Between the Poles

France announces carbon tax

I've blogged previously about carbon taxes being introduced in British Columbia and Australia (expected to be  revoked).  The French Government has announced a tax on all fossil fuels in proportion to the emissions they generate.  It is estimated that the tax will generate € 4 billion by 2016,  The government intends to use the money to help fund green energy measures. President François Hollande is on record for calling for heavy investment in renewable energy in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

In addition to the carbon tax, the government has said it will also impose a levy on profits from France's nuclear power network, which is responsible for generating over 70% of France's electric power.

TEPCO admits Fukushima disaster was avoidable

As readers of this blog will know, I began following the Fukushima Daiichi and Daiini events as they unfolded starting on March 11, 2011.  Everyone following the events had a lot of questions about TEPCO's handling of the disaster.  To me the critical question is why it took weeks to restore external power to Daiichi, when external power was restored to Daiini within hours preventing a major disaster at that plant.

Fukukshima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission

In October, 2011, the National Diet established the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) chaired by Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a former president of the Science Council of Japan.  The NAIIC is the first independent commission created in the history of Japan's constitutional government.   The Executive Summary is available in English. 

The main players in the report are the Prime Minister's Office (Kansei), the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI),  the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC), and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).

The key conclusion of the report was that the accident was a "manmade" disaster.

The TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government (METI), the regulators (NISA and NSC),  and TEPCO.  Therefore, we conclude that the accident was clearly "manmade".

The regulator NISA

Since 2006, the regulators and TEPCO were aware of the risk that a total outage of electricity (station blackout) at the Fukushima Daiichi plant might occur if a tsunami were to reach the level of the site.

There were many opportunities for taking preventative measures prior to March 11.  The accident occurred because TEPCO did not take these measures, and [the regulators] NISA and NSC went along.

The operator TEPCO

TEPCO's mindset which included the reluctance to take responsibility epitomized by President Shimuzu's inability to clearly report to the Prime Minister's Office the intentions of the operators of the plant.

TEPCO was too quick to cite the tsunami as the cause of the nuclear accident.  The Commission believes that this is an attempt to to avoid responsibility by putting all the blame on the unexpected (the tsunami) and not on more the foreseeable earthquake.  The damage to Unit 1 was caused not only by the tsunami but also by the earthquake.  Additionally there two causes for the loss of external power, both earthquake related:  there was no diversity or independence in the earthquake-resistant external power systems, and the Shin-Fukushima transformer substation was not earthquake resistant.

TEPCO's internal reform task force

According to the Japan Times, after the Fukushima disaster TEPCO set up an internal reform task force headed by TEPCO President Naomi Hirose to investigate TEPCO's handling of the disaster.  October 12, the internal reform task force said in a statement that

The utility was aware safety improvements were necessary long before last year's quake and tsunami caused three catastrophic core meltdowns at the facility, but failed to act because it feared the political, economic and legal consequences of implementing new measures. 

According to the task force,

TEPCO feared that  efforts to upgrade its nuclear facilities to be better prepared for major natural disasters would stimulate antinuclear sentiment, interfere with operations and increase litigation risks. 

Specifically, the task force said that 

TEPCO could have mitigated the impact of the Fukushima meltdowns if it had diversified the plant's power and cooling systems by paying closer heed to international standards and recommendations. 

The task force also said that

TEPCO should have trained its employees in practical crisis-management skills, rather than conducting obligatory safety drills as a mere formality. 

This is the first time that TEPCO has acknowledged that the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant could have been avoided.

The statement was released after TEPCO's Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee, a five-member committee that was set up to monitor the task force's reform plans,  held its first meeting Friday.   According to the head of the Committee, the committee's goal is to ensure that TEPCO develops practices and procedures so an accident like (the Fukushima meltdowns) will never happen again.

Japan announces plan to phase out nuclear power by 2040

Prior to Fukushima, Japan generated about a quarter of its electric power from 50 nuclear power plants.  Japan lies in a heavily earthquake prone area, and all of its nuclear power plants are on the coast and susceptible to earthquake originated tsunamis such as those that led to the Fukushima disaster..

