Maarten Wetselaar, integrated gas and new energies director for Royal Dutch Shell plc, can envision a future world in which electricity will be the prime, if not sole, source of energy for individual consumers.
"Electricity will be the only way of using energy to heat or cool your home -- and for your mobility, which is very different from the customers of today," Wetselaar said.
Wetselaar said he anticipates a similar future for business customers.
"We see a significant move toward electrification where it's possible, with factories and plants being repurposed to go away from using molecules-based energy," Wetselaar said on a panel discussing fuels of the future at CERAWeek by IHS Markit, held recently in Houston.
"In those areas where electrification is impossible, we see very significant emphasis on trying to find other means to be carbon- neutral," Wetselaar added. "The world will look very different and [will have] transitioned 20 years from now because, if that doesn't happen, we will not achieve the Paris Accord."
Prior to his current position as president and CEO of Cheniere, Jack Fusco served as CEO of the largest U.S. independent power company, which adopted a cooperative approach to reduce its carbon footprint.
"One of our power plants was surrounded by a hydroelectric plant on one side and wind turbines all around it," Fusco said. "We came up with an idea in 2010 to offer the local utility a firm baseload strip of power, so we used our combined-cycle natural gas plant to match the output of the wind generator."
The wind would peak in the late afternoon and night, Fusco explained.
"So during the day, we would amp up our gas plant," he said. "We sold the utility a baseload strip of power of 250 megawatts over the long term of fixed reliable power that they depend on. We maximized the wind output and then used the natural gas combined cycle to shape that output."
The approach worked "extremely well," Fusco said. "The two technologies, it ended up, 'stopped fighting' each other and started to support each other."
Renewables and profitability
Despite the strong partnership between solar and wind energy and "the backup that natural gas can offer," Wetselaar said natural gas' carbon footprint is an issue that must still be addressed.
"The issue is that if you only have solar and wind, then energy storage, particularly in seasonal climates, becomes very, very complicated," he said. "You can't build enough batteries to keep your system whole throughout the calendar year, so having natural gas as a source to integrate with wind and solar is very important."
"The only other alternative, really, is to focus on nature-based solutions and to essentially go back to reforestation and to other elements for nature to help us capture that CO2," he said.
Arnaud Breuillac, president of exploration and production for Total S.A., said the industry as a whole has "almost constantly" underestimated the cost curve for renewables, though that cost has diminished faster than industry leaders believed it would.
The "tricky thing" about that transition to renewables, Breuillac said, is how different forms of energy are supplied to customers.
"I think the trickiest thing for all of us is to get our customers to change the way they consume energy," he said. "This is a bigger challenge than we've been organized for, I think, as an industry."
"And for it to be sustainable as part of our business is, it has to be profitable," Breuillac concluded. "It is important for a company like Total that we are a credible supplier of low-carbon electricity and not being seen only as a part of the problem, but as part of the solution."
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