As Europe fiddles, US may take lead on climate change

Mills, a Canadian, developed his system in Australia. But a couple of years ago, frustrated by government indifference there, he shipped out Solargenix to California. “It has a state plan for renewables; it has the technologists to deliver; and it has the venture capital,” he told me. Backers in Silicon Valley have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars already into start-up green tech companies like Ausra. In the fall, Mills opened a robot-run factory outside Las Vegas ready to cover the deserts of the American West with glass mirrors that catch the sun’s energy.

“This is not mad scientists any more,” Mills said. “In the next decades, clean energy is going to be ten times bigger than the internet and IT combined. The energy business is the largest business in the world, and with climate change, it all has to be replaced. We are just waiting to deliver to the boom.”

Industry analysts say up to $50 billion in capital is waiting to be invested in solar projects in the Nevada desert. On his arrival at the Oval Office, Obama will find in his in-box applications for permits to put solar panels and reflectors across 400,000 hectares of the West - enough for 40,000 megawatts of electricity generating capacity.

And utilities are willing to buy. All they need is the green light from Washington: a few tax breaks, permission to erect mirrors on federal desert land, a cap-and-trade system that puts a price on carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels, and a transmission system to get the new green power to market. Mills has published peer-reviewed papers showing how the United States could get 90 per cent of its energy from covering just 10 per cent of the Nevada desert with mirrors.

Could it happen? Renewables like solar and wind have two problems. First, they are intermittent. Some days there is no wind; every night there is no sun. Second, unlike coal or oil, the fuels are not transportable. And most of the US’s renewable potential is west of the Mississippi, whereas most of the demand is east of the Mississippi. The United States currently has no national grid capable of moving the power east.

Industry advocates say that a new high-voltage direct-current grid, using superconducting materials to minimise transmission losses, could transform the potential of US renewables. And by connecting wind and solar energy (not to mention some nuclear and fossil fuel, too), it would minimise the risk of an outage of any one source of power due to the weather crashing the system.

This is not just about the United States. The technology that drives America usually ends up driving the world. If Obama goes for a smart super-grid, you can almost guarantee that Merkel and her fellow Europeans will suddenly get more enthusiastic about a super-grid scheme quietly being promoted there to hook up to solar energy from the Sahara desert. A grander version would also tap geothermal energy from Iceland, hydropower from Scandinavia, and wind power from the North Sea.

And China? Whisper it quietly, but China is already the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines. Any industrialist sitting in China and watching the U.S. government open its wallet to rebuild the country’s energy infrastructure will be thinking contracts, contracts, contracts. China will want to manufacture the wind turbines and solar panels and superconducting cables.

The US market is so big it could have huge implications for R&D and energy manufacturing around the world. And if green tech is good enough for Americans, then everyone will want not just to make it but to use it as well.

Climate scientists believe we have to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 per cent by 2050, with cuts of 80-90 per cent in industrialised countries. If so, then the decarbonisation of our economies has to be completed within the lifetime of power plants being designed and financed now.

In Germany, once the darling of the greens, they are talking right now about building a new generation of coal-fired power stations. In America, the talk is different. The talk is about delivering energy security AND climate security. But talk is just talk. Let’s hope Obama delivers on what he says.