and offshore drilling increases the chances that US supplies could grow by enough to balance shortfalls elsewhere and avert much higher prices at the gas pump.

Energy infrastructure is likely to be another focus of the new administration, because the economic and competitive benefits of abundant energy will be diluted if, for example, Marcellus and Utica shale gas or Bakken and Permian Basin shale oil have to be exported because domestic customers don't have access to them.

That suggests an early effort to reverse decisions by the current administration to block the construction of various pipelines, starting with the Keystone XL pipeline and more recently the Dakota Access Pipeline. That will force new confrontations with activists and environmental organizations that have raised their game to a new level in the last eight years.

Such opposition would likely intensify if the new administration sought to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, which recently went into effect, or submitted it for review by the US Senate as a treaty. But it's not clear that a big change in direction would require leaving Paris.

The US commitments at Paris, like those of the other signatories, were voluntary and non-binding. For that matter, recent shifts in US energy consumption and especially electricity generation have put the US in a good position to meet its initial Paris goals with little or no additional effort, as noted by outgoing Energy Secretary Moniz. The Paris Agreement will only become a major point of contention if President Trump chooses to make it one.

In his list of the top energy stories of 2016, fellow blogger Robert Rapier rated the election of Donald Trump ahead of the OPEC deal and many other important events of the year, based on its likely impact on "every segment of the US energy industry." In retrospect that was equally true of Barack Obama's election in 2008. The shift we are about to experience on energy will be that much sharper, because President Obama and President-Elect Trump both set out to make big changes to the status quo for energy, in opposite directions. We shouldn't miss one important difference, however.

The course that Barack Obama's administration followed on energy was largely predictable from the start, because it was based on openly and deeply held beliefs about energy and the environment. Donald Trump's well-known preference for deals over dogma sets up the prospect of some big surprises, in addition to what we can already anticipate.

Don't Book Your Solar-Powered Flight Yet

• An around-the-world flight by a solar-powered airplane is a remarkable achievement, but it does not signal that solar passenger planes are the next big thing.
• Compared to other options, solar's low energy density makes it an especially challenging pathway for pursuing large cuts in the emissions from aircraft.

Earlier this week the pioneering solar-powered airplane, Solar Impulse 2, completed its record-setting circumnavigation of the Earth, returning to Abu Dhabi. Just a few hours earlier, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced its intention to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft engines under the Clean Air Act. Over the last dozen years I have written numerous posts linking stories like these together, but this is one case in which I sincerely hope these events were entirely unrelated. That requires a bit of explanation.

Let's start by acknowledging the engineering talent and sheer courage involved in the flight of the Solar Impulse 2 (Si2). The aircrew and designers deserve all the kudos they will receive; they have earned a place in aviation history. However, notwithstanding the prediction of pilot Bertrand Piccard that, "within 10 years, electric aircraft could be carrying up to 50 passengers on short to medium-haul flights," I am skeptical that this project will be the forerunner of solar-powered commercial flight in the way that Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight in 1927 led to the first non-stop commercial flight across the Atlantic in 1938.

There's no anti-solar bias involved in that statement, just an appreciation of the constraints that physics and geometry (e.g., the "square-cube law") impose on the amount of solar energy an aircraft can harvest during flight with anything like current technology. Energy density is an essential factor in the economics of commercial air travel.

According to the website for the Si2, the aircraft is approximately "the size of a 747 with the weight of a car." That should be our first hint that scaling up to the performance and capacity of today's jets would be an even bigger challenge than the one these folks have just completed. During the course of its journey, which entailed over 500 hours of flight spread across 17 months, the Si2 collected and consumed electrical energy equivalent to a little over 300 gallons of kerosene-based jet fuel. By comparison, a Boeing 777, which is capable of carrying up to 400 people, burns an average of around 2,000 gallons of jet fuel per hour.

If you covered a 777's wings with the same 22%-efficient SunPower solar cells used by the Si2, they would generate the fuel-equivalent of less than 3 gallons per hour at noon on a cloudless day. Even allowing for the higher efficiency of electric motors compared to gas turbines, that is still orders of magnitude less than the energy necessary to push a fully-loaded jetliner through the sky at 550 miles per hour. (The Si2 averaged 47 mph.)

