Alternative transportation if global
warming doesn't get in the way department: "HANS
BRINKER OR
THE SILVER SKATES" - READ THE WHOLE BOOK HERE...
Ideas/Concepts Employed in the 21st Century...From Washington State to Connecticut: Headquarters, Weston!
Next President should be running on
the message - "a full tank of fuel for everyone and no more
dependence on Middle East oil."
.
Barack Obama, Dreamer in Chief:
Vision is Obama’s thing. It sure beats cleaning up beaches.
Charles Krauthammer, nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010, The
Washington Post Writers Group.
June 18, 2010 12:00 A.M.
Pres. Barack Obama doesn’t do the mundane. He was sent to us to do
larger things. You could see that plainly in his Oval Office address on
the Gulf oil spill. He could barely get himself through the pedestrian
first half: a bit of BP-bashing, a bit of faux-Clintonian “I feel your
pain,” a bit of recovery and economic-mitigation accounting. It wasn’t
until the end of the speech — the let-no-crisis-go-to-waste part that
tried to leverage the Gulf Coast devastation to advance his
cap-and-trade climate-change agenda — that Obama warmed to his task.
Pedestrian is beneath Obama. Mr. Fix-It he is not. He is
world-historical, the visionary, come to make the oceans recede and the
planet heal.
How? By creating a glorious, new clean-green economy. And how exactly
to do that? From Washington, by presidential command, and with tens of
billions of dollars thrown around. With the liberal (and professorial)
conceit that scientific breakthroughs can be legislated into existence,
Obama proposes to give us a new industrial economy.
But is this not what we’ve been trying to do for decades with ethanol —
which remains a monumental boondoggle, economically unviable and
environmentally damaging to boot — as with yesterday’s panacea,
synfuels, into which Jimmy Carter poured billions?
Notice that Obama no longer talks about Spain, which until recently he
repeatedly cited for its visionary subsidies of a blossoming new
clean-energy industry. That’s because Spain, now on the verge of
bankruptcy, is pledged to reverse its disastrously bloated public
spending, including radical cuts in subsidies to its uneconomical
photovoltaic industry.
There’s a reason petroleum is such a durable fuel. It’s not, as Obama
fatuously suggested, because of oil-company lobbying, but because it is
very portable, energy-dense, and easy to use.
But this doesn’t stop Obama from thinking that he can mandate a
superior substitute into being. His argument: Well, if we can put a man
on the moon, why not this?
Aside from the irony that this most tiresome of clichés comes
from a
president who is canceling our program to return to the moon, it is
utterly meaningless. The wars on cancer and on poverty have been
similarly sold. They remain unwon. Why? Because we knew how to land on
the moon. We had the physics to do it. Cancer cells, on the other hand,
are far more complex than the Newtonian equations that govern a moon
landing. Equally daunting are the laws of social interaction — even
assuming there are any — that sustain a culture of poverty.
Similarly, we don’t know how to make renewables that match the
efficiency of fossil fuels. In the interim, it is Obama and his
Democratic allies who, as they dream of such scientific leaps, are
unwilling to use existing technologies to reduce our dependence on
foreign (i.e., imported) and risky (i.e., deepwater) sources of oil —
twin dependencies that Obama decried in Tuesday’s speech.
“Part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the
surface of the ocean,” said Obama, is “because we’re running out of
places to drill on land and in shallow water.”
Running out of places on land? What about the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge or the less-known National Petroleum Reserve — 23 million acres
of Alaska’s North Slope, near the existing pipeline and designated
nearly a century ago for petroleum development — that have been shut
down by the federal government?
Running out of shallow-water sources? How about the Pacific Ocean, a
not-inconsiderable body of water, and its vast U.S. coastline? That’s
been off-limits to new drilling for three decades.
We haven’t run out of safer and more easily accessible sources of oil.
We’ve been run off them by environmentalists. They prefer to dream
green instead.
Obama is dreamer in chief: He wants to take us to this green future
“even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don’t
yet precisely know how we’re going to get there.” Here’s the offer: Tax
carbon, spend trillions, and put government in control of the energy
economy — and he will take you he knows not where, by way of a road he
knows not which.
That’s why Tuesday’s speech was received with such consternation. It
was so untethered from reality. The Gulf is gushing, and the president
is talking mystery roads to unknown destinations. That passes for
vision, and vision is Obama’s thing. It sure beats cleaning up beaches.
Climate Deal Likely to Bear Big Price
Tag
NYTIMES
By JOHN M. BRODER
December 9, 2009
WASHINGTON — If negotiators reach an accord at the climate talks in
Copenhagen it will entail profound shifts in energy production,
dislocations in how and where people live, sweeping changes in
agriculture and forestry and the creation of complex new markets in
global warming pollution credits.
So what is all this going to cost?
The short answer is trillions of dollars over the next few decades. It
is a significant sum but a relatively small fraction of the world’s
total economic output. In energy infrastructure alone, the
transformational ambitions that delegates to the United Nations climate
change conference are expected to set in the coming days will cost more
than $10 trillion in additional investment from 2010 to 2030, according
to a new estimate from the International Energy Agency.
As scary as that number sounds, the agency said that the costs would
ramp up relatively slowly and be largely offset by economic benefits in
new jobs, improved lives, more secure energy supplies and a reduced
danger of climate catastrophe. Most of the investment will come from
private rather than public funds, the agency contends.
“People often ask about the costs,” said Kevin Parker, the global head
of Deutsche Bank Asset Management, who tracks climate policy for the
bank. “But the figures people tend to cite don’t take into account
conservation and efficiency measures that are easily available. And
they don’t look at the cost of inaction, which is the extinction of the
human race. Period.”
Whatever global warming’s effects — and most scientific projections are
less dire — there are also varying estimates of the economic costs of
failing to act to address the problem soon, some of them very high.
In Copenhagen, some of the most intense and difficult discussions for
negotiators center on any potential agreement’s near-term financial
arrangements. Some of the poorest and most vulnerable nations are
calling for a gigantic transfer of wealth from the industrialized world
to island nations and countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America that
are most likely to feel the ravages of a changing climate.
Many poor nations are insisting that wealthier nations make deeper cuts
in their emissions and contribute more money to help the poorer
countries, a split that widened in Copenhagen on Tuesday as competing
documents of a potential agreement circulated.
Over time, some of the hundreds of billions of dollars the poorer
countries are demanding will begin to flow, as global carbon markets
become established and governments in rich countries begin to open the
spigot of public spending.
But in the meantime, the industrialized countries have proposed a
relatively modest fund of about $10 billion a year for each of the next
three or four years to help poorer countries adapt. Even that effort
remains the subject of conflict over which countries should contribute
how much, what body should oversee the spending and how to determine
which projects qualify for finance.
President Obama’s spokesman said last week that the president supported
a short-term fund to aid developing nations and that the United States
would pay “its fair share.” In many multilateral efforts, the United
States picks up a quarter to a third of the tab.
“Providing this assistance,” the White House statement said, “is not
only a humanitarian imperative — it’s an investment in our common
security, as no climate change accord can succeed if it does not help
all countries reduce their emissions.”
The money would be used to help developing nations reduce emissions by
switching to renewable energy sources like wind and solar and by
compensating landowners for not cutting down or burning forests, a
major source of carbon dioxide emissions. Other funds might be used to
adjust to effects of a changing climate, like rising sea levels, by
building flood walls or relocating settlements to higher ground.
Mr. Obama will travel to Copenhagen on Dec. 18 to attend the final day
of the meeting, a sign that the White House believes that a
far-reaching accord, including deals on some of the sticky financial
issues, is possible.
“This is the question that is being posed in Copenhagen,” said Robert
N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at Harvard
University. “How much money do the developed countries have to put on
the table to bring developing countries into the conversation?”
Mr. Stavins said that the bulk of the money would have to come from
private investment because, he said, it was “inconceivable” that the
governments of the wealthy countries would come up with adequate
financing and also because private entities spent money much more
efficiently.
The climate and energy legislation passed by the House in June sets
aside roughly $8 billion a year for assistance to developing countries
by 2030, Mr. Stavins said. That figure, he suggested, represents the
upper limit of public financial support from the United States.
The perspective from the developing world is, not surprisingly,
somewhat different.
Álvaro Umaña Quesada, the leader of Costa Rica’s climate
delegation, said that it was important to the developing world to have
early resources and a predictable flow of long-term financing. He said
that the $10 billion in so-called quick start financing that was now on
the table was adequate but that such spending had to rise to roughly
$80 billion and as much as $150 billion a year by 2020.
“That is not very much compared to the size of the world economy or the
financial crisis bailouts,” he said. “There are great needs for
adaptation, where the small island nations are really at risk. Some of
them are one severe weather event away from disappearing.”
The European Union has endorsed a fund of that size; the United States
remains noncommittal. The Obama administration has asked for $1.2
billion in climate-related financing in the 2010 budget, far below the
needs being discussed at Copenhagen. But administration officials said
they would seek more money for international climate programs in future
years.
Perhaps the most detailed analysis of the financing needs of any
climate change agreement comes from Project Catalyst, an initiative of
the European Union and ClimateWorks, a foundation-supported policy
group based in San Francisco. The group’s work has helped shape the
negotiations in Copenhagen.
The group estimates that roughly $100 billion will be needed by 2020 to
finance climate-change programs in the developing world. About half
could come from the growing global market in carbon emissions credits
under a cap-and-trade system, which would be worth an estimated $2
trillion a year by 2020.
A cap-and-trade system is already operating in Europe and is under
consideration by Congress. Such a system sets a ceiling on the carbon
emissions of a given country or industry and allows trading of
pollution permits within the cap. As the overall limit on emissions
grows tighter, the price of pollution permits rises, creating a sizable
market in carbon credits.
Countries would grant some of the carbon market allowances directly to
energy and environmental programs in the developing world, with other
funds coming from a relatively small fee on each transaction.
An additional $10 billion to $20 billion would come from taxes on fuels
used in aviation and shipping. The rest, perhaps $25 billion to $35
billion, would be loans and grants from industrialized nations to
poorer countries, split roughly three ways among the United States, the
European Union and Canada, Japan and Australia.
“The good news is that everybody now is supporting our proposal for
financing,” said Dr. Umaña, the Costa Rican delegate. “The bad
news is that it’s happening 15 years too late. Without real money on
the table, this will be a disaster.”
Let's see...if Manhattan Island
geothermal project had no problem, Northern California shouldn't
have one either?
Drilling Ordeals Said to Delay
Geothermal Project
NYTIMES
By JAMES GLANZ
August 20, 2009
The Obama administration’s first major test of geothermal energy as a
significant alternative to fossil fuels has fallen seriously behind
schedule, several federal scientists said this week, even as the
project is under review because of the earthquakes it could generate in
Northern California.
Intended to extract heat from hot bedrock, the project has been delayed
because the bit on a giant rig, meant to drill more than two miles
underground, has struggled to pierce surface rock formations, the
scientists said.
The bit has snapped off at least once and become repeatedly fouled in a
shallow formation called cap rock, and the drillers have twice been
forced to pull it out and essentially start the hole over again.
Late last year, the project, undertaken by a start-up company called
AltaRock Energy, received $6.25 million in financing from the Energy
Department, in hopes that it would be the first of dozens of projects
to produce renewable energy by fracturing rock at the bottom of a deep
hole and then circulating water through the cracks to generate steam.
But last month, after an article in The New York Times raised questions
on whether AltaRock had been forthcoming about earthquakes generated by
a similar project in Basel, Switzerland, the Energy Department and the
Bureau of Land Management informed the company that it would not be
allowed to fracture rock until the department completed a new review of
whether the project would be safe. The company was allowed to keep
drilling, however, down toward the depth at which it would begin the
fracturing.
The scientists who told of delays in the project spoke only on the
condition that they not be identified, in order to preserve their
access to company progress reports. The scientists said that after
nearly two months of the highly expensive drilling, the rig had reached
depths of less than 4,000 feet. The original schedule called for it to
reach a final depth of 12,000 feet, or 2.3 miles, after no more than 50
days of drilling, according to company officials.
The problems are particularly surprising given that the drilling
essentially started at 3,200 feet, at the bottom of an older hole at
the site, north of San Francisco at a place called the Geysers.
The company has also raised some $30 million in venture capital. Among
AltaRock’s high-profile investors are Google and the investment firms
Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Advocates for the technique, known as an “enhanced geothermal system,”
say it could eventually generate vast amounts of energy and reduce
America’s dependence on fossil fuels. But the latest delays come as
AltaRock awaits word on whether the federal government will allow the
fracturing of rock at all.
The fracturing would be virtually guaranteed to induce earthquakes,
which the company has said would be so small as to be nearly
imperceptible but which local residents and some scientists fear could
be larger. The project is in one of the world’s most seismically active
areas.
Although the Basel earthquakes caused only minor structural damage,
they frightened many in the city and led to the shutdown of the project
there. The Energy Department review, likely to be released in the next
few weeks, is expected to compare the Basel and California projects and
determine whether AltaRock’s effort is safe.
The department is “monitoring the progress of the drilling at the site
and is examining the question of induced seismicity there as we weigh a
final decision on the project,” said a spokeswoman, Stephanie Mueller.
“We continue to believe that enhanced geothermal systems have enormous
potential to provide renewable baseload energy to heat and power homes
and businesses,” she said. The term “baseload energy” is used to refer
to sources essentially constant, like the heat in the earth’s crust,
rather than intermittent, like wind and solar energy.
AltaRock declined a request for comment on the status of its drilling.
“Please be advised that our policy is not to comment on ongoing
commercial operations,” James T. Turner, the company’s senior vice
president for operations, said in an e-mail message.
As it waits for the outcome of the Energy Department’s review, the
company has repeatedly pledged to avoid what it calls serious mistakes
committed by the Basel project. In particular, AltaRock has said that
the Basel project drilled in the vicinity of a major known fault that,
the company says, was responsible for a huge earthquake that devastated
the city in 1356.
But scientists at the Swiss Seismological Service and other European
institutions say the fault responsible for that earthquake has never
been clearly identified, let alone localized beneath the geothermal
project.
“The Basel project did not drill into any known fault in the area,”
said Nicholas Deichmann of the Swiss Seismological Service. Most of
AltaRock’s public statements about that project, he said, “are simply
wrong.”
In response, a scientist on AltaRock’s project said its description of
the geothermal effort in Basel was based on documents published by
scientists both in and outside the project there.
Deep
in Bedrock, Clean Energy and
Quake Fears
NYTIMES
By JAMES GLANZ
June 24, 2009
BASEL, Switzerland — Markus O. Häring, a former oilman, was a hero
in this city of medieval cathedrals and intense environmental passion
three years ago, all because he had drilled a hole three miles deep
near the corner of Neuhaus Street and Shafer Lane.
He was prospecting for a vast source of clean, renewable energy that
seemed straight out of a Jules Verne novel: the heat simmering within
the earth’s bedrock.
All seemed to be going well — until Dec. 8, 2006, when the project set
off an earthquake, shaking and damaging buildings and terrifying many
in a city that, as every schoolchild here learns, had been devastated
exactly 650 years before by a quake that sent two steeples of the
Münster Cathedral tumbling into the Rhine...read full story here.
Wave Power
Development Hits Some Rocks
NYTIMES
By Kate Galbraith
May 20, 2009, 8:35 am
Portugal’s wave power project, which uses a system undulating
generators like those above, as been grounded. Last month, the Wall
Street Journal reported that the world’s furthest-along wave power
project, off the coast of Portugal, was out of the water and in
financial trouble.
The project, a farm of floating, electricity-generating sea snakes, is
a casualty of the economic crisis. Its majority owner, the Australian
firm Babcock & Brown, is in bankruptcy proceedings. The wave
devices are on shore for repairs and may not be relaunched until a new
partner acquires the Babcock & Brown stake.
“At the present time we are still in confidential discussions with a
potential replacement for B&B as the other shareholder in the
Portugal project,” said Phil Metcalf, the chief executive of Pelamis
Wave Power, which supplies the sea-snake devices and is also the
Portugal project’s minority owner, in an e-mail message.
He declined to discuss the topic further, and pointed to a statement on
the company’s Web site.
“The Pelamis/Babcock relationship is an excellent analogy for where we
are as an industry,” said Sean O’Neill, the president of the Ocean
Renewable Energy Coalition, in an e-mail message. “Most companies are
in the demonstration/pilot phase so we’ll be seeing some fits and
starts.”
Some wave power developers are pulling back on plans in the United
States. “Energy developers have given up on about a third of the wave
power projects they proposed along the West Coast,” reported Northern
California Public Broadcasting earlier this month. Some withdrew their
permit applications from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Others had their applications rejected.
Two of the withdrawn permits (and one license) belonged to Finavera, a
Canadian company whose wave-power device sank off of the coast of
Oregon in 2007. Finavera subsequently decided to focus more on wind
power.
Roger Bedard of the Electric Power Research Institute wrote in an
e-mail message that the pullback on permits, far from being dire,
represented an inevitable weeding-out of the applicant pool. It is easy
to file for a preliminary permit because there is no filing fee, he
noted, and some companies filed “without much of a chance or the
know-how to develop a project.”
“The good news,” Mr. Bedard continued, “is that the wave energy
developers who are well financed and experienced, like PG&E here in
California and Ocean Power Technology in Oregon, are moving forward.”
In Europe, Mr. Metcalf of Pelamis Wave Power also said work was
progressing on a next-generation wave device, “which we have designed
to be much more capable, and will be up and running in Orkney next
year.”
Salazar: Wind Power Can Replace 3, 000
Coal Plants
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:43 a.m. ET
April 6, 2009
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) -- Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says
windmills off the East Coast could generate the same amount of
electricity as 3,000 coal-fired power plants.
He also says domestic oil and natural gas drilling will continue to be
part of the nation's energy equation.
The secretary spoke at a public hearing Monday in Atlantic City. The
hearing is the first of four to be held around the country to discuss
how energy resources such as oil, gas, wind and waves should figure
into the Obama administration's energy policy.
Salazar also is exploring what to do now that a moratorium on offshore
oil drilling has expired.
Environmentalists want to bar oil and gas drilling off the East Coast.
The industry says oil and gas drilling can be safe.
No longer in issue, what?
Editorial: E.P.A.’s Doctor No
NYTIMES
December 25, 2008
On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the
federal Clean Air Act plainly empowered the Environmental Protection
Agency to regulate greenhouse gases from cars and trucks — and, by
inference, other sources like power plants.
There was great hope at the time that the decision would force
President Bush to confront the issue of climate change, which he had
largely ignored for six years. Instead, it became the catalyst for a
campaign of scientific obfuscation, political flimflam and simple
dereliction of duty — which United States Senator Barbara Boxer aptly
described as a “master plan” — to ensure that the administration did as
little as possible.
The guiding intelligence behind the master plan has been Vice President
Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s point man, in turn, has been Stephen Johnson,
the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
It was Mr. Johnson who refused to grant California a normally routine
waiver that would have allowed it to impose its own greenhouse gas
standards on cars and trucks. It was Mr. Johnson who was trotted out to
explain why the administration could not possibly fulfill the Supreme
Court’s mandate before leaving office.
And it was Mr. Johnson, in one final burst of negativity, who declared
last week that his agency was under no obligation to even consider
greenhouse gas emissions when deciding whether to allow a new
coal-fired power plant to go forward.
The case involved a proposed power plant in Utah and turned on an
arcane regulatory question: whether a Clean Air Act provision requiring
the monitoring of carbon-dioxide emissions also meant that they could
be controlled. This sort of question would normally prompt careful
review. Mr. Johnson responded with a 19-page memorandum that added up
to one word: No.
Senator Boxer has gone so far as to call Mr. Johnson’s peremptory
judgment illegal.
The only thing saving this administration from a total wipeout on clean
air issues was a timely decision on Tuesday from the Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit. It temporarily reinstated the
Clean Air Interstate Rule — a 2005 regulation aimed at reducing soot
and smog, and the most important clean air proposal to emerge from Mr.
Bush’s E.P.A. In July, the court found the rule deficient on several
counts, but on appeal it decided that a flawed rule was better than
none at all.
So there we have it. One original initiative in eight years, saved at
the bell. That’s a poor showing, and the Democrats are hardly alone in
hoping for better under an Obama administration. Last week, two
prominent moderate Republicans — William K. Reilly, who ran the E.P.A.
under President George H.W. Bush, and William D. Ruckelshaus, who
served as administrator under both Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald
Reagan — sent a little-noticed but eloquent letter to President-elect
Barack Obama.
The gist of the letter was that the E.P.A. could be an enormously
positive force in the fight against climate change and oil dependency.
All it needed was someone who believed in its mission and was prepared
to use the laws already on the books. Granting California its waiver,
carrying out the Supreme Court decision, regulating emissions from
vehicles and power plants — all this and more, they wrote, could be
accomplished with the statutory tools at hand.
This exhortation from two veterans of the environmental wars was
designed to encourage not only Mr. Obama, but also Lisa Jackson, the
woman he has chosen to run the agency. It was also, however, an arrow
aimed at the ideologues who have been running the agency for the last
half-dozen years — and a lament for how little they have done with the
weapons Congress gave them.
Bad news on this
front just a few weeks later?
Weston's Rep.
Stripp looks at green energy
Weston FORUM
Saturday, December 06, 2008
State Rep. John Stripp of Weston (R-135) participated in an Energize CT
panel recently with the speaker of the House and other leaders from the
legislature’s Energy, Commerce and Finance committees.
There were presentations on both traditional and alternative energy
sources including fuel cells, solar energy, biofuels, and nuclear power
as well as conservation and “green collar” job creators.
“If we really want to reduce Connecticut’s dependence on foreign oil,
there has to be a proactive, coordinated effort that encourages
alternative energy sources and conservation in a way that stimulates
job growth in emerging ‘green collar’ industries,” said Mr. Stripp,
whose district includes Weston, Easton and Redding.
The non-profit American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy ranks
Connecticut third among all states, behind only California and Oregon,
in promoting energy independence and investment in cost-effective
energy efficiencies.
“In order for these programs to continue to grow and succeed, a
trained, qualified workforce is a must,” Mr. Stripp said.
Connecticut is already one of the nation’s largest hubs for companies
that produce fuel cells, supporting an estimated 2,100 related jobs.
Last session, Mr. Stripp voted afor legislation to promote the fuel
cell industry in Connecticut by supporting the buying of
hydrogen-electric hybrid buses and converting Bradley International
Airport to the world’s first airport to run on fuel cells.
“The enhancement of ‘green energy’ research and development, as well as
the growth of ‘green energy’ manufacturing, represent major pieces of
Connecticut’s economic future, and the next few years will be crucial
to determine just how big that piece can grow,” said Mr. Stripp, the
head Republican on the Commerce committee.
Mr. Stripp believes “green collar” jobs can become a bigger part of
Connecticut’s economy as development of alternative energies and
efficiency efforts continue to grow.
Connecticut’s public education systems, including technical high
schools, community colleges and state universities, are gearing up to
transition the workforce to compete for Connecticut’s share of these
“green collar” jobs, he said.
Clever New Yorkers make fun of the Mayor (l.) and who can forget
West Side Story - "When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way/From
your first cigarette to your last dying day..."
4.2
Million 'Green' Jobs Possible
Hartford Courant
By H. JOSEF HEBERT | Associated Press
October 6, 2008
A major shift to renewable energy and efficiency is expected to produce
4.2 million new environmentally friendly "green" jobs during the next
three decades, according to a study commissioned by the nation's mayors.
The study, released last week by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, says
that about 750,000 people work today in what can be considered green
jobs — from scientists and engineers researching alternative fuels to
makers of wind turbines and more energy-efficient products.
But that's less than one half of 1 percent of total employment. By
2038, another 4.2 million green jobs are expected to be added,
accounting for 10 percent of new job growth during the next 30 years,
according to the report by Global Insight Inc.
"It could be the fastest-growing segment of the United States economy
over the next several decades and dramatically increase its share of
total employment," said the report, which The Associated Press
obtained. However, the study cautioned, such job growth won't be
realized without an aggressive shift away from traditional fossil fuels
toward alternative energy and a significant improvement in energy
efficiency.
For example, it assumes that by 2038 alternative energy will account
for 40 percent of electricity production, with half of that coming from
wind and solar; widespread retrofitting of buildings to achieve a 35
percent reduction in electricity use; and 30 percent of motor fuels
coming from ethanol or biodiesel.
Alternative energy, such as wind, geothermal, biomass and solar,
currently accounts for less than 3 percent of electricity generation,
and nonfossil sources, such as ethanol and biodiesel, account for about
5 percent of all motor fuels, the report notes.
Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, the conference's president, said the report
makes "a very compelling economic argument for investing in the green
economy and that we're going to get a huge return for it."
"These are things we have to do," Diaz said in a telephone interview,
adding that "Washington needs to get on the train."
Both presidential candidates have cited the jobs potential if the
country embraces alternative energy and efficiency.
Democratic nominee Barack Obama predicts that investments in a "clean
energy economy" during the next 10 years "will help the private sector
create 5 million new green jobs" — a more ambitious projection than
outlined by the study provided to the mayors.
GOP rival John McCain's energy blueprint makes no specific job growth
forecast, but declares the development of green jobs and green
technology "vital to our economic future."
The report predicts that the biggest job gain will be from the
increased use of alternative transportation fuels, with 1.5 million
additional jobs, followed by the renewable power generating sector,
with 1.2 million new jobs.
