By SHERRY ROBINSON
All She Wrote
© 2023 New Mexico News Services
Last week energy professionals met to talk about “building an advanced energy ecosystem in New Mexico.” Conference participants came from industry, the labs, government, unions and education. Alas, the protests outside the Albuquerque hotel got more attention than the learned people inside.
I’ve been writing about energy in New Mexico since the 1970s and have covered my share of energy conferences. They’re part dog-and-pony show and part education; the most productive exchanges tend to happen in the hallways when participants talk to each other.
The goal of this meeting was to unite all the players in decarbonizing New Mexico. Participants advocated using a range of technologies – including carbon capture, sequestration, hydrogen, nuclear and some that haven’t yet been invented – to phase out fossil fuels and end carbon emissions, reported the Albuquerque Journal.
The conference wasn’t about winners and losers, said Rep. Meredith Dixon, (D-Albuquerque), who organized the meeting with New Mexico Women Lead. “There’s room at the table for everyone.”
Dixon excluded environmentalists as presenters, saying she wanted an exchange among scientists. She’ll get some grief for that, but I applaud her goals.
I’ve always thought this approach makes the most sense, but we don’t hear it enough. The protesters outside believe only renewables will save the planet while some on the other end of the spectrum see any gain for solar and wind as a loss to oil and gas. They’ve all missed the message on the need for everything, and the unnecessary squabbling has cost time and resources better used in the real challenge.
One argument for the all-of-the-above approach sits in my garage. I can’t afford an electric vehicle. Yet. So, I’ll buy gasoline for a while longer. My roof is devoid of solar panels for the same reason. But the price of both is dropping steadily.
Sen. Martin Heinrich talked about pricing when he addressed the conference. In 1976 “the cost per watt of generating capacity from utility scale solar was $100. Today, it is well under 50 cents and continuing at a consistent, predictable decline.” Wind power and battery storage have seen similar cost reductions.
Heinrich, an engineer, was at home in this crowd, talking about S-curves, deviations and distributed technology.
“The unsubsidized levelized cost of solar photovoltaics dropped from around $300 to $400 per megawatt hour in 2009 to around $30 to $40 per megawatt hour in 2021,” he said. “The unsubsidized levelized cost of onshore wind energy dropped from around $100 to $170 per megawatt hour in 2009 to around $26 to $50 per megawatt hour in 2021.”
Even so, worldwide change will take some time.
That was the argument made by Karl Fennessy, vice president for corporate policy at ConocoPhillips, who said industry projections are that global demand for oil and gas will plateau in the early 2030s and remain steady until 2050. His company, meanwhile, is working hard to decarbonize its oil and gas operations.
That said, I sympathize with the protesters, and if I were 20 again, I’d join them. We, their elders, have left them a mess, and we don’t have time to waste.
But I’m not 20, and I’ve seen a few things. I can’t agree with a protest leader that the conference focused on “old, false solutions.” We can’t know what scientists and engineers will come up with if they work together.
Heinrich pointed out that the state’s technology experts are working on “everything from enhanced geothermal systems and concentrating solar power to small modular nuclear reactors and electrolysis for generating green hydrogen.” Such advanced devices aren’t as far along as solar panels, but they could potentially decarbonize challenging uses like trains, planes and industrial processes.
Protesters have their role to play too. We need them to remind us of the urgent need for change.