As the Financial Times reported, the near-term applications of solar-powered flight are likely limited to surveillance drones and other specialized platforms for which long-range fuel-free flight confers a big advantage. I could also envision lightweight, high-efficiency solar cells being used on next-generation commercial aircraft to provide auxiliary (non-motive) power, saving both fuel and emissions.

That brings me back to the EPA. The agency's stated rationale for targeting aircraft engines now is that they expect these emissions to increase in the future, and that reductions would lead to climate and health benefits. There's no mention of solar-powered aircraft, and I must trust that had nothing to do with their announcement.

The EPA's latest greenhouse gas inventory reported that in 2014 commercial and other aircraft accounted for 8% of US transportation-related emissions, and about 2% of all US emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. It also showed that aviation emissions have fallen 22% since 2005.

Perhaps the growth they are worried about is proportional, rather than absolute, as emissions from electricity generation and other sources decline faster. However, compared to cars and light trucks that account for over 60% of emissions from transportation, and for which many emission-reduction options are available, aviation is a small and rather challenging focus for further reductions.  Those will likely rely on advanced biofuels, along with additional gains in turbine efficiency and airframe weight reduction. 

The website for Solar Impulse 2 acknowledges that its flight was intended to highlight the earth-bound applications of renewable energy: "Behind Solar Impulse’s achievements, there is always the same goal: show that if an airplane can fly several days and nights in a row with no fuel, then clean technologies can be used on the ground to reduce our energy consumption, and create profit and jobs." Solar-powered air travel for the masses seems pretty far off, and certainly not something we can count on for cutting our emissions. 

Out of Reach Without Nuclear and Shale

• US emissions reduction goals for 2025 could not be achieved without nuclear power and the fracking technology necessary to extract shale gas. 
• Recent revisions by the EPA in its estimates of methane leaks from natural gas production and use do not negate the benefits of gas in reducing emissions.

In its lead editorial yesterday, the Washington Post took presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to task for his attacks on nuclear power and natural gas. The Post focused its critique on greenhouse gas emissions and the emissions trade-offs involved in substituting one form of energy for another. That speaks directly to one of the main reasons that Mr. Sanders' argument resonates with his supporters, but it ignores an even more basic problem. The energy contribution from shale and nuclear power is so large that if our goal is a reliable, low-emission energy mix that meets the future energy needs of the US economy, we simply cannot get there without them, at least not in any reasonable timeframe.

The pie chart below shows the current sources of US electricity in terms of the energy they generate, rather than their rated capacity. This is an important distinction, because the renewable electricity technologies that have been growing so rapidly--wind and solar--are variable and/or cyclical, generating only a fraction of their rated output over the course of any week, month, or year.

For example, replacing the output of a 2,000 megawatt (MW) nuclear power plant such as the Indian Point facility just north of New York City would require, not 2,000 MW of wind and solar power, but between 7,600 MW and 9,400 MW, based on the applicable capacity factors for such installations. Now scale that up to the whole country. With 99 nuclear reactors in operation, rated at a combined 98,700 MW, it would take at least 375,000 MW of new wind and solar power to displace them. As the Post's editorial points out, money spent replacing already zero-emission energy is money not spent replacing high-emitting sources.

At the rates at which wind and solar capacity were added last year, that build-out would require 24 years. That's in addition to the 36 years it would take to replace the current contribution of coal-fired power generation. It also ignores the fact that intermittent renewables require either expensive energy storage or fast-reacting backup generation to provide 24/7 reliability.

That brings us to natural gas, the main provider of back-up power for renewables, and the "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing) technology that accounts for half of US natural gas production. Fracking has transformed the US energy industry so dramatically that it is very hard to gauge the consequences of a national ban on it, even if such a policy could be enacted. Would natural gas production fall by a third to its level in 2005, when shale gas made up only around 5% of US supply, and would imports of LNG and pipeline gas from Canada ramp back up, correspondingly?

Or would production fall even farther? After all, one of the main factors behind the rapid growth of shale gas in the previous decade is that US conventional gas opportunities in places like the Gulf of Mexico were becoming scarcer and more expensive to develop than shale, which was higher-cost then than today. Either way, the constrained supply of affordable natural gas under a fracking ban would not support generating a third of US electricity from gas, vs. 20% in 2006. So we would either need even more renewables and storage--in addition to those displacing nuclear power--or, as Germany has found in pursuit of its phase-out of nuclear power, a substantial contribution from coal.