Another 81,000 jobs will be generated by industries related to making
homes and commercial buildings more energy-efficient, the study said.
And it predicted an additional 1.4 million green jobs related to
engineering, research, consulting and legal work.
"We're trying to show the size of the green jobs economy," assuming
policy shifts toward less dependence on fossil fuels, said Jim Diffley
of Global Insight.
Architects
and Engineers Express Doubt
About Bloomberg’s Windmill Proposal
NYTIMES
By KEN BELSON and DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: August 20, 2008
Interviews with architects, engineers and energy experts on Wednesday
suggest that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposal to place wind
turbines atop the city’s skyscrapers and bridges, as well as off the
coastline of Queens and Brooklyn, would be complicated and expensive
and barely begin to meet the growth in demand for electricity that is
expected in the coming years.
Mayor Bloomberg's plan to put windmills atop skyscrapers has been
criticized, but what about these two approaches, in the illustrations
above and below?
“The smaller turbines that he’s talking about almost don’t pay in terms
of kilowatts per hour produced,” said Daniel Karpen, a Long Island
engineering consultant who has studied the feasibility of wind power.
“He’s going to need money to build them, and then you end up with a
tremendous amount of red tape. It’s a nightmare.”
The thought of making the most of a clean, bottomless resource like
wind is certainly an attractive one. But the challenges of harvesting
that resource in a densely populated city like New York are manifold,
which is why several initiatives to experiment with wind in recent
years have not taken flight.
Skyscrapers would have to be designed — or retrofitted at great cost —
to accommodate the extra weight, vibration and swaying of the turbines.
Insurers would have to be persuaded that turbines are worth the risk.
And New York is not a particularly windy city, so a few buildings
facing New York Harbor might be the only sites that make sense.
Even if Mr. Bloomberg could find investors willing to build turbines
capable of generating 1,000 megawatts of electricity, experts said,
operators of the city’s grid would be able to count on only 100
megawatts, or less than 1 percent of peak demand.
Solar panels, by contrast, can be put on an array of structures and are
active on hot, sunny days when electricity use is high. (New York is
windiest on winter nights, when demand is low).
“New York is really a solar city,” said Anthony Pereira, chief
executive of altPower, a company that helps design, develop and install
solar and wind power and is a member of the Alliance for Clean Energy
New York, an industry group.
Mr. Pereira said that some solar panel installations could pay for
themselves in four years, compared with as many as 25 years for small
wind turbines.
Speaking on Wednesday in Washington Heights, the mayor said that his
proposals for wind power were only the “very beginning” and that “if
you don’t ask, you’re never going to find out” whether new ideas make
economic sense.
“Windmills are no panacea for our problems, but they can help,” he
said, a day after making his proposal in a speech at the National Clean
Energy Summit in Las Vegas. “No one thing will fix the problems we have
created over the years.”
The mayor said that he saw windmills off the shore of Blackpool,
England, where they appeared as dots on the horizon. But the track
record for such projects in New York is spotty.
Last year, the Long Island Power Authority’s proposal to build dozens
of windmills off Jones Beach was shot down because the projected costs
skyrocketed and the cost of electricity from the turbines would have
been at least double that of power from traditional sources.
Wind turbines have been used at a handful of sites in New York City,
including Battery Park City and 34th Street at the East River. They
have been installed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard site and soon will be
placed at a commercial building in the Melrose section of the Bronx.
A serious consideration of harvesting wind energy on New York’s
skyscrapers and bridges, however, requires the abandonment of any
fanciful idea about installing windmills on the Empire State Building
or the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge.
First of all, it is unlikely that any existing structure would be able
to withstand the extra swaying, twisting, vibrating and weight that
turbines impose. So the tower’s structural framework would have to be
retrofitted to handle the new loads, adding enormously to a project’s
cost with relatively little yield.
Second, the familiar windmill or wind farm turbine has a horizontal
rotor with radiating blades. These would pose a tremendous liability in
the city, where a flying blade could do great damage. (Five people were
killed in 1977 by a helicopter blade that snapped off atop what is now
the MetLife Building on Park Avenue.)
There are vertical-axis wind turbines, some of which resemble giant
food processor blades, that can collect wind from any direction and
have been the choice of several architects who considered wind farms
for the city.
Eight vertical wind turbines were integral to the original
design of the new 1 World Trade Center, also known as Freedom Tower, by
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. They would have been situated within an
open-air, cable-framed structure at the tower’s upper reaches, though
they were never envisioned as a major power source.
“It would have been a small but identifiable portion of the building’s
needs,” said Carl Galioto, a Skidmore partner. “We were hoping that, at
peak capacity, it would have been enough to power the elevators. If it
were able to do that, it would have been rather impressive.”
The turbines would also have served as a symbolic representation of
perpetual renewal, certainly a meaningful theme at ground zero.
But Gov. George E. Pataki expressed concern about the danger the blades
would pose to migrating birds, and others worried about them icing up.
Before these issues could be resolved, the New York Police Department
raised objections to the tower’s overall security provisions,
compelling a redesign that abandoned the wind farm notion.
More than 30 vertical wind turbines, each about 50 feet tall and 12
feet in diameter, were included in the Kohn Pedersen Fox design of the
stadium proposed for the New York Jets on the West Side.
“They were designed to capture the prevailing winds from the Hudson
River,” said Trent J. Tesch, a senior associate principal at the firm.
He added that their presence within the industrial-looking facade would
have “expressed the frenetic energy of what was happening inside.”
In combination with photovoltaic cells, Mr. Tesch said, the plan called
for the turbines to produce enough power to satisfy all the stadium’s
needs when a game was being played and to generate energy for other
users when the team was not playing. The stadium project was scuttled
in 2005 when legislative leaders in Albany failed to support it.
Kohn Pedersen Fox is proposing an array of vertical turbines for an
exhibition hall called the Ubiquitous Life Building in New Songdo City,
South Korea. These would collect the wind that hits the building’s
facade, forcing it to cross the rooftop. “They don’t necessarily have
to be incredibly high up to be productive,” Mr. Tesch said.
Urban turbine farms might be productively situated at industrial sites
around New York Harbor, where they could take advantage of low-rise
surroundings and wind off the water, Mr. Galioto said. And there are
other ways of collecting wind energy in large structures. Skidmore is
working on the 71-story Pearl River Tower in Guangzhou, China, where
the exterior walls of the mechanical-equipment floors are shaped into
enormous scoops to direct the wind into turbines inside. These will
generate energy for the heating, ventilating and air-conditioning, the
firm said.
“There’s an example of building design,” Mr. Galioto said, “where wind
power is integrated within the building and one doesn’t need all sorts
of fanciful contraptions appended to the top.”
We
heard about this in Weston,
thanks to the
Global Warming Committee!
Breaking free of oil: Home powered
with geothermal energy
Stamford ADVOCATE
By Richard Lee, Business Editor
Article Launched: 08/18/2008 02:36:25 AM EDT
STAMFORD - Two homeowners think they have found a way to beat Big
Oil. Joe Comerford and Lynne Kudzy are heating their 50-year-old
house on Sawmill Road in North Stamford with a geothermal system they
said will safeguard them against a volatile oil market.
"It's a pocketbook issue. It's a house with a big footprint so we were
a captive to oil heat," Comerford said of the four-bedroom,
31Ú2-bath house that measures more than 3,000 square feet.
Comerford and Kudzy, who had their geothermal system installed early
last year, still use oil to heat their water but plan to connect that
to their geothermal system. The technology uses an
environmentally friendly refrigerant that promotes heat transfer. Water
vapor is compressed by being circulated through electric heat pumps in
the basement to create warm air in the winter. The compression is
decreased in summer to create cool air.
The home did not have a central air conditioner, so they installed a
unit and ductwork so it was in place for the geothermal system.
"You get central air with geothermal. If you have central air, no
ductwork needs to be installed, and the cost will be lower," Comerford
said.
The geothermal system was installed for $40,000.
"The entire thing was done on our nickel," he said.
That's because there is little financial assistance in Connecticut for
geothermal installations. Connecticut Light & Power and
United Illuminating Co. offer a small incentive for geothermal energy -
up to $3,000 per site. The Connecticut Clean Energy Fund does not
have funds for geothermal energy, said David Goldberg, manager of
strategic initiatives.
"In the past six months, we've been looking into the benefits of
ground-source heat pumps," Goldberg said. "The one thing that the
report indicates is an overall increase in consuming electricity. You
have an electric motor for the heat pump."
Since geothermal reduces reliance on heating oil, the fund is
determining the benefits of the technology. State Rep. William
Tong, D-Stamford, who plans to visit Comerford and Kudzy's house, is a
member of the General Assembly's Energy Committee and helped draft the
energy reform bill passed in 2007.
"One of the challenges, given the state's finances, is maintaining
those rebate and incentive programs," Tong said. "The governor needs to
make them a priority. I'm going to push on the Energy Committee for
funding energy assistance programs."
Geothermal was part of the Stamford Energy Future Expo that Tong hosted
in May at city hall. The event was supported by the Connecticut
Clean Energy Fund, CL&P and Mayor Dannel Malloy's office.
Tong is planning a similar event next year and wants Comerford to be a
speaker.
"I hope Joe spreads the gospel," Tong said.
Comerford and Kudzy did their homework before beginning the project,
settling on a system manufactured by Earth to Air Systems LLC in
Franklin, Tenn. The results have been dramatic, because the
system cuts oil and electricity costs, Kudzy said.
"It's amazing. It cools so much more rapidly and quietly," she said,
adding that the system saves money heating and cooling the house.
"Operating costs are incredibly less with much lower electric bills.
The average house around here will pay $6,000 for oil."
Although the price of crude oil has dropped in the past few weeks,
Comerford said they made the right decision.
"We did our (return on investment) calculations when oil was about
$2.25 a gallon. We figured the payback would be eight years or less.
Oil is bad now, but it could be worse. The oil world is unstable,"
Comerford said.
He said he expects to connect the geothermal system to his hot water
tank soon, eliminating the need for oil. "It's the best big-scale
investment you can make to reduce a carbon footprint."
Comerford, who told his neighbors about his project at a Sawmill
Association neighborhood meeting in June, said they were intrigued.
"People are extremely concerned about what it's going to cost to heat
this winter," he said. "We're confident that it will be good for
resale."
Eric Morson, president of the Sawmill Association, was impressed by
what he heard, but the expense gives him second thoughts.
"It's a $30,000 expense, and the payback is long. I have two kids to
put through school," Morson said. "Oil has retreated, but it's still
above $4 a gallon. It's a tough call. It would be a kick to see the
electric meter go backward."
Installing the geothermal system took about three months and required
drilling two 300-foot-deep holes to draw 55-degree water to the
surface, Comerford said. Comerford and Kudzy used Advanced Air
Solutions in Harrisburg, Pa., to install the system. Deregulation
of electrical rates in Connecticut and New York has created a demand
for geothermal installations, and more companies are getting involved
in the industry, said Sam Pollak, project manager at Advanced Air.
"There are three or four companies in the Northeast now. About three
years ago, there was only one," Pollack said.
Geothermal has a bright future, said Don Gary of Weston, who owns
Geothermal Technologies LLC with his son, Robert Gary, and Michael
McGrath.
"We're working on a project in Weston and have four waiting," Don Gary
said.
As owner of Hybrid Homes, predecessor of Geothermal Technologies,
Robert Gary learned about installing geothermal systems, Don Gary said.
Geothermal Technologies also is a distributor of Earth to Air Systems.
Several months ago, the trio installed a geothermal system for a model
home at Windemere, a development in North Stamford, and expects to
install more as the houses are sold.
Fuel
Prices Knocking Wind Out Of
Towns: Some local governments are running on empty as new fiscal
year approaches
New London DAY
By Amy Renczkowski
Published on 5/19/2008
t's a game of roulette for some towns when it comes to
calculating fuel and oil budgets for the next year.
Many school systems and municipalities in the area are hoping they've
placed the right bets but questioning the amount they budgeted because
of the volatile oil market and the uncertainty of the economy.
Only a handful of towns have locked into set prices for oil and fuel
for next year's budget. Other towns are watching in dismay as prices
skyrocket to more than $4 a gallon.
”You kind of hold your breath and wait for a good time to do it,” said
David Erwin, superintendent of Montville schools.“This is one of the
most challenging issues for districts this year with the budget.”
The Ledyard school district played its lucky card in January and locked
into heating oil and transportation fuel for less than $3 a gallon for
the 2008-09 budget.
”When I did it, I said, 'We're either going to look brilliant or like
complete nincompoops,'” said Superintendent Michael Graner.
The process for locking in a price is supposed to be simple. Most towns
start shopping in late winter and spring, when they begin crunching
numbers for the budget year that starts in July. Many towns sign
contracts that allow them to purchase at a specified price for the
entire fiscal year. Stonington has begun locking in prices to buy
about half the heating oil that will be needed at $3.28 a gallon, half
the diesel needed for $3.42 a gallon and all 43,000 gallons of gas the
town needs for $3.29 a gallon.
But North Stonington, Old Saybrook and Montville are already
anticipating shortfalls in the amount they budgeted for next
year. Some towns aren't sure how they're going to handle the
overruns because of budget cuts. They have no extra funds.
”If I now come in and say, 'I'm sorry, I need another $30,000 for
fuel,' I don't have any place to get it anyway,” said Charles McCarthy,
business manager for North Stonington schools.
The city of New London budgeted for almost a 60 percent increase from
the $350,000 it spent on in the fiscal year ending in June 2007.
Yet the city's interim finance director, Donald Goodrich, said he
worries the $560,000 figure could still fall short of next year's true
fuel costs.
”My gut reaction is it would have to go up based on prices today,”
Goodrich said.“All bets are off right now. It's so volatile.”
The New London school system budgeted the cost of heating oil to
increase by 39 percent. Oil is expected to cost the system about
$435,000 next year. The school system also expects to spend
$166,000 on diesel and gasoline next year for transportation, said
Maria Whalen, the director of business and finance, who has anticipated
the cost of diesel to increase by 41 percent. The system uses gasoline
for only a few vehicles, she said. Oil and fuel budgets for the
Groton and Waterford schools and the town of Westerly are running on
fumes. All three are expecting a deficit for this fiscal year, which
ends in June.
Conservation
measures have given the East Lyme school district nearly 80,000 gallons
of surplus heating oil. Within the past school year, most of the
windows in the Lillie B. Haynes Elementary School were replaced, and
the school system instituted new energy conservation measures,
including turning some thermostats down. Superintendent Paul
Smotas said the school system is also considering further measures such
as installing solar panels at the high school.
Smotas said the
system, which in years past had purchased about 250,000 gallons of
heating oil, will now need to buy only 200,000. Energy
conservation is also affecting the budget next year for fuel and oil
for Waterford schools. The ongoing school consolidation project, to
move from five elementary schools to three, allowed the district to
budget about $84,000 less for fuel. And at the Quaker Hill School, the
district didn't have to budget for any fuel because it's a newly
renovated school that uses green initiatives and has a geothermal
system.
”The move to
consolidate and go with geothermal has proven to be a very fortunate
move,” said Randy Collins, superintendent of schools in Waterford.
In Montville, the renovation of schools has created a challenge for
estimating the need. Energy conservation measures are offset by
additional square footage.
”It's difficult to judge what we need,” Erwin said.“Between these high
prices coupled with the fact of new renovations ... it's a challenge.”
Ethanol, Just Recently a Savior,
Is Struggling
NYTIMES
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
February 12, 2009
Barely a year after Congress enacted an energy law meant to foster a
huge national enterprise capable of converting plants and agricultural
wastes into automotive fuel, the goals lawmakers set for the ethanol
industry are in serious jeopardy.
As recently as last summer, plants that make ethanol from corn were
sprouting across the Midwest. But now, with motorists driving less in
the economic downturn, the industry is burdened with excess capacity,
and plants are shutting down virtually every week.
In the meantime, plans are lagging for a new generation of factories
that were supposed to produce ethanol from substances like wood chips
and crop waste, overcoming the drawbacks of corn ethanol. That nascent
branch of the industry concedes it has virtually no chance of meeting
Congressional production mandates that kick in next year.
The decline in fortunes has been extreme for both kinds of ethanol
since last summer, when $145-a-barrel oil appeared to shift fuel
economics in their favor.
Only months ago, refiners in some regions were buying up as much corn
ethanol as they could to blend with expensive gasoline, effectively
keeping pump prices down slightly. Meanwhile, investors seemed willing
to finance plants to produce next-generation biofuels.
But since the summer, oil and gasoline prices have plunged, while the
price of corn, from which virtually all commercial ethanol in this
country is made, has remained relatively high. Refiners are limiting
their ethanol purchases to a level required to meet federal blending
mandates — a level far below the industry’s capacity.
“The ethanol industry is on its back despite the billions of dollars
they have gotten in taxpayer assistance, and a guaranteed market,” said
Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy analyst at Rice University.
The government’s Energy Information Administration recently projected
that the industry would fall short of the targets for expanded use of
ethanol and other biofuels that Congress set in a 2007 energy law.
“It’s possible we may have to look at the targets again,” said Senator
Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the chairman of the Senate Energy and
Natural Resources Committee.
VeraSun Energy, one of the nation’s largest ethanol producers, has
suspended production at 12 of its 16 plants and is planning to sell
production facilities. In recent days Renew Energy, Cascade Grain
Products and Northeast Biofuels have filed for bankruptcy protection.
Pacific Ethanol said it would suspend operations at its Madera, Calif.
plant.
Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade
group, estimated that of the country’s 150 ethanol companies and 180
plants, 10 or more companies have shut down 24 plants over the last
three months. That has idled about 2 billion gallons out of 12.5
billion gallons of annual production capacity. Mr. Dinneen estimated
that a dozen more companies were in distress.
Ronald H. Miller, the president and chief executive of Aventine
Renewable Energy, said, “The economics right now are very poor.”
Aventine has suspended construction of one Nebraska plant and delayed
completion of a second in Indiana.
This is not how it was supposed to be when Congress mandated in
2007
that refiners blend increasing amounts of ethanol into the country’s
transportation fuel supply. The law came at a time when the country’s
thirst for gasoline seemed unquenchable, and oil prices seemed only to
go up.
In an effort to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil and to
lower the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming,
Congress mandated a doubling of corn ethanol use, to 15 billion gallons
a year by 2015. Congress also mandated, by 2022, the use of an
additional 21 billion gallons of ethanol
and other biofuels produced
from materials collectively known as biomass.
The potential materials
include corn stubble, wood chips and straw.
Congress hoped that advanced biofuels would overcome the longstanding
controversies associated with corn ethanol, including the contention
that its production raises food prices. Congress started small,
decreeing that industry produce 100 million gallons of advanced
biofuels next year and 250 million gallons in 2011. But it is becoming
clear that even these modest targets will not be met.
Producing the advanced fuels entails breaking down a tough material,
cellulose, that is abundant in corn cobs, wood chips and other
biological waste, then converting it to liquid fuel. While scientists
have proven it can be done, the cost is still high, and little if any
cellulosic ethanol is being produced at commercial scale.
Carlos A. Riva, president and chief executive of Verenium, a company
working to produce ethanol from sugar cane waste, said that solving the
technological hurdles for this type of fuel was “not a slam dunk.” But
he and other executives say they are optimistic the challenges can be
overcome, and the 2011 and 2012 targets may be met a few years late.
Small, mostly private companies that go by names like Range Fuels, Poet
and BlueFire Ethanol have built pilot plants and hope to move into
commercial production. But private investment in advanced biofuels has
plummeted since the economy went sour late last year, and it is unclear
if the industry can scale up. “Cellulosic ethanol is something that is
always five years away and five years later you get to the point where
it’s still five years away,” said Aaron Brady, an energy expert at
Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm.
With gasoline consumption declining even as federal mandates for
ethanol are increasing, demand for cellulosic ethanol may be
insufficient anyway.
Energy experts project that national gasoline consumption in 2009 and
2010 will be 6 percent or more below the 2007 level, and future ethanol
production targets could represent more than 10 percent of gasoline
production. Since regulations set a 10 percent blend limit for ethanol
in most gasoline, there would be no place for ethanol production to go.
“Without moving the blend wall, there is no future for cellulosic
ethanol,” said Jeff Broin, president and chief executive of Poet, a
company with interests in corn and cellulosic ethanol.
Automobile manufacturers say most of their cars are not designed to run
on higher ethanol concentrations. But the Environmental Protection
Agency and the Department of Energy are conducting studies to see if
the 10 percent limit could be raised.
Senator Bingaman said he expected those tests to be completed over the
next year or so, and he would like to see higher blend levels for
ethanol.
“There’s no doubt when we wrote that bill, we did not anticipate the
recession we are currently sinking into,” he said. “Exactly what that
requires us to do as far as changing the law, I am not clear on yet.”
Obama
Camp Closely Linked With Ethanol
NYTIMES
By LARRY ROHTER
Published: June 23, 2008
When VeraSun Energy inaugurated a new ethanol processing plant last
summer in Charles City, Iowa, some of that industry’s most prominent
boosters showed up. Leaders of the National Corn Growers Association
and the Renewable Fuels Association, for instance, came to help cut the
ribbon — and so did Senator Barack Obama.
Then running far behind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in name
recognition and in the polls, Mr. Obama was in the midst of a campaign
swing through the state where he would eventually register his first
caucus victory. And as befits a senator from Illinois, the country’s
second largest corn-producing state, he delivered a ringing endorsement
of ethanol as an alternative fuel.
Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the
influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has
powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to
domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn, he also has
advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a
time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the
parties and their presidential candidates.
In the heart of the Corn Belt that August day, Mr. Obama argued that
embracing ethanol “ultimately helps our national security, because
right now we’re sending billions of dollars to some of the most hostile
nations on earth.” America’s oil dependence, he added, “makes it more
difficult for us to shape a foreign policy that is intelligent and is
creating security for the long term.”
Nowadays, when Mr. Obama travels in farm country, he is sometimes
accompanied by his friend Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority
leader from South Dakota. Mr. Daschle now serves on the boards of three
ethanol companies and works at a Washington law firm where, according
to his online job description, “he spends a substantial amount of time
providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.”
Mr. Obama’s lead advisor on energy and environmental issues, Jason
Grumet, came to the campaign from the National Commission on Energy
Policy, a bipartisan initiative associated with Mr. Daschle and Bob
Dole, the Kansas Republican who is also a former Senate majority leader
and a big ethanol backer who had close ties to the agribusiness giant
Archer Daniels Midland.
Not long after arriving in the Senate, Mr. Obama himself briefly
provoked a controversy by flying at subsidized rates on corporate
airplanes, including twice on jets owned by Archer Daniels Midland,
which is the nation’s largest ethanol producer and is based in his home
state.
Jason Furman, the Obama campaign’s economic policy director, said Mr.
Obama’s stance on ethanol was based on its merits. “That is what has
always motivated him on this issue, and will continue to determine his
policy going forward,” Mr. Furman said.
Asked if Mr. Obama brought any predisposition or bias to the ethanol
debate because he represents a corn-growing state that stands to
benefit from a boom, Mr. Furman said, “He wants to represent the United
States of America, and his policies are based on what’s best for the
country.”
Mr. Daschle, a national co-chairman of the Obama campaign, said in a
telephone interview on Friday that his role advising the Obama campaign
on energy matters was limited. He said he was not a lobbyist for
ethanol companies, but did speak publicly about renewable energy
options and worked “with a number of associations and groups to
orchestrate and coordinate their activities,” including the Governors’
Ethanol Coalition.
Of Mr. Obama, Mr. Daschle said, “He has a terrific policy staff and
relies primarily on those key people to advise him on key issues,
whether energy or climate change or other things.”
Ethanol is one area in which Mr. Obama strongly disagrees with his
Republican opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona. While both
presidential candidates emphasize the need for the United States to
achieve “energy security” while also slowing down the carbon emissions
that are believed to contribute to global warming, they offer sharply
different visions of the role that ethanol, which can be made from a
variety of organic materials, should play in those efforts.
Mr. McCain advocates eliminating the multibillion-dollar annual
government subsidies that domestic ethanol has long enjoyed. As a free
trade advocate, he also opposes the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff that the
United States slaps on imports of ethanol made from sugar cane, which
packs more of an energy punch than corn-based ethanol and is cheaper to
produce.
“We made a series of mistakes by not adopting a sustainable energy
policy, one of which is the subsidies for corn ethanol, which I warned
in Iowa were going to destroy the market” and contribute to inflation,
Mr. McCain said this month in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper,
O Estado de São Paulo. “Besides, it is wrong,” he added, to tax
Brazilian-made sugar cane ethanol, “which is much more efficient than
corn ethanol.”
Mr. Obama, in contrast, favors the subsidies, some of which end up in
the hands of the same oil companies he says should be subjected to a
windfall profits tax. In the name of helping the United States build
“energy independence,” he also supports the tariff, which some
economists say may well be illegal under the World Trade Organization’s
rules but which his advisers say is not.
Many economists, consumer advocates, environmental experts and tax
groups have been critical of corn ethanol programs as a boondoggle that
benefits agribusiness conglomerates more than small farmers. Those
complaints have intensified recently as corn prices have risen sharply
in tandem with oil prices and corn normally used for food stock has
been diverted to ethanol production.
