This past weekend, energy leaders converged on Tulane University’s campus for the second annual Future of Energy Forum. This year’s theme, “Powering the Future: Innovation, Competition, and Collaboration,” focused on ways that new technology and partnerships will shape the energy sector.
As carbon emissions and global energy consumption continue to fuel the climate crisis, ways to achieve a clean energy future dominated discussions. Sustainable energy leaders from across the Gulf South and the country shared their ideas on implementing renewable energy sources.
Louisiana lags behind much of the country in using renewable energy sources. In 2024, renewable energy sources accounted for merely 4% of Louisiana’s total net electricity generation, while natural gas accounted for 76%.
“This is not a technology problem, this is a policy and political problem,” Logan Burke, the executive director of Alliance for Affordable Energy, said. “The reason that Louisiana is so far behind so much of the rest of the country, and frankly, a lot of the world, is that we have chosen to throw all of our eggs into the oil and gas basket.”
Investing in renewable energy sources have proven to be sustainable environmentally and economically. In 2023, clean energy employment added nearly 149,000 new jobs, representing 59% of new energy sector jobs. Clean energy jobs are growing at roughly 4.9% each year, over double the national average of 2.0%, and now account for roughly 42% of all energy sector employment.
“Fortunately, we can see that when you invest in things like solar, wind and the transmission to move that energy around, you get jobs and you get better resilience and reliability,” Burke said.
In addition to traditional renewable energy sources — namely, solar and wind — panelists discussed how geothermal energy could transform energy generation. Geothermal energy is a renewable energy source that harnesses the Earth’s internal heat to generate electricity. The United States leads the world in geothermal generation capacity with 3,900 MW at the end of 2023.
While most of the U.S.’s geothermal energy capacity comes from western states, Louisiana has shown some geothermal energy potential. The most common source of geothermal energy in Louisiana is through the geothermal heat pump. These pumps use the relatively constant temperatures in the Earth’s core to exchange temperatures, thereby providing heat during winter and cooling homes in the summer.
“Louisiana happens to have really good subsurface geothermal heat resources,” Troy A. von Otnott, the chief executive officer of HotRok Energy, said. “I think Louisiana could absolutely be a leader in developing the most important baseload energy resource we have in the country, outside of nuclear.”
Education is an essential step in effectively implementing clean energy.
“[My nephew is] learning about the different types of energy that may be available, whether it be from fossil fuels to nuclear to geothermal to wind and solar,” said Spring Gaines, the research and policy manager at the Center for Planning Excellence, regarding her nephew’s fourth-grade science homework. “We need more education in our elementary and middle schools to let them know this is a pathway for them in the job market.”