One of the primary reasons cited by Mr. Sanders and others for their opposition to shale gas, aside from overstated claims about water impacts, is the risk to the climate from associated methane leaks. Here he would seem to have some support from the US Environmental Protection Agency, which recently raised its estimates of methane leakage from natural gas systems.

Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2), so this is a source of serious concern. However, a detailed look at the updated EPA data does not support the contention of shale's critics that natural gas is ultimately as bad or worse for the climate than coal, a notion that has been strongly refuted by other studies.

The oil and gas industry has questioned the basis of the EPA's revisions, but for purposes of discussion let's assume that their new figures are more accurate than last year's EPA estimate, which showed US methane emissions from natural gas systems having fallen by 11% since 2005. On the new basis, the EPA estimates that in 2014 gas-related methane emissions were 20 million CO2-equivalent metric tons higher than their 2013 level on the old basis, for a year-on-year increase of more than 12%. This upward revision is nearly offset by the 15 million ton drop in methane emissions from coal mining since 2009, which was largely attributable to gas displacing coal in power generation.

In any case, the new data shows gas-related emissions essentially unchanged since 2005, despite the 44% increase in US natural gas production over that period. The key comparison is that the EPA's entire, updated estimate of methane emissions from natural gas in 2014, on a CO2-equivalent basis, is just 2.5% of total US greenhouse gas emission that year. In particular, it equates to less than half of the 360 million ton per year reduction in emissions from fossil fuel combustion in electric power generation since 2005--a reduction well over half of which the US Energy Information Administration attributed to the shift from gas to coal.

In other words, from the perspective of the greenhouse gas emissions of the entire US economy, our increased reliance on natural gas for power generation cannot be making matters worse, rather than better. That's a good thing, because as I've shown above, we simply can't install enough renewables, fast enough, to replace coal, nuclear power and shale gas at the same time.

What does all this tell us? Fundamentally, Mr. Sanders and others advocating that the US abandon both nuclear power and shale gas are mistaken or misinformed. We are many years away from being able to rely entirely on renewable energy sources and energy efficiency to run our economy. In the meantime, nuclear and shale are essential for the continuing decarbonization of US electricity, which is the linchpin of the plans behind the administration's pledge at last December's Paris Climate Conference to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% by 2025. That goal would be out of reach without them.

A Grand Compromise on Energy?

The idea of  a Congressional "grand compromise" on energy has been debated for years. A decade ago, such an agreement might have opened up access for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in exchange for "cap and trade" or some other comprehensive national greenhouse gas emissions policy. By comparison, the deal apparently included in the 2016 spending and tax bill is small beer but still worthwhile: In exchange for lifting the outdated restrictions on exporting US crude oil, Congress will respectively revive and extend tax credits for wind and solar power.

Anticipation about the prospect of US oil exports seemed higher last year, when production was growing rapidly and threatening to outgrow the capacity of US oil refineries to handle the volumes of high-quality "tight oil" flowing from shale deposits. Just this week Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations, citing a study by the Energy Information Administration, suggested that allowing such exports might now be nearly inconsequential in most respects.

Although little additional oil may flow in the short term, given the current global surplus, it's worth recalling that the gap between domestic and international oil prices hasn't always been as narrow as it is today. The discount for West Texas Intermediate relative to UK Brent crude has averaged around $4 per barrel this year, but within the last three years it has been as wide as $15-20. Oil traders will tell you that average differentials between markets are essentially irrelevant. What counts is the windows when those gaps widen, during which  a lot of cargoes can move in short periods.

No matter how much or little US oil is ultimately exported, and how much additional production the lifting of the export ban will actually stimulate, the bigger impact on the global oil market is likely to be psychological. Having to find new outlets for oil shipped from West Africa, for example, because US refiners are processing more US crude and importing less from elsewhere is one thing; having to compete directly with cargoes of US oil is going to be quite another. That's where US consumers will benefit in the long run, from lower global oil prices that translate into lower prices at the gas pump.

Finally, if OPEC can choose to cease acting like a cartel--at least for the moment--and treat crude oil as a normal market, then it's timely for the US to follow suit and end an oil export ban that originated in the same 1970s oil crisis that put OPEC on the map.

How about the other side of this deal? What do we get for retroactively reinstating the expired wind production tax credit (PTC), along with extending the 30% solar tax credit that would have expired at the end of next year?