“If you want to take some of the pressure off this market, the obvious
thing to do is lower that tariff and let some Brazilian ethanol come
in,” said C. Ford Runge, an economist specializing in commodities and
trade policy at the Center for International Food and Agricultural
Policy at the University of Minnesota. “But one of the fundamental
reasons biofuels policy is so out of whack with markets and reality is
that interest group politics have been so dominant in the construction
of the subsidies that support it.”
Corn ethanol generates less than two units of energy for every unit of
energy used to produce it, while the energy ratio for sugar cane is
more than 8 to 1. With lower production costs and cheaper land prices
in the tropical countries where it is grown, sugar cane is a more
efficient source.
Mr. Furman said the campaign continued to examine the issue. “We want
to evaluate all our energy subsidies to make sure that taxpayers are
getting their money’s worth,” he said.
He added that Mr. Obama favored “a range of initiatives” that were
aimed at “diversification across countries and sources of energy,”
including cellulosic ethanol, and which, unlike Mr. McCain’s proposals,
were specifically meant to “reduce overall demand through conservation,
new technology and improved efficiency.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama has not explained his opposition to
imported sugar cane ethanol. But in remarks last year, made as
President Bush was about to sign an ethanol cooperation agreement with
his Brazilian counterpart, Mr. Obama argued that “our country’s drive
toward energy independence” could suffer if Mr. Bush relaxed
restrictions, as Mr. McCain now proposes.
“It does not serve our national and economic security to replace
imported oil with Brazilian ethanol,” he argued.
Mr. Obama does talk regularly about developing switchgrass, which
flourishes in the Midwest and Great Plains, as a source for ethanol.
While the energy ratio for switchgrass and other types of cellulosic
ethanol is much greater than corn, economists say that time-consuming
investments in infrastructure would be required to make it viable, and
with corn nearing $8 a bushel, farmers have little incentive to shift.
Ethanol industry executives and advocates have not made large donations
to either candidate for president, an examination of campaign
contribution records shows. But they have noted the difference between
Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain.
Brian Jennings, a vice president of the American Coalition for Ethanol,
said he hoped that Mr. McCain, as a presidential candidate, “would take
a broader view of energy security and recognize the important role that
ethanol plays.”
The candidates’ views were tested recently in the Farm Bill approved by
Congress that extended the subsidies for corn ethanol, though reducing
them slightly, and the tariffs on imported sugar cane ethanol. Because
Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama were campaigning, neither voted. But Mr.
McCain said that as president he would veto the bill, while Mr. Obama
praised it.
Boone Pickens project buys 667 GE wind
turbines
DAY
Posted on May 15, 8:21 AM EDT
NEW YORK (AP) -- A renewable energy company founded by billionaire T.
Boone Pickens says it's buying 667 wind turbines from General
Electric. The longtime oilman's company, Mesa Power, plans to use
the turbines to start what it expects will be the world's largest wind
energy project. The Pampa Wind Project will be located in Texas.
The turbines in the deal can each produce 1,000 megawatts of
electricity. That makes the project's first phase - one of four planned
- able to make enough to power more than 300,000 average U.S.
homes. Pickens says the first phase of the project will cost
about $2 billion, with power coming online by early 2011.
Op-Ed
Columnist
Have
a Nice Day
NYTIMES
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
September
16, 2009
Applied Materials is one of the most
important U.S. companies you’ve probably never heard of. It makes the
machines that make the microchips that go inside your computer. The
chip business, though, is volatile, so in 2004 Mike Splinter, Applied
Materials’s C.E.O., decided to add a new business line to take
advantage of the company’s nanotechnology capabilities — making the
machines that make solar panels. The other day, Splinter gave me a tour
of the company’s Silicon Valley facility, culminating with a visit to
its “war room,” where Applied maintains a real-time global interaction
with all 14 solar panel factories it’s built around the world in the
last two years. I could only laugh because crying would have been too
embarrassing.
Not a single one is in America.
Let’s see: five are in Germany, four
are in China, one is in Spain, one is in India, one is in Italy, one is
in Taiwan and one is even in Abu Dhabi. I suggested a new company motto
for Applied Materials’s solar business: “Invented here, sold there.”
The reason that all these other
countries are building solar-panel industries today is because most of
their governments have put in place the three prerequisites for growing
a renewable energy industry: 1) any business or homeowner can generate
solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power utility has to
connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has to buy the power for a
predictable period at a price that is a no-brainer good deal for the
family or business putting the solar panels on their rooftop.
Regulatory, price and connectivity
certainty, that is what Germany put in place, and that explains why
Germany now generates almost half the solar power in the world today
and, as a byproduct, is making itself the world-center for solar
research, engineering, manufacturing and installation. With more than
50,000 new jobs, the renewable energy industry in Germany is now second
only to its auto industry. One thing that has never existed in America
— with our fragmented, stop-start solar subsidies — is certainty of
price, connectivity and regulation on a national basis.
That is why, although consumer
demand for solar power has incrementally increased here, it has not
been enough for anyone to have Applied Materials — the world’s biggest
solar equipment manufacturer — build them a new factory in America yet.
So, right now, our federal and state subsidies for installing solar
systems are largely paying for the cost of importing solar panels made
in China, by Chinese workers, using hi-tech manufacturing equipment
invented in America.
Have a nice day.
“About 95 percent of our solar
business is outside the U.S.,” said Splinter. “Our biggest U.S.
customer is a German-owned company in Oregon. We sell them pieces of
equipment.”
If you read some of the anti-green
commentary today, you’ll often see sneering references to “green jobs.”
The phrase is usually in quotation marks as if it is some kind of
liberal fantasy or closet welfare program (and as if coal, oil and
nuclear don’t get all kinds of subsidies). Nonsense. In 2008, more
silicon was consumed globally making solar panels than microchips, said
Splinter.
“We are seeing the industrialization
of the solar business,” he added. “In the last 12 months, it has
brought us $1.3 billion in revenues. It is hard to build a
billion-dollar business.”
Applied sells its solar-panel
factories for $200 million each. Solar panels can be made from many
different semiconductors, including thin film coated onto glass with
nanotechnology and from crystalline silicon. At Applied, making these
complex machines requires America’s best, high-paid talent — people who
can work at the intersection of chemistry, physics and nanotechnology.
If we want to launch a solar
industry here, big-time, we need to offer the kind of long-term
certainty that Germany does or impose the national requirement on our
utilities to generate solar power as China does or have the government
build giant solar farms, the way it built the Hoover Dam, and sell the
electricity.
O.K., so you don’t believe global
warming is real. I do, but let’s assume it’s not. Here is what is
indisputable: The world is on track to add another 2.5 billion people
by 2050, and many will be aspiring to live American-like, high-energy
lifestyles. In such a world, renewable energy — where the variable cost
of your fuel, sun or wind, is zero — will be in huge demand.
China now understands that. It no
longer believes it can pollute its way to prosperity because it would
choke to death. That is the most important shift in the world in the
last 18 months. China has decided that clean-tech is going to be the
next great global industry and is now creating a massive domestic
market for solar and wind, which will give it a great export platform.
In October, Applied will be opening
the world’s largest solar research center — in Xian, China. Gotta go
where the customers are. So, if you like importing oil from Saudi
Arabia, you’re going to love importing solar panels from China.
Op-Ed
Columnist
Texas to Tel Aviv
NYTIMES
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: July 27, 2008
What would happen if you cross-bred J. R. Ewing of “Dallas” and Carl
Pope, the head of the Sierra Club? You’d get T. Boone Pickens. What
would happen if you cross-bred Henry Ford and Yitzhak Rabin? You’d get
Shai Agassi. And what would happen if you put together T. Boone
Pickens, the green billionaire Texas oilman now obsessed with wind
power, and Shai Agassi, the Jewish Henry Ford now obsessed with making
Israel the world’s leader in electric cars?
You’d have the start of an energy revolution.
The only good thing to come from soaring oil prices is that they have
spurred innovator/investors, successful in other fields, to move into
clean energy with a mad-as-hell, can-do ambition to replace oil with
renewable power. Two of the most interesting of these new clean
electron wildcatters are Boone and Shai.
Agassi, age 40, is an Israeli software whiz kid who rose to the senior
ranks of the German software giant SAP. He gave it all up in 2007 to
help make Israel a model of how an entire country can get off gasoline
and onto electric cars. He figured no country has a bigger interest in
diminishing the value of Middle Eastern oil than Israel. On a visit to
Israel in May, I took a spin in a parking lot on the Tel Aviv
beachfront in Agassi’s prototype electric car, while his sister watched
out for the cops because it is not yet licensed for Israeli roads.
Agassi’s plan, backed by Israel’s government, is to create a complete
electric car “system” that will work much like a mobile-phone service
“system,” only customers sign up for so many monthly miles, instead of
minutes. Every subscriber will get a car, a battery and access to a
national network of recharging outlets all across Israel — as well as
garages that will swap your dead battery for a fresh one whenever
needed.
His company, Better Place, and its impressive team would run the smart
grid that charges the cars and is also contracting for enough new solar
energy from Israeli companies — 2 gigawatts over 10 years — to power
the whole fleet. “Israel will have the world’s first virtual oilfield
in the Negev Desert,” said Agassi. His first 500 electric cars, built
by Renault, will hit Israel’s roads next year.
Agassi is a passionate salesman for his vision. He could sell camels to
Saudi Arabia. “Today in Europe, you pay $600 a month for gasoline,” he
explained to me. “We have an electric car that will cost you $600 a
month” — with all the electric fuel you need and when you don’t want
the car any longer, just give it back. No extra charges and no CO2
emissions.
His goal, said Agassi, is to make his electric car “so cheap, so
trivial, that you won’t even think of buying a gasoline car.” Once that
happens, he added, your oil addiction will be over forever. You’ll be
“off heroin,” he says, and “addicted to milk.”
T. Boone Pickens is 80. He’s already made billions in oil. He was
involved in some ugly mischief in funding the “Swift-boating” of John
Kerry. But now he’s opting for a different legacy: breaking America’s
oil habit by pushing for a massive buildup of wind power in the U.S.
and converting our abundant natural gas supplies — now being used to
make electricity — into transportation fuel to replace foreign oil in
our cars, buses and trucks.
Pickens is motivated by American nationalism. Because of all the money
we are shipping abroad to pay for our oil addiction, he says, “we are
on the verge of losing our superpower status.” His vision is summed up
on his Web site: “We import 70 percent of our oil at a cost of $700
billion a year ... I have been an oil man all my life, but this is one
emergency we can’t drill our way out of. If we create a renewable
energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil.”
Pickens made clear to me over breakfast last week that he was tired of
waiting for Washington to produce a serious energy plan. So his
company, Mesa Power, is now building the world’s largest wind farm in
the Texas Panhandle, where he’s spent $2 billion buying land and 700
wind turbines from General Electric — the largest single turbine order
ever. The U.S. could secure 20 percent of its electricity needs from
wind alone.
But Pickens knows he’s unique. Unless, he says, “Congress adopts clear,
predictable policies” — with long-term tax incentives and
infrastructure — so thousands of investors can jump into clean power,
we’ll never get the scale we need to break our addiction. For a year,
Senate Republicans have been blocking such incentives for wind and
solar energy. They vote again next week.
If only we had a Congress and president who, instead of chasing crazy
schemes like offshore drilling and releasing oil from our strategic
reserve, just sat down with Boone and Shai and asked one question:
“What laws do we need to enact to foster 1,000 more like you?” Then
just do it, and get out of the way.
Dumb as We
Wanna Be
NYTIMES
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: April 30, 2008
It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy
policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy
of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away.
Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to
suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for
this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is
money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi
Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas
tanks. What a way to build our country.
When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China,
increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our
contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.
No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs.
Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend
precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather
than on innovation?
The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what
energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as
the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize
supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”
Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.
But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think.
We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape
energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to
discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want
to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable
energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.
Are you sitting down?
Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been
bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to
stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to
encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so
poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December,
it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production.
Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have
been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time
when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we
are squabbling over pennies.
These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip
back down again — which often happens — investments in wind and solar
would still be profitable. That’s how you launch a new energy
technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without
subsidies.
The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by
taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he
would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush — showing
not one iota of leadership — refused to get all the adults together in
a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a
20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two
years.
“It’s a disaster,” says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of
the biggest wind-power developers in America. “Wind is a very
capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready to
take ‘Congressional risk.’ They say if you don’t get the [production
tax credit] we will not lend you the money to buy more turbines and
build projects.”
It is also alarming, says Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar
Energy Industries Association, that the U.S. has reached a point “where
the priorities of Congress could become so distorted by politics” that
it would turn its back on the next great global industry — clean power
— “but that’s exactly what is happening.” If the wind and solar credits
expire, said Resch, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000
jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion
worth of investments that won’t be made.
While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost
manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America’s premier solar
company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory
in the former East Germany — 540 high-paying engineering jobs — because
Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.
In 1997, said Resch, America was the leader in solar energy technology,
with 40 percent of global solar production. “Last year, we were less
than 8 percent, and even most of that was manufacturing for overseas
markets.”
The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy
crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the
energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We
are in the midst of a national political brownout.
Governator of California employs "wave power"
Governors,
Others Meet On Climate Change:
Governors
Convene At Yale To Fight Global Warming
By DAVID FUNKHOUSER | Courant Staff Writer
April 19, 2008
NEW HAVEN - The moment he strode into Woolsey Hall Friday afternoon,
late but just in time for a photo op, Arnold Schwarzenegger changed the
climate of Yale's austere gathering of governors and gave the
sweltering crowd a boost of energy — and a lot to think about.
In what was intended as a historic replay of a landmark meeting on
conservation called by President Theodore Roosevelt 100 years ago, Yale
brought together governors and officials from several states this week
to sign a declaration calling on the federal government to get moving
on climate change.
Schwarzenegger came to sign the declaration and to deliver his own
brand of eco-politics: As a fiercely independent Republican governor of
California, he perhaps has done more to fight global warming than any
other governor in the nation. And he makes no bones about his
differences with Congress and the Bush administration.
"In California, we say don't wait for Washington, because Washington is
asleep at the wheel," he said. Like many who spoke at the conference,
he is looking to the next administration for decisive action: "Things
will begin to pick up speed after Inauguration Day."
That sentiment matched the central theme of the conference, which was
that states have moved far out in front on the issue, and the federal
government needs to work with them when developing climate policy.
"Today, we recommit ourselves to the effort to stop global warming and
we call on congressional leaders and the presidential candidates to
work with us — in partnership — to establish a comprehensive national
climate policy," states the declaration, signed so far by 18 governors.
The statement urges Washington to support state efforts already
underway and provide both mandatory measures and financial incentives
for states. Three dozen states already have or are considering programs
to confront climate change.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell welcomed the crowd and earned praise from speakers
for her efforts on global warming, including the state's participation
in a regional program to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power
plants. The program sets up a cap-and-trade system that limits
emissions and charges companies for permits to emit carbon dioxide, one
of the key heat-trapping greenhouse gases associated with global
warming. The first auction of such permits is scheduled for September.
The state legislature's appropriations committee on Friday approved a
climate change bill that would begin to set mandatory caps on
greenhouse gas emissions. The bill still needs final approval by the
House, the Senate and Rell.
In Washington, Congress is negotiating over a bill co-sponsored by
Connecticut independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman that would set up a
nationwide cap-and-trade system. At issue are mandatory emissions caps,
and whether industry will have to pay for permits to emit CO{-2}.
Joining Rell and Schwarzenegger in signing the declaration on the stage
in Woolsey Hall were Govs. Jon Corzine of New Jersey and Kathleen
Sebelius of Kansas. The governors of Arizona, Colorado, Delaware,
Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico
New York, Oregon, Virginia and Washington also have signed.
Also on stage were representatives from Mexico and the Czech Republic
and two Canadian provincial premiers, Jean Charest of Quebec and Gary
Doer of Manitoba, both heavily involved in the issue. Charest announced
Friday that his province will join a climate-change initiative
involving a coalition of western U.S. states.
Yale also brought in Nobel Prize-winner R.K. Pachauri, head of the
United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to speak at
the signing Friday afternoon.
Pachauri dismissed skeptics of global warming and said the world is
unquestionably on a path of development and consumption of the Earth's
resources that cannot be sustained.
Impacts already are being felt, he said, and "lifestyles will change."
He warned that without action now, irreversible changes in climate
could lead to melting of the massive Greenland and West Antarctic ice
sheets. Such events would send sea levels up several meters "and put at
risk several hundreds of millions of people," he said.
"The good news," he said, "is that mitigation is not an expensive
proposition." He noted states' efforts have already shown some economic
advantages that in the long run could outweigh the costs. He said the
most important thing nations can do is to put a price on carbon, to
incorporate incentives into the economic system.
The afternoon's ceremonies began without Schwarzenegger.
But as Rell, Corzine and Sebelius posed for photos after signing the
declaration, Schwarzenegger walked onto the stage, rousing the crowd to
applause.
Schwarzenegger gave the audience a boisterous dose of optimism and
reality.
"People are not going to give up their energy-burning cars and TVs," he
said, chiding environmentalists for running campaigns "powered by
guilt."
"I don't think any movement has made it far on guilt. Successful
movements are built on passion," he said. He also criticized activists
and outdated environmental laws for putting obstacles in the path of
cleaner energy solutions, such as a huge solar array proposed for the
Mojave Desert.
"If we can't put solar power plants in the middle of the Mojave Desert,
I don't know where the hell we can put it," he said.
He urged the audience to keep an open mind and not shun collaboration
with corporations or political opponents.
"I am optimistic" about attacking the problem of climate change,
Schwarzenegger said. "You can feel the big things moving. … You can
feel the momentum. Things are about to move our way."
Theodore Roosevelt IV, grandson of the president who convened the 1908
meeting, spoke at a private dinner at the Yale Law School Thursday
evening.
A noted environmentalist who works for the investment bank Lehman
Brothers, he warned of a growing economic inequality in America that
threatens social cohesion.
While most in the room would generally agree on economic and
environmental policy, he said, for most Americans, "downward mobility
is the threat, whereas upward mobility was the promise."
This disconnect, he said, means many citizens do not trust their
government and may feel environmentalists stand in the way of their
economic progress.
What's needed, he said, is "a Square Deal for the 21st century" that
also considers the public's needs for economic security, health care
and education.
Watertown could get
state's biomass plant
Waterbury Republican-American
Sunday, September 9, 2007 9:08 AM EDT
A renewable energy power plant is helping to fill a need for
electricity in this small town and provide an example of a similar
project proposed for Watertown.
The Watertown plant would be the first of its kind in Connecticut.
Tamarack Energy, the company proposing the plant, has pitched the
wood-burning facility as a way to reduce greenhouse gases and
dependence on fossil fuels. Called a biomass plant, it converts
wood debris, old pallets and piles of wood chips into a source of
renewable energy that could help to bridge an energy gap in the state.
BIOMAS PLANT IN MASS.
In this rural town of 7,700 people, the Fitchburg Power Station
provides full-time employment for 20 people and has generated more than
$240,000 in taxes over the past three years.
Located on five acres in an industrial park, the plant is not far from
a two-lane highway and a large state forest — a similar setting to the
plant site proposed in Watertown. The facility is fairly quiet, outside
of light mechanical noise. Most of the noise is generated by the diesel
engines from incoming trucks delivering wood.
Jonathan Clapp, the plant manager, has worked there since it was built
in 1992.
"This is all you get in a fuel spill," Clapp said, letting a small pile
of wood chips fall between his fingers and onto a waiting conveyor belt.
The smell of pine chips wafts around the plant as tractor trailers
deliver wood material that has been procured from forest debris, scrap
wood and trees that have been shredded to clear land for house lots.
Most of the plant's systems are automated; rubber conveyor belts send
chips to multiple levels of its dark interior.
Although it's automated, the roughly 80,000-square-foot facility
requires 20 employees for operations and maintenance.
It runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, burning nearly 25 tons of
material an hour. That equates to roughly 30 truckloads of wood per day
and roughly 200,000 tons per year, Clapp said.
"We haven't found much difficulty finding fuel," he said. "Real estate
development has been our bread and butter."
The method used to create the energy has been around since the 1800s.
Wood chips and other wood material are burned in the bottom of a
65-foot-high boiler. A large flame heats water in a series of pipes at
the top until it reaches roughly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The process turns the water into high-pressured steam, which then spins
a 25,000-horsepower turbine.
Wood is chipped before it gets to the plant. It has to meet size
requirements to be accepted. Other fuel sources include processed
packaging material, such as shredded gum wrappers and hospital gowns
made of paper. It's not industrial waste, rather surplus material
that's unusable, Clapp said.
Most of the wood comes from a 50-mile radius around the plant and the
company works with independent contractors who procure it. At least
seven companies in town, and others nearby, sell wood to the plant.
"The area has grown up with us," Clapp said. "They depend on us, to
some degree, to survive."
A ton of wood can be sold to biomass plants for between $15 and $23.
Water makes up 40 percent of the plant's emissions, and pollutants such
as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide are monitored by the state at the
top of the plant's 180-foot stack. Unburned material is captured in
1,600 fiberglass filters tucked away into an upper level of the plant.
Even the ash gets used by companies that cart it away for use in
fertilizer, Clapp said.
Over the course of 15 years it has only had one fire, said Town
Coordinator Karen Murphy.
As part of a really, really big energy bill, "Energy Improvement
Districts" passed in Long Session - PA07-242
(specifically, sections 21-36).
Economist's energy plan taking off
PETER URBAN purban@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 07/15/2007 10:39:59 AM EDT
WASHINGTON — It was a serendipitous meeting at an ice hockey rink that
sparked Connecticut native Guy Warner's most recent business venture —
Pareto Energy, which is advising Ansonia as it sets up the state's
first mini-power network.
Warner, an economist who lives here, had worked in Central and South
America helping companies with the financing and construction of
on-site energy plants. The business tumbled after Sept. 11, 2001, and
the collapse of Enron, and Warner was ready for a change.
"I took a year off and coached my daughter's hockey team," Warner said.
When he wasn't skating around, Warner was thinking about how to reshape
his business.
There were plenty of companies in need of reliable power supplies, but
few could afford to do it themselves. The obvious answer was to have
them pool their resources.
In the 1980s, businesses in New York's Times Square, Washington's K
Street and downtown Philadelphia organized "business improvement
districts" to hire private security and cleanup crews to improve their
neighborhoods.
If businesses could organize into an "Energy Improvement District,"
Warner felt certain that he could attract private investors — using
tax-free municipal bonds — to finance the capital improvements needed
to build a cost-effective and reliable energy system.
Back at the hockey rink, Kathryn Kretschmer-Weyland, whose daughter was
on the team, was impressed with Warner's winning and compassionate
coaching style.
She wanted to know more about him.
Kretschmer-Weyland is the chief operating officer of the U.S.
Conference of Mayors and had heard an earful from mayors about the
problems they were having with brownouts and rising electricity rates.
"We started talking about what he did and what I did," she said. "I
thought there might be a nexus here."
Regulators and utilities typically propose billions of dollars of
investments to fortify conventional grid infrastructure — large,
central power plants that have an extraordinarily negative impact on
the environment and land use and are connected to customers over wires
that can easily be knocked down by weather or human violence, Warner
said.
"It's 1950s technology," he said.
Smaller, more efficient generators can be designed to provide the
electricity needed for the Energy Improvement District as well as
supply air conditioning to nearby buildings by capturing the heat
otherwise lost up the generator's smokestacks, he said.
Warner, 50, speaks in long run-on sentences bouncing from one idea to
another as he explains how he went from being an economist to the head
of a company that provides energy and financing advice to
municipalities.
In some ways it goes back to his hometown.
Warner grew up in Wallingford in central Connecticut. He graduated high
school from Choate Rosemary Hall prep school, then attended St.
Lawrence University in New York and received a master's degree from
George Washington University.
Wallingford operates its own power company and has worked with local
businesses to keep rates down and provide reliable service. He thought
that other municipalities could benefit from a similar local approach.
"I grew up in a town where the power company was well-respected," he
said.
Warner employs about 10 people at his Pareto Energy office in
Georgetown near the Potomac River. The company pushed through
legislation in the Connecticut General Assembly — approved last month —
that allows towns to set up Energy Improvement Districts. They are
advising Ansonia, Stamford and Watertown on setting them up.
Pareto Enterprises hopes to be hired to organize the EIDs — traversing
the legal and regulatory steps, pulling together the partners and
rounding up the financing that will bring the projects to reality.
Kretschmer-Weyland considers Warner a genius.
"As an economist, he knew the way to make this work," she said.
Kretschmer-Weyland thought that cities like Stamford could benefit from
providing a reliable energy source to financial services companies that
cannot afford to lose computer links to Wall Street.
Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy, who is active in the conference, was
intrigued and has embraced Warner's approach.
In August 2003, a major power outage hit much of the Northeast and
Midwest. New York City alone estimated that the failure cost the city
more than $500 million in lost revenues. All together, the total
economic damages of the blackout exceeded those ascribed to the 9/11
terrorist attacks, Warner said.
"Power became a front-door issue for mayors," Warner said.
Ansonia will likely become the first city to embrace Warner's concept
later this summer, now that the Connecticut General Assembly has passed
a law allowing these unique districts to be established within
municipalities.