Japan has just announced plans to phase out nuclear power by 2040.  The announcement was made by issuing a "policy goal", which is not binding on future governments and which a new government administration could reverse.

The new energy policy aims to

• shut down reactors that are more than 40 years old,
• not issue new licenses for reactor construction
• restart existing reactors only if they pass standards issued by the new Nuclear Regulatory Agency

The Nuclear Regulatory Agency, which is an independent body to be launched on Sept 19, replaces two regulatory agencies, NISA and NSC, which were heavily criticized after the Fukushima disaster.

All but two of Japan's 50 reactors remain shutdown in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.  After Fukushima all reactors were shutdown and the first two reactors were only restarted in June 2012.

At this point Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium have announced that they plan to phase out nuclear power by 2022.  France has announced that it plans to reduce its reliance on nuclear power from 75% to 50% by 2025.  In contrast the United States and Canada have issued the first new licences for nuclear facilities in 30 years.  However, in the U.S. a recent court decision has temporarily halted the issuance of any new licenses until the disposal of radioactive waste is resolved.  Both India and China are actively investing in new technologies to expand their nuclear fleet.

First new nuclear reactor preparatory license in 30 years issued in Canada

As I have blogged on several occasions Ontario is in several ways leading the charge in the green power revolution in North America.  Nuclear power is one of the reasons that Ontario already has one of the lowest carbon emissions rates in North America.  In 2011 about 56.9 % of Ontario's power came from nuclear power plants. 

In 2007, the Ontario Government committed to phasing out coal generation in the province by 2014.  Although coal accounts for only about 19 % of power generation in Ontario, a province of over 10 million people, that is still a lot of power generation to have to find an alternative for.  For example, Ontario Power Generation's Nanticoke plant is the largest coal fired power plant in North America.  The Province has decided that more nuclear power is required to make up for what is lost when all coal-fired generation is retired.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has issued a Nuclear Power Reactor Site Preparation Licence to Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG) for a new nuclear power plant project at the Darlington nuclear site.  This is the first new nuclear reactor preparation license since 1981. The CNSC has concluded that the project was not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects, assuming proposed mitigation measures will be implemented. In May 2012, the Government of Canada authorized the project to proceed to licensing to prepare a site, which is the first step in the CNSC licensing process that is required for any new nuclear power project in Canada.

The next step in the regulatory process will be CNSC licensing to construct a nuclear power plant, once OPG submits an application. The public will have an opportunity to comment on OPG’s application to construct, and application to operate, at public hearings to be scheduled in the future.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission freezes issuing final nuclear power licenses

Last week the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) said it would freeze issuing final nuclear reactor licenses for new plants or license renewals for existing plants.  This decision is in response to the June U.S. court decision that rejected the NRC’s decision that licensing and re-licensing of nuclear reactor plants could proceed because it was assumed that the environmentally responsible long-term disposal of used fuel would be resolved.  The court found that the NRC had not adequately considered the environmental effects of the federal government’s failure to establish either a repository for used fuel, or of an adequate plan for longer-term storage of used fuel at reactor sites.  The two plants which have already received final licenses and are under construction, Plant Vogtle and SCANA’s V.C. Summer expansion, will be allowed to proceed.  Technical review processes underway for other proposed plants can also proceed.

Parallels between the Three Mile Island and Fukushima nuclear accidents

Fukushima Daiichi

After the Fukushima nuclear plant accident in March, 2011, the National Diet of Japan established in October, 2011, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) chaired by Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a former president of the Science Council of Japan.  The NAIIC is the first independent commission created in the history of Japan's constitutional government. 

The Commission began work in December, 2011 and after a six month investigation including 900 hours of hearings and interviews with 1167 people (government, regulators, and TEPCO) and 19 commission meetings open to public and broadcast on the internet (simultaneously in Japanese and English) has just submitted its report (only the Executive Summary is available in English at present). 