We'll certainly get more wind farms, along with some stability for an industry that has been whipsawed by past expirations and last-minute extensions of a tax credit that has been a major driver of new installations throughout its 20+ year history. Wind energy accounted for 4.4% of US grid electricity in the 12 months through September, up from a little over 1% in 2008.

However, this tax credit isn't cheap . The 4,800 Megawatts of new wind turbines installed in 2014 will receive a total of nearly $2.5 billion in subsidies--equivalent to around $19 per barrel--during the 10 years in which they will be eligible for the PTC, and 2015's additions are on track to beat that. The PTC is also the policy that enables wind power producers in places like Texas to sell electricity at prices below zero--still pocketing the 2.3¢ per kilowatt-hour (kWh) tax credit--distorting wholesale electricity markets and capacity planning.

As for solar power, it's not obvious that the tax credit extension was necessary at all, in light of the rapid decline in the cost of solar photovoltaic energy (PV). In any case, because the tax credit for solar is calculated as a percentage of installed cost, rather than a fixed subsidy per kWh of output like for wind, the technology's progress has provided an inherent phaseout of the dollar benefit. Solar's rapid growth seems likely to continue, with or without the tax credit.

The big missed opportunity from a clean energy and climate perspective is that these tax credit extensions channel billions of dollars to technologies that, at least in the case of wind, are essentially mature and widely regarded as inadequate to support a large-scale, long-term transition to low-emission energy. I would have preferred to see these federal dollars targeted to help incubate new energy technologies, along the lines of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition announced by Bill Gates and other high-tech leaders at the Paris climate conference.

The current deal, embedded within a $1.6 trillion "omnibus" spending bill, must still pass the Congress and be signed by the President. It won't please everyone, but it is at least consistent with the "all of the above" approach that has been our de facto energy strategy, at least since 2012. It also serves as a reminder that despite the commitments at Paris to reduce emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, renewable energy will of necessity coexist with oil and gas for many years to come.

Rare Earths Not So Rare?

• The bankruptcy of the main US producer of "rare earth" materials signals the end of a multi-year crisis over their global supply and cost.

The announced Chapter 11 filing of US-based rare earths mining and refining company Molycorp effectively marks the end of a crisis that managed to escape the notice of most people. Rare earths are elements of low abundance, compared to the ores of metals like iron and copper. Despite their relative scarcity, they have proved extremely useful in industrial applications including renewable energy technologies. Five years ago it appeared that China had cornered the market on rare earths and was exercising its market power to, among other aims, lure businesses reliant on these minerals to shift their operations to China.

Molycorp's modernization of its rare earth mine in California and subsequent expansion into other aspects of the business were responses to a perceived global crisis. China's restrictions on rare earth exports threatened the economic competitiveness of hybrid and electric cars, wind turbines, non-silicon solar cells, compact fluorescent lighting (CFL), and other devices of interest to energy markets and policy makers.

The situation also raised concerns in the defense industry, due to the importance of rare earth metals and alloys in the manufacture of missile components, radar and sonar equipment, and other military hardware. Governments created or expanded strategic stockpiles for these materials, and took other steps to manage their reliance on supplies from China.

However, as reported by the Council on Foreign Relations last fall, the effectiveness of efforts by the Chinese government to leverage their control of rare earth supplies was short-lived. Its policies led to mostly market-based responses, involving both supply and demand, that undermined China's near-monopoly and ultimately contributed to Molycorp's present financial difficulties.

Molycorp wasn't the only company to bring new supplies into production, or the only one to struggle as the crisis unwound. New supplies were already in the pipeline at the time China restricted its exports, in reaction to price spikes that preceded the policy as global demand bumped up against the output of China's mines and processing facilities. Nor was government control of China's fragmented rare earth industry sufficient to prevent continued exports exploiting loopholes of the restrictions.

Finally, and probably most importantly for both China-based and non-China-based producers, innovators in the industries using these materials found ways to make do with lower proportions of rare earths in permanent magnet motors and generators, or to do without them altogether.

The upshot from an energy perspective is that if anything will slow the expansion of wind and solar power, hybrid cars and EVs, and other alternative energy and energy-saving technologies, it is unlikely to be a shortage of rare earths. They may be rare relative to other industrial commodities, but in the small proportions used it seems they are not rare enough to pose more than a temporary bottleneck.