Mayor Jim Della Volpe said that instead of relying solely on large
nuclear, oil and coal-burning power plants, a portion of Ansonia's
electricity needs will be met by a cluster of newly built, small,
environmentally friendly power plants sited in an energy improvement
district.
On Thursday, Della Volpe signed a resolution officially establishing
the city's EID following a vote earlier in the week by the Board of
Aldermen authorizing its creation.
The power generated there — all of it from clean-running sources like
natural gas-powered fuel cells — will provide low cost, reliable
electric power that will serve as a catalyst for continuing Ansonia's
economic revitalization, Della Volpe said.
Bridgeport Mayor John M. Fabrizi said he is enthusiastic about the
concept and would like to launch a pilot program with a city building
as the focus.
"I believe this can be a real benefit to economic development and would
help draw private investors in to the city," Fabrizi said.
Warner hopes to bring EIDs to municipalities across the country and is
working on other ideas for more efficient and reliable energy. For now,
he is happy that his concept has taken root in his home state.
Germany Debates
Subsidies for Solar Industry
NYTIMES
By MARK LANDLER
Published: May 16, 2008
THALHEIM, Germany — This sad stretch of eastern Germany, with its
deserted coal mines and corroded factories, epitomizes post-industrial
gloom. It is a place where even the clouds rarely seem to part.
Yet the sun was shining here the other day — and nowhere more brightly
than at Q-Cells, a German company that surpassed Sharp last year to
become the world’s largest maker of photovoltaic solar cells. Q-Cells
is the main tenant among a flowering cluster of solar start-ups here in
an area known as Solar Valley.
Thanks to its aggressive push into renewable energies, cloud-wreathed
Germany has become an unlikely leader in the race to harness the sun’s
energy. It has by far the largest market for photovoltaic systems,
which convert sunlight into electricity, with roughly half of the
world’s total installations. And it is the third-largest producer of
solar cells and modules, after China and Japan.
Now, though, with so many solar panels on so many rooftops, critics say
Germany has too much of a good thing — even in a time of record oil
prices. Conservative lawmakers, in particular, want to pare back
generous government incentives that support solar development. They say
solar generation is growing so fast that it threatens to overburden
consumers with high electricity bills.
Solar-energy entrepreneurs warn that reducing incentives will deprive
Germany of its pole position in an industry of the future. As proof,
they point to the United States and Japan, which were once solar stars
but have faded as their government subsidies became less enticing.
The debate over solar subsidies is a test of how an environmentally
minded country can move from nurturing a promising alternative energy
sector to creating a mass-market industry that can compete with
conventional energy sources on its own footing. It is a tricky
transition, even with a sympathetic population.
“Germany’s law has basically been a turbocharger,” said Anton Milner,
the chief executive of Q-Cells. If the proposals being floated by the
Christian Democratic Union, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, were
adopted, he predicted, “you’d kill the industry.”
Germany’s surging market has lured investors from Canada, Norway and
the United States. More than 40,000 people work in the photovoltaic
industry, helping to revive blighted regions like this one. On
Wednesday, Q-Cells reported a 63 percent jump in its first-quarter
operating profit, showing the riches to be reaped from sunshine.
Leading a visitor past gleaming rows of solar panels on the roof of
Q-Cells’ headquarters, Mr. Milner, a British-born former executive at
Royal Dutch Shell, said Germany could not afford to blow this chance.
Surely, he says, the naysayers are aware that the cost of electricity
will spike along with the price of fossil fuels?
Joachim Pfeiffer, a member of Parliament who is drafting the plan to
cut incentives, said: “We don’t want to slaughter the solar industry;
we think photovoltaic technology will have a great future. But to have
that future, we can’t have overkill now.”
At the heart of the debate is the Renewable Energy Sources Act. It
requires power companies to buy all the alternative energy produced by
these systems, at a fixed above-market price, for 20 years.
This mechanism, known as a feed-in tariff, gives entrepreneurs a
powerful incentive to install solar panels. With a locked-in customer
base for their electricity, they can earn a reliable return on their
investment. It has worked: homeowners rushed to clamp solar panels on
their roofs and farmers planted them in fields where sheep once grazed.
The amount of electricity generated by these installations rose 60
percent in 2007 compared with 2006, faster than any other renewable
energy (solar still generates just 0.6 percent of Germany’s total
electricity, compared with 6.4 percent for wind).
This, in a country that gets an average of only 1,528 hours of sunshine
a year, less than a third of the total daylight hours. That figure is
comparable to London’s but it is one-third fewer sunshine hours than in
Florence, Italy, and only half San Diego’s, making German solar
installations less efficient, and their growth all the more remarkable.
With wind, biomass and other alternative energy also growing, Germany
derives 14.2 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. That
puts it ahead of a European Union target for countries to generate 12.5
percent of electricity from alternative sources by 2010.
Spain, France, Italy and Greece have copied Germany’s solar incentives.
In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed a plan in which
utilities pay rebates to customers with solar panels, though only up to
the amount of electricity they would have otherwise used from
conventional energy sources.
“Germany is a driving force worldwide,” said Hermann Scheer, a member
of Parliament who helped write the law. “It is very important that the
driving force not become a lame duck.”
Christian Democrats, however, say the law has been too successful for
its own good. Utilities, they note, are allowed to pass along the extra
cost of buying renewable energy to customers, and there is no cap on
the capacity that can be installed — as exists in other countries to
prevent subsidies from mushrooming.
At the moment, solar energy adds 1.01 euros ($1.69) a month to a
typical home electricity bill, a modest surcharge that Germans are
willing to pay. That will increase to 2.14 euros a month by 2014,
according to the German Solar Energy Association.
But the volume of solar-generated energy is rising much faster than
originally predicted, and critics contend that the costs will soar. Mr.
Pfeiffer, the legislator, said solar power could end up adding 8 euros
($12.32) to a monthly electricity bill, which would alienate even the
most green-minded. With no change in the law, he says, the solar
industry will soak up 120 billion euros ($184 billion) in public
support by 2015.
The conservatives would like to accelerate the rate at which the
feed-in tariff declines, now set at 5 percent a year. Under a draft
proposal, the tariff would fall 30 percent in 2009, and 9 percent a
year after that. The law’s term might also be shortened to 15 years
from 20.
Mrs. Merkel, who boasts of her green credentials, has yet to enter the
debate. Her party must win over its coalition partner, the Social
Democratic Party, which might be tough, given that the law was
strengthened in 2004 by the last government, led by the Social
Democrats.
Meanwhile, solar advocates are testifying before Parliament and
publishing articles defending the law.
Eicke R. Weber, a prominent physicist, said the estimate of 120 billion
euros in subsidies was too high because it did not take into account
the rising price of conventional electricity. That, plus a gradual
decline in the cost of solar, will close the price gap between
conventional and solar-generated electricity by 2014 or 2015, he
predicted.
The actual subsidy, Mr. Weber said, will be 40 billion to 60 billion
euros, a third of what the German state is paying to prop up its
superannuated coal industry.
“If we’re willing to burden the population with 180 billion euros of
support for a dying industry, who do we worry about taking one-third of
this to make Germany the world leader in photovoltaic technology?” said
Mr. Weber, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy
Systems in Freiburg.
Defenders of solar energy see the hand of Germany’s power companies
behind the effort to change the law. Reducing incentives for solar
would favor wind, which is a more natural fit for the utilities, since
the cost of building wind farms is too high for the average homeowner
with an empty roof and an urge to generate electricity.
“Solar energy is more decentralized, so the industry sees more
competition from solar than from wind,” said Carsten Körnig, the
managing director of the German Solar Energy Association.
In the former East Germany, where scores of state-subsidized industries
were shuttered after reunification in 1990, the solar industry is a
welcome tonic for a depressed region. Signet Solar, an American maker
of photovoltaic modules that use thin-film technology, chose to build
its first factory and research center near Dresden.
“We decided right from the beginning to have our main R&D in
Germany,” said Gunter Ziegenbalg, Signet’s managing director.
Still, there are constant reminders of how quickly Germany could lose
its status. Signet is building its next factory in Madras, India;
Q-Cells is building one in Malaysia. Other German companies are
exploring the Mediterranean markets, particularly Spain.
With more sunny days a year, Spain is likely to have a competitive
solar industry that can stand on its feet before Germany’s does. And
now it has put in place its own German-style incentives.
“To develop a technology, you’ve got to create an industry,” said Mr.
Milner, the chief executive of Q-Cells, referring to the German success
story. “You can wait and wait and wait for costs to come down, but it
takes too long.”
THE SUNNY SIDE OF
THE ENERGY CRISIS?
Three 10x21 panels...for small customer; then there is Wal-Mart
(next); or will
modern construction standards protect this California utility
project? On
the right the installation from Spain, we think.
Battle
Brewing Over Giant Desert Solar Farm
NYTIMES
By Todd Woody
August 5, 2009
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Environmental groups are worried that
a massive solar project in the Mojave will threaten protected wildlife,
like this fringe-toed lizard.
Tessera Solar plans to plant 34,000 solar dishes — each one 40 feet
high and 38 feet wide — on 8,230 acres of the Mojave Desert in Southern
California.
Although the lengthy licensing process for the Calico solar farm
remains in the early stages, several environmental groups are already
raising red flags about the massive project’s impact on such protected
wildlife as the desert tortoise, the Mojave fringe-toed lizard and
Nelson’s bighorn sheep.
Calico is one of dozens of industrial-scale solar farms planned for the
Southwest that have divided environmentalists over the need to promote
renewable energy while protecting fragile desert ecosystems.
But the sheer size of the Calico project, as well as its location next
to federal conservation areas, is drawing scrutiny from grassroots
green activists and national organizations like the Defenders of
Wildlife.
The solar farm would generate 850 megawatts of electricity for Southern
California Edison.
Also jumping into the fray is a well-funded labor group that is
pressing solar developers to employ union workers, and the Wildlands
Conservancy, a Southern California non-profit that supports a proposal
by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, to ban renewable
energy development on hundreds of thousands of acres of the Mojave
adjacent to Calico.
Most of the land for the solar farm would be leased from the federal
government.
“Our feeling is the utility-scale project should first be sited on
disturbed land, public or private, instead of pristine lands,” April
Sall, the conservation director for the Wildlands Conservancy, told
California Energy Commission staff at a recent hearing on the Calico
project. “There are several endangered species, plant and animal, that
would be affected by this project,” Ms. Sall said, adding that the “the
side-blotched lizard” might also affected.
The labor group, called California Unions for Reliable Energy, sent an
attorney and biologist to testify at the hearing. The group has come
under fire for inundating developers who decline to sign labor
agreements with demands that they conduct scores of costly
environmental studies on their solar projects.
California Unions for Reliable Energy has taken a particularly
aggressive stance in the Calico case, dispatching its own biologist to
investigate the project site. At the hearing, the biologist, Scott
Cashen, accused Tessera Solar of providing scientifically invalid data
in its license application as well as underestimating the solar farm’s
consequences for wildlife.
“Our concerns basically revolve around the lack of any sort of
scientific rigor that was devoted to establishing base line conditions
at the site,” Mr. Cashen said.
Sean Gallagher, Tessera Solar’s vice president for market strategy and
regulatory affairs, said in an interview on Tuesday that the company
has followed regulators’ scientific protocols in preparing its license
application.
Mr. Gallagher said he has been in discussions with the Natural
Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and other environmental
groups and expects Tessera Solar will be able to address their wildlife
concerns.
“I’m not surprised there’s a lot of interest from environmentalists
given the size of the project, but I don’t expect this to turn into a
big fight,” Mr. Gallagher said.
Tessera Solar, which is based in Houston, stresses that its SunCatcher
solar dish is more environmentally friendly than other solar thermal
technologies, consuming less water and requiring no grading of the
desert.
And while the company acknowledged in its license application that the
project would have “significant” impact on the desert tortoise and
other plant and animal species, it also concluded that measures taken
to minimize its environmental impact means that Calico “would not
substantially affect, reduce the number of, or restrict the range of
unique, rare, or endangered species of animal or plant, or the habitat
of these species.”
Obama’s
Green Delusions
The false promises of renewable
energy.
National Review
By Alex Alexiev
June 3, 2009
Standing in front of an array
of photovoltaic solar panels at Nellis Air Force Base last Wednesday,
President Obama gave us to understand that his vision for an America
powered by clean, renewable energy and awash in green jobs is becoming
a reality faster than anyone could have imagined. Nellis, near Las
Vegas, is the home of the largest solar-energy plant in the Western
Hemisphere and, in the president’s words, a “shining example” of what
renewable energy can do to put our economy on a “firmer foundation for
economic growth.” It is a success story that needs to be replicated “in
cities and states across America,” Obama said, and he announced a
“solar energy technology program” to do just that.
The figures do indeed look impressive at first sight. The $100-million
plant was built without a penny of government money, we are told, yet
it provides the base with electric power costing 2.2 cents per
kilowatt/hour, which is less than one-fourth of the 9 cents that Nevada
Power charges its other customers. The annual savings will amount to $1
million, guaranteed for 20 years. Proof positive, it seems, that our
green future is now. Or is it?
Beyond these numbers, uncritically reported by the mainstream media, is
the reality of a make-believe industry touted by environmental zealots,
corporate freeloaders parading as entrepreneurs, and a president
capable of staggering disingenuousness. If the Nellis solar project is
a “shining example,” it is a shining example of everything that’s wrong
with Obama’s green delusions. The project makes no economic sense on
its own merits and, like all renewable-energy projects, was made
possible only by a combination of government coercion and state and
federal handouts at the expense of utility customers and the American
taxpayer. The coercion in this case came in the form of a state mandate
that Nevada utilities must obtain 20 percent of their power from hugely
expensive renewable sources by 2015; the handouts came in the form of a
30 percent federal tax credit, accelerated depreciation rates, “solar
energy credits,” and similar goodies. It is such government largesse —
and the promise of more to come — that convinces the renewable-energy
industry’s corporate welfare queens to line up behind dubious projects
like Nellis.
In his speech at Nellis, President Obama asserted that he wants
“everybody to know what we’re doing here in Vegas,” and he pointed to
Germany as an example to follow in the solar business. He should have
followed his own advice and looked more closely at the German example.
After Germany guaranteed solar producers a rate seven times as high as
the market rate, the country’s electric bill jumped by 38 percent in
one year.
Obama also should have mentioned what happens to investors who fall for
Washington’s green hype. For the two private companies involved in the
Nellis project, it has not been a success story. SunPower Corp., the
builder of the solar plant, has lost 75 percent of its market value in
just the past year and is facing an uncertain future (to put it
mildly). MMA Renewable Ventures, a San Francisco–based firm, which
financed the project, was recently sold to the Spanish company
Fotowatio for the fire-sale price of $19.7 million, after losing more
than half of its business between 2007 and 2008.
The Spanish purchase of the dying MMA made no business sense except in
one critical area: It allowed Fotowatio to establish a beachhead in the
United States, which, with $20 billion of green-energy tax incentives
in 2010 alone, increasingly looks like the world’s last refuge for
solar freeloaders. Most European countries have seen the damage that
green energy can do to their economies and are rapidly (if quietly)
scaling back their support. This is especially true in the countries
that have been leaders on solar and wind power. Both Germany and Spain
have dramatically slashed their subsidies for renewables, and Spain has
reduced its commitment to green power from 2400 megawatts in 2008 to
500 megawatts or less in 2009.
There is yet another lesson from Spain that Obama prefers not to
discuss. The $100-million Nellis project created 200 jobs at a cost of
$500,000 per job. The longer Spanish experience, according to a recent
study from Juan Carlos University, shows a cost of $774,000 for each
government-subsidized green job created since 2000. More disturbingly,
for each of these jobs, 2.2 jobs in other industries were destroyed
because of higher energy prices, not counting manufacturers who vote
with their feet. This is surely a success story that Americans can do
without.
— Alex Alexiev is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Two Large
Solar Plants Planned
in California
NYTIMES
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: August 14, 2008
Two California companies said Thursday that they would each build solar
power plants that were 10 times bigger than the largest now in service,
creating the first true utility-scale use of a technology now mostly
confined to rooftop supplements to conventional power supplies.
The solar power will be sold to Pacific Gas and Electric, which is
under a state mandate to get 20 percent of its electricity from
renewable sources by 2010. The utility said that it expected the
plants, both using photovoltaic technology, which turns electricity
directly into sunlight, would be competitive with other renewable
sources, including wind and solar thermal, which uses the sun’s heat to
boil water. To date, the only large plants have been solar thermal.
Solar power is more costly than wind, watt for watt, experts say, but
delivers the energy at a time of day when electricity prices are higher
and is more valuable even if it is more costly.
OptiSolar, a company that has just begun to make thin-film solar panels
— with a layer of semiconductor material thinner than a human hair on
the back of a glass panel — will install 550 megawatts in San Luis
Obispo County, in central California. And the SunPower Corporation,
which uses crystalline cells, will build 250 megawatts in the same
county. The OptiSolar plant will cover about nine square miles and the
SunPower plant about 3.5, although the actual cell area will be
smaller.
They will total 800 megawatts. A megawatt is enough power to run a
large Wal-Mart. At peak hours, together the plants will produce as much
power as a large coal plant or a small nuclear reactor. But they will
run far fewer hours of the year so output will be at least a third less
than that of a coal plant of the same size.
The scale of the California announcement makes it “pretty significant,”
said Robert J. Thormeyer, a spokesman for the National Association of
Regulatory Utility Commissioners, whose members sit on the state public
utility commissions.
But such developments are only possible in states that have ambitious
quotas for renewable power and have good sun, he said. “It’s hard to
say if it’s something we’ll see replicated in other states,” he said.
But “it opens up a door.”
The chairman of SunPower, Thomas H. Werner, said the 250 megawatts that
his company would build was as much solar photovoltaic capacity as was
installed worldwide last year.
At OptiSolar, the chief executive, Randy Goldstein, said, “There is
really no point in doing this on small scale.”
“If you’re going to make a difference, you’ve got to do it big,” Mr.
Goldstein said in a telephone interview.
The largest current installation in the United States is at Nellis Air
Force Base, in Nevada, with 14 megawatts, also built by SunPower. Spain
has one completed plant at 23 megawatts. A German company, Juwi, has a
40-megawatt installation east of Leipzig. Florida Power and Light
recently ordered a 25-megawatt plant.
Solar energy, both photovoltaic and thermal, which uses the sun’s heat
to make steam, is bounding ahead, driven mostly by state quotas.
California requires that 20 percent of the kilowatt-hours sold by
investor-owned utilities come from renewable sources by 2010, a goal
that some companies are struggling to meet. Pacific Gas and Electric
expects that when these two solar plants are completed, its total will
rise to 24 percent, but that will not be until 2013.
Both plants would require a variety of permits.
The planned California installations raise questions about the idea
that solar power is best deployed on the roofs of houses and
businesses. Although they can help avoid transmission expenses when
built near load, the companies said that by building on a gargantuan
scale, they expected to achieve economies of scale in the cost of
design, installation and connection to the grid, as well as marketing
and overhead. A typical home installation is several thousandths of a
megawatt, while these are in the hundreds of megawatts.
The prices are not clear. The companies said their contracts did not
allow them to talk about the price, and a spokeswoman for Pacific Gas
and Electric said her company was trying to obtain the best possible
deal for its ratepayers by not disclosing the contracts and not telling
other suppliers of renewable energy what it was willing to pay.
According to the California Energy Commission, last year the price of
power from a solar photovoltaic installation was 70.5 cents a
kilowatt-hour, roughly six times the national average retail rate for
residential power. But both OptiSolar and SunPower said their costs
were much lower.
SunPower’s panels are mounted at a 20-degree angle, facing south, and
pivot over the course of the day, so they face the sun. OptiSolar’s
panels are installed at a fixed angle. They are larger and less
efficient, but much less costly, so that the cost per watt of energy is
similar, company executives said.
Both are good at producing power at the time of day when prices tend to
be high, in the afternoon.
Neither approaches the economy of fossil-fuel burning plants, said
Jennifer Zerwer, a spokeswoman for Pacific Gas and Electric. But they
are competitive with wind power and with power from solar thermal
plants.
And prices will eventually fall, she said.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Giant Retailers
Look to the Sun for Energy Savings
NYTIMES
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
Published: August 10, 2008
In recent months, chains including Wal-Mart Stores, Kohl’s, Safeway and
Whole Foods Market have installed solar panels on roofs of their stores
to generate electricity on a large scale. One reason they are racing is
to beat a Dec. 31 deadline to gain tax advantages for these projects.
So far, most chains have outfitted fewer than 10 percent of their
stores. Over the long run, assuming Congress renews a favorable tax
provision and more states offer incentives, the chains promise a solar
construction program that would ultimately put panels atop almost every
big store in the country. The trend, while not entirely new, is
accelerating as the chains seize a chance to bolster their
environmental credentials by cutting back on their use of electricity
from coal.
“It’s very clear that green energy is now front and center in the minds
of the business sector,” said Daniel M. Kammen, an energy expert at the
University of California, Berkeley. “Not only will you see panels on
the roofs of your local stores, but I suspect very soon retailers will
have stickers in their windows saying, ‘This is a green energy store.’ ”
In the coming months, 85 Kohl’s stores will get solar panels; 43
already have them. “We want to keep pushing as many as we possibly
can,” said Ken Bonning, executive vice president for logistics at
Kohl’s.
Macy’s, which has solar panels atop 18 stores, plans to install them on
another 40 by the end of this year. Safeway is aiming to put panels
atop 23 stores. And other chains, including Whole Foods Market, BJ’s
Wholesale Club and REI, the purveyor of outdoor goods, are planning
projects of their own. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer,
has 17 stores and distribution centers with solar panels in operation
or in the testing phase. It plans to add them soon to five more stores.
People at the chain are considering a far larger program that would put
panels and other renewable technologies at hundreds of stores.
“It’s going to be the Wal-Marts of the world that will buy these things
over acres and make a difference,” said Roger G. Little, chairman and
chief executive of the Spire Corporation, a Boston company that
provides solar equipment.
Analysts are not sure how much power the rooftop projects could
ultimately produce, but they say it could be enough to help shave total
electricity demand. In many communities, stores are among the biggest
energy users. Depending on location and weather, the solar panels
generate 10 to 40 percent of the power a store needs. If Wal-Mart
eventually covered the roofs of all its Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart
locations with solar panels, figures from the company show that the
resulting solar acreage would roughly equal the size of Manhattan, an
island of 23 square miles.
Booming demand in recent years has driven up the price of solar panels,
and analysts say it costs far more to generate electricity from solar
energy than from coal. Coal generation costs about 6 cents for a
kilowatt hour, which is enough electricity to run a hair dryer for an
hour. Natural gas generation costs about 9 cents a kilowatt hour, said
Reese Tisdale, a senior analyst with the consulting firm Emerging
Energy Research. In comparison, “best case” for power from solar panels
is about 25 to 30 cents a kilowatt hour, he said.
But retailers believe that they can achieve economies of scale. With
coal and electricity prices rising, they are also betting that solar
power will become more competitive, especially if new policies
addressing global warming limit the emissions from coal plants.
Retailers, hoping to create a bigger market and positioning themselves
at the forefront of a national shift toward renewable energy, are
encouraging one another to join the bandwagon.
“We’re hoping that our purchases along with some other retailers will
help bring the technology costs down,” said Kathy Loftus, who is in
charge of energy and other initiatives at Whole Foods Market.
Most of the efforts so far are in California, New Jersey and
Connecticut, states that offer generous incentives. Executives say they
would like to convert many more. How quickly they can do so depends on
government policy because retailers rely on tax incentives to offset
the cost. Corporate officials describe a federal tax credit for
renewable energy, one that Congress has let expire and then renewed
several times, as particularly important. A Congressional deadlock over
offshore oil drilling has held up legislation that would renew the
credit for next year.
“Every project that starts development has to be finished by Dec. 31 or
you lose tax equity advantage, and nobody’s willing to take that risk,”
said George Waidelich, vice president for energy operations at Safeway.
“You’re talking about millions of dollars.”
Retailers are fast becoming energy experts. They are experimenting with
traditional solar panels, a new type of thin solar panel and
ground-mounted tracking systems that move with the sun. They are
also combining those systems with other rooftop technologies like
skylights and solar water heaters.
“Solar has become part of the kit that we think about when we open a
store,” said Sharon Im-Lee, REI’s energy manager.
American retailers are following the lead of stores in Europe, which
are much further along. Store-roof projects are so numerous in parts of
Germany that they can be spotted in satellite photos. Government
subsidies there, however, have lasted for years.
“In Germany, there are none of the concerns you find in the United
States about whether support will be around next year,” said Jenny
Chase, an energy analyst in London.
Retailers in the United States tend to buy their own solar-power
systems, at $4 million to $6 million for a store the size of a
Wal-Mart, or enter into an agreement with a utility company that pays
the up-front costs and then gives the store a break on power bills — an
approach that appeals to big chains.
“It really helps make it economical for the retailer,” said Kim
Saylors-Laster, Wal-Mart’s vice president for energy.
Retailers are also looking at other ways to extend their use of
renewable energy by testing technologies like wind turbines and
reflective white roofs, which keep buildings cooler in warm weather.
Bernard Sosnick, an analyst with Gilford Securities who has examined
Wal-Mart’s plans, said the day might come when people can pull their
electric cars up to a store and recharge them with power from the roof
or even from wind turbines in the parking lot.