The main players in the report are the Prime Minister's Office (Kansei), the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI),  the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC), and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).

The key conclusion of the report was that the accident was a "manmade" disaster

The TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government (METI), the regulators (NISA and NSC),  and TEPCO.  Therefore, we conclude that the accident was clearly "manmade".

Replacing people or changing the names of institutions will not solve the problems.  The underlying issue is the social structure that results in "regulatory capture" and the organizational, institutional and legal framework that allows individuals to justify their own actions, hide them when inconvenient, and leave no records in order to avoid responsibility.

The regulator NISA

Since 2006, the regulators and TEPCO were aware of the risk that a total outage of electricity (station blackout) at the Fukushima Daiichi plant might occur if a tsunami were to reach the level of the site.

The regulators also had a negative attitude toward the importation of new advances in knowledge and technology from overseas.  If NISA had passed onto TEPCO measures that were included in the B.5.b subsection of the U.S. security order that followed the 9/11 terrorist action, and if TEPCO had put measures in place, the accident may have been preventable.

There were many opportunities for taking preventative measures prior to March 11.  The accident occurred because TEPCO did not take these measures, and [the regulators] NISA and NSC went along.

Further exacerbating the problem was the fact that [the regulator] NISA was created as part of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), an organization that has been actively promoting nuclear power.

The crisis management system of the Prime Minister's Office, the regulators, and other responsible agencies did not function correctly.  NISA was expected to play the lead role as designated in the Act on Special Measures Concerning Nuclear Emergency Preparedness.  However, NISA was unprepared for a disaster of this scale and failed in its function.

The operator TEPCO

TEPCO's mindset which included the reluctance to take responsibility epitomized by President Shimuzu's inability to clearly report to the Prime Minister's Office the intentions of the operators of the plant.

The Commission concludes that there organizational problems within TEPCO. Events make it clear that if there are not response measures for a severe accident in place, the steps that can be taken on-site in the event of a station blackout are very limited.  On top of this, sections in the diagrams of the severe accident instruction manual were missing.

TEPCO was too quick to cite the tsunami as the cause of the nuclear accident.  The Commission believes that this is an attempt to to avoid responsibility by putting all the blame on the unexpected (the tsunami) and not on more the foreseeable earthquake.  The damage to Unit 1 was caused not only by the tsunami but also by the earthquake.  Additionally there two causes for the loss of external power, both earthquake related:  there was no diversity or independence in the earthquake-resistant external power systems, and the Shin-Fukushima transformer substation was not earthquake resistant.

I remember hearing early in the accident, that it was at the time that the Prime Minister was briefing the opposition in the Diet to reassure them on the status of the plant, based on information he had received from TEPCO, 20 minutes into his presentation is when the first (hydrogen) explosion occurred.

Three Mile Island

On March 28, 1979, the United States experienced the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power generation at Three-Mile Island (TMI). Two weeks later, the President of the United States Jimmy Carter established an independent Presidential Commission headed by John G Kemeny.   Oct 30, 1979, about six months later, the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island submitted its report. 

Its overall conclusion was

To prevent nuclear accidents as serious as Three Mile Island, fundamental changes will be necessary in the organization, procedures, and practices -- and above all -- in the attitudes of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and, to the extent that the institutions we investigated are typical, of the nuclear industry.  ...

We are convinced that if the only problems were equipment problems, this Presidential Commission would never have been created. The equipment was sufficiently good that, except for human failures, the major accident at Three Mile Island would have been a minor incident. But, wherever we looked, we found problems with the human beings who operate the plant, with the management that runs the key organization, and with the agency that is charged with assuring the safety of nuclear power plants.

In conclusion, while the major factor that turned this incident into a serious accident was inappropriate operator action, many factors contributed to the action of the operators, such as deficiencies in their training, lack of clarity in their operating procedures, failure of organizations to learn the proper lessons from previous incidents, and deficiencies in the design of the control room. These shortcomings are attributable to the utility, to suppliers of equipment, and to the federal commission that regulates nuclear power. Therefore -- whether or not operator error "explains" this particular case -- given all the above deficiencies, we are convinced that an accident like Three Mile Island was eventually inevitable.