An Energy Perspective on the Iran Nuclear Framework

• With enormous natural gas reserves and renewables potential, Iran has little need for nuclear power, and even less for uranium enrichment.
• If Iran's sacrifices in pursuit of its nuclear program cannot be explained by a gap in its energy mix, what will motivate its leaders to abide by the current nuclear deal?

The coverage of the recently agreed international nuclear framework for Iran's nuclear program has missed an important aspect of the story. Nearly all of the reporting and analysis I have read considered the deal from a security and geopolitical perspective, without examining the merits of civilian nuclear power within Iran's domestic energy mix. That goes to the heart of Iran's motivation for future adherence to the terms of the detailed agreement that must shortly follow the broad framework negotiated in Switzerland.

This line of analysis dates back to an article I wrote for Geopolitics of Energy, published by the Canadian Energy Research Institute exactly 10 years ago, in April 2005, and subsequently reprinted in my blog. Other than some outdated figures on energy consumption, reserves and cost, it has held up pretty well, particularly in terms of its main proposition:

"Iran makes an unusual candidate for civilian nuclear power, compared to other countries with nuclear power. Most of these fall into either of two categories: those that lack other energy resources to support their economies, such as France, Japan and South Korea, and resource-rich countries that developed nuclear power as a consequence of their pursuit of nuclear weapons, including the US, former USSR, UK, and arguably China. Blessed as it is with hydrocarbon reserves, Iran does not fall into the former category, and it claims not to fall into the latter. Does it represent a unique case?"

In the years since I wrote that, we've seen a growing interest in nuclear energy elsewhere in the Middle East, including a reported memorandum of understanding between Saudi Arabia and Korea for constructing civilian power reactors in the Kingdom. Such projects in energy-rich Gulf States beg the same questions as in Iran, although the "displacement of oil for export" rationale holds up better for Saudi Arabia and the UAE than for Iran under the current circumstances.

As in 2005, the key to understanding the fit of nuclear power within Iran's energy mix is natural gas. In the most recent country analysis by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) Iran's domestic energy consumption has grown by roughly two-thirds since the 2003 data on which I based my 2005 article. The EIA data indicate that around 75% of that growth has been fueled by gas. That's not surprising, since Iran now claims 18% of the world's proved reserves of natural gas, having leapfrogged Russia for the top spot a few years ago. At current production rates, Iran has over 200 years of proved gas reserves, compared to about 14 years for the US. (Higher US estimates are based on the less-restrictive category of resources, not reserves.)

Moreover, since 2005 the cost of building nuclear power plants has increased, in some cases significantly, while the cost of natural gas-fired combined cycle turbine power plants has generally declined, thanks to substantial efficiency improvements. For that matter, the cost of alternatives like solar power, which Iran's geography favors, has declined even more in the interim.

A decade after I first examined this question, it is still hard to find a compelling energy rationale for Iran to pursue civilian nuclear power with the persistence it has demonstrated. Developing more of its abundant natural gas would be more cost-effective, perhaps in combination with solar power, which presents natural synergies with gas relating to solar's intermittency. These options would not have triggered the kind of economic constraints to which Iran's choices have led.

Nor does the other rationale to which I alluded above withstand scrutiny in this case, involving the application of domestic nuclear power to free up for export oil and gas that would otherwise be consumed to generate electricity. The implied cost of Iranian gas displaced from power generation would likely be higher than the cost of new gas development, especially when the costs of the full nuclear fuel cycle that is the crux of international concerns are included. If anything, Iran's pursuit of nuclear energy in the last decade has functioned as a reverse fuel displacement mechanism, resulting in costly reductions in oil exports due to international sanctions.

As for the benefits of nuclear energy in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Iran did not include nuclear power in the list of mitigation measures it presented at the UN climate summit in Durban in 2011, nor did it commit to specific emissions reductions at the Cancun Climate Conference in 2012.

On balance, Iran's objective need for civilian nuclear power scarcely justifies the sacrifices it has endured, or the lengths to which it has gone to secure its nuclear program. Over the last 10 years, buying time through engagement and negotiations led to an opportunity for the "P5 +1" countries to impose the tough sanctions that brought Iran to the point of the current deal, once rising US shale oil production effectively defused Iran's "oil weapon." However, if the current agreement merely buys more time, it risks squandering the best chance to bell this cat. We cannot count on having more slack in energy markets 10 years hence than we do today.