“It’s not as over the horizon as it might seem,” he said.
Solar power sees bright future; Rebate
program helps fight rising prices
By EMILY GROVES
For the Norwich Bulletin
Posted Jul 18, 2008 @ 11:47 PM
Canterbury, Conn. — In November, Stan Clerici paid $84,000 to install
three 10-feet-by-21-feet solar panels in his yard to generate power to
his 3,600-square-foot Canterbury home.
After a $44,000 Connecticut Clean Energy Fund rebate, an electric bill
that dropped from about $250 a month to $15 and credits from a
nonprofit agency and Connecticut Light & Power Co., Clerici expects
the investment to pay off in about 10 years.
“I knew electricity was going to keep going up, even higher than what
they’ve estimated, and I’ve always been interested in alternative
energy, because I know fossil fuels are being depleted at a fast rate,”
he said. “I think this year you’re going to see a lot of people
struggling with rising fuel prices. Some people are doing something
about it, and some people aren’t. I chose to do something about it.”
The number of people statewide to take advantage of the state’s solar
rebate program has grown rapidly in the last year and a half, prompted
by concerns about the rising cost of electricity.
Clerici is one of 586 people since January 2005 to receive solar
rebates from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, which was established
by the state legislature in 2000 to promote renewable energy. Of those
rebates, 480 were issued since February 2007, according to Emily Smith,
spokeswoman for Connecticut Innovations, a Rocky Hill-based company
that administers the fund.
“It really is taking off, and one of the reasons it’s taking off is the
cost of electricity is going up,” she said.
Smith said the state fund provides rebates covering around 50 percent
of the cost. The average system, a five-kilowatt unit, provides 75
percent of a home’s electricity use each month, she said.
Clerici estimated his 10-kilowatt unit provides 91 percent of a home’s
monthly use. He said his system has produced as many as 65 kilowatts
per day, which is more than twice what he uses. He sends his unused
power back to Connecticut Light & Power and is paid for it. He said
the power company gives him credit on his bill, so he doesn’t know the
exact rate he is paid. He also receives around $100 every three
months from the Mass Energy
Consumer Alliance, a Boston-based nonprofit, for producing clean energy.
Mitch Gross, spokesman for Connecticut Light & Power, said an
average household uses 700 kilowatt hours per month, for an electric
bill of $138.56. According to Smith and Clerici’s figures,
5-kilowatt units could slash
monthly electric bills by $103.92 and 10-kilowatt units could cut
$126.09.
The Energy Information Administration projects around 41,000 consumers
nationwide will cash in on solar power in 2008. Still, Smith
said, the monthly benefits are great, but the costly
systems take around 10 years to pay off and are not accessible to just
anyone.
“These are expensive systems,” she said. “It’s not something people are
going to jump up and do tomorrow, especially in this economy.”
Use of
solar panels heats up
Stamford ADVOCATE
By Richard Lee, Business Editor
Article Launched: 07/14/2008 02:38:06 AM EDT
Michael Lindberg keeps a close eye on the world's energy supply.
As chairman of Wilton's Energy Commission, he educates townspeople,
business operators and elected officials about how to react to
skyrocketing fuel costs.
As a result, the school system and town government have contracted for
about 40 percent of their electrical energy to be provided through
renewable or sustainable sources.
Now, Lindberg has embraced his own advice. He installed a photovoltaic
solar array on the roof of his Thunder Lake Road home.
Lindberg declined to disclose how much he spent on the project, which
will reduce his monthly electric costs significantly.
He estimates the 7.5-kilowatt system will supply 75 percent of his
family's annual electrical requirements at a savings of $125 per month,
or about $100,000 over the 25-year life span of the panels.
"We will typically sell excess power to CL&P during the day and buy
it back during the night and on cloudy days," Lindberg said. "The
installation has a positive environmental benefit equivalent to
planting approximately 900 trees or offsetting approximately 200,000
miles of driving in a typical automobile."
Lindberg's house, with its roof angle and southern exposure, is ideal
for the project, installed by Solar Works, owned by Wilton resident Ron
French.
"A lot of people think it's expensive, but it's a misnomer. The
Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, administered by Connecticut Innovations,
will support half of the installation.
There's a federal investment tax credit of $2,000, and you're adding a
considerable amount of value to your home," said French, whose crew
installed the array in June.
The net cost of a "moderate" PV array that produces 4 to 5 kilowatts,
smaller than Lindberg's, is $20,000 to $25,000, after the government
assistance, said Mark Pizzi, partner with architect John Rountree in
Westport Solar Consultants.
"The rebate is passed through the solar installation firm. The customer
doesn't have to wait or apply for the rebate," Pizzi said.
In the past three months he and Rountree have received numerous calls
from homeowners.
Rountree's job is to ensure the installation fits the look of the
house.
"We design a signature that is most compatible with the structure. Most
of what we're doing is retrofitting. There's still a thought that
panels are ugly," said Rountree, who works with installers.
Rountree and Pizzi make it clear to callers that photovoltaic
installations do not affect home heating oil use, but the elevated
price of oil works its way through the cost structure to electricity
utilities.
But the oil and natural gas crunch will affect homeowners' electric
bills, Rountree said.
"Rate hikes are being proposed by CL&P because fuel costs are going
up," he said.
In fact, electric bills in the area from Connecticut Light & Power
jumped 4.7 percent July 1, adding to a 2 percent rate increase in
January. And rates will jump another 1 percent next year.
While most solar installations in the region are photovoltaic, some
homeowners opt for solar thermal or hot water installations which
offset use of home heating oil or natural gas, said Jared Haines,
president of Mercury Solar Systems in Greenwich and New Rochelle, N.Y.
As home heating oil prices have skyrocketed, the pay-back period for
solar thermal installations has dropped from 10 to five years, he said.
"This is taking off. Ninety percent of our business in photovoltaic,"
Haines said. "From last year to this year, we've seen a 300 percent
increase in interest. Last year, it was two or three phone calls a day.
Now it's six to eight. We had six (employees) last year. Now we have
22."
Homeowners realize energy expenses will continue to climb, and they
want to protect themselves, said French, who is awaiting action in
Congress to renew funding for sustainable energy.
"People are looking to do anything to save money. Connecticut has some
of the highest electric rates in the country," he said. "People also
are aware that climate change is real, and they want to do something."
French estimates that, by the end of the year, his company will see a
150 percent increase in business over last year.
"There's definitely an increase in people calling," said Paul Israel,
president of Sunlight Solar, a Milford installer. "We're increasing 25
percent a year. We started with one (installer) when we started in
Connecticut four years ago. We're up to 23. We're in a very
labor-intensive industry."
Connecticut Innovations, through its Clean Energy Fund, has assisted in
funding 53 photovoltaic installations in lower Fairfield County this
year as of May 31, including three in Darien, 10 in Greenwich, seven in
New Canaan, two in Norwalk, nine in Stamford, 17 in Westport and five
in Wilton.
More than $1.1 million in incentive funding has been awarded for the
projects.
The quasi-governmental agency has assisted in funding 399 installations
since the program started about 31Ú2 years ago, said Emily
Smith, a Connecticut Innovations spokeswoman.
"The growth of our program is tremendous. Requests have increased
dramatically year over year," she said. "You're hedging against the
future."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
New Jersey
Dealing With Solar Policy’s Success
NYTIMES
By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: June 25, 2008
With oil prices skyrocketing, demand for solar power is booming. And
New Jersey, which has used a rebate program to help install more solar
panels than any other state but California, is getting burned by its
own success.
There is a backlog of more than 700 applications for the rebates, and
property owners have to wait months, even years, to get solar panels
installed. The program, which is paid for by surcharges on all utility
bills, has been shut down several times over the last three years
because applications far outpaced rebate money. Some solar installation
companies have had to lay off workers while they waited for rebate
checks to be sent.
All this has convinced New Jersey regulators that it is time to wean
solar energy from public subsidies altogether. The state plans to
replace rebates with energy credits that can be bought and sold on the
open market.
As it works out the details of the transition, New Jersey — not the
place most people associate with solar innovations — finds itself at
the forefront of a growing national debate about the role of government
in helping stimulate this sector of the energy economy.
New York, Colorado, Maryland and several other states with incentive
programs are considering whether to scale back public subsidies so
solar power can compete more extensively in an open market. And they
are confronting another difficult question: Is that best done by
turning to a few large companies, or sticking with smaller businesses
that can create more local jobs?
“Obviously, big systems get us to our goals much faster, but we want
everybody to participate,” said Jeanne M. Fox, president of New
Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities, which proposed the changes and is
expected to give them final approval next month.
Ms. Fox said she believes it will be possible to phase out rebates,
create a secure market for trading energy credits, welcome large solar
system operators and still protect many — if not all — small
installers.
But some of those smaller operators think the proposed transition will
replace a proven success with an untested experiment from which they —
the entrepreneurs who started the solar boom with the help of rebates —
will be excluded.
“The state wants to build a market to suit big companies that have
access to huge sources of capital,” said Bill Hoey, managing member of
N.J. Solar Power L.L.C., a $10 million company. “They could just crush
the mid- and small-size market.”
At SunEdison, one of the largest installers in the state and the
nation, Mark R. Culpepper, the vice president for strategic marketing,
enthusiastically supports New Jersey’s transition. He called it “a
pretty normal market evolution” in which “very small players will
probably go away, while small to mid-sized companies will be acquired
by others or go into specific niche markets where they can specialize.”
Similar conflicts are arising all over the country, but the battle is
most clearly drawn in New Jersey, where state officials feel compelled
to act decisively.
Under a state energy master plan, solar power should account for 2.12
percent of New Jersey’s electricity by 2020. But even though more than
3,100 residential and commercial solar systems have been installed
during the six years the state has offered rebates, they generate only
0.07 percent of current energy needs.
To reach even that, New Jersey has handed out more than $170 million in
rebates. The Board of Public Utilities has estimated that if rebate
rates remained unchanged, it would cost nearly $11 billion to get to
the 2020 goal. According to state calculations, that would add about
7.5 percent to New Jersey electricity rates, which are already among
the highest in the country.
“We need to do things differently because ratepayers can’t keep paying
for rebates indefinitely,” Ms. Fox said.
Rebates, which have averaged $20,000 for residential projects and more
than $1 million for large commercial installations, would virtually end
this year under the state’s plan. A limited number for small
residential projects producing less than 10 kilowatts would be phased
out over the next four years.
In their place, the state would turn to a program it started several
years ago that issues energy credits. The concept is simple: Solar
projects generate energy credits every year, and the state requires
utility companies like PSE&G to buy them to offset carbon emissions
from their power plants and to help meet renewable-energy targets. By
purchasing credits, the utilities do not actually generate solar power,
but they offset the cost of installing and operating solar equipment.
New Jersey plans to greatly expand the program by allowing the credits
to be bought and sold like commodities, with long-term contracts and
prices set by the open market.
Regulators say that will be fairer to ratepayers and help the state
reach its renewable-energy goals faster. They also say the plan
provides safeguards for small installers and ensures competition by
prohibiting any company from capturing more than 20 percent of a
utility’s yearly credits.
But the small companies fear that large businesses are poised to take
particular advantage of the credit system. Being bigger, they can
handle more credits, cover more long-term commitments and secure more
advantageous financing than mom-and-pop operations.
SunEdison, based in Maryland, has already made inroads in New Jersey
using a new approach — called power purchase agreements — that smaller
companies do not have the capital to duplicate.
Under those agreements, which the state first allowed in 2004, property
owners do not have to buy or operate their solar projects, or handle
the sale of energy credits. Instead, they avoid all up-front costs by
contracting with SunEdison or other large companies, and bill property
owners at fixed rates that are lower than utility company rates.
SunEdison has put up more than 22 solar systems in New Jersey, along
with dozens in others states, mostly for large retail companies like
Kohl’s.
Experts say these purchase agreements can promote the move to solar
power. And regulators hope that a vibrant market for energy credits
will speed that growth to the point where solar power can compete with
conventionally generated electricity.
But Lyle K. Rawlings, president of Advanced Solar Products, in
Hopewell, N.J., and vice president of the Mid-Atlantic Solar Energy
Industries Association, a trade group, said those attempts to make the
solar market more competitive could backfire, actually hindering
competition by squeezing out smaller companies.
He said that the state’s proposed safeguards did not go nearly far
enough. While a portion of new projects would be subject for a few
years to caps on how many credits one company can control, he said,
those caps would not apply to existing solar installations.
“The model they’re creating is overcomplicated, fraught with
uncertainty and really doesn’t protect the small installers who’ve
created this industry,” Mr. Rawlings said. He said his own company had
laid off 4 of its 15 workers in the last few months, and several New
Jersey solar companies had gone out of business. “This is going to lead
to a kind of unhealthy market concentration and chaos, like what’s
already happened in other states.”
Blake Jones, president of Namaste Solar Electric, in Boulder, Colo.,
and a board member of the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association,
said his state was considering changes similar to New Jersey’s.
He said a major goal of solar incentive programs is creating green
jobs. “On a per-kilowatt basis, more jobs, more local business and more
rural economic development is created by small projects and small
businesses than medium or large ones,” he said.
In Maryland, installers hope to persuade regulators to raise the value
of energy credits in order to provide more income for small companies.
New York is several steps behind the other states in developing its
solar market because of regulations that have limited solar
installations to small-scale residential projects. Installers there are
watching what happens in New Jersey because they expect to enter a
similar debate in the next few years.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Solar energy
surging at Kohl's
CT POST
Rob Varnon
May 2, 2008
Kohl's Department Stores said
Monday it is bringing its West Coast experiment with solar power to
three Connecticut stores.
The retailer said it started in January to convert stores in
New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland following the successful rollout
of solar panel technology at 25 of its 88 California stores last year.
There are 17 Kohl's in Connecticut; the Orange, Manchester
and Rocky Hill stores will have the panels, according to company
spokeswoman Mary Ann Campbell.
Kohl's, which also has stores in Fairfield, Norwalk,
Ridgefield and Trumbull, did not disclose why it chose the particular
stores.
Kohl's received three Connecticut Clean Energy Fund grants to
defray the cost of the installation of the solar panels at their
Connecticut sites. The amount of those grants was not disclosed.
Shares of Kohl's rose $1.33 to close at $49.07 on Monday
trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Kohl's is on a growing list of companies that have installed
or are planning to attach solar arrays to their buildings.
Emily Smith, a CCEF spokeswoman, said 72 businesses have won
grant approvals to install solar panels. Many have already added the
technology, she said, and if all are built, including the 513
residential and small-business projects, the state could have 11,400
megawatts of solar-power-generated electricity available. One megawatt
can generally power 750 to 1,000 homes, according to industry standards.
Fairfield-based R.C. Bigelow installed solar panels that
now provide about 10 percent of the tea maker's yearly electricity,
according to plant manager Jim Gildey.
Even under Monday's gloomy gray skies, Bigelow's array was
generating 23 kilowatts of power, Gildey said.
"Green is the buzz word," Gildey said, "but we've been doing
green for a long time."
The company installed more-efficient emergency lighting in
1996 and adopted motion detecting light sources in 1999 that switch off
lights when people aren't in rooms, he said.
He said owner Cindi Bigelow set the company on the path to
being more environmentally friendly years ago, weaving a sense of
environmental obligation into Bigelow's corporate strategy. Cutting the
electric bill is only part of the goal, Gildey said, adding it will
take years before Bigelow recovers its investment. The real reason to
adopt solar technology is to cut carbon pollution, he said. Since
installing the panels, Bigelow estimates it has stopped about 290,000
pounds of carbon from being emitted into the atmosphere.
Bigelow used a $777,000 Connecticut Clean Energy Fund grant
to cover about 55 percent of the cost of its project.
The CCEF provides grants to residents and businesses.
Seymour-based Thule Inc. won a $1.3 million CCEF grant on
April 7, 2008, to install solar arrays on its roof that potentially
could provide 26 percent of the company's electricity needs.
When Bigelow installed its array, which is a collection of
solar panels, those panels were expected to provide about 6.7 percent
of Bigelow's needs.
Kohl's said in a news release it expects to get about 30
percent of each store's electricity needs from the arrays it installs.
Those installations are under way.
For information on CCEF grants, visit the Web site of its
parent organization, Connecticut Innovations at www.ctinnovations.com.
A Green Energy
Industry Takes Root in California
NYTIMES
By MATT RICHTEL and JOHN MARKOFF
Published: February 1, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO — The sun is starting to grow jobs.
While interest in alternative energy is climbing across the United
States, solar power especially is rising in California, the product of
billions of dollars in investment and mountains of enthusiasm.
In recent months, the industry has added several thousand jobs in the
production of solar energy cells and installation of solar panels on
roofs. A spate of investment has also aimed at making solar power more
efficient and less costly than natural gas and coal.
Entrepreneurs, academics and policy makers say this era’s solar
industry is different from what was tried in the 1970s, when Jerry
Brown, then the governor of California, invited derision for
envisioning a future fueled by alternative energy.
They point to companies like SolarCity, an installer of rooftop solar
cells based in Foster City. Since its founding in 2006, it has grown to
215 workers and $29 million in annual sales. “It is hard to find
installers,” said Lyndon Rive, the chief executive. “We’re at the stage
where if we continue to grow at this pace, we won’t be able to sustain
the growth.”
SunPower, which makes the silicon-based cells that turn sunlight into
electricity, reported 2007 revenue of more than $775 million, more than
triple its 2006 revenue. The company expects sales to top $1 billion
this year. SunPower, based in San Jose, said its stock price grew 251
percent in 2007, faster than any other Silicon Valley company,
including Apple and Google.
Not coincidentally, three-quarters of the nation’s demand for solar
comes from residents and companies in California. “There is a real
economy — multiple companies, all of which have the chance to be
billion-dollar operators,” said Daniel M. Kammen, a professor in the
energy and resources group at the University of California, Berkeley.
California, he says, is poised to be both the world’s next big solar
market and its entrepreneurial center.
The question, Professor Kammen says, is: “How can we make sure it’s not
just green elite or green chic, and make it the basis for the economy?”
There also are huge challenges ahead, not the least of which is the
continued dominance of fossil fuels. Solar represents less than
one-tenth of 1 percent of the $3 trillion global energy market, leading
some critics to suggest that the state is getting ahead of itself, as
it did during the 1970s. The optimists say a crucial difference
this time is the participation of private-sector investors and
innovators and emerging technologies. Eight of more than a dozen of the
nation’s companies developing photovoltaic cells are based in
California, and seven of those are in Silicon Valley.
Among the companies that academics and entrepreneurs believe could take
the industry to a new level is Nanosolar, which recently started making
photovoltaic cells in a 200,000-square-foot factory in San Jose. The
company said the first 18 months of its capacity has already been
booked for sales in Germany.
“They could absolutely transform the market if they make good on even a
fraction of their goal for next year,” Professor Kammen said. “They’re
not just a new entrant, but one of the biggest producers in the world.”
Many of the California companies are start-ups exploring exotic
materials like copper indium gallium selenide, or CIGS, an alternative
to the conventional crystalline silicon that is now the dominant
technology. The newcomers hope that CIGS, while less efficient
than silicon, can be made far more cheaply than silicon-based cells.
Indeed, the Nanosolar factory looks more like a newspaper plant than a
chip-making factory. The CIGS material is sprayed onto giant rolls of
aluminum foil and then cut into pieces the size of solar panels.
Another example is Integrated Solar, based in Los Angeles, which has
developed a low-cost approach to integrating photovoltaic panels
directly into the roofs of commercial buildings.
In 2007, 100 megawatts of solar generating capacity was installed in
California, about a 50 percent increase over 2006, according to the
Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group.
That growth rate is likely to increase, in part because of ambitious
new projects like the 177-megawatt solar thermal plant that Pacific Gas
and Electric said last November it would build in San Luis Obispo.
The plant, which will generate power for more than 120,000 homes
beginning in 2010, will be built by Ausra, a Palo Alto start-up backed
by the investor Vinod Khosla and his former venture capital firm,
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
The industry in California is also helped by state and local
governments’ substantial subsidies to stimulate demand. The state has
earmarked $3.2 billion to subsidize solar installation, with the goal
of putting solar cells on one million rooftops. The state Assembly
passed a law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020,
which could spur alternatives like solar.
Additional incentives have come from a small but growing number of
municipalities. The city of Berkeley will pay the upfront costs for a
resident’s solar installation and recoup the money over 20 years
through additional property taxes on a resident’s home. San Francisco
is preparing to adopt its own subsidy that would range from $3,000 for
a home installation to as much as $10,000 for a business.
The subsidies have prompted a surge in private investment, led by
venture capitalists. In 2007, these seed investors put $654 million in
33 solar-related deals in California, up from $253 million in 16 deals
in 2006, according to the Cleantech Group, which tracks investments in
alternative energy. California received roughly half of all solar power
venture investments made in 2007 in the United States.
“We’re just starting to see successful companies come out through the
other end of that process,” said Nancy C. Floyd, managing director at
Nth Power, a venture capital firm that focuses on alternative energy.
“And through innovation and volume, prices are coming down.”
Whether any of this investment pays off depends, as it did in previous
eras, on reaching the point at which solar cells produce electricity as
inexpensively as fossil fuels. The cost of solar energy is projected to
fall steeply as cheaper new technology reaches economies of scale.
Optimists believe that some regions in California could reach that
point in half a decade.
At present, solar power is three to five times as expensive as coal,
depending on the technology used, said Dan Reicher, director for
climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org, the philanthropic
division of the Internet company. Among its investments, Google says,
is $10 million in financing for eSolar, a company in Pasadena that
builds systems that concentrate sunlight from reflecting mirrors.
“We’re at the dawn of a revolution that could be as powerful as the
Internet revolution,” Mr. Reicher said. The problem is, he said,
“renewable energy simply costs too much.”
At a conference of alternative energy companies in San Francisco last
month, to discuss how to encourage the industry’s growth, Mr. Brown,
the former governor, joked that if the participants wanted to make real
headway selling alternative energy, they should try not to come off as
flaky. “Don’t get too far ahead of yourselves,” said Mr. Brown, now the
state’s attorney general. “You will be stigmatized. Don’t use too many
big words and make it all sound like yesterday.”
Going
green,
and going to Greenwich
Stamford ADVOCATE
By Richard Lee, Assistant Business Editor
Published August 30 2007
Mercury Solar Systems has opened an office at, appropriately enough, 10
Green Lane in Greenwich, seeing the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund's
solar rebate program as a vehicle to build its client base. New
Rochelle, N.Y.-based Mercury arrived with a bang, snagging National
RE/Sources, the Greenwich-based developer of iPark Norwalk, as its
first corporate client.
Mercury's installation of a 54-panel, 11-kilowatt solar panel system
atop a portion of the sprawling 400,000-square-foot former Perkin-Elmer
headquarters should start this year and take 11Ú2 weeks to
complete, said Mercury President Jared Haines.
"This is our first (corporate project) in Connecticut. We're looking at
advertising the iPark project once it's installed," said Haines, who
proposed a solar installation to Joseph Cotter, National RE/Sources
president and chief executive officer, at a reception at the Norwalk
facility. He suggested combining solar panels with the
environmentally friendly roof that National RE/Sources plans to install.
"This is the first time I've seen this, a combination green roof and
solar, done anywhere - definitely the first time in Connecticut," said
Haines, estimating the solar panel project at $100,000. "It's a
smaller-scale system because they want to measure the results."
The state Clean Energy Fund will pay about $45,000 toward the cost, and
National RE/Sources will be eligible for a 30 percent federal tax
rebate, he said. Solar panels normally last 25 years.
"The conversion to solar electricity is a viable option for all
businesses in the Northeast and in Fairfield County where electricity
rates are among the highest in the country," Haines said. "The
combination of federal tax credits, cash incentives offered by the
state and savings on electricity costs outweigh the investment."
Some companies are adopting solar technology because they want to
improve the environment, said David Ljungquist, project manager at the
Clean Energy Fund, but others are seeing it as a hedge against utility
price increases.
"Companies want some degree of control over rising energy rates. When
you put in photovoltaic, you know what your cost will be for the next
25 years," he said. Commercial property owners also see solar
installations as another way to increase the value of their holdings.
"Bigger companies with a lot of shareholders like to include it in
financial reports for their investors," said Rosemarie Hughes, leasing
administrator for iPark Norwalk. The iPark this spring signed
Norwalk Hospital as its first tenant for the main building, taking
100,000 square feet for its pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology and
Soundview Medical services.
"Solar electricity fits our goal of having Class A energy-efficient
office space that's a commercial role model for conservation," said
Lynn Ward, vice president of leasing.
Haines plans to use the iPark project as a model for Mercury's other
corporate customers. Based on the negotiations going on between Mercury
several area businesses, iPark will see some visitors.
"In Connecticut, we've got about $3.5 million in estimates right now,
and about 80 percent is commercial," Haines said, with the remainder
being possible residential projects. "People are learning more and more
about the benefits on the commercial side. We're talking with real
estate developers, car dealerships, car washes, a pet store and a
Fortune 500 company."
Mercury Solar, affiliated with ECNY Electric, a New York state-based
electrical contractor, employs 15, including eight installers.
Within the next five years, they will be busy as companies learn more
about the state and federal programs and become more sensitive to the
environment, Haines said.
"It's going to take the same road as hybrid cars," he said.
