FAIRFIELD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 2, 2003--According to the Energy Information Administration's Annual Energy Outlook 2003, energy consumption in the US will rise 39 percent over the next 20 years.
Today, the US consumes almost 100 quadrillion BTUs a year. By 2025, that consumption is expected to reach 139 quadrillion BTUs.
The current U.S. demand is met by the following energy sources:
-- Petroleum - 38% -- Natural Gas - 25% -- Coal - 22% -- Nuclear - 8% -- Renewables - 6%
This current energy portfolio is under stress to meet rising demands and at the same time, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality and decrease dependency on foreign oil.
Can technology play a role in meeting the energy challenges of the future? There are significant efforts under way to meet those challenges. Most notably, in January 2003, President Bush announced the $1.2 billion Hydrogen Fuel initiative to reverse America's dependence on foreign oil. Through this enterprise, the U.S. government plans to foster development of the technology needed to create commercially viable hydrogen fuel production and infrastructure to supply fuel cell energy for cars, trucks, homes and businesses with no pollution or greenhouse gases.
Private sector companies like GE can and will play a significant role in bringing new technologies to the marketplace. This installment of GE's Innovation Update will highlight GE's latest energy innovations as well as the company's R&D efforts to make alternative energy systems a reality.
GE Global Research Explores Hydrogen Energy
Today, energy is consumed in the U.S. in four major sectors:
-- Residential - 21% (7% of which is generated from petroleum)
-- Commercial - 18% (3.5% petroleum)
-- Industrial - 33% (27% petroleum)
-- Transportation - 28% (97% petroleum)
One potential technology gaining attention lately is hydrogen energy, because hydrogen powered transportation has the greatest potential to simultaneously increase the nation's energy independence, improve regional air quality and decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Why hydrogen?
-- Hydrogen has three times the energy-per-gram ratio of gasoline
or natural gas.
-- Hydrogen fuel can be combusted in an internal combustion
engine or reacted in a fuel cell to generate power. Either
way, its primary emission is water with no greenhouse gas
emissions.
-- There are already some vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel on
the road today around the world.
There are still many challenges that remain ahead before hydrogen cars are an everyday reality:
-- Production: Hydrogen doesn't come out of the ground - you have
to make it by converting another primary energy source. Today,
you can produce hydrogen by reforming fossil fuels (with
carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, as a by-product) or by
electrolysis of water (which requires electricity, which
requires energy). And where does production take place? On the
automobile (which means you'd be carrying around a hydrogen
plant in your trunk); at a refueling station; or at a
centralized hydrogen production plant (then how do you get it
to the consumer, which leads to the next question....).
-- Distribution: Today in the U.S, we have a fairly extensive
network of natural gas pipelines that can move gas around. But
the same pipeline network would need extensive modification to
transport hydrogen. And once transported, how do you get it to
where consumers can use it? While there is seemingly a gas
station on every corner today, there is not a hydrogen station
next to it or within it.
-- Storage: While hydrogen energy has more punch per gram than
gas, it does not compare favorably in energy-by-volume because
liquid hydrogen has one-quarter the energy per unit volume of
gasoline. As a light gas, it takes up a lot of space. So how
do you store it in a car, at the refueling station, and for
transport? And how do you store enough of it on board a
vehicle to provide consumers with the driving range to which
they are accustomed?
-- Acceptance: History has shown that consumers tend not to buy
into a new technology, like hydrogen cars, until it competes
with the current technology in terms of cost, reliability,
convenience and safety (perceived and actual). Today, hydrogen
still has a way to go to compare to the current technology in
these parameters.
GE Global Research has an advanced technology research program exploring some of these technical challenges in hydrogen energy, in particular:
-- Producing hydrogen using fossil fuels (coal and natural gas)
with sequestration of the carbon dioxide produced during the
process; and renewable routes to hydrogen using solar and wind
to power electrolysis or direct conversion to hydrogen using
solar energy.
-- Developing the materials needed for and solving the
reliability issues associated with hydrogen pipelines.
-- Researching on-board, solid-state storage via materials that
would absorb hydrogen at low pressure and then supply it to a
fuel cell.
To further explore some of the enabling technologies, GE is a founding partner in the Global Climate and Energy Project being conducted by Stanford University. It's a 10-year, $225 million project focused on identifying commercially viable technologies that foster the development of a global energy system where greenhouse emissions are much lower than today. The project's main areas of research are: advanced transportation; capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide; and energy infrastructure (see http://gcep.stanford.edu for more information).