Viewed from an energy perspective, the primary purpose of Iran's nuclear program seems unlikely to be an expanded energy supply, rather than a weapons capability. In that context, the concerns about this deal recently expressed by two former US Secretaries of State who negotiated Cold War arms control agreements with the Soviet Union should be sobering. They deserve serious consideration by both the White House and a Congress that seeks its own opportunity to weigh in.

How the Oil Price Slump Helps Renewable Energy

Intuition suggests that the current sharp correction in oil prices must be bad for the deployment of renewable and other alternative energy technologies. As the Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column noted Wednesday, EV makers like Tesla face a wall of cheap gasoline. Meanwhile, ethanol producers are squeezed between falling oil and rising corn prices. Yet although individual projects and companies may struggle in a low-oil-price environment, the sector as a whole should benefit from the economic stimulus cheap oil provides.

The biggest threat to the kind of large-scale investment in low-carbon energy foreseen by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and others is not cheaper oil, but a global recession and/or financial crisis that would also threaten the emerging consensus on a new UN climate deal. We have already seen renewable energy subsidies cut or revoked in Europe as the EU has sought to address unsustainable deficits and shaky member countries on its periphery.

Earlier this week the World Bank reduced its forecast of economic growth in 2015 by 0.4% as the so-called BRICs slow and the Eurozone flirts with recession and deflation. The Bank's view apparently factors in the stimulus from global oil prices, without which things would look worse. The US Energy Information Administration's latest short-term forecast cut the expected average price of Brent crude oil for this year to $58 per barrel. That's a drop of $41 compared to the average for 2014, which was already $10/bbl below 2013. Across the 93 million bbl/day of global demand the IEA expects this year, that works out to a $1.4 trillion savings for the countries that are net importers of oil--including the US. This equates to just under 2% of global GDP.

Although the strengthening US dollar mitigates part of those savings for some importers, it's still a massive stimulus--on the order of what was delivered by governments during the financial crisis of 2008-9. Even after taking account of the reduced recycling of "petrodollars" from oil producing nations, which have historically invested billions of dollars a year outside their borders, the pressure on governments to reduce expenditures on programs including renewable energy should be lower than it would be without this unexpected bonus.    

Just as the arrival of $100 oil in the last decade didn't produce an overnight transformation to renewable energy, $50 oil seems unlikely to harm the sector much, particularly in light of the cost reductions that wind, solar PV and other technologies have demonstrated in the last several years. If developers use this opportunity to shrink their costs further and become economically competitive with low or no subsidies, they will be well-positioned when oil prices inevitably recover, whether a few months or a few years in the future.

2014 in Review: Shale Energy's First Price Cycle

2014 was an extraordinary year in energy, vividly illustrating both sides of the Chinese proverb about interesting times. Oil market volatility was the big story for much of the year, with the dominance of geopolitical risks finally yielding to surging supplies. Of the two energy revolutions underway, shale wields the bigger stick for now, while the growth of renewables gathers momentum. All of this has implications for 2015 and beyond.

The US remained the epicenter of the shale revolution this year, with development elsewhere still subject to uncertainties about economic production potential, infrastructure, and the rules of the road. A comparison of oil-equivalent additions to US energy supplies from oil, gas and non-hydro renewables for the first nine months of the year highlights both the significance of shale and the differences in relative scale that impede a rapid shift to renewables.

US shale drilling added over a million barrels per day of "light tight oil" (LTO) production, compared to 2013, based on US Energy Information Administration data for the first nine months of the year. That brings cumulative gains since 2011 to nearly 3 million bbl/day. This hasn't just upended the global oil market; it has also revolutionized the way oil moves across North America. Over a million bbl/day now moves by rail, a figure recently projected to peak at 1.5 million by 2016. Nor is that entirely the result of delays to pipeline projects like Keystone XL. One proposed pipeline for Bakken LTO was reportedly canceled due to a lack of interest from shippers. Rail is expensive but provides producers and refiners with greater flexibility in both volume and destinations than fixed pipelines.

The collapse of oil prices has prompted many producers to reassess drilling plans, although it has been a boon for refiners and consumers.  Refining margins look relatively healthy, at least based on the proxy of "crack spreads", the difference between the wholesale prices of gasoline and diesel and the oil from which they are made. Some refiners also anticipate that low prices will spur demand growth, as described in a fascinating Wall St. Journal interview with Tom O'Malley, who has turned a succession of castoff refineries into profitable businesses. 

