image credit: woodleywonderworks

In July, Nobel laureate and former vice president Al Gore issued a challenge: generate 100 percent of American electricity from truly clean sources that do not contribute to global warming, and do it within 10 years.

This is a bold, some would say impossible, challenge which will involve work on three distinct technical fronts:

• The first calls for improvements in efficiency so that we get the most out of the energy we currently produce.
• The second is to quickly develop and commercialize the renewable energy technologies that we know work.
• The third is to create a new integrated grid to deliver power from where it is produced to where people live.

The existing U.S. grid is in critical need of an upgrade. It is old, fragmented, and too limited in its reach. Grid-related power outages and problems with power quality reportedly cost the U.S. $80 billion to $188 billion per year. Areas rich in renewable resources, like solar, wind, and geothermal energy, currently have no major transmission lines to move the power they generate to the markets where it is needed.

In recent years, investments in green technologies have exploded. 2007 was the year of biofuel, this year solar power investments surged, and next year investment is predicted to begin flowing into smart grid development.

“I’m more convinced than ever that it’s just about to happen,” said Drew Clark of IBM’s Venture Capital Group.  “Cleantech may be the only category that is left relatively unscathed and venture capitalists are looking to put new money into traditional IT type of companies and smart grid is exactly that.”

IBM’s venture capital investment patterns can be viewed as a weathervane of upcoming trends.  The group doesn’t make direct investments in start-up companies but does meet with them, and other venture capitalists, in order to determine what technology trends are developing on the horizon.  IBM then will determine how it can diversify its strategy to meet with the emerging technologies.

To support a dramatic expansion of these clean energy sources, we need to modernize the transmission infrastructure so that electricity generated anywhere in America can power homes and businesses across the nation. A unified national smart grid would form the entire skeleton of a modern electricity system, allowing us to efficiently carry large amounts of electricity over long distances in a network that is integrated, continuously monitored, and resistant to failure. It would allow early-evening winds off the Delaware coast to help power afternoon air conditioning in California. It would use solar power produced in Arizona to support manufacturing centers in Ohio. Households would have smart meters to help manage their electricity use and enabling them to sell their excess electricity, generated by roof-mounted solar panels or wind turbines, or stored in plug-in vehicles, back to the grid.

Updating the grid in this way would save money, increase the reliability of the power supply, and pave the way for a clean electricity system. And just like the building of the interstate highway system and the railroads before it, a major effort to modernize the grid would create thousands of jobs for American workers. One United States Department of Energy study calculated that internal modernization of US grids with smart grid capabilities would save between 46 and 117 billion dollars over the next 20 years

It is an ambitious goal, but it is achievable. The technology exists, the materials exist, and the know-how exists. All that is required now is the political will.