Sue Tierney, managing principal of the consultancy group Analysis Group, was one of the keynote speakers at the Tufts Energy Conference. Tierney specializes in electric and gas industry policy and formerly served as assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Energy. She sat down with the Daily to discuss upcoming developments in the energy sector.
Katherine Sawyer: You've done some work with solar energy, among other different clean energy sources. Do you think that renewable energy sources and clean energy sources like solar are capable of powering the country? Do you think we can make a switch to clean energy?
Sue Tierney: Do I think there can be a switch to clean energy? Yes. Tremendously more renewable energy and lower emissions energy can be used. Do I think that we could actually, in my lifetime and maybe in your lifetime, do everything from what we consider to be renewable fuels like solar and water and stuff? I don't think so, unfortunately. In part that's because solar and wind are intermittent … so there are times of the day when you can't depend upon that now — when we don't really have battery storage to absorb that — so we need some technological breakthroughs on things like storage to really make a huge penetration … renewables are going to play a much bigger part … but I think in the very near−term, we're not likely to see a total dependency on those.
KS: Do you think that we as a country, from an economic perspective, can become energy independent?
ST: That's a really important question, and there are a lot of different dimensions of it. [When] most people think about that right now, we think of oil, because more than half of our oil comes from overseas. It would be in part difficult and also probably not realistic to think that we could, in the near−term, displace so much international oil, that we would be just running on our own oil production.
We could do a lot through biofuels. I don't like ethanol, but we could do a lot through other kinds of biofuels … Now if you think about natural gas, there's a lot we can do to make sure that we are on our own on natural gas.
But now let's think about solar. So right now, the fuel is local because it's on solar rays, on materials that absorb it … But when you think about producing solar panels, whether for rooftops or in solar power stations, we're developing the technology in the United States so we can be independent on technology development stuff and intellectual property stuff. And you have to have a lot of workers to actually put the solar panels on roofs. But in between is manufacturing, and in the United States it's much more expensive to build and manufacture solar panels than it is in China. So it's really hard, unless we massively change our industrial policy in the United States, to imagine that China is not going to clean our clock. So it's weird we send all this money to Saudi Arabia for oil, and that's a scary thought — they're not very friendly — and in the near term, we actually send a lot of money and jobs to China for solar panels more and more. But maybe that's OK if we're all interdependent…
KS: With different environmental choices like the Kyoto Protocol, there's controversy about whether the United States is doing enough and the impact that that's having on the world. What is your take on what we need to do to start this global process?
ST: The process obviously has started, but there's so much more that the United States has to do to play a leadership role. If I were a decision−maker in Washington and I had a huge favorability rating, I would capture the momentum and articulate all the ways that the United States could transform itself and its economy to much more efficient energy use and cleaner technologies so that we could then be a huge player in transforming the energy market.
There are a lot of elements of that. Part of it is about technology development, research and development in schools and universities, in the national laboratories. Part of that is about policies that the states are doing, policies like renewable portfolio standard … Part of it is about loan guarantees to help finance U.S. companies … in this business. All of those things are helpful, but at the end of the day, in my opinion, we really need a price on carbon in order to really begin to make it worthwhile for people to make some of the investments in clean energy that they might not make today.
The realities in Congress are right now that the policymaking is so polarized that even people of goodwill who might be able to develop a program … are worried that they'll be hurt at the polls, that they'll be hurt in the blogosphere and they'll be hurt in X, Y and Z. It's a very tough time, and it is a horrible conundrum because we need it, but I just don't think that the politics are there. The economy doesn't make it any better.
KS: What are some new technologies that the individual can use to reduce carbon emissions?
ST: The biggest and cheapest ways are the variety of ways by which people can tighten up energy use in their homes … There is a huge amount of electricity and other energy used in refrigerators, air conditioning and heating systems in homes … Obviously, fuel economy is a big deal.
KS: Where are the breaking fields in clean energy?
ST: There's been a huge infusion of wind projects around the country … The Economic Recovery Act includes a huge number of rebates for households, tax credits and a variety of things to help get energy efficiency going. Those things are the near−term things in which we're likely to see something happen.
KS: Why is this important — why do we need these clean energy reforms?
ST: The scientific evidence is overwhelming that climate change is occurring. The global mean temperature is warming up faster than expected. The developed world has enjoyed the economic benefits associated with those greenhouse gas emissions as a carbon−based economy. The planet can't do it the way we've done it for the past 200 years.