We may already be seeing the demand response to lower prices. November US volumes were at a 7-year high, according to API. This is unlikely to be replicated quickly elsewhere, however, for the same reasons that global oil demand was slow to moderate when prices rose over the last several years: In many countries the influence of oil prices on consumer behavior is overwhelmed by fuel taxes or subsidies. With prices now falling, some developing countries are capitalizing on the opportunity to unwind billions of dollars in consumption subsidies, offsetting market drops. That could have important implications for future oil demand and greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile US consumers have watched retail gasoline prices fall by $1.39 per gallon since July and by over a dollar compared to a year ago. If sustained, the effective stimulus could exceed $100 billion annually, ignoring the effect of lower prices for jet fuel, diesel and other products. It's not surprising that half of respondents in last month's Wall St. Journal/NBC poll indicated this was important for their families.

While oil has been making headlines, shale gas without much fanfare added the equivalent of another half-million bbl/day to US production. That explains why despite enormous drawdowns of gas during last winter's "Polar Vortex", gas inventories began this winter much closer to normal levels than was widely expected in the  spring. Gas has lost a little ground in electricity generation to coal in the last two years, but few reading the EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan regulation would expect that trend to continue.

Shale gas remains controversial in some areas due to perceived environmental and community impacts. New York state is apparently making its temporary ban on hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") permanent, preferring to rely on shale gas supplies from neighboring Pennsylvania. Yet while shale drilling in North Dakota has led to an increase in gas flaring--burning off gas that can't economically reach a market--the latest findings from the University of Texas and Environmental Defense Fund measured methane leakage from gas wells at an average of 0.43%. That shrinks gas's emissions footprint and enhances its potential role in climate change mitigation.

Turning to renewables, wind energy now provides a little over 4% of US electricity. However, its growth has slowed due to uncertainty about continued federal subsidies. The wind production tax credit, or PTC, had previously been extended through 2013 in a way that allowed projects brought online later to benefit from the extension. It was just extended again through the end of 2014, along with a broad package of other expiring tax benefits. This late revival might be a gift to a few projects already under construction, but it seems unlikely to spur additional projects without further legislative action in the new Congress.

Solar power has also made great strides, with costs falling rapidly and US additions in 2014 expected to reach 6,500 MW, likely outpacing wind additions. This is happening despite the ongoing trade dispute between the US and China over imported solar modules. Utilities are already experiencing solar's impact on their traditional business model. Yet as important as wind and solar power are likely to be in the future energy mix, their impact in 2014, at least in the US, was still dwarfed by the growth of shale resources. Drilling is already slowing down, however, so renewables could take the lead in 2015 as shale is expected to post smaller gains.

Looking ahead, the global focus on greenhouse gas emissions will increase in the run-up to the Paris climate conference in December.  It remains to be seen whether enough progress was made in the recently completed talks in Lima, Peru, to resolve the significant remaining obstacles to a new global climate agreement. And while oil supply gains trumped geopolitics in 2014, a list of risk hot-spots from the Council on Foreign Relations includes several scenarios with major implications for oil and/or natural gas prices. Meanwhile we can expect the new Congress to take up Keystone XL, oil exports, EPA regulations, and other energy-related issues. I'd bet on another lively year.

A different version of this posting was previously published on the website of Pacific Energy Development Corporation.

A Solar Car for the Masses?

• Ford is currently showing a concept car that addresses the shortcomings of solar-powered transportation in a clever way.

• If they can make it a cost-effective option, it would provide consumers a new kind of convenience, in contrast to the compromises inherent in most EVs.