Specifically on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Commission said

We had a broad mandate from the President to investigate the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. When NRC was split off from the old Atomic Energy Commission, the purpose of the split was to separate the regulators from those who were promoting the peaceful uses of atomic energy. We recognize that the NRC has an assignment that would be difficult under any circumstances. But, we have seen evidence that some of the old promotional philosophy still influences the regulatory practices of the NRC. While some compromises between the needs of safety and the needs of an industry are inevitable, the evidence suggests that the NRC has sometimes erred on the side of the industry's convenience rather than carrying out its primary mission of assuring safety.  ... The old AEC attitude is also evident in reluctance to apply new safety standards to previously licensed plants.

About the operator GPU and its subsidiary Metropolitan Edison 

First of all, it is our conclusion that the training of TMI operators was greatly deficient. While training may have been adequate for the operation of a plant under normal circumstances, insufficient attention was paid to possible serious accidents. And the depth of understanding, even of senior reactor operators, left them unprepared to deal with something as confusing as the circumstances in which they found themselves.

Second, we found that the specific operating procedures, which were applicable to this accident, are at least very confusing and could be read in such a way as to lead the operators to take the incorrect actions they did.

We found that at both companies, those most knowledgeable about the workings of the nuclear power plant have little communication with those responsible for operator training, and therefore, the content of the instructional program does not lead to sufficient understanding of reactor systems.

...the analysis of this particular accident raises the serious question of whether all electric utilities automatically have the necessary technical expertise and managerial capabilities for administering such a dangerous high-technology plant. We, therefore, recommend the development of higher standards of organization and management that a company must meet before it is granted a license to operate a nuclear power plant.

And I remember a documentary about TMI where the then Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania related that it was while he was briefing the press to reassure them about the status of the plant, based on information just received from Met Ed, that the first release of radioactive material occurred.

Two nuclear reactors approved to resume operations in Japan

The Japanese Government has approved the resumption of operations at two of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors, the first to come back on line after they were all shut down following the Fukushima crisis.  The two reactors are operated by Kansai Electric Power Co at Ohi in western Japan.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) says that as of December 2011 conditions equivalent to a cold shutdown, where the inside reactor temperatures have decreased to below 100 degrees C, have been achieved at Units 1 through 3. Tepco also says that the release of radioactive materials has been significantly suppressed. Efforts to continue cooling down the reactors, control radioactive emissions into the atmosphere, and stop all radiation leakage into the ocean continue ongoing.  Tepco says that in the future they will move forward with their primary mission to decommission Units 1 through 4.

After Fukushima, the last operating nuclear reactor was shut down May 6, 2012.

Tepco shareholders have approved nationalization of Tepco, which would have been forced into bankrupcy as a result of the Fukushima incident.  Tepco management has secured an agreement from the government to inject ¥1 trillion ($12.6 billion) in government capital in return for a 50.1% stake in the company.

APPA National Conference: Energy efficiency is the cheapest alternative fuel

This week I spent a few days at the American Public Power Association (APPA) National Conference in Seattle.  The priority issues facing APPA members in 2012 are similar in many respect to those facing the entire electric power industry, but there are certain aspects of the unique characteristic of APPA members that differentiate them from investor owned utilities (IOUs). They are all government owned, but have the ability to 100% debt finance capital investment.  They also tend to have a close relationship with the local community and are better positioned for developing successful community-based programs such as energy efficiency.

By way of background, the APPA, which is based in Washington DC, is a not-for-profit, non-partisan service organization founded to advance the public policy interests of its members. It represents most of  the more than 2,000 community-owned electric utilities in the US. Most public power utilities are owned by municipalities, but some are owned by counties, public utility districts, and states.  For example,  all of Nebraska is served by public power.  APPA members also include joint action agencies (state and regional consortia of public power utilities) and state, regional, and local associations that have purposes similar to APPA.

