AOL Energy – Andrew Holland on Fusion for the Future
Source: AOL Energy, 9/20/2011
ASP Senior Fellow Andrew Holland is a featured author.
“America faces a series of significant challenges regarding how we produce and use energy over the next several decades. Our current energy system undermines our national security, is economically unstable, and environmentally unsustainable.
Although the recession has reduced energy demand, in the longer term the US is expected to see a 20% increase in total energy demand and a 30% increase in electricity demand by 2035.
Meanwhile, our existing infrastructure is aging. Of the approximately 1400 coal-fired generators, 104 nuclear reactors, and over 5000 natural gas power plants, almost all will have to be replaced or substantially retrofitted over the next 40 years.
These challenges will require our politicians, scientists, and business leaders to make a series of choices about what we want our energy system to look like in 2030 and 2050.
Fundamentally, this represents a choice: either business as usual or a new course that firmly establishes American leadership in clean, sustainable energy production.
Renewable power, like wind and solar, together with increased efficiency and conservation measures, must be a part of the new energy paradigm. But, when you look beyond the medium term, there are real questions about whether a modern grid can support the intermittency and unpredictability of a grid that is more than half-powered by renewables.
Electricity from fusion could provide the baseload power necessary to overcome this…”
