Electric Industry Infrastructure for Sustainability: Climate Change and Energy Storage

Although the regulatory structure for limiting emission of greenhouse gases is uncertain, limits will be in force soon. Infrastructure needs to implement those limits are technologies to remove most carbon from electric generation emissions, technologies to dispose of the carbon removed, sensing systems to monitor carbon emissions, and market or regulatory structures to implement the limits. Adaptation to climate change will require upgrades and capacity increases in existing transmission and distribution systems, and increased capacity in new systems. Increased use of renewable can reduce carbon emissions. Higher penetrations of intermittent renewable resources, wind and solar, will be allowed if storage is available to allow full dispatch of those generators. Infrastructure needs for energy storage are efficient and cost-competitive technologies to store electricity, power electronic interfaces between those dc technologies and the ac power system, and monitoring and control systems to control and dispatch the storage systems.