Regulation, fuel mix and power rates

The utility industry as a whole is facing interesting times in the U.S. The electric power industry is getting more complcated as Mr Crisson emphasized repeatedly.

At the top of the list of things that the APPA is concerned about is regulation.  This has not always been the case for public utilities, because they are government and in the past most of the regulation came from their municipal governments.  But this year Federal regulation, especially that from the EPA is directly affecting public power utilities.  One third of public utilities generate power and a significant proportion of that is from coal-fired plants.  Related to the EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), the closure of 26 GW of coal-fired capacity has already been announced.  Estimates of the total coal plant closures range between 40 and 70 GW and even higher.  The APPA is very concerned about the time frame for compliance of three years.  As a measure of that concern, the APPA has filed suit against the EPA for the first time in its history with a petition for reconsideration asking the EPA to grant additional time to public power utilities to meet the MATS standard.

It seems certain that the fuel mix for electric power generation is going to change significantly in the short term.  Speakers at the APPA event were very pessimistic about the future prospects for coal. The alternatives that APPA members are considering are energy efficiency, renewables, nuclear, hydro (small and large scale), and natural gas. 

Energy efficiency

For many APPA members the cheapest "alternative fuel" is energy efficiency and this is an area for which municipal utilities are in a much better position that IOUs because they are part of government and can  participate directly in the process of setting energy efficiency standards for building codes. 

In 1990 Burlington voters approved a bond to fund energy efficiency programs.  Since 2003, Burlington Electric Department (BED) customers and all Vermont electric customers pay a small monthly Energy Efficiency Charge (EEC) that supports efficiency programs.  The City's annual electricity consumption in 2009 was about 2 percent greater than in 1989.  BED has been able to meet the energy needs of a growing local economy over the last 19 years through efficiency.  BED estimated that energy efficiency investments save Burlington consumers more than $10.1 million of retail electric costs annually. BED's energy efficiency program began in 1991 with Burlington Electric Department's Guidelines for Energy Efficient Construction, that was adopted for state wide construction.  BED has a very high proportion of LEED-certified buildings.

Both Tacoma Power and BED said that they are not only participating in writing building codes, but also in inspection and enforcement, something that I suspect it would not be possible for an IOU to do.

Natural gas

The alternative fuel that is getting the most attention is natural gas, because reserves appear to be substantial as a result of hydraulic fracturing technology, and the price of natural gas in the U.S. domestic market continues to be exceptionally low.  Henry Hub prices ended at $2.18 per MMBtu last week.  But there are concerns about security of supply, the future of natural gas prices and the effect of LNG exports on prices.  Many utilities are not convinced that this is the silver bullet.

In addition more EPA and other agency regulations are expected in the future, for example, on CO₂ emissions and toxics and CH₄ emissions related to shale gas and hydraulic fracturing.  Increasing EPA and other Federal agency regulations are expected to lead to increased fuel prices and more decomissioning of coal-fired capacity.  Some speakers even foresee similar regulation being applied to natural gas fired plants as is currently shutting to coal-fired capacity.

One speaker, Art Berman, argued that because of the depletion of conventional reserves and the unexpectedly rapid decline in production from shale-gas wells, 2-3 years for a shale-gas well versus 20-30 years for a conventional well, reserves are significantly overstated. He cited evidence from the Haynesville shale-gas play that without new wells, production would decline 48% per year.

Berman believs that increasing demand, for example from fuel switching from coal, the rapid decline in production from shale-gas wells and environmental regulation will likely raise natural gas prices.  He argued that the industry needs a $7 price to be commercially viable.

