THE UNITED States will double its renewable energy output by 2012 through greater deployment of wind and photovoltaic power, the American energy secretary Stephen Chu has said.
Dr Chu, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, also said that the US department of energy has now “been labelled as the largest venture capital firm of clean energy” in the world.
The energy secretary was speaking at a digital video conference from Copenhagen, where the United Nations negotiations on climate change are continuing.
Dr Chu also accepted questions from participants at US embassies in Dublin, London and Beijing.
Responding to questions from Dublin on his views on developing alternative energy technology in transport, Dr Chu said that the strategy was threefold: to aggressively improve fuel efficiency; to develop the battery technology; and to explore the huge potential of new forms of biofuels, such as those derived from agricultural waste.
In the course of his keynote address, Dr Chu said that funding for alternative energy initiatives had gone up during oil shortages in the 1970s and 1980s but had gone down when oil prices had dropped.
Referring to step increases in oil prices in recent years, he said that his own belief was that prices would not return to the $20 or $30 a barrel level. He said the long-term prosperity of the US would depend on how it funded its development of alternative sources of energy.
He said the US Recovery Act, passed by legislature in response to the downturn in the US, had allocated some $80 billion (€54.6 billion) to this area, including substantial funds for: battery development; smart electricity grids; carbon capture and sequestration; and renewables like wind and solar energy.
Referring to the fact buildings comprise 40 per cent of energy use in the US, he said that a sum of $11 billion had been allocated towards retrofitting buildings to make them more energy-efficient.
He also said the free market had not “picked up” retrofitting or energy-efficiency even though it saved money. The reasons for that, he said, included barriers like inertia and inconvenience. The challenge was to develop tools to make it easier and more convenient for homeowners.
He said that there would also be a need to revolutionise the way buildings are designed, built and operated. In relation to wind technology, he said the cost had gone down by a factor of 10 in the last 20 years.