Leading GE's efforts in hydrogen technology is Dr. Susan Townsend, who recently has been elected to the Board of Directors of the National Hydrogen Association (NHA) for a two-year term. Members of the NHA come together seek to seek short-term results from information transfer activities and identification of research and business opportunities, while keeping an eye on the long-term direction of energy and environmental technology issues and the opportunities they present. NHA Web Site: www.hydrogenus.org
Los Angeles and Cape Cod Embark on Pioneering Wind Energy Projects
To meet the constantly growing power requirements of its citizens, the states of California and Massachusetts were in need of an environmentally friendly, renewable source of energy. Though the states are on opposite sides of the continent, they both turned to the same abundant resource: wind. Over the past six years, the harnessing of wind power to produce electricity has grown by 31 percent globally due to its practicality and renewable status.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) will soon begin construction of its 22,000-acre wind farm in the Mojave Desert, which will provide area residents with a 120-megawatts of clean, renewable energy. California currently leads the U.S. in wind energy production, with a total wind generating capacity of 1,822 megawatts.
In the Northeast, Massachusetts is embarking on a first-of-its-kind wind energy project. In response to recent legislation requiring four percent of the state's energy to be from a renewable source by 2009, the first off-shore wind farm in the U.S. will be built off the coast of Cape Cod. This 468-megawatt project will provide enough clean electricity to meet about three-quarters of the annual energy requirements of the Cape and nearby islands, or approximately half a million homes.
Both projects selected GE Wind Energy to supply the wind turbine technology. GE Wind Energy has developed or sold more than 5,500 wind turbines which supply more than 3,100 megawatts of electricity worldwide. The total installed capacity of wind energy in the U.S. at the end of 2002 was more than 4,600 megawatts, or enough to serve more than 1.2 million households.
Next Generation Hydropower
Hydropower is currently the world's largest renewable source of energy, contributing more than 15 percent of the world's electricity. First used around 250 B.C., hydropower was initially harnessed to directly power grain and saw mills. Nearly 2000 years later, the invention of power generators enabled the kinetic energy contained in the falling water to be converted into electricity, and the first electricity-generating hydro plant opened in 1882.
Since then, GE Hydro has emerged as a world leader in the technology for the hydropower and water control industries. In just the past six months, GE Hydro has initiated a number of projects to refurbish existing hydropower plants and build new facilities in countries such as Switzerland, Canada, Scotland, Brazil, Norway, China and the U.S.
Typically, refurbishment projects involve replacing or repairing existing generators and turbines with the most current technology that will provide greater energy efficiency. By upgrading the equipment used in the hydropower plants, the overall megawatt capacity can be increased by as much as 30 percent.
In the case of building entirely new hydropower plants, the GE Hydro team will carefully assess the location and, if necessary, design a "wire to water" package that includes all of the essential machinery and equipment to extract the energy from the falling water and send it to the nearby power grid. From there, in most cases, the energy in the form of electricity is then distributed to residences and businesses in the area.
The Lights Have Gone Out, But Not For Long
When the power goes out, much more than just your television shuts off. Although often thought of as just a nuisance, power outages can and often do create dangerous situations.
This past winter, the U.S. was pounded with ice and snow, in some cases resulting in enough damage to cause extended power outages, which left many people without heat and hot water. While power outages such as these cannot ever be fully prevented, the ability to speed up the response time and the restoration process is a crucial step towards lessening the potential damage.
GE recently developed the Smallworld PowerOn Remote Dispatch software. This web-based tool is used to dispatch work crews from remote service centers, allowing users to view outage orders, maintenance orders, crews, and network status information, and improve overall network reliability. The information is available in near-real time helping to eliminate dispatching bottlenecks and improve decision-making by delivering current, accurate information to remote centers.
The Smallworld PowerOn Remote Dispatch software will help to streamline the process of alerting maintenance crews to power outages, expediting the process of fixing any problems and in turn, help save lives.
For more information on these announcements and other information about GE technology, please contact Jim Healy at (518) 387-6284 / [email protected] or Amanda Hamilton at (212) 931-6131 / [email protected].
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CONTACT:
Jim Healy, 518/387-6284
or
Amanda Hamilton, 212/931-6131