It’s car show season again, with the annual crop of car-model launches like the new Corvette “supercar” and the Acura TLX prototype. However, my biggest regret in missing this year's Washington DC Auto Show was not seeing the Ford “C-MAX Solar Energi” concept, an unlikely marriage of electric vehicle (EV) and solar photovoltaic panels (PV). The car previously debuted at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

This isn’t the first time a carmaker has put solar panels on the roof of a car, even if we exclude competitions like the Solar Car Challenge and other efforts to test how far or fast one-off solar vehicles designed by engineering students or enthusiasts could travel. However, I believe this is the first time an “OEM” has added solar panels to a production car for the purpose of providing a significant fraction of its motive power.
The biggest hurdles that any attempt to power a car with onboard solar panels must overcome are the low energy density of sunlight at the earth’s surface and the relatively low rate at which current solar panels can convert it into power. A typical EV requires 0.25-0.33 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy to travel one mile. 1.5 square meters of solar panel on the roof of a vehicle would receive on average only about 1.6 kWH per day in much of the US, assuming it was stationary and never parked under a roof or tree, and much less in winter. That’s only enough energy to travel 5 or 6 miles, or the equivalent of around 12 ounces of gasoline in a typical hybrid car. It's hard to fight physics.

The clever part of Ford’s solar design is its recognition that the rate of self-charging from the car’s rooftop wouldn’t be sufficient to liberate its owner from the gas pump without help in the form of an “off-vehicle solar concentrator.” This is essentially a glass carport that focuses the sun’s rays on the car’s PV roof and, according to the write-up in MIT’s Technology Review, works with the car’s software to move the car during the course of the day to keep the roof in the brightest area. That maximizes the amount of energy stored in the car’s battery, yielding enough for the daily needs of a fair percentage of drivers.

It’s not immediately obvious that combining two of the most expensive energy technologies of today — EV and PV — represents a good strategy for making them more competitive with the status quo, particularly given the likelihood of relatively stable gasoline prices for the next few years and the significant improvements being made in the fuel economy of conventional cars. 40 mpg highway is no longer considered remarkable. The ordinary hybrid version of the C-MAX is rated at 43 mpg combined city/highway, and the plug-in version on which the solar prototype is based is rated at 100 mpg-equivalent on electricity alone.

I have no idea what Ford would charge for the solar option should it eventually build the car, but it’s a good bet that it would be a significant multiple of the roughly $300 cost of the solar panels. Even without the Fresnel-lens carport, integrating PV into the car’s roof in a durable manner, together with the necessary changes to the car’s power management hardware and software, are unlikely to come cheap. Nor is it obvious that putting solar panels on a car’s roof is the best way to provide renewable electricity for vehicles. As Technology Review notes, Tesla is pursuing high-voltage (i.e., rapid) recharging facilities powered by stationary solar arrays, thus removing the constraint on effective PV area. It would be even simpler for many EV owners who want to avoid “exporting” their automobile emissions to fossil-fuel power plants to sign up for 100% renewable power from their local utility.

It’s no secret that EV sales have been disappointing, initially, for various reasons. 2013 sales figures for the US indicate that EVs, including plug-in hybrids like the non-solar C-MAX Energi, accounted for just under 100,000 new vehicles in 2013, or 0.6% of the US car market, compared to nearly 500,000 hybrids, or just over 3% of total sales of 15.5 million. If the US Congress eventually pursues tax reform along the lines suggested by recently retired Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus (D-MT), then the federal EV tax credit of up to $7,500 per car, which has helped push EV sales to current levels, would be in jeopardy. Carmakers should be thinking seriously about the long-term value proposition for EVs on their own merits.

The C-MAX Solar looks like a step in that direction. Once technology-hungry early adopters and the greenest consumers have been satisfied, the mass market will be seeking cars that compete on mainstream measures of convenience, cost and performance. In that light, even a Tesla that can be recharged to half its battery capacity in around 20 minutes via the company’s network of Superchargers falls short, compared to a gasoline car that can be refueled in under 3 minutes. No recharger on earth can deliver energy to a car at the effective rate of a gas pump, without dramatic changes in battery technology.

Yet the C-MAX Solar can do something that no other type of car can: make its own fuel, in a car that can also be refueled conventionally at any gas station, anywhere. That could provide a unique selling point, enhancing the convenience of cars in a totally new way, rather than requiring compromises on convenience as other plug-in EVs do.

I’ve long believed that the transition from fossil fuels to low-emission energy technologies has been hobbled by its dependence on government subsidies and would accelerate when those technologies can outperform on measures of “better, faster, cheaper.” Ford’s solar prototype must still demonstrate that it can become a real production car, rather just than a car show concept. If it does, it could help make EVs attractive to average consumers without requiring thousands of tax dollars in incentives. That could help create the basis for a truly sustainable transition to a new energy economy.

A different version of this posting was previously published on Energy Trends Insider.