The shine is off renewable energy and shale gas is the new disruptive technology in power generation.
Harnessing Disruption is the theme of this year’s EnergyBiz Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C. this week, and that means gas-fired generation from unconventional sources is jumpin’.
Recession,
rising energy costs and competing interests that could hamstring the
power sector all play a role. And renewables are sometimes seen as a
stress point as utilities seek to meet state mandates for their
renewable portfolio standards. The dim prospects for any carbon
legislation for the foreseeable future are responsible, combined with
downward price pressures from the gas glut.
“Low gas pricing is really giving us some breathing room,” said Anthony F. Earley Jr., chairman and CEO of PG&E Corporation (NYSE: PG&E).
Renewable energy is competing for attention, and even as its costs decline, natural gas dominates the discussion.
Earley,
the new executive at the San Francisco utility, is a different
circumstance than many of his colleagues. With California’s 33%
renewable portfolio standard by 2020, he said that’s effectively 50% as
most hydropower doesn’t count under the standard.
But there was little talk about state renewable portfolio standards this year.
Consider
some of the headline speakers of the first three forums to get a sense
of how the landscape has shifted. Three years ago Boone Pickens was
touting massive wind farms in the Great Plains. In 2010, Representative
Ed Markey (D-Mass.) was shepherding cap-and-trade legislation through
the U.S. House of Representatives. A year ago, Google caused a stir with
plans for a backbone transmission plan for offshore wind, with the Atlantic Wind Connection outlining its $5 billion project.
But
now the issue is managing expectations as costs rise and much of the
public is still ill-informed, and sensitive to price shocks as gasoline
tops $4 a gallon.
“A certain part of the public thinks we can get
off Mideast oil by building windmills, but we only get 1% of power from
oil,” said Thomas F. Farrell II, president and CEO of Dominion (NYSE: D).
“The
industry has $2 trillion in refurbishment of the grid, as we try to
optimize how we handle our investments of what to build over the next
two decades,” said Nick Akins, president and CEO of AEP (NYSE: AEP).
Even
as recent as a year ago, the choice seemed to be renewables or nuclear,
with much talk of natural gas as the bridge fuel. Now, gas is the fuel
of choice due to its low cost and quick turnaround in building plants.
A
slow decline in attention paid by government support may not change, as
wind and solar are under threat of collapse if tax credits expire,
particularly for wind, at the end of 2012.
Regardless of the
resource base or the preferred resource of any CEO, the detrimental lack
of a national energy policy is something on which all can agree,
regardless of the year.
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