Ryan Carlyle
The optimist in me wants to say "modular thorium breeder reactors" or "concentrated solar thermal power" because theyre both green, reasonably scalable, and capable of providing base-load power unlike other renewables. But Im not convinced of the life-cycle economics, and both have some significant unresolved technical concerns.There are various small trends, like expanded subsidies for residential rooftop PV solar power. It has severe scaling issues around grid management, though. In fact, the problems with rooftop solar will probably cause another small trend in itself, which is distributed and utility-scale battery systems for grid storage and time-shifting. California is attempting to jump-start a grid-battery industry because their PV solar generation targets are going to utterly break their power grid without some kind of large-scale grid storage. Again, issues with economics will probably kill those trends as soon as government subsidies dry up. There could be some good synergies with electric car batteries used as storage (both in active vehicles and as recycled battery packs) but that sector is facing a severe chicken/egg bootstrapping problem.
Wind power is growing fast. But Id call that a current trend, not a future trend.
More likely, the next big trend will be the widespread adoption of shale gas fracking outside the US. This has the potential to practically eliminate coal power, thereby improving air quality, making a serious dent in global warming, and even reducing energy costs for consumers in Europe and Asia. As icing on the cake, it will weaken a number of nations that extract disproportionate geopolitical power from their gas exports.
Frankly, the main thing slowing down global fracking is lack of existing drilling and pipeline infrastructure. The safety science is conclusive; the regulations required to make it environmentally-friendly are now proven. The value proposition for society is utterly enormous. The hurdle is that once you build the infrastructure, gas becomes so plentiful and cheap that the development economics take a dive. Oil companies know that now, and arent going to pour unbridled cash enthusiasm into shale basins only to see massive price declines like they did in the US. I expect national oil companies to jump into this sector for cheap domestic energy eventually -- its just a matter of time.
The big losers in the shale-gas revolution will be high-cost renewables that failed to build enough economy of scale to be cost-competitive with gas-fired electricity. Eliminate coal power, and a lot of the environmental pressure falls off electricity providers and governments.
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Credit: greenenergychoice.blogspot.com