Solar
Energy Is
Popular, But Scale Still Very Small
Other
sources receive more research funding
By Andrew C. Revkin , Matthew L. Wald
Published on 7/16/2007
The trade association for the nuclear power industry recently asked
1,000 Americans what energy source they thought would be used most for
generating electricity in 15 years.
The top choice? Not nuclear plants, or coal or natural gas.
The winner was the sun, cited by 27 percent of those polled.
It is no wonder solar power has captured the public imagination. Panels
that convert sunlight to electricity are winning supporters around the
world — from Europe, where gleaming arrays cloak skyscrapers and
farmers' fields, to Wall Street, where stock offerings for panel makers
have had a great ride, to California, where Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger's “Million Solar Roofs” initiative is promoted as
building a homegrown industry and fighting global warming.
But for all the enthusiasm about harvesting sunlight, some of the most
ardent experts and investors in solar technologies say that moving this
energy source from niche to mainstream — last year it provided less
than 0.01 percent of the country's electricity supply — is unlikely
without significant technological breakthroughs. And given the current
scale of research in private and government laboratories, that is not
expected to happen anytime soon.
Indeed, even a quarter century from now, said the Energy Department
official in charge of renewable energy, solar power might account for,
at best, 2 percent or 3 percent of the energy supply in the United
States.
In the meantime, coal-burning power plants, the main source of
smokestack emissions linked to global warming, are being built around
the world at the rate of more than one a week.
Propelled by government incentives in Germany and Japan, as well as a
growing number of American states, sales of photovoltaic silicon panels
have soared, helping steadily drop manufacturing costs and leading to
widespread product refinements.
But Vinod Khosla, a prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneur focused on
energy, said the market-driven improvements were not happening fast
enough to put solar technology beyond much more than a boutique
investment.
“Most of the environmental stuff out there now is toys compared to the
scale we need to really solve the planet's problems,” Khosla said.
Scientists long ago calculated that an hour's worth of the sunlight
bathing the planet held far more energy than humans worldwide could use
in a year, and the first practical devices for converting light to
electricity were designed more than half a century ago.
Yet research on solar power and methods for storing intermittent energy
flows has long received less spending, both in the United States and
other industrialized countries, than energy options with more political
support.
For decades, conventional nuclear power and nuclear fusion received
dominant shares of government energy-research money.
These days, a growing amount of government money in the United States
is headed to the farm-state favorite, biofuels, and to research ways to
burn coal while capturing the resulting carbon dioxide, the main
heat-trapping smokestack gas.
In the current fiscal year, the Energy Department plans to spend $159
million on solar research and development. It will spend nearly double,
$303 million, on nuclear energy research and development, and nearly
triple, $427 million, on coal, as well as $167 million on other fossil
fuel research and development.
For the moment, the biggest government boost for solar power is coming
from the states, not the federal government. But there, too, the focus
remains on spurring markets, not laboratory research.
The federal government is proposing more spending on solar research
now, but not enough to set off a large sustained energy quest, many
experts say.
“This is not an arena where private energy companies are likely to make
the breakthrough,” said Nathan S. Lewis, head of a solar-research
laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
A variety of environmental organizations press for tax credits for
people who buy solar equipment, which helps manufacturing but not
research.
One of the industry's most hoped-for pieces of legislation, which would
establish national standards for connecting solar cells to the grid and
for being paid by local utilities, was introduced this spring by Sen.
Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Reps. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., and
Michael Ferguson, R-N.J.
This, too, is focused on stimulating a market, not on basic research.
Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., has also sponsored legislation that would be
helpful to the industry. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is in
his state, in Denver.
Still, some experts say government-financed research efforts often go
awry. And several government officials defended the current effort,
saying an outsize investment in solar research is not needed because
the industry is already in high gear.
But there are few major programs under way to find ways to drastically
reduce the cost of converting sunlight to energy and — of equal if not
more importance — efficiently storing that energy for when the sun is
not shining.
Experimenting with many materials, scientists are hoping to expand the
range of light wavelengths that can be absorbed, to cut the amount of
energy that photovoltaic cells lose to heat, and to engineer materials
to force photons to ricochet around inside the silicon to give up more
of their energy.
Bush administration officials say they are committed to making power
from that technology as well as solar thermal systems competitive with
other sources by 2015.
Alexander Karsner, the lead Energy Department official for renewable
energy technology and efficiency, said expanded use of photovoltaic
cells could have its greatest impact by substantially reducing the
energy thirst of new buildings.
To be sure, there are some promising signs in solar energy.
Big arrays of mirrors that concentrate sunlight to run turbines, which
first emerged in the early 1980s, are resurgent in sun-baked places
like the American Southwest, Spain and Australia. Some developers say
this solar thermal technology is competitive now with power generated
by natural gas when demand, and prices, hit periodic peaks.
With more research, that method might allow for storing energy, which
today is a problem for both solar thermal systems and photovoltaic
power, which makes electricity directly from sunlight.
But that method is hampered by another research hurdle — finding
methods for cheaply storing power.
“The scale on which things actually have to happen on energy is not
fully either appreciated or transmitted to the public,” said Dr. Lewis
of Cal Tech. “You have to find a really cheap way to capture that
light, for the price of carpet or paint, and also convert it
efficiently into something humans can use for energy.”
Raymond L. Orbach, the undersecretary of energy for science, said the
administration's challenge is to spread a finite pot of money to all
the technologies that will help supply energy without adding to global
warming.
“No one source of energy that we know of is going to solve it,” Orbach
said. “This is about a portfolio.”
After more than two decades in which research on converting solar power
to electricity largely lapsed, the Bush administration and lawmakers in
Congress are seeking more money for solar-energy science.
Orbach said the Energy Department's proposed research plan for 2008 to
2012 includes $1.1 billion for solar advances, more than the $896
million targeted at fusion in that span.
But many scientists, perhaps seasoned by past cycles, said that they
doubt the new burst of interest is sufficient to draw the best young
minds in chemistry and physics. After encouraging 346 research groups
last year to seek government grants for surmounting hurdles to
harnessing solar power, the Energy Department this year ended up
awarding 27 projects worth $22.7 million over three years — hardly the
stuff of an energy revolution, several scientists said.
“There is plenty of intellectual firepower in the U.S.,” said Prashant
V. Kamat, an expert in the chemistry of solar cells at the University
of Notre Dame, who has some Energy Department financing. “But there is
limited encouragement to take up the challenge.”
California
to Sue EPA Over Greenhouse Gas
Regulations
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 2, 2008
Filed at 2:12 p.m. ET
SACRAMENTO (AP) -- California sued the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency on Wednesday for denying its first-in-the-nation greenhouse gas
limits on cars, trucks and SUVs, challenging the Bush administration's
conclusion that states have no business setting emission standards.
Other states are expected to join the lawsuit, which was anticipated
after the EPA denied California's request Dec. 19. The lawsuit was
filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson denied California a waiver that it
needs under the federal Clean Air Act to move forward with regulating
greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks. At least 16 other
states had been expected to follow California's lead and adopt the
state's tougher emission limits.
"There's absolutely no justification for the administrator's action,"
Attorney General Jerry Brown told The Associated Press in an interview
Wednesday. "It's illegal. It's unconscionable and a gross dereliction
of duty."
In announcing his decision last month, Johnson said the federal
government was moving forward with a national solution and dismissed
California's arguments that it faced unique threats from climate
change.
Johnson said energy legislation signed by President Bush will raise
fuel economy standards nationwide to an average of 35 mpg by 2020. He
said that was a far more effective approach to reducing greenhouse
gases than a patchwork of state regulations.
California officials have said their 2004 law was tougher. It would
have required the auto industry to cut emissions by one-third in new
vehicles by 2016 or reach an average of 36.8 mpg.
Twelve other states -- Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New
Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,
Vermont and Washington -- have adopted the California emissions
standards.
The governors of Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Utah have said they
also plan to adopt them. The rules also are under consideration in
Iowa.
"(EPA officials) are ignoring the will of millions of people who want
their government to take action in the fight against global warming,"
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "That's why, at the
very first legal opportunity, we're suing to reverse the U.S. EPA's
wrong decision."
Fifteen states plan to intervene on California's behalf, including 13
of those that have either adopted or are in the process of adopting the
rules. Delaware and Illinois, which have not passed the standards, also
are part of the lawsuit.
"Today, there is simply no environmental issue more compelling -- or
extraordinary -- than the increasing threat of climate change," New
York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a statement. "Greenhouse gas
emission standards for cars are a logical and necessary step to
effectively combat global warming."
The EPA's decision was a victory for automakers, who had argued that
they would have been forced to reduce their selection of vehicles and
raise prices in the states that adopted California's standards.
It was the first time the EPA had fully denied California a waiver
under the Clean Air Act since Congress gave the state the right to
obtain such waivers in 1967.
Brown said the EPA has attempted to kill a legal, viable policy
tailored to help California deal with projected consequences of global
climate change. Rising seas could erode the state's coastline and top
its levees, while warming temperatures are expected to reduce the
Sierra snowpack, leading to a potential water crisis.
"To curb the innovative efforts of California and other states makes no
sense," Brown said.
During a news conference announcing the lawsuit, Brown said the EPA's
decision appears to have been made after "White House pressure,
automobile influence or some other lobbying pressure."
He filed the suit in the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit, which is
viewed as more friendly to the state's position than other federal
courts. Brown said he expects the Bush administration will seek to have
the case transferred to the more conservative federal appeals court
based in Washington D.C.
"We understand this is a long fight that may go to the Supreme Court,"
Brown said. "We feel this is going to be a struggle."
A call seeking comment from the EPA was not immediately returned
Wednesday. The denial angered members of Congress, including
California Democrats who sit on key committees. Sen. Barbara Boxer and
Rep. Henry Waxman, who chair the committees that oversee the EPA, said
the agency ignored the legal requirements in the Clean Air Act.
Last week, the EPA said it would turn over all documents about its
denial of the California waiver request to congressional committees
that have promised hearings into the decision. That includes the
agency's communications with the White House.
The auto regulations are a major part of California's global warming
law, which aims to reduce greenhouse gases statewide by 25 percent --
to 1990 levels -- by 2020. Auto emissions account for about 17 percent
of the state's proposed reductions. California Air Resources
Board chairwoman Mary Nichols said the state expects to obtain its
waiver by appeal and does not plan to shift its strategy to meet its
greenhouse gas-reduction goals.
Ford:
Hydrogen cars
close to production
By TOM KRISHER, AP Auto Writer
July 10, 2007
DEARBORN, Mich. - The relatively quick-and-easy answer to foreign oil
dependence and automotive greenhouse gas emissions is circling the
grounds every day at Orlando International Airport in Florida,
according to a top Ford Motor Co. official. It's a utilitarian
12-passenger parking lot shuttle bus powered by a 6.8-liter internal
combustion hydrogen engine, which Ford officials said is their hydrogen
technology that's closest to mass production.
"We really believe this technology is ready to be evaluated at the
consumer level," John Lapetz, the company's program manager for the
buses, told reporters on Tuesday at an event staged to tout Ford's
future vehicles.
About 30 E-450 Hydrogen shuttle buses are working across the U.S. and
Canada, and Ford engineers are monitoring them electronically in real
time, Lapetz said. The vehicles, powered by a modified gasoline engine,
have near zero emissions and get up to 13 percent better fuel economy
than their gasoline counterparts, he said.
Nearly every automaker is testing hydrogen-powered vehicles across the
world, touting them as a renewable alternative to gasoline.
Lapetz said Ford has the ability to bring internal combustion hydrogen
technology to market in cars within five years. But that's only if fuel
storage limitations can be solved, public fear of hydrogen can be
allayed, filling stations set up, and gas prices stay high.
"The technology is there at a sufficient level, in the three-to-five
year window, if all things were perfect, we could reasonably think this
is a solution we could draw on," Lapetz said. "We're not really talking
about invention, that's the thing. We know how to manufacture this kind
of technology in high volumes."
That time frame is reasonable, Gurpreet Singh, team leader for engine
and emission control technologies with the U.S. Department of Energy,
said Tuesday.
"You're taking the base gasoline engine and modifying that. You don't
need to have anything that's very exotic," he said.
The Energy Department also says hydrogen can be used as safely as other
common fuels if handled properly.
Four of Ford's $250,000 buses currently are in service in Orlando, two
at the airport and two with the convention bureau. Ford has incurred
the design costs and relies on partners to pay for the buses, in this
case the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The buses'
range is limited to 150-200 miles by fuel storage technology, and they
cost far more than the roughly $70,000 Ford charges for shuttles
powered by gas engines.
The first Orlando bus started shuttling passengers in April and has
performed reliably, said Carolyn Fennell, spokeswoman for the Greater
Orlando Aviation Authority.
Internal combustion hydrogen could be a bridge toward the ultimate
hydrogen vehicles powered by fuel cells, which are as far off as 2015
or beyond, said Scott Staley, chief engineer of Ford's hydrogen and
fuel cell technology department.
Internal combustion hydrogen engines give off a small amount of
pollution because they burn lubricants, Lapetz said. Fuel cell
vehicles, on the other hand, use hydrogen to produce electricity that
fuels an electric motor. They are quieter than gasoline engines and
their only waste product is water.
Despite the small amount of pollution, the internal combustion hydrogen
engines have another advantage, and that is a far lower cost than fuel
cells, Lapetz said.
"It doesn't have the sizzle of a fuel cell,
but it's got the steak of the meal," he said.
Home, Green
Home; As Costs Decline And Efficiencies Increase,
Environmentally Friendly Housing Goes Mainstream
By STEVE GRANT, Courant Staff Writer
February 25, 2007
When Peter and Nellie Rabinowitz of Bethany decided several years ago
that they wanted an environmentally sensitive home, they had a hard
time finding somebody to build one.
Builders said, "We've heard of that, but nobody does it around here.
Everybody wants a big house with as many square feet as possible, and
they don't care about sustainable or energy efficient or anything like
that," said Peter Rabinowitz.
Things have changed. Green buildings - energy-sipping and
Earth-friendly - are increasingly appealing. And they don't have to be
goofy looking.
"When a house is green but looks like other houses in the neighborhood
- and can be replicated by large-scale building companies - then we
know green is mainstream. We're seeing that happen right now," said
David Pressly, a home builder in Statesville, N.C., and past president
of the National Association of Home Builders.
Higher energy prices are helping drive the new green construction,
which invariably emphasizes energy conservation and reduces fuel and
utility bills. At the same time, a flood of new green construction
technologies and materials has reached the market, everything from
cupboards made of recycled wheat chaff to sophisticated, compact,
high-efficiency furnaces. Even the number of architects and builders
who will design or construct a green home is growing.
Green residential buildings remain a sliver of the residential
construction pie, to be sure, but when low-income housing goes green,
as is happening in Hartford and Bridgeport, that is a signal. Because
if there was a criticism of green residential construction, it was the
cost.
But the premium for green construction can be comparatively small, and
often offset by lower operating costs. Some elements of green
construction, in fact, are so competitive that in both Hartford and
Bridgeport, low-income green housing projects - where every dollar is
critical - are under way. Some green building features don't even carry
an extra cost, such as positioning windows to take advantage of natural
light.
The Rabinowitz home, designed by architect Donald Watson of Trumbull
and custom-built by Building Performance Construction Co. of Trumbull,
is a more expensive home on a big country lot. It serves, nonetheless,
as an example of the kind of green residence that many middle-income
Connecticut families could afford.
It is a New England farmhouse contemporary and totals more than 4,000
square feet, if you include the attic, basement and an above-garage
annex, all finished into usable living space for the family. But
competitive bids to build the basic house, about 2,500 square feet,
came in at $130 a square foot. Even with the added cost of land, that
figure for the core house remains solidly within the range of many
middle-income Connecticut families.
The bid cost was several years ago, Watson said, and was "within the
range of 5 percent of conventional construction costs." But the home's
operating costs will be significantly lower than a conventional home,
and many features will require minimal maintenance, including such
features as factory-painted, cement-fiber siding.
"The argument is, you're getting your money back through energy
efficiency and lower house maintenance costs," Watson said. Just as
with energy-saving appliances, the initial cost may be higher, but
lower operating costs can make the overall cost less expensive over a
period of years.
Virtually every feature, every material used in the Rabinowitz home is
green, relying wherever possible on materials or systems that are
harvested or manufactured in an eco-friendly way, do not pollute and
conserve energy. Floors are bamboo. Fiber cement clapboard siding comes
with a finish that reduces the need for on-site painting and
maintenance. The house is highly insulated and requires only a small
and highly efficient boiler. An automatic ventilation system brings in
fresh air. It has solar panels to heat hot water and soon will have
photovoltaic panels to produce electricity.
Paints and trim give off no volatile organic compounds, which minimizes
airborne pollution. The house even has a root cellar off the basement;
an old-fashioned idea that still works, taking advantage of a place
where temperatures are cool and vary little over the year. There, many
foods can be safely stored without mechanical refrigeration.
The couple - he is an associate professor at Yale School of Medicine;
she is a physician's assistant - estimate their electricity and fuel
costs already are about half what they were in their previous home in
Westport, which they described as a gas-guzzler.
Nellie Rabinowitz said their experience has been an indication of the
rapid advances in green construction. New products kept coming on the
market, often giving them unexpected choices in material or furnishings.
"Every month there were new options," she said.
"More builders know something about it and are willing to try it and
work with it," said Peter Rabinowitz, whose research includes the
exposure of humans to pollutants at home and work. "And there are more
suppliers. It's all becoming a lot easier since we started."
Still, residential green construction amounts to a last frontier
because green construction already has a stronger presence in
commercial and institutional projects. But now, even residential green
construction is catching on.
"It is definitely starting to get traction out there in the
marketplace," said Adam Ney, president of AuctorVerno, a company with
offices in Bethany and Bloomfield that promotes green construction. In
Connecticut, green construction is most common among expensive homes
and lower-income projects, though Ney said there are signs mid-priced
homes are incorporating some green features, such as energy-efficient
appliances, as a way to attract buyers in a cool housing market.
"More and more developers are starting to embrace sustainable as a way
to market to a growing buy-green marketplace," Ney said.
Habitat for Humanity
In the North End of Hartford, in a neighborhood with more than its
share of bumps and bruises, is a modest but very green building that
demonstrates that a green residence does not have to be expensive.
Hartford Area Habitat for Humanity has just completed a duplex
residence that is both affordable and green. The units have about 1,250
square feet each, have been appraised at $117,600 and are being sold
for $88,000 to families with incomes below 50 percent of the area's
average median income.
"That house is probably one of the greenest houses in Hartford County,
if not the state," Ney said.
The houses are on Risley Street, on a former factory parking lot in a
neighborhood where Habitat for Humanity is building 33 homes. With the
exception of solar panels on the roof and front-loading,
water-conserving clothes washers in the basements, funded by United
Technologies Corp., the organization says the green features of the
duplex can now be replicated on the additional homes it will be
building.
"It's been great for us to do something like this because it shows you
can build green affordably," said Julie M. Donahue, Hartford Area
Habitat for Humanity executive director.
To reduce air pollutants, there is no wall-to-wall carpeting; the
owners can use area rugs where needed. Using 2-by-6 studs spaced every
24 inches, instead of 2-by-4s every 16 inches, wood use was cut 30
percent. That was possible because Habitat used engineered lumber,
which incorporates recycled wood and is stronger than conventional
lumber. The 2-by-6s then allowed the use of thicker wall insulation,
which will keep monthly energy costs down.
Toilets incorporate the latest low-flow technology. Rainwater will be
gathered and available to wash cars and water plants. Appliances are
highly energy efficient. Even copper piping is eliminated, Donahue
said, because copper is often mined in developing countries with little
regard for the environment - and because in some earlier Habitat for
Humanity homes, valuable copper pipes were stolen before construction
was completed.
The project included technical training so the organization can
replicate the green features in other houses in the complex. "You don't
want to build a house like this and then walk away and go back to
building the way you always built," Donahue said. "You want to be able
to learn enough through the process that you can continue building this
way."
There is enormous potential for energy savings from buildings,
according to the American Institute of Architects, which estimates that
buildings consume about 76 percent of all electricity generated by U.S.
power plants and account for nearly 48 percent of the greenhouse gases
thought to contribute to global warming. The institute is calling for
strict new energy standards for new buildings and major building
renovations.
Bridgeport Neighborhood Trust
In Bridgeport, a Bridgeport Neighborhood Trust project similar to the
Habitat for Humanity project will create two duplex buildings with
homes of 1,000 to 1,200 square feet, with, among other green features,
highly insulated foundations and walls that will significantly reduce
heating and cooling costs. Work is scheduled to begin this spring, and
the idea is to use them as models for new duplex homes on other lots in
the city.
A key goal is to keep operating costs of these homes far lower than in
conventional housing, as one way to make them more affordable over the
years for their low-income owners. The idea is to create "an
affordable, versatile home that can be replicated across the city,"
said Michael Taylor, project manager for the design of the new
buildings and president of Vita Nuova of Newtown, a company that
promotes sustainable development.
"It is a sustainability issue for these neighborhoods; they can use the
funds they would have used on utilities to keep the house up," he said.
Fannie Mae, the private company that helps low-, moderate- and
middle-income families purchase homes, provided a $21,000 grant to
develop the green housing prototypes.
"We hope that when we are done, anybody can build them," Taylor said.
The plans eventually will be available to the public at no cost.
Westonites
learn going green can slow global warming
Weston FORUM
by BRIAN GIOIELE
Feb 8, 2007
Dozens of people braved the frigid temperatures Monday to learn what
they can do to stem the threat of global warming.
The group spent the evening listening to experts at designing and
building “greener homes” using new energy conservation and energy
generation technologies. They also heard from local residents who have
taken the first steps in their personal lives to reduce the use of
fossil fuels.
“It doesn’t matter what your politics are, or whether you believe
global warming is an issue in your life; the point is, we are in an
energy crisis no matter what we do,” said Martin Strasmore, head of the
recently formed Weston Select Committee on Global Warming.
The committee’s goal, according to Mr. Strasmore, is to prompt
individuals to make decisions that can have an “immediate impact” in
the fight to slow, if not stop, the global warming phenomenon.
Higher heating costs
Mr. Strasmore said the committee’s projection is that Weston could see
as much as a 70% hike in heating costs from the winter of 2003-04.
Couple that with the fact that this winter’s average temperatures are 5
to 10 degrees higher than “normal,” and, the committee chairman said,
it was time to begin educating the local masses on energy options.
“Whether one agrees or not with opinions about climate change and
global warming, there’s no doubt that energy costs have been rising,”
Mr. Strasmore said. “With populations growing, fossil fuel usage and
greenhouse gases are increasing. While industry and local governments
are starting to take positive steps, individual citizens can make
decisions now that can have a more immediate impact.”
To help increase awareness about global warming and what individual
homeowners can do to decrease their own intake of fossil fuels, the
committee held its first symposium Monday, Feb. 5, at the Weston Public
Library.
Bill Valus of Encon discussed geothermal heat pump systems. Also
featured were Anthony Coschigano of Mercury Solar Systems and Mike
Trolle, who, along with his brother, has become a leading builder of
energy-efficient homes.
Two local homeowners, John Egan and Carol Baldwin, offered their
experiences having made the switch to more “green” energy opportunities.
Self-educated
“The technology is out there, the choices are out there, but there is a
lot of minutia out there,” said Mr. Egan. “I found that I had to
educate myself.”
And that education led this self-described “21st Century hippie” to
purchase a hybrid car, then work geothermal heating and solar panel
systems into his new home, on which construction is nearly complete.
While the upfront costs may be steep, Mr. Egan hopes to begin reaping
the financial benefits within the next eight to 10 years, when the
savings he projects to receive in energy costs finally offset the
initial installation costs. But, he added, his decision was based on
more than finances.
“On the upside, my children see me make positive choices for myself, my
family and other people,” said Mr. Egan.
Ms. Baldwin and her husband, longtime local residents, delved into the
geothermal heating and cooling system process while renovating their
1850s farmhouse. And while the environment played a part in the
decision, the couple has also found this new system has delivered
better heating results than their old oil burning system.
“The best part was calling Petro and saying I was ending my contract,”
said Ms. Baldwin, laughing. “We’re really happy with the system.”
In discussing his solar energy company, Mr. Coschigano said that it is
both financially and environmentally prudent for individual homeowners
and industry to move to “renewable” energy opportunities.
“We all love our steam showers, our air conditioning, but our uses have
far exceeded what we can produce,” said Mr. Coschigano. “There are
limited fossil fuels and the global warming issue to deal with. People
have to start asking, How can I reduce our dependence?
Mr. Coschigano said that people, no matter their political persuasion,
are becoming tired of paying exorbitant energy costs, and those costs
are not going to be going down anytime soon.
“We all see what’s happening to the environment,” he added. “Whether
it’s geothermal, solar or other renewables, we all need to get more
involved. We all have a responsibility to the environment, because we
ultimately did this to our environment.”
Four areas
Since its formation by the Board of Selectmen last October, the
committee has been discussing four areas where individuals can make a
difference: energy use in homes, transportation, recycling, and product
buying decisions.
Working with Weston High School students and the adviser from the Help
Our World club (HOW), the committee has begun researching the most
important actions individuals can take to reduce greenhouse gases
(primarily carbon dioxide) and therefore global warming.
The Board of Selectmen established this select committee in October,
and its mission statement included helping increase awareness of
people’s impact on global warming.
