Fossil Fuels Will Remain King Well Past 2050, Says New Federal Report

quote:

---

A new federal report disputes the claim that the United States will reach net-zero carbon emissions from power generation anytime soon.

While the share of energy that comes from wind and solar will increase, the projections say fossil fuels will remain king for the foreseeable future.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) produces an annual outlook that explores long-term energy trends in the United States. The report examines the country’s future energy mix and trends in energy demand, and projects greenhouse gas.

While President Joe Biden has stated that the nation will eliminate all fossil fuels within a decade, the EIA’s projections don’t support that goal.

According to the EIA’s latest report, by 2050, consumption of coal, natural gas and oil will still make up the majority of where Americans get their energy from. In 2022, 79% of our energy came from fossil fuels, and according to the EIA that will fall to 65% by 2050.

---

quote:

---

Kevin Kilty, a retired University of Wyoming adjunct professor of engineering, told Cowboy State Daily that the EIA is a good source of information.

“They generally are about as truthful as they can possibly be about things, but they operate under some political constraints like everybody else,” Kilty said.

There are other energy outlook reports by the United Nations and British Petroleum. One thing they all share in common, Kilty said, is they agree there’s no realistic scenario where fossil fuels are eliminated in the time frames they consider, which is 20 or 30 years.

“That’s just silly to even think about. Fossil fuels are going to be providing two thirds in almost all scenarios that these people can consider,” Kilty said.

Fossil fuels have properties that renewables, barring some unforeseen spectacular breakthrough, just can’t replace, Kilty said.

---

quote:

---

One of the points to notice in the EIA report, Kilty said, is where battery storage will be over the next few decades.

Electricity is consumed virtually at the moment of demand, meaning it has to be produced at the moment it’s used. The problem with wind and solar is that there’s no way to predict with any precision when it’s going to be available or not.

To smooth out its intermittency, energy storage will need to be used, which is very expensive, Kilty explained, and under all scenarios on the report storage never catches up to production.

To compensate for the lack of storage, the grid will have to be built out many times larger.

In the West, there’s very little storage. So, Kilty said, by the time coal- and natural gas-fired capacity are reduced, the West will need to import larger amounts of energy from other parts of the country.

---