by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow
As appearing in the Daily Sentinel
At the end of the classic, “The Wizard of Oz,” when Dorothy asks Glinda for help getting home, the good witch of the north says, “You don’t need to be helped any longer. You’ve always had the power.”
This week I participated in the Colorado Energy Summit in Montrose. Experts made presentations on diverse issues including oil, gas, geothermal, hydropower, nuclear, wind, solar, transportation and climate. I was struck by several examples of long-term debates about seemingly impossible problems, to which we have actually had solutions all along.
A great example is the most intractable problem with renewable energy, especially wind and solar power. That is, their reliability. Because the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine, the ability to store that power is essential. Without storage, reliability can only be addressed by continuing to operate coal and natural gas power plants. That could change if we had better technology for storage — not the batteries used in home installations, but on a massive utility scale. That’s always been the challenge for renewables.
Battery technology is slowly improving but cannot yet store enough electricity for large cities and entire regions of the country. But what if giant warehouses full of batteries were not needed? In fact, we’ve had much larger and absolutely reliable batteries for decades — if you consider an apparently unrelated technology — hydroelectric dams.
