What an energy efficient grid could look like

Within the partnership’s purview is a project on how to optimize the energy grid to meet future energy demands while lowering emissions with the most cost-effective approach.

What’s happening: One of the keys to achieveing a lower carbon future rests with the electricity grid. The existing infrastructure of the U.S.’s current power grid, which largely draws from fossil fuels, took over six decades to build. To deploy emerging energy technologies at scale, the grid will undergo a transition, shifting its power supply away from higher-emission resources, like coal, to ones that produce fewer emissions, like renewables and natural gas coupled with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). While this transition is essential to meeting society’s climate goals, cost and current infrastructure need to be considered to ensure that energy remains affordable and reliable.

The Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS), a modeling tool created by NREL, allows researchers to simulate different energy-mix scenarios for the power grid to understand which combination of resources would most efficiently lead to lower emissions, and eventually, achieving net zero emissions. ExxonMobil is working alongside the national laboratories to analyze these scenarios, essentially mapping out what the grid’s future could look like and how new technologies can be optimally deployed.

Understanding the grid: The grid is the complex, interconnected network that transmits electricity from power plants into homes and businesses.

In the United States, there are three main grids that supply energy to different sections of the country. The energy mix of each grid depends on the resource supply and demand in that region.

Here’s how it works: