13 - Electricity: Technological Opportunities and Management Challenges to Achieving a Low-Emissions Future

Summary

Editor's Introduction

We are moving into a future powered by electricity. In developing countries, electricity use continues to replace the burning of fuels. Extension of the electricity grid to rural and agricultural areas will expand the customer base of electric utilities and broaden the industrialized regions in these countries. In the industrialized world, growing “plug loads” caused by the proliferation of appliances, computers, and other gadgets will combine with the increased penetration of electrically driven heating and cooling systems to raise residential and commercial sector demand for electricity. Advances in process design will cause more industrial operations to shift from direct combustion to electric operations. And in the transportation sector, the combined effects of urban pollution, traffic congestion, and the costs of oil imports will encourage many countries to develop electric-powered railroads, vehicles and mass transit systems. Unless care is taken now in the plans made to meet these demands, emissions of greenhouse gases from the electricity sector will increase rapidly in the decades ahead.

David Jhirad and Irving Mintzer argue that meeting the projected demand for electricity will be very difficult for many developing countries— countries which now are caught in a triple bind. First, these countries do not have (and are unlikely to get) the capital to build all the new power plants suggested by the most recent forecasts of demand. Secondly, many utilities which have traditionally provided electric power in developing countries suffer from declining levels of financial and technical performance. And thirdly, like many other institutions in both developing and industrialized countries, electric utilities in the developing world face severe pressure to address environmental concerns, both local and global.