The committee concept is the brainchild of Mr. Strasmore, who hopes to
bring together a “broad spectrum” of individuals to not only raise
awareness about the impacts of global warming but also encourage the
community to establish reduction goals and support town initiatives to
reduce the town’s energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.
“This town is one of the most affluent small towns in the United
States, and therefore we consume more energy per capita and create more
(carbon dioxide) emissions than most towns of our size on the planet,”
said Mr. Strasmore. “The intention is to engage our community in
demonstrating that we can change and have a positive impact, reducing
our energy and emissions footprints.”
Growing
`Greener' Buildings
Hartford Courant Editorial
December 10, 2006
Last session, the General Assembly took a step - and a very timid one
at that - toward joining the national green-building movement when it
set energy and environmental standards for state-funded building
projects. But with today's soaring energy costs and mounting concern
about the role of carbon emissions in global warming, lawmakers must go
much further.
The standards apply to new building construction costing more than $5
million and renovations worth at least $2 million. Yet the legislation
specifically exempts Connecticut's school buildings, most of which were
built when heating oil was cheap and which are today considered among
the least energy-efficient in the nation.
The exemption was short-sighted, foolhardy and wrong.
Timidity is something Connecticut can no longer afford - literally.
Statewide, taxpayers spent more than $124 million heating school
buildings during the 2004-05 year, according to the Institute for
Sustainable Energy at Eastern Connecticut State University. Last year,
that figure was projected to rise to $160 million.
Higher efficiency standards make sense for commercial and residential
buildings, too. Buildings use 41 percent of the country's energy and
generate 43 percent of our carbon dioxide output.
Studies show that energy-efficient construction costs about the same or
slightly more than regular construction. By cutting energy use up to 50
percent, however, owners of buildings reap huge long-term savings - as
much as $50 to $65 per square foot over 20 years, according to the
Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.
Connecticut has several shining examples of such initiatives: the Mark
Twain House Museum's visitor and education center in Hartford, Pfizer's
clinical research building in New Haven, Bristol Myers Squibb Co.'s
offices in Wallingford, Yale University's engineering research building
and UConn's Burton Family Football Complex in Storrs.
Connecticut's elected leaders must show the same boldness of vision.
Governors in California, New Jersey, New York and Maine have used their
executive powers to implement tough construction standards for public
buildings. Gov. M. Jodi Rell should do no less.
During the next legislative session, the Connecticut Green Building
Council is expected to press for a law (as it has now for several
years) requiring new construction and renovations costing at least $1
million and using at least 25 percent state money to meet
energy-efficiency standards called Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design. Lawmakers should finally pass such
legislation.
Connecticut company touts progress in
hydrogen power
By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN, AP Business
Writer
Jul 21, 11:59 AM EDT
STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) -- A Connecticut
company has won a federal grant to test new technology that it says can
produce clean hydrogen power for cars and industrial companies at a
cost competitive with gasoline.
President Bush has touted hydrogen power
as a way to reduce the country's dependence on oil from volatile
countries. But hydrogen is three to four times as expensive to produce
as gas, according to federal government estimates cited by FuelCell
Energy Inc.
FuelCell Energy, based in Danbury, makes
fuel cells that generate electricity for power plants while also
creating excess hydrogen. The new technology involves converting the
extra hydrogen into a purer form that can be used to power cars or for
industrial purposes, such as powering chemical production.
The company, which already has used the
technology on a small unit at the University of Connecticut Global Fuel
Cell Center, won a $1.36 million grant from the U.S. Department of
Defense last week to produce a larger version.
"We actually become an enabler for the
hydrogen highway," said Dan Brdar, the company's chief executive. "It
clearly opens a whole new market segment for us."
Government investments in such technology
are vital to make hydrogen power a reality, said U.S. Rep. John Larson,
D-Hartford.
"I think it's extraordinarily important,"
said Larson, a strong advocate of hydrogen power. "This moves us a long
way in that direction."
The company expects to begin deploying the
technology for industrial use in about two years. Company officials
eventually hope to use the hydrogen for cars as well. The military
hopes to use the hydrogen from the fuel cells to power utility trucks
such as forklifts and eventually military vehicles, said Frank Holcomb,
project leader for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Officials will evaluate the reliability of
the technology and whether it can produce a sufficient amount of
hydrogen, Holcomb said.
"We know hydrogen and the hydrogen
infrastructure are coming," Holcomb said. "This is just one step to
getting us a little bit closer to that. We want to start dabbling in
the technology now because we see some of the benefits to it."
The company says its technology will save
up to half the energy required by conventional methods to convert the
hydrogen for power. That should enable the company to meet government
targets to produce hydrogen for $3 to $4 per kilogram, down from $4 to
$6, Brdar said. The unit that will be produced as a result of the
federal grant will provide enough hydrogen to run a fleet of 300 cars,
Brdar said.
Walter Nasdeo, an analyst for Ardour
Capital Investments in New York who follows the company, said using the
technology for cars may still take some time.
"I think it's very important as another
step in the development of this whole hydrogen-oriented infrastructure
we're striving for here," Nasdeo said. "It makes it that much closer to
reality."
The prototype at UConn has produced top
quality hydrogen, said Kenneth Reifsnider, director of the fuel cell
center.
"This brings it to a community of
industrial and commercial users that otherwise wouldn't consider
hydrogen as a source of energy," Reifsnider said. "This has the
potential to bring cost down to a much lower level."
The company's stock traded on Nasdaq
Friday morning at $8.57, down 10 cents. The stock has traded between
$7.90 and $15 over the past year.
Focusing on Fuel Cells
ROB VARNON rvarnon@ctpost.com
Article created: 07/16/2006 04:45:58 AM EDT
Connecticut's two major manufacturers of fuel cells, South
Windsor-based UTC Power and Danbury-based FuelCell Energy Inc., are
contending for the right to determine the future of the state's energy
market through a new program aimed at diversifying electric generation.
The companies plan to provide fuel cells for commercial developments
seeking approval from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, which is
administering Project 100. That program's goal is to provide 100
megawatts of electricity from renewable or alternative sources by 2008.
The projects selected will be able to charge a 5.5-cent premium for
electricity produced and take advantage of federal tax breaks. CCEF was
formed by the General Assembly to encourage the development of clean
energy in Connecticut. The group serves as a clearinghouse for
information on government-sub- sidized programs and opportunities for
businesses and was specifically named in the 2003 legislation
authorizing Project 100 as the administrator.
The CCEF has approved 19 megawatts of power for the project and on Aug.
15 will open bids to fill the remaining 81. The companies might pitch
about 80 to 90 megawatts of fuel cell projects, including two in
Bridgeport that would use FuelCell Energy products.
The CCEF will decide on the projects by November. While there may
be some wind and other projects mixed in, fuel cell-derived energy is
taking center stage.
Fuel cells are gaining in popularity because they generate less
pollution than conventional power systems, use hydrogen instead of
fossil fuels to make electricity and are efficient. But the cost of
producing fuel cells is prohibitive and there are questions about what
their best use will be. How they work
Mike Brown, UTC Power's vice president of business development and
general counsel, said, at its core, a fuel cell is like a battery with
an anode on one side, a cathode on the other and an electrolyte
between. The anode and cathode are similar to the positive and negative
posts of a car battery and the electrolyte is a chemical that forces
electrons to flow in a specific direction.
UTC Power is a division of Hartford-based United Technologies Corp.
There are five basic types of fuel cells differentiated by the type of
electrolyte in use, he said, but they operate on the same principle. ?
Hydrogen is piped into the fuel cell. As the hydrogen flows into the
anode, a catalyst helps separate the gas into protons and electrons.
-Only the protons are able to move from this point through the
electrolyte to the cathode, where oxygen is combined with the protons
through a chemical reaction to produce pure water and heat.
-The electrons, left behind, are directed through an external circuit
in the form of electric current.
While industry experts and some environmentalists tout fuel cells as a
clean energy source, the system creates some pollution, because many
companies rely on hydrocarbons, such as natural gas, to create the
hydrogen, according to Steve Szymanksi, business development manager
for Wallingford-based Proton Energy.
Proton Energy makes equipment used to separate hydrogen from water,
which Szymanksi said, eliminates much of the pollutants from the
process. Proton recently unveiled New England's first hydrogen filling
station in Vermont, which uses a wind-powered turbine to make the
electricity used to separate the hydrogen from water at the site. The
drivers of experimental cars and buses that use fuel cells will be able
to fill up their tanks with pure hydrogen at this station.
Szymanksi said another reason companies are using natural gas is
because there is a distribution system set up for it. But eventually,
he said, there will be a system for hydrogen distribution.
Fuel cells on the go
Proton's fueling station is aimed at the car industry, which is looking
to adopt fuel cells to cut down on pollution and the need for gasoline.
Project 100 is not involved with transportation projects.
Brown said UTC Power has put fuel cells in Hyundais and Nissans and has
several buses, including ones in California, that run on hydrogen.
Because fuel cells are much cleaner than diesel and gas-powered
engines, Brown said, UTC Power thinks bus fleets of the future will
primarily use fuel cells. Fuel cells are also used for space
missions and UTC Power has had its cells on every manned NASA mission
since Apollo 1, Brown said.
"We couldn't have landed on the Moon without them," he said.
That's because of their efficiency and weight, compared with more
standard batteries that would have to be used to power spacecraft.
In homes or as power plants
More than five years ago, as a member of the House Technology
Committee, U.S. Rep. John Larson, D-1, predicted that in about 20 years
fuel cells would be in almost every home, eliminating the need for
electricity distribution wires.
Brown and other experts aren't so sure that's going to happen, and
neither UTC Power nor FuelCell Energy is proposing in-home
applications. The main reasons are that fuel cells are very expensive
and the present grid system delivers power to a large number of people
for less money.
Specifically, Brown said, there are economies of scale larger fuel cell
and other power projects can use to cut the cost of electricity. In a
nutshell, fuel cells will work in conjunction with the grid as either a
primary power plant or back up source.
"I don't see the grid going away," Brown said.
FuelCell Energy and UTC Power are building fuel cell projects around
the globe, but Brown said the companies differ on how large the fuel
cells should be and how they should be used.
FuelCell is working on bigger projects to feed power into the grid,
much like a standard power plant would. Its two Bridgeport projects of
10 and 30 megawatts are examples of this approach.
Brown said UTC Power advocates using fuel cells for distributive
generation purposes, meaning they would be used to provide electricity
for an entire building or neighborhood.
While Connecticut residents might not see in-home fuel cells anytime
soon, Japan, since late 2005, has been installing 1-kilowatt
residential fuel cell co-generation units.
Ebara Ballard, a joint venture of Ballard Power Systems of Canada and
Japan's Ebara Corp., has installed 103 of the residential units, which
can use kerosene or natural gas to create electricity.
Rebecca Young, a Ballard spokeswoman, said the systems are used to meet
the home's daily electricity and hot water needs. Ballard's system
includes a box about 3 feet tall and a hot water unit that uses the
escaping heat from the fuel cell to provide hot water throughout the
home. During peak hours, homeowners use some electricity from the grid.
That's because the units can't cover all the energy use at peak times
in a household, but the fuel cell means the family doesn't need as much
power from the grid during such periods.
The units cost about $55,000 each, she said. But as more are
manufactured the price will come down, and, Young said, Ebarra Ballard
expects them to sell for $5,000 to $6,000. Japan's government, she
said, is providing millions of dollars to subsidize the cost of the
systems.
Money is the hold up
The biggest obstacle to fuel cells becoming more widely used is their
cost.
Fuel cells are made of a variety of materials, including platinum,
which trades in the $1,200-per-troy-ounce range on the New York
Mercantile Exchange.
But Brown said prices will come down when production volume goes up.
And creating volume is what subsidized programs like Connecticut's
Project 100 and Japan's in-home endeavor are helping to do, he said.
Fuel cells planned on mill site
ROB VARNON rvarnon@ctpost.com
Article created: 07/11/2006 04:45:33 AM EDT
In a turnaround decades in the making, a
Japanese corporation is backing a project to create a technologically
advanced fuel-cell power plant inside one of the buildings of the old
Bridgeport Brass Co. on Housatonic Avenue.
Almost 26 years after managers cut 650 jobs and closed Bridgeport Brass
because of high utility costs, an inefficient and outdated factory and
foreign competition, Elemental Power Group LLC wants to create a
30-megawatt fuel-cell power plant in building seven, which formerly
housed the rolling mills.
"It's a $115 million project," said Robert Babcock, president of New
York-based EPG.
Through the Clean Energy Fund's Project 100, the state Legislature
mandated that 100 megawatts of Connecticut's power must be generated
from renewable or clean power sources by 2008. Under the project,
approved companies get a 5.5-cent-per-kilowatt-hour premium over the
regular sale price to create and sell power.
EPG is partially bankrolled by Marubeni Corp., a general trading
company from Japan with $75 billion in annual revenues, according to
Babcock, also a vice president of Marubeni. Before it became an
investment company dealing in a wide variety of industries, including
energy, Marubeni purchased raw materials for Japanese manufacturers and
marketed the finished product for them, he said.
The Bridgeport project is exciting, Babcock said, because it will make
an old factory useful again and could serve as a blueprint for future
power projects in Fairfield County.
One of the reasons EPG wants the project in Bridgeport is that it is
difficult to find room to build new power plants in Fairfield County.
It will be years before EPG starts producing power at Bridgeport Brass,
Babcock said. The Connecticut Clean Energy Fund has to approve the
plant, and then The United Illuminating Co. has to agree to purchase
power from it. Finally, the Department of Public Utility Control must
add its approval.
If all goes as planned, Babcock said, the plant could be producing
power by the end of 2008.
Jon Angel, president of the commercial real estate firm Jon Angel Real
Estate in Fairfield, said he thinks this is a great use for an old
property.
EPG will buy the 11 fuel cells from Danbury-based FuelCell Energy Inc.,
according to Babcock. And while EPG's new plant would not
generate many jobs in Bridgeport — a few engineering, security
and maintenance employees would be all that are needed — the project
would help boost employment at FuelCell Energy's production plant in
Danbury.
FuelCell Energy would not confirm it is building the fuel cells for
EPG. Stephen Eschbach, a FuelCell spokesman, said Monday his company
plans to unveil later this month about 30 to 40 megawatts worth of
fuel-cell projects to be built within Connecticut. He added FuelCell
Energy has contracts with Marubeni for several large fuel-cell projects
in Asia.
EPG will be fighting to win a portion of the Project 100 contract.
Charles Moret, a fund spokesman, said his organization recommended
three projects for approval during the first round of bids, but a wind
farm project was withdrawn. However, a 4-megawatt fuel cell project in
Wallingford and a 15-megawatt biomass plant, which converts gases from
refuse into energy, are moving forward.
Moret said he is not sure how many companies will come forward for
round two; the Clean Energy Fund reviewed 11 during the first round.
Applications for the second round have to be in by next Monday.
"I guess everybody is coming to the table," Moret said when he was told
of EPG and Marubeni's bid.
Moret said Marubeni is a large, well-known international company.
The Clean Energy Fund expects to announce the projects it supports in
November, Moret said.
This is the second large fuel-cell project proposed for the city;
Bridgeport Fuelcell Park wants to build a 10-megawatt facility off
State Street. That project received a more-than-$500,000 loan from
Project 100 to help cover predevelopment costs, including design and
planning.
Babcock said his project does not require seed money and EPG expects to
be profitable because of the premium paid for producing electricity, as
well as federal tax incentives.
Solar
Technology Finds New Way To Harness Sun's Energy: Pavement
DAY
By Arthur Max, Associated Press Writer
Published on 1/1/2008
Scharwoude, Netherlands — If you've ever blistered your bare feet on a
hot road you know that asphalt absorbs the sun's energy. A Dutch
company is now siphoning heat from roads and parking lots to heat homes
and offices.
As climate change rises on the international agenda, the system built
by the civil engineering firm, Ooms Avenhorn Holding BV, doesn't look
as wacky as it might have 10 years ago when first conceived.
Solar energy collected from a 200-yard stretch of road and a small
parking lot helps heat a 70-unit four-story apartment building in the
northern village of Avenhorn. An industrial park of some 160,000 square
feet in the nearby city of Hoorn is kept warm in winter with the help
of heat stored during the summer from 36,000 square feet of pavement.
The runways of a Dutch air force base in the south supply heat for its
hangar.
And all that under normally cloudy Dutch skies, with only a few days a
year of truly sweltering temperatures.
The Road Energy System is one of the more unusual ways scientists and
engineers are trying to harness the power of the sun, the single most
plentiful, reliable, accessible and inexhaustible source of renewable
energy — radiating to earth more watts in one hour than the world can
use in a whole year.
But today, solar power provides just 0.04 percent of global energy,
held back by high production costs and low efficiency rates.
Solar advocates say that will change within a few years.
Other renewable sources have drawbacks: Not every place is breezy
enough for wind turbines; waves and tides are good only for coastal
regions; hydroelectricity requires rivers and increasingly
objectionable dams; biofuels take up land once used solely for food
crops.
“But solar falls everywhere,” says Patrick Mazza, of Climate Solutions,
a consultancy group in Seattle, Wash.
Compared with other energy sources, “solar comes out as the one with
the real heavy lift. It's the one we really need to get at,” he said.
Ooms' thermal energy system is actually a spin-off from attempts to
reduce road maintenance and costs.
A latticework of flexible pipes, held in place by a grid, is covered
over by asphalt, which magnifies the sun's thermal power. As water in
the pipes is heated, it is pumped deep under the ground to natural
aquifers where it maintains a fairly constant temperature of about 68
F. The heated water can be retrieved months later to keep the road
surface ice-free in winter.
Though it doubles the cost of construction, the system is designed to
provide longer life for roads and bridges, fewer ice-induced accidents
and less need to repave worn surfaces.
But the same system can pump cold water from a separate subterranean
reservoir to cool buildings on hot days.
“We found we were gathering more energy in summer than we needed, so we
asked a building contractor what we can do with the extra energy,” said
Lex Van Zaane, the commercial manager. The answer was to construct
buildings near the tarmac and pipe hot water under the floor.
The water usually isn't hot enough on its own, and must go through an
electricity-powered heat pump for an extra boost, Van Zaane said. The
installation cost is about twice as much as normal gas heating, but the
energy required is about half of what would otherwise be needed. That
translates into lower monthly heating bills and a 50 percent savings in
carbon emissions.
Rooftop solar water heaters have been standard in some countries for
decades. In 1954 Bell Labs created the first photovoltaic cells, which
use sunlight to create electric current.
But it is only in the last decade that researchers have begun raising
the efficiency of photovoltaic cells to economically generate
electricity, and new technologies aim to make them commercially
competitive without subsidies from taxpayers.
Experimental technologies involve new methods to concentrate the sun's
energy by using mirrors or lenses, or devices that track the sun's path
across the sky. New materials are being developed to make better cells.
And scientists are working with electrochemical cells using a liquid
rather than a solid component to absorb light.
“The prospect of relying on the sun for all our power demands is
finally becoming realistic,” says report in New Scientist.
Alternative
energy:
Westonites find relief from
rising heating oil costs
Weston FORUM
by PATRICIA GAY
May 31, 2006
Fourth of July may not be here for another month, but there are some
Westonites who are already getting ready to celebrate their
independence — independence from fossil fuel that is.
With fuel prices going through the roof, some enterprising Weston
families and one local builder are using an alternative energy source
called geothermal heating — also known as geoexchange — to beat the
price of oil heat.
At today’s rate of about $2.50 for a gallon of heating oil, a
6,000-square foot home costs roughly $7,500 a year to heat. A
geothermal home costs significantly less.
Rone and Carol Baldwin of Fanton Hill Road are dumping their old oil
burner and installing new geothermal heating throughout their antique
colonial home. “Our oil bill this year was astronomical, but we won’t
have to use oil at all anymore,” Mr. Baldwin said.
Builder Robert Gary is outfitting a new home on Valley Forge Road with
a geothermal heating system rather than a conventional oil heating
system. He is also converting his own home in Redding from oil to
geothermal because he believes it is better for the environment.
“I see this as a necessity. Oil is a dirty business; this is a cleaner
alternative,” Mr. Gary said.
Geothermal heating
So what is geothermal heating? It may not be well known in Connecticut,
but it is a common heating source in other parts of the world.
Geothermal energy is tapped into by more than 20 countries, most
notably Iceland, which gets 17% of its electricity from geothermal
energy.
Geothermal heating relies primarily on the earth’s natural thermal
energy, a renewable resource, to heat or cool a house or multi-family
dwelling.
The geothermal process uses the heat contained in the earth. The
ground’s temperature is always a steady 55 degrees. Pipes are buried in
deep, vertically drilled holes. Water (or other transfer liquid) is
circulated through the heat exchanger nd back out through the loops
continuously. An indoor unit compresses the fluid to a higher
temperature; after it boils, the steam runs a turbine which gathers
power, then the water is recondensed and sent through the cycle again.
Tubing is run down to circulate air through the pipes back up to the
heat pump, exchanging heat for cool air.
In the summer, the outside air temperature can be 90 degrees, and in
the winter, 30 degrees. By utilizing the 55-degree temperature within
the ground, air can be made cooler for air conditioning in the summer
and heat can be drawn out for the winter and for hot water.
Geothermal proponents say if we had pipes strong enough and deep
enough, we could send them down to the earth’s mantle and have a
practically inexhaustible source of electricity. But with today’s
technology, we can only reach pockets of heat that are close to the
surface. A small amount of energy, either solar or electrical, is
needed to supplement the system.
Independence
The Baldwins and their daughters, Jane, 16, and Grace, 12, live in the
Lester Fanton home, also known as the Whitbeck house, which was built
in 1859.
They expect their geothermal system to be fully installed and operating
within the next six to eight weeks and are excited about their upcoming
independence from using oil.
“We had to install a new HVAC (heating, ventillation, and air
conditioning) system anyway, so it was a question of which one to
install. Since geothermal cuts down on heating and air conditioning
bills significantly, it seemed like the way to go,” Mr. Baldwin said.
Ms. Baldwin said she first heard about geothermal heating from a friend
from Sweden who told her how cold the country could be during the
winter. When Ms. Baldwin commented about how high the heating bills
must be she was met with a surprising answer.
“I was told that the heating bill was actually very low because many
homes in Sweden use geothermal heating,” she said.
Brook Reed of Seguin Heating & Air Conditioning of New Milford is
busy at work installing the tubing and pipes for the Baldwins’ new
system. He said his company is making a lot more geothermal conversions
these days.
Because there is an expense to taking out the old heating system and
installing a geothermal one, it will be about seven to 10 years before
the Baldwins can expect to see a positive return and significant
savings. “We expect to be living in Weston for many years to come, so I
think it’s a good investment,” Ms. Baldwin said.
Another family in Weston, which did not wish to be identified, is also
making the conversion from oil to geothermal. “We will not be creating
more pollution, and there will be no more oil truck,” said the
homeowner.
They plan to use solar power, rather than electricity, to help power
the system, saving even more in energy costs.
Wave of the future?
Some new and very expensive homes in Weston are also going to be
outfitted with geothermal heating systems. Mr. Gary, a principal of
Little Mountains Building Company, LLC, is building a 6,400-square-foot
colonial on Valley Forge Road utilizing geothermal rather than oil or
gas.
Mr. Gary is originally from Weston and is married to the former
Elizabeth Coprio, also of Weston. He started building homes in Weston,
Westport, and Redding about nine years ago, and is starting his 16th
one.
One day he was talking to an oil salesman, and during the discussion
figured out the homes he built were collectively using about 35,000
gallons of oil a year. “That just made me sick to think about that how
much oil is consumed a year. The amount of oil to heat houses is just
staggering,” he said.
So Mr. Gary decided to do something about it.
He spent two years researching to see if there was a better way to heat
homes. He had heard about geothermal and solar heating but didn’t know
how practical it would be to implement them in residential homes.
Mr. Gary met with different companies and manufacturers and came up
with a plan to build cleaner and more energy efficient homes. He also
took into account the fact that his homes would be competing on the
market with others that use traditional oil heat. As a practical
matter, the energy efficient homes needed to be competetive cost-wise.
“I want to build a house for the same price point and offer a lot more.
I will probably not be making as much as the other guys. I am trying to
do something where I can make some money, but it is a better product,”
he said.
He said a consumer will not feel any difference in temperature inside a
geothermal home, but there is less maintenance, there are fewer moving
parts, and no boiler involved, a big plus for a homeowner.
Mr. Gary is also converting his home in Redding from oil to geothermal.
When he is done, Mr. Gary said he would like to convert more homes and
possibly create “hybrid homes” that use geothermal as a primary heat
source and oil secondarily. “Geothermal can do 80% of the work and oil
would kick in for the last part,” he said.
Unexpected benefit
The process to convert to geothermal heat provided an unexpected
benefit to the Baldwin family. In order to construct wells on the
property for the new system, several large pine and oak trees had to be
cut down.
The Baldwins were planning on replacing some floors in their home and
wanted pine floors to match, so Ms. Baldwin decided to see if she could
recycle the fallen trees to use as boards for the flooring.
She called George Bell of Wilton, who mills wood, and told him about
her situation. Mr. Bell brought a portable mill to the Baldwins’
property and was able to convert the trees into usable boards. He even
processed a cherry tree which came down in a storm. After some
seasoning, he is going to bring a kiln to the home to finish drying the
wood so it can be used for flooring.
