What would it take to decarbonize the electric grid by 2035?A new reportby the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) examines the types of clean energy technologies and the scale and pace of deployment needed to achieve 100% clean electricity, or a net-zero power grid, in the United States by 2035. This would be a major stepping stone to economy-wide decarbonization by 2050.
The study, done in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy and with funding support from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, is an initial exploration of the transition to a 100% clean electricity power system by 2035—and helps to advance understanding of both the opportunities and challenges of achieving the ambitious goal.
Overall, NREL finds multiple pathways to 100% clean electricity by 2035 that would produce significant benefits, but the exact technology mix and costs will be determined by research and development (R&D), manufacturing, and infrastructure investment decisions over the next decade.
"There is no one single solution to transitioning the power sector to renewable and clean energy technologies," said Paul Denholm, principal investigator and lead author of the study. "There are several key challenges that we still need to understand and will need to be addressed over the next decade to enable the speed and scale of deployment necessary to achieve the 2035 goal."
None of the scenarios presented in the report include the IRA and BIL energy provisions, but their inclusion is not expected to significantly alter the 100% systems explored—and the study''s insights on the implications of achieving net-zero power sector decarbonization by 2035 are expected to still apply.
To examine what it would take to fully decarbonize the U.S. power sector by 2035, NREL leveraged decades of research on high-renewable power systems, from theRenewable Electricity Futures Study, to theStorage Futures Study, to theLos Angeles 100% Renewable Energy Study, to theElectrification Futures Study, and more.
Using its publicly available flagshipRegional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS)capacity expansion model, NREL evaluated supply-side scenarios representing a range of possible pathways to a net-zero power grid by 2035—from the most to the least optimistic availability and costs of technologies.
Unlike other NREL studies, the 2035 study scenarios consider many new factors: a 2035 full decarbonization timeframe, higher levels of electrification and an associated increase in electricity demand, increased electricity demand from carbon dioxide removal technologies and clean fuels production, higher reliance on existing commercial renewable energy generation technologies, and greater diversity of seasonal storage solutions.
"For the study, ReEDS helped us explore how different factors—like siting constraints or evolving technology cost reductions—might influence the ability to accelerate renewable and clean energy technology deployment," said Brian Sergi, NREL analyst and co-author of the study.
In all modeled scenarios, new clean energy technologies are deployed at an unprecedented scale and rate to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2035. As modeled, wind and solar energy provide 60%–80% of generation in the least-cost electricity mix in 2035, and the overall generation capacity grows to roughly three times the 2020 level by 2035—including a combined 2 terawatts of wind and solar.
To achieve those levels would require an additional 40–90 gigawatts of solar on the grid per year and 70–150 gigawatts of wind per year by the end of this decade under this modeled scenario. That''s more than four times the current annual deployment levels for each technology. If there are challenges with siting and land use to be able to deploy this new generation capacity and associated transmission, nuclear capacity helps make up the difference and more than doubles today''s installed capacity by 2035.
Across the four scenarios, 5–8 gigawatts of new hydropower and 3–5 gigawatts of new geothermal capacity are also deployed by 2035. Diurnal storage (2–12 hours of capacity) also increases across all scenarios, with 120–350 gigawatts deployed by 2035 to ensure that demand for electricity is met during all hours of the year.
Seasonal storage becomes important when clean electricity makes up about 80%–95% of generation and there is a multiday-to-seasonal mismatch of variable renewable supply and demand. Seasonal storage is represented in the study as clean hydrogen-fueled combustion turbines, but it could also include a variety of emerging technologies.
Across the scenarios, seasonal storage capacity in 2035 ranges from about 100 gigawatts to 680 gigawatts. Achieving seasonal storage of this scale requires substantial development of infrastructure, including fuel storage, transportation and pipeline networks, and additional generation capacity needed to produce clean fuels.
"The U.S. can get to 80%–90% clean electricity with technologies that are available today, although it requires a massive acceleration in deployment rates," Sergi said. "To get from there to 100%, there are many potentially important technologies that have not yet been deployed at scale, so there is uncertainty about the final mix of technologies that can fully decarbonize the power system. The technology mix that is ultimately achieved will depend on advances in R&D in further improving cost and performance as well as the pace and scale of investment."
In all scenarios, significant transmission is also added in many locations, mostly to deliver energy from wind-rich regions to major load centers in the Eastern United States. As modeled, the total transmission capacity in 2035 is one to almost three times today''s capacity, which would require between 1,400 and 10,100 miles of new high-capacity lines per year, assuming new construction starts in 2026.
To decarbonize the grid by 2035, the total additional power system costs between 2023 and 2035 range across scenarios from $330 billion to $740 billion. The scenarios with the highest cost have restrictions on new transmission and other infrastructure development. In the scenario with the highest cost, the amount of wind that can be delivered to population centers is constrained and more storage and nuclear generation are deployed.
However, in all scenarios there is substantial reduction in fossil fuels used to produce electricity. As a result of the improved air quality, up to 130,000 premature deaths are avoided in the coming decades, which could save $390 billion to $400 billion—enough to exceed the cost to decarbonize the electric grid.
When factoring in the avoided cost of damage from the impacts of climate change, a net-zero grid could save over an additional $1.2 trillion—totaling an overall net benefit to society ranging from $920 billion to $1.2 trillion.
"Decarbonizing the power system is a necessary step if the worst effects of climate change are to be avoided," said Patrick Brown, NREL analyst and co-author of the study. "The benefits of a zero-carbon grid outweigh the costs in each of the more than 100 scenarios modeled in this study, and accelerated cost declines for renewable and clean energy technologies could lead to even larger benefits."
Reduced technology costs alone cannot achieve the transformational change outlined in the study. NREL also identifies four key challenges that must be addressed in the next decade, through further research and other societal efforts, to enable full power sector decarbonization.
Electrification of some end-use energy services in the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors is a key strategy for decarbonizing those sectors. Increased electrification, in turn, increases overall electricity demand and the scale of the power system that needs to be decarbonized. Enabling more efficient use of electricity in the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors could enable a cost-effective transition.
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