Nuclear power

Another alternative fuel type is nuclear.  I attended a standing-room-only presentation by Nuscale, a small  modular nuclear reactor (SMR) manufacturer, that claims that its small scale reactor is able to shut down safely in the event of a station blackout, which is what occurred at Fukushima Daiichi.  Nuscale has announced its first US customer, South Carolina Gas and Electric, and is the planning stage to build a SMR plant at Savannah River.  Other manufacturers of SMR reactors include Babcock & Wilcox and Westinghouse.

Hydro

In some parts of the country there is interest in medium scale hydro projects, especially because hydro provides dispatchable capacity.  Intermittent power creates demand for capacity that can be ramped up rapidly (dispatchable) which includes hydro, gas-fired, and storage batteries and pumped hydro. Snohomish County PUD has just commissioned a 8.3 MW hydro project at Young's Creek, the first new hydro project in Washington state in 20 years and expects to build more in the future.  Even in California where large scale hydro is not considered to be renewable, Sacramento Metropolitian Utility District (SMUD) is actively pursuring a 400 MW 3 unit variable speed pumped storage hydro project at Iowa Hill, primarily because it would provide dispatchable capacity to backstop intermiitent sources.  I blogged previously about Switzerland intending to use similar pumped hydro capacity to become "Europe's battery."

Department of Energy

The Department of Energy (DOE) has sent a memorandum to the Power Marketing Agencies (PMAs) requesting them to take a leadership role in the DOE's goal of creating a more secure and sustainable electric sector nationwide.  The PMAs are instructed to include NERC reliability standards, integrate variable resources, enable scheduling on an intra-hour basis, support centralizing dispatch, include responding to solar flares and minimize cyber-security vulnerabilities in their strategic and capital improvement plans.  The APPA in a response to the memorandum says  that these proposals will result in increased electricity rates for BPA (Bonneville Power Administration), WAPA (Western Area Power Administration), SWPA (Southwestern Power Administration), and SEPA (Southeastern Power Administration) customers.

Workforce issues

A major issue facing electric power utilities, and other utilities, that was called out by Mr Crisson as a priority was workforce turnover, often referred to as the aging workforce.  I have blogged about this problem many times and it was gratifying to hear the CEO of the APPA call this out as a priority issue.

Technology and innovation

There was a lot of discussion of new technologies that are transforming the electric power grid including advanced grid technology, often referred to as smart grid, power storage technology including large scale lithium ion batteries, electric vehicles, small modular nuclear reactors, and distributed generation (typically small scale intermittent sources such as wind and solar).  The challenge for a historically conservative industry is to focus more on innovation in order to speed up the rate of adoption of new technology.

Aggressively transforming the German power grid

The Federal Ministry for the Economy and Technology has published a most interesting overview of how Germany plans to transform the German electric power grid.  It is based on the 40 year energy plan that was released in 2010, but incorporates the 2011 decision to shut down all nuclear power plants in Germany by 2022.

Ensuring adequate power supply at affordable prices is essential for the future development of the German economy.  By 2022 Germany intends to shut down existing nuclear power plants. Together with the requirement to reduce emssions this is forcing a fundamental restructuring of the German energy supply including a new, intelligent and efficient power grid.

Another important factor is reliability.  A measure of reliability is the total time of nonavailability - the total number of minutes annually that the avereage consumer is without power.  In Germany this is about 14.63 minutes annually, reflecting a very high level of reliability.  It will be necessary to maintain this high level of availability as the grid is radically transformed.

German electric power generation is currently 80% fossil and nuclear fuels.  In 40 years it is planned that it will be over 80% renewable energy and CO₂ emissions will be at least 80% below the 1990 emissions level.  To do this will require a new power grid, new power generation plants, new storage facilities, and new technologies. In 2008 power consumption in Germany was about 625 TWh.  By 2030 consumption is expected to drop to about 500 TWh, of which about half will be derived from renewable sources.  In 2030 it is projected that roughly 50 TWh net will be imported.

Transforming the grid

The German electric grid consists of 1.7 million km of conductors.  It will need to be expanded and reinforced to support new onshore and offshore wind turbines, thousands of new solar power generator installations as well as new conventional power plants to replace nuclear and older fossil fuel plants.

