In 10 years, the world will be using more electricity from an "all of the above" set of generation sources, especially nuclear power, natural gas and renewables, panelists said Thursday evening at IHS CERAWeek.
On the topic of "the shape of things to come" for electric infrastructure and technology, Jone Lin Wang, IHS vice president for global power, asked panelists to describe what they see on the 10-year horizon for electricity.
Steve Bolze, GE Power president and CEO, said the world will be consuming 20% more electricity.
"It will still be a very diverse mix," Bolze said. "There will be more gas, renewables and distributed generation, and it will be a lot more digitally connected."
Kim Greene, Southern Company executive vice president and chief operating officer, said "We'll see a little more nuclear and 21st century coal in our footprint, and more renewables -- solar, wind and maybe biomass -- and more distributed generation of different types."
In contrast, Russ Girling, TransCanada president and CEO, said he thinks the change will not be quite so striking.
"I don't know that the energy mix will be any different ... but it will become more efficient," Girling said. "The fallacy out there is that the mix is going to change a whole lot, and it isn't."
The world will still use coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear power and some renewables, he said.
"That's what we've done the last 20 years, and it will be what we'll do for the next 20 years," Girling said.
Hirohide Hirai, director general of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy at Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, said Tokyo will be the site of the 2020 Summer Olympics, and Japan hopes to "show the world what a hydrogen society looks like" during that event.
Regarding electric generation, Hirai said he hopes that over the next 10 years Japan can fully explore the interior of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant to determine how the March 2011 disaster played out.
"That will give us more information about how to design better for safe nuclear power generation," Hirai said.
SOUTHERN COMPANY TOUTS DIVERSIFICATION
Although Southern Company was pleased by the US Supreme Court's stay of the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan, Greene said Southern Company remains concerned about climate change and reducing emissions.
"With regard to the Clean Power Plan, we do believe it is an overreach by the EPA and, as written, was pretty unworkable for us," Greene said.
"We believe an 'all of the above' strategy is best," Greene said. "If you care about the climate, if you care about clean air, you'd better care about nuclear."
At the Plant Vogtle nuclear generation site in Burke County, Georgia, construction began in 2013 on the third and fourth reactors on the Savannah River near the South Carolina state line. Each of the new reactors is to have a capacity of 1,117 MW, which would bring the site's total capacity to 4,536 MW. Unit 3 is tentatively set to be done in 2019, and Unit 4 in 2020.
After the new units come online, Greene said, "Those plants will be operating until the year 2100."
As another example of diversification, Southern's Mississippi Power unit is nearing completion of a 582-MW integrated gasification combined-cycle generation plant in Kemper County, which will transform lignite coal into a clean-burning synthetic gas, and 65% of the resulting carbon dioxide will be captured and sold for use in enhanced oil recovery operations. The Kemper County plant is expected to begin commercial operations in the third quarter of 2016, Greene said.
However, coal is playing a decreasing role in Southern's generation mix, Greene said, falling to about 33% in 2015 from about 70% in 2007, and natural gas made up much of the difference.
GAS, COAL, NUCLEAR AND RENEWABLES
Girling said his company plans to invest about $20 billion over the next few years, and "shale gas is a fundamental driver for a lot of that investment."
Natural gas pipelines are "chock-a-block full and growing" toward both the east and west, Girling said, to serve both North American needs and LNG export terminals.
Japan is expected to fill about a quarter of its electric needs via natural gas, and a similar amount by coal by 2030, Hirai said. The remainder would be divided between nuclear power (20% to 22%) and renewables (22% to 24%) including hydro.
After the Fukushima disaster, Japan shut all of its nuclear power plants, which resulted in high power prices and more emissions, despite less power use, because of increased use of coal generation, Hirai said. Japan restarted the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant, in the south of the country, in August.
Japan's Kansai Electric Power said Friday it had begun restarting another nuclear power plant, Takahama Nuclear Power Plant, in central Japan. The 870-MW plant is expected to be running at full capacity by Thursday.
Bolze said GE expects the world to need 50% more generation capacity in 20 years, of which about 70% would be in developing regions.
"We see a lot of development still in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East," he said.
The types of energy developed in various areas will largely depend on nearby resources, Bolze said.
"It's very much 'all of the above,'" he said.
