Clean energy: at your fingertips or inaccessible

It seems that low-carbon life is getting closer to people. Are familiar new energy terms, such as solar energy, wind power, and electric vehicles, projecting a brilliant future, or are they just just out of reach?

Solar Solar

Advantages: The energy that the sun casts on Earth for an hour is enough to sustain the entire world's energy needs for a year. Relevant persons estimated in 2010 that by 2016, the US solar industry will be able to directly or indirectly provide 500,000 jobs.

Status: In 2012, it is more likely that only 100,000 jobs will be expected. The price of traditional solar cells fell by 40% last year. The main reason is that China’s production capacity has increased significantly, and the price of silicon raw materials has been low, and the Chinese government also gives sufficient support to these enterprises. The sharp drop in the price has seriously hurt the American solar energy industry.

Outlook: China's share of the global solar panel market will continue to rise by 54%. The US photovoltaic industry is still not optimistic. However, from a global perspective, the decline in the price of solar panels means that more families can use this equipment. This is undoubtedly a good result.

Wind Wind Energy

Advantage: If the US wind energy content is fully developed, it will be able to provide more than 12 times of the total energy consumption of the country's total new energy.

Current situation: If we return to 2007, when electricity prices are maintained at 45-85 US dollars per megawatt hour, wind energy has a better development prospects, because the cost is only 35 US dollars. However, with the expansion of natural gas supply and the economic recession since 2008, the sales price dropped to 30 US dollars per megawatt-hour, which completely eroded the profitability of wind energy. At the same time, the opposition’s ignorance has also made it difficult to build wind power plants. At present, the difficulty of building wind power plants is no less difficult than that of a new thermal power plant.

Outlook: By 2014, the gradual decline in wind turbine prices should reduce the cost of wind power generation. Although this development rate has been slow since 2008, wind power generation will contribute 1/3 of the new energy demand from now until 2035.

Algae Algae Energy

Advantage: Algae contain about 30 times more energy than other biofuel crops. It can produce cheaper bio-crude oil and save a lot of arable land.

Status: A roadmap recently published by the U.S. Department of Energy includes 33 technical challenges that must be overcome for the use of algae energy—from environmental risks to effective transformation. In fact, researchers have not yet been able to develop large-scale algae for energy extraction.

Outlook: The Energy Bureau once reminded in 2010: "To achieve economical and efficient use of algae energy, it will take many years of basic and applied research."

Fuel Cells Fuel Cells

Advantages: From laptop computers to cars to power plants, fuel cells can be used in almost all areas, and there is also zero emission environmental advantages. Almost all fuel cells are made from the most common elemental hydrogen.

Current situation: To compete with fossil fuels, the cost per kilowatt of electricity generated by fuel cells must be less than $30. However, at present, this figure is 49 dollars. At present, there are only 60 hydrogen refueling stations throughout the country. Only 200 cars and 15 buses use this fuel. The industry leader, FuelCell Energy, lost $56.3 million in 2010 and has never been profitable.

Outlook: Even if the fuel cell becomes cheap and stable, a liquid hydrogen infrastructure network that can maintain operation will take decades to complete.

Batteries battery

Advantages: Zero emissions (assuming the energy of the charging facility is also zero emission).

Status Quo: The US government injected 2.4 billion U.S. dollars into this industry under the framework of the Economic Recovery and Reinvigoration Investment Act of 2009. It hopes to see more electric cars appear on the road. However, the high price of raw materials means that the cost per kWh of advanced lithium-ion batteries is still as high as 650 US dollars. At this price, a Nissan Leaf sedan equipped with a 24 kilowatt battery pack costs several times more than other cars.

Outlook: Even if the U.S. government calls on the industry to reduce battery costs to $100 per kilowatt-hour by 2020, the most optimistic estimate is that this technology will not be able to produce products that cost less than $300 per kilowatt-hour in the next few decades. .

Cellulosic Biofuel Cellulose Biofuel

Advantages: Biofuels extracted from straw, tree trunks, grass stems and leaves.

Current situation: In 2010, the United States produced a total of 88 million gallons of cellulosic biofuel, which is lower than any other corn ethanol refinery. Large-scale commercial production is still unrealistic because extracting sugar from these plants is much more difficult than extracting from corn. The cost of building a cellulosic biofuel refinery is currently four times that of a first-generation biofuel refinery.

Outlook: In 2007, the U.S. government set a goal of producing 100 million gallons of this type of fuel per year. By 2010, this target has been revised to 6.6 million gallons per year.

Smart Meters Smart Meter

Advantages: The replacement of traditional meters with smart meters can provide real-time information feedback for both customers and power plants, which can bring greater efficiency and stability to the transmission network.

Current situation: Smart meters have been widely used. But lobbying groups claim that the radio wave radiation emitted by smart meters will constitute public health and will invade public privacy. A malfunctioning electricity meter will also result in a huge electricity bill, which has led some local governments to request a reassessment of the reliability of this technology.

Outlook: The smart meter is the key to the smart grid—the computer automatically distributes power transmission. Analysts expect that by 2015 there will be 250 million smart meters that are widely installed.

ChargingStations Charging Station

Advantages: The 240-volt and 480-volt charging station network will be spread over the roadside and parking lots, and the use of electric vehicles will be very convenient.

Status Quo: Nissan Motor's Leaf can charge up to 30 minutes at 480 volts. Unless we can arrange enough charging devices at once, we make sure people don't have to wait because the charging time limit means inconvenience. In most cases, users of electric cars can only charge at home, so the radius of activity is greatly limited.

Outlook: The high cost of charging stations (up to $35,000 each) and the relatively low utilization rate determine that the application of this technology will be limited to urban areas in the coming years.