To develop the new grid, the highest priorities are

• New transmission capacity to link 25 GW of offshore wind generation in the Baltic by 2030,
• In addition to the new natural gas and coal power plants that are already being constructed, an additonal 17 GW of conventional power generation will be required by 2022.
• In 2010 about 880,000 photovoltaic installations produced about 11,500 GWh.  By 2020 the number of solar installations will continue to increase.
• By 2015 about 400 km of high tension transmission lines will need to be reinforced and an additional 850 km constructed.  By 2020 several thousand km of new transmission capacity will be required.
• In 2010 a total of 22,500 GWh were generated from biogas and biomass sources.  By 2020 this will increase to about 50,000 GWh
• Currently the German power grid has storage capacity of about 10 GW from storage and pumped storage power plants - about the equivalent of 10 large power plants.  By 2020 storage it is projected that storage capacity will increase to 13 GW.

Streamlining planning and regulatory approval

Until now the construction of new transmission capacity has been seriously delayed by a very cumbersome planning and regulatory process, especially for lines crossing multiple states (This situation is even worse in the U.S.).  In the summer of 2011 the Federal and State governments agreed on a foundation for streamlining the planning and regulatory approval process for expanding the transmission grid.  Two new laws, EnWG and NABEG, were passed.  The objective of the new laws is to reduce the time required for planning and regulatory approval for new transmission lines from ten years to four years.  A key provision of NABEG is that when proposed transmissiion lines cross multiple States, the Federal regulator (BNA) will be responsible for planning and approval using an open and transparent process.

BP energy trends through 2030 projects decreasing energy intensity and growing emissions

For the past two years BP has prepared an annual projection of energy trends through 2030.  Their projection of energy consumptions differs somewhatt from others that are publicly available, but lie within the International Energy Agency's (IEA) 2011 Current Policies and New Policies Scenarios.

Population, GDP, Energy intensity, Per capita energy consumption

BP assumes that the rate of population growth is decreasing.  In the last 20 years the world's population increased by 1.6 billion people, but it is projected that the population increase will drop to 1.4 billion over the next 20 years.  World GDP growth is expected to accelerate from 3.2% per year in the past 20 years to 3.7% 2010-2030.   It is also expected that the rate of decrease in energy intensity (energy used per unit of GDP) will also accelerate to 2.0% per year compared to 1.2% per year over the past 20 years.  This implies that energy consumption per capita will continue to grow at 0.7% per year, the same rate as it has since 1970.

Electric power generation

World electricity demand is projected to average 2.6% growth over the next 20 years. It is expected that improved efficiency will mean that fuel consumed will not grow as rapidly as generated power.  Coal will continue to be the largest source of electric power at 39%.  It is projected that together nuclear, hydro and other renewables will contribute about as much to power generation as coal.  In the subsequent decade 2020-2030, 75% of the growth in electric power generation will come from nuclear, hydro and other renewables.  The proportion of natural gas is projected to remain roughly constant at about 31% through the next 20 years.

Energy intensity

The long term worldwide trend in energy intensity is decreasing, which means we can produce more with the same amont of energy.  As a proportion of the total energy market, oil continues to decline, natural gas and reneewables to increase.  Coal is projected to increase until 2020, after which it is expected to decline.  BP sees the rate at which renewables are penetrating the global energy markets as exhibiting remarkable similarities to the rapid adoption of nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s.

Emissions

While decreasing energy intensity is good news from an environmental perspective, BP projects that CO₂ emissions will continue to increase through 2030.  Emissons from OECD countries are expected to decrease slowly, but by no means sufficiently quickly to make up for the rapid increase in emissions from non-OECD countries.  The projected increase in global emissions is 28% by 2030 over 2010.

The IEA New Policies Scenario projects that energy-related CO₂ emissions will increase more slowly, by 20% reaching 36.4 Gt in 2035.  The IEA says this is consistent with a long-term global temperature increase of more than 3.5°C.