The whole milling process turned out to be less expensive than buying
new flooring, so the Baldwins are very pleased they can use the trees
from their property in such a personal way.
“When our home renovation is done, it is going to be a very special
place,” said Ms. Baldwin.
Quest for energy alternatives heats up
By DAVE CARPENTER, AP Business Writer
May 28, 2006
CHICAGO - The future of energy is bright in Said Al-Hallaj's
invention lab at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and not just
because of the solar window that lies in development on a table.
All around the lab are advanced alternative energy projects
that testify to the war on oil that's proceeding quietly at
laboratories and research centers across the country.
A tiny two-passenger electric car stands ready to drive 25
miles on one charge of its custom-designed pack of lithium-ion
batteries, not unlike the ones that power laptops. A research assistant
who's working out the kinks on an electric bicycle motors down a
hallway at 20 mph, triple the speed of the hybrid fuel-cell scooter
developed here.
Elsewhere, Al-Hallaj and another professor are converting an
SUV into a plug-in hybrid vehicle using lithium-ion cells to double the
fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. And a team of students is
converting a gasoline-powered lawnmower to use hydrogen as fuel.
Some of the projects could be manufactured commercially right
now, said Al-Hallaj, research associate professor of chemical and
environmental engineering and coordinator of IIT's renewable energy
program. The problem is cost, which keeps them from competing with oil
— for now.
"The implications if we succeed are unbelievable," Al-Hallaj
said. "You're coming up with a solution that is clean and advanced —
(good for) energy, the environment and people who are burdened by high
prices."
Solutions for high gasoline prices might seem painfully far
off to drivers as summer travel season begins, but experts say the
skyrocketing costs of oil and gas have given new momentum to the push
to develop alternative fuels and alternative energy sources.
The efforts are readily apparent in the nation's heartland,
where a boom in ethanol is expanding and scientists at laboratories far
and wide are working to turn agricultural waste or "biomass" such as
switchgrass, wheat straw, cornstalks and miscanthus into a fuel called
cellulosic ethanol that could be produced commercially to reduce U.S.
dependence on oil.
In a separate burst of alternative energy developments
unrelated to transportation fuels, wind farms are sprouting up across
the country thanks to larger, more efficient turbines, and nascent
coal-to-energy technology holds promise for pollution-free power plants
in the future.
The driving force for most of the energy efforts, though, is
oil. And researchers are thrilled about the impetus that soaring prices
have given their work.
"With petroleum prices being as high as they are, the stars
are aligning for looking seriously at alternative fuels and chemicals,"
said Hans Blaschek, a University of Illinois microbiology professor
working on the conversion of corn into butanol, a promising alternative
to petroleum-based fuels.
The highest-profile existing oil alternative is ethanol. The
corn-based fuel might not hold the key to an oil-free future, but it is
providing at least a stopgap remedy while scientists look beyond corn
for an answer.
The runup in gas prices has softened for now the argument
that ethanol isn't economically competitive without federal subsidies,
and it has accelerated plans for ethanol plants by farmers'
cooperatives and Archer Daniels Midland Co., the Decatur, Ill.-based
agribusiness, among others.
Still, ethanol's potential is limited by cost and transport
issues and the fact that even those seemingly endless fields of corn in
the Midwest are finite. Experts say corn-based ethanol isn't ever
likely to displace more than 10 percent of the gasoline supply.
"We just don't have enough corn," said Dan Basse, an analyst
for Chicago-based AgResource Co. "If you turned every corn plant in the
country into ethanol, there still wouldn't be enough."
That's where biomass comes in. By using other crops and
forest waste along with the entire corn plant, not just the kernels, theDepartment of Energy
says enough cellulosic ethanol could be produced by 2030 to lower U.S.
gasoline consumption 30 percent.
Scientists at the National Center for Agricultural
Utilization Research in Peoria are among those on a mission to expand
ethanol beyond a grain-based fuel, working intensely on how best to
break down the cellulose of biomass into sugars and complex chemicals
in order to produce ethanol economically. An optimal solution might
still be a decade away.
Mike Cotta,
who heads the U.S.Department of Agriculture-run center in
Peoria, says many technical challenges remain to be overcome.
Researchers must come up with more inexpensive and environmentally
viable ways of converting the polymers that the bulky biomass materials
are made of into simple sugars.
But a lot has happened in recent years to move them closer to
their goal, including great progress cited by Cotta in developing
cheaper, more efficient enzymes to break the materials down.
"We're going to need some major breakthroughs, but once these
things get in place ... it's going to happen," he said.
At Argonne National Laboratory, 25 miles southwest of
Chicago, a variety of biomass-related projects are being carried out
with close involvement of not only the Energy Department but large
corporations such as ADM and energy group BP PLC. Teams immersed in
biofuels research there for years have had their efforts not only
validated but given new life by the intensified focus on high energy
prices and byPresident Bush's
call in this year's State of the Union Address for America to break its
"addiction" to oil by developing alternative fuels.
"It's just been totally crazy," Seth Snyder, section leader
for chemical and biological technology, said of the stepped-up demand
for workshops and research information. "Everybody's interested now.
... We've been saying all along we can make a big impact, and suddenly
people are saying 'Maybe these people are right.'"
Environmentalists and scientists alike applaud the fact that
alternative fuels and alternative energy sources are in the spotlight
more than ever, but they say energy efficiency is still being
neglected.
"There are many people who believe that biomass has the power
to replace our appetite for gasoline," said Kimberly Gray, professor of
civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University. "But
that will only occur with significant improvements in energy efficiency
and smart growth."
Without a trend toward more and smaller hybrid vehicles
combined with high-density, walkable communities, Gray said, the
suggestion by some experts that biofuels could virtually eliminate
Americans' demand for gasoline by 2050 is unrealistic.
Another biofuel with promise is biodiesel, which uses
vegetable oil and other nontoxic ingredients and can be blended with
conventional diesel fuel. The trucking industry in particular has
interest, and the Department of Agriculture says it can reduce carbon
emissions by 78 percent.
But despite growing use in some areas of B11 — an 11 percent
biodiesel fuel — overall consumption is still relatively tiny and
biodiesel is not likely to be an everyday alternative for motorists in
the near future. Only a handful of large biodiesel plants exist
nationwide.
"It's a small interest, pretty much where ethanol was back in
the '80s, but it's growing," Basse said.
Dayton Keyes of the central Illinois town of Maroa decided
not to wait. Angry about prices spiraling ever higher, the 37-year-old
police officer built a small biodiesel reactor in his garage last year
and now tanks up his Volkswagen Golf with a homemade fuel concocted
from used cooking oil.
"It just ticks me off to no end to see that even a 10-cent
change in the average fuel price kills us and our politicians are doing
nothing to solve it," said Keyes, who commutes 105 miles round-trip
daily to his job in Springfield. "I thought, 'Shoot, I'm going to try
to do something about this.'"
Inspired by media reports about a cross-country excursion
using cooking oil as fuel, he found information on the Internet,
ordered a how-to book and invested close to $1,000 in constructing a
reactor — plus a few hours every week brewing up batches of biodiesel.
The result is a fuel that costs him only about 70 cents a
gallon, gets 45 miles per gallon and has converted him to a biodiesel
proselyte who hopes to hasten the time when biofuels abound. He is
trying to get a full-fledged biodiesel plant up and running.
"Renewable resources is a buzzword right now, but you don't
see evidence of it," he said. "I'm trying to get a biodiesel revolution
going where people will start making their own fuel."
Those now in labs trying to devise cheaper energy solutions
applaud federal and state government support but emphasize that more
will be needed if they are to succeed.
"A lot of people in government who ridiculed energy
conservation and alternative energies ... are now investors," said
Al-Hallaj. "The people who are funding these projects are the same ones
who said, `Drill and spend and forget about it.'"
Rather than a single breakthrough, experts say it will likely
take a combination of energy developments to help break free of oil's
grip.
"There are a lot of people out there who think there's a
silver bullet to answer the energy challenge facing this country — one
technology that will answer everything," said Gerald Groenewold,
director of the Energy and Environmental Research Center in Grand
Forks, N.D. "Some people say wind's the answer to electricity
generation, ethanol's the answer to vehicle generation. We think it
will be a mix of a lot of things."
"Clean energy" option becoming more popular
Chris Rhatigan, Register Staff
10/08/2006
JEWETT CITY — In this quiet town near the Rhode Island border, down a
dirt road and behind a factory lies a stretch of the Quinebaug River.
The rushing river is diverted at one point through a canal.
On the end of the short canal is a large building, with a metal-encased
turbine inside connected to a generator, which is cooled by a
10-foot-wide fan. The machinery shakes the room with a powerful,
whirring sound.
And so the power of moving water is turned into electricity. It may
seem old-fashioned, but environmentalists hope it’s how more and more
people will supply power to their homes. Unlike electricity
generated by sooty fossil fuel-generated power plants, clean energy has
a minimal impact on the environment.
The Jewett City plant is part of a program called CT Clean Energy
Options. Twice a year, United Illuminating Co. and Connecticut Light
& Power Co. put notices in customers’ bills offering them renewable
energy credits at a low price. The utilities offer clean energy
credits from two independent firms — Sterling Planet or Community
Energy.
According to SmartPower New England Regional Director Bob Wall, New
Haven leads all cities and towns in the state with 500 users signed up.
Statewide, a total of 9,000 customers have opted for renewable energy,
Wall said.
"It’s off to an outstanding start. It’s one of the fastest-growing
programs in the country," he said.
The clean energy option increases customers’ bills slightly. However,
prices have gone down as technology has evolved. Sterling Planet now
says their program costs about 25 cents extra a day. UI says it costs
between $3.85 for 50 percent and $8 per month for households using 700
kilowatt hours of clean power on top of a customer’s normal bill.
"It’s an affordable program that makes it simple for citizens to get
clean energy," Wall said.
UI spokeswoman Anita Steeves said the company acts as a conduit between
clean energy suppliers and customers. She also said customers
signing up for clean energy are receiving the same power as always. If
they choose the clean energy options, the extra money goes toward
buying renewable energy from sources like windmills in the Midwest and
hydroelectric plants throughout New England.
"What we attempt to do is invest customers’ money to bring the most
amount of energy online," said Bob Maddox of Sterling Planet.
The company buys credits from sources like hydroelectric plants in New
England, natural gas plants in New Jersey and windmills in the
Midwest. Maddox said Georgia-based Sterling Planet provides clean
energy to Yale University, Nike, Duke University and the United States
Air Force.
Paul Copleman, sales and marketing operations manager for Community
Energy, said the main sources for his company’s renewable energy are
wind power from Pennsylvania and landfill gas plants in New England.
Copelman said while most people realize the environmental benefits of
wind power, economic benefits also exist. He said farmers lease their
land to make way for wind turbines; municipalities boost their tax
bases with the new businesses, and there are good jobs in construction
and maintenance of new facilities.
Duncan Broatch, of Summit Hydropower Inc. owns the plant in Jewett
City. He said the plant was originally a mill, and in the late 1800s it
provided power to the town. Now the plant diverges the flow of
the Quinebaug River to generate 2.8 megawatts of electricity, enough to
supply power to 2,800 homes.
The water rushes through several stages before its conversion to
energy. First it is channeled into a forebay, which looks like a canal
about 20 feet wide. It then flows through a set of thin metal
bars at the end of the forebay at 2,000 cubic-feet-per-second,
filtering out debris. After it’s filtered, the water goes into a
massive turbine, and then back into the river unchanged.
"There’s absolutely no pollution. We’re not changing the water at all,"
Broatch said.
The turbine spins a metal cylinder, leading to a generator that
distributes electricity to the nearby power lines. The
electricity ends up on a grid the whole region draws its energy from,
according to Broatch.
Broatch said there are less than a dozen hydroelectric plants in
Connecticut. He said he would like to see more old mills converted into
power plants like the one in Jewett City. There are plants in
Collinsville and Putnam that Broatch would like to see back online.
Wall said another sign that renewable energy is taking off in the state
is the installation of several solar projects. He said solar power is
in the works for the Whole Foods distribution center in Cheshire,
Staples office store in Killingly, and Barnard Magnet School in New
Haven.
The rise of such projects, Wall said, is due to people realizing the
ease of installing solar panels along with tax incentives from the
quasi-public group Connecticut Clean Energy Fund and the federal
government. Wall said studies done by scientists show there is
not enough wind speed in Connecticut to justify a wind-to-energy
plant. However, especially on the shoreline, small projects with
just one or two turbines are possible, Wall said.
"I think eventually there will be wind in Connecticut, even if it’s at
a smaller scale," he said.
T R A D I T I O N M E E T S T H E
I N T E R N E T :
Clever cut and paste; Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
discuss the state of politics...and
good ideas that won't go anywhere (at right);
"Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates" available to read on-line (now that
the copywright has expired) from Google and the City of Newton,
MASS. public library - click here.
Wind farm off New Jersey?
$1.4 Billion
Oregon Wind Deal Announced
NYTIMES
By KATE GALBRAITH
December 10, 2009, 12:08 pm
General Electric will supply wind turbines to what it says will be the
nation’s largest wind farm, in Oregon. The $1.4 billion deal was
announced on Thursday.
The deal marks the “largest wind turbine commitment this year and the
third largest in the history of our wind business,” said Steve Bolze,
the president and chief executive of G.E.’s power and water division,
in a telephone interview.
When the turbines, with 845 megawatts of capacity, are going full
speed, they will provide enough power for 235,000 homes, G.E. said. The
project will be operated by Caithness Energy, a New York City-based
renewables developer. Southern California Edison, a California utility,
has agreed to buy power from the farm for 20 years.
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The 338 turbines — stretching across about 30 square miles, just south
of the Columbia River in north-central Oregon near the town of
Arlington — will be installed in 2011 and 2012, according to Mr. Bolze.
The project has “already received the majority of their necessary
government permits, including permits they need in California,” he said.
According to G.E.’s news release, Caithness Energy estimates that the
$2 billion project will employ 400 workers during its construction
phase, and 35 while the wind farm is running. (On its Web site,
Caithness Energy estimates — more conservatively than G.E. — that the
wind project will be the largest in Oregon.)
The deal marks good news for the wind business, which has seen
continued growth this year but complained of a manufacturing slowdown,
as orders have been delayed amid financing problems. “Financing is
starting to become more available to customers, but it’s not at the
same level as 1 1/2 years ago,” Mr. Bolze said.
The 2.5 megawatt turbines from G.E. will be assembled in Pensacola,
Fla., with well over half of the parts (measured by value) being made
in the United States, according to Mr. Bolze.
Asked whether any of the turbine pieces would come from China, he said:
“I think on this one, if it is, it’s a negligible piece at this point.”
Pickens Drops
Plan for Largest Wind Farm
NYTIMES
By Kate Galbraith
July 7, 2009, 9:01 am
Reuters T. Boone Pickens’ widely advertised plan for
building the world’s largest wind farm appears dead.
T. Boone Pickens, the legendary oilman, has abandoned his plan to build
the world’s largest wind farm, according to a report in the Dallas
Morning News that was confirmed by a spokesman for Mr. Pickens.
The report states that Mr. Pickens will instead build a handful of
smaller wind farms around the Midwest. Possible locations include
Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Kansas and Texas. The Texas Panhandle was
the to be the site of the original wind farm.
Mr. Pickens has said in the past that he had to delay his wind plans
due to the financing difficulties that have hit wind farms across the
country in the last nine months, along with a fall-off in natural gas
prices.
The latest scaling back, according to the Dallas paper, is due to
transmission constraints. Texas plans to build about $5 billion worth
of transmission lines to help carry the wind from West Texas, but they
will not go where Mr. Pickens had hoped. Originally he had even planned
to build his own transmission lines.
Meanwhile, Mr. Pickens has embarked on a round of media appearances to
commemorate the one-year anniversary of the launch of his energy plan,
which promotes natural gas as a fuel for cars – as well as greater use
of wind energy in electricity generation – as a method of getting the
nation off of foreign oil.
In an early-morning appearance on Squawk Box, a CNBC show, Mr. Pickens
said that while the climate bill was “extremely important and all,” he
was still focused on getting the nation off of foreign oil.
“The security issue doesn’t go away,” he said.
Remember Weston's joust with the Siting Council?
BATTLE OVER TEST TOWERS: Loophole Allows Wind Turbine Work In Colebrook
Without Local Debate
The Hartford Courant
By RINKER BUCK
May 25, 2009
COLEBROOK —
Renewable energy is now an American mantra, but homeowner Stephen King
has learned that a legal limbo awaits anyone who wakes up to discover
that a wind farm might be going up next door.
Because of a loophole that allows zoning boards to approve test towers
for wind turbines without notifying neighbors, residents near terrain
favorable for wind energy could face the prospect of a major wind
energy project being built in their community with limited ability to
challenge it. What's more, the state, through its clean energy
grants and its final permitting authority — the Connecticut Siting
Council — inadvertently supports the bypassing of local zoning during a
wind energy development.
That is the issue being tested as Connecticut's first potential site
for a wind farm has entered its research phase on the western fringes
of the Hartford suburbs.
Last fall, two politically connected wind-energy entrepreneurs who run
BNE Energy Inc. of Waterbury, cleared 2 acres along Route 44 in
Colebrook and put up a 180-foot meteorological tower to test the
feasibility of developing a wind farm. The tower has anemometers and
wind vanes to test the speed and direction of wind over eight months to
a year, data that are required before the siting council can begin the
approval process.
Even though the test tower could lead directly to a commercial
enterprise — within a year or two, as many as five, 320-foot turbines
with blades as long as 115 feet could be whirling over the site — and
even though the proposed wind facility would be in a residential zone,
the town of Colebrook issued permits for the project without a public
hearing or notifying neighbors.
That decision — affirmed at a contentious zoning board of appeals
hearing in Colebrook in February — is now being challenged by King and
other neighbors in a case scheduled to reach Superior Court in
Litchfield in August.
King, a network manager for a Torrington manufacturing company whose
house and land borders the BNE site on Flagg Hill Road, first learned
about the wind farm while making coffee in early December. Through the
windows of his kitchen, King saw a Volvo excavator widening an access
road in the woods south of his home. When he called a neighbor
about the excavator, King learned that about 2 acres on the 75-acre
property owned by BNE had been cleared and that the town had approved a
permit to install the research tower.
Two days later, when he met with Colebrook First Selectman Thomas
McKeon and Karen Griswold Nelson, the zoning enforcement officer, King
was told that a permit was issued for the tower because zoning
regulations allowed such "temporary uses" in a residential zone, and
thus no prior notice to neighbors was required.
The state legislation creating the siting council in 1972, revised in
1981, gave the state the authority to override local zoning because
electrical generating facilities — from nuclear plants to
trash-to-energy projects — are unpopular and invariably arouse local
opposition. These powers now apply to any wind turbine facility that
will generate more than 1 megawatt of electricity. BNE has said that it
plans to build a 10-megawatt facility, which would probably mean
between three and six wind turbines over 300 feet high apiece.
Colebrook had just set in motion a large and highly visible energy
project that it would have virtually no control over if BNE decides to
build on the site. BNE's exploration of the Colebrook site, and another
in Prospect, was supported by $121,000 in low-cost loans from the
Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, a state agency that provides seed money
for renewable energy projects from surcharges paid by Connecticut
electricity consumers.
Political Partnership
BNE Energy is a partnership between Greg Zupkus, a former aeronautical
engineer and telephone company executive, and Paul Corey, the former
chairman of the Connecticut State Lottery. Corey was most recently in
the news in 2005 for giving John Rowland, the former governor, a hot
tub.
"I don't know anything about the local process or informing the
neighbors beyond what the town told me to do," Zupkus said. "The first
selectman and the zoning officer in Colebrook were very helpful and
supportive from the get-go, and they never informed us that we had
anything else to do."
King said he feels torn between two allegiances — the need for
renewable energy and his rights as a homeowner.
"I am actually a very strong supporter of green initiatives, and I
might agree in the end that a wind farm here makes sense," King said.
"But, especially since state money is involved, I think that these
'green entrepreneurs' should follow local zoning laws.
"This is a huge decision for Colebrook. Five, 300-foot towers right
over Route 44 is a massive commercial presence for a rural town. This
should have been done out in the open, with everyone in town
participating in the process and having their say."
At a zoning board of appeals meeting in February, King and several
other Colebrook residents asked zoning officials if they were aware,
when they permitted the temporary meteorological tower, that they had
in effect ceded all local decision-making power to the state Siting
Council. Nelson, the zoning enforcement officer, said that
because the test tower was installed on a lot previously zoned for a
single-family home, where temporary research structures are allowed,
the tower was allowed.
"I signed the zoning permit for a temporary [meteorological] tower on
land owned by BNE," Nelson said at the zoning hearing. "Pure and
simple, that's what it is, similar to a zoning permit for an accessory
structure for [a] house, for a deck or for whatever."
'Sympathetic'
Nelson conceded later at the hearing that the state Siting Council will
be able to pre-empt town zoning laws and would have final jurisdiction
over the permitting of the wind farm.
After the Zoning Board of Appeals rejected his bid, King hired a lawyer
and sued the town and BNE. His complaint lists, among other charges,
that Colebrook had failed to follow its own zoning procedures, which
forbid commercial structures in a residential neighborhood without
public hearings and a special use permit. The case is scheduled to be
heard in August at Superior Court in Litchfield.
Virtually everyone involved in the zoning for BNE's tower agrees that
the issue of how to regulate wind farms exists in a legal limbo that
gives neighbors very few rights. On the one hand, local land use
regulations tend to favor research projects for renewable energy. But
once the feasibility of a project is established, the state Siting
Council — with its powers to override local zoning — takes over.
"The siting council will bend over backwards to make sure the people of
Colebrook feel that they've had their say in this project," said Derek
Phelps, the executive director of the state agency. "We will notify the
town, every neighbor and concerned party, and hold hearings out there.
All the relevant state agencies from transportation to the Department
of Environmental Protection will have a chance to weigh in."
"But," Phelps said, "a project that falls under our jurisdiction does
not require compliance with local zoning codes. We try to minimize
environmental impact to the maximum extent possible, but there is no
local planning and zoning input required of our decisions."
Colebrook officials say a decision to allow a temporary meteorological
tower could pave the way to permanent wind turbines. But, they say,
they are powerless to change the process right now.
"Obviously local community attitudes and local zoning have not caught
up with wind power," said John Garrells III, Colebrook's planning and
zoning chairman.
Copyright © 2009, The Hartford
Courant
Page last updated at 12:33 GMT,
Thursday, 21 May 2009 13:33 UK
Abnormal noises could affect growth
and feeding of the goats, officials say
|
Wind farm
'kills Taiwanese goats'
A large number of goats in Taiwan may have died of
exhaustion because of noise from a wind farm.
A farmer on an outlying island told the BBC he had lost
more than 400 animals after eight giant wind turbines were installed
close to his grazing land.
The Ministry of Agriculture says it suspects that noise
may have caused the goats' demise through lack of sleep.
The power company, Taipower, has offered to pay for
part of the costs of building a new farmhouse elsewhere.
A spokesman for the company said the cause of the
goats' deaths still needed to be investigated, but that it doubted the
goats died from the noise.
 |
 One night I went out to the
farmhouse and the goats were all standing up; they weren't sleeping
|
Before the wind farm was built about four years ago,
farmer Kuo Jing-shan had about 700 goats.
Shortly after the electricity-generating turbines were
installed, the 57-year-old says his animals started to die. He now has
just 250 goats left.
"The goats looked skinny and they weren't eating. One
night I went out to the farmhouse and the goats were all standing up;
they weren't sleeping.
"I didn't know why. If I had known, I would've done
something to stop the dying," he told the BBC's Cindy Sui in Taiwan.
Plausible
A local livestock inspector from the agriculture
ministry said that Mr Kuo was the only farmer to have reported such
large-scale deaths.
He said his claim was plausible because of all the
farmers in the Penghu archipelago, his farm was closest to the wind
turbines.
"Abnormal noises could affect the normal growth and
feeding intake of animals and cause them to suffer sleep deprivation,"
Lu Ming-tseng said.
Mr Kuo said the power company had offered to help him
move but that there would be no compensation for the loss of his goats.
"It's a pain to relocate, but what can I do. I can't
survive with the wind turbines," he said.
|
Turbine
Collapses, Wiring Blamed
NYTIMES
By KATE GALBRAITH
March 17, 2009, 3:15 pm
Local television coverage, including this YouTube clip from WPTZ TV in
upstate New York, suggested that nearby residents were questioning
turbine safety after the collapse.
A “wiring anomaly” was blamed for the collapse earlier this month of a
wind turbine near Altona, N.Y., according to Noble Environmental Power,
the operator of the wind park.
The 1.5 megawatt turbine, made by General Electric, broke apart on
March 6th, and caused a small fire on the ground, as seen in this video
from the local NBC affiliate, WPTZ.
According to press reports, the park had experienced a power outage at
the time, but two of the 65 turbines malfunctioned and continued to
spin at speeds faster than the machines are designed to sustain — until
one eventually collapsed.
The park was shut down immediately after the collapse, and Noble noted
that while the debris scattered 345 feet from the turbine’s base, that
was still less than the local setback requirements. In Altona, turbines
must be at least 1,200 feet from a home, and 500 feet from roads.
“Although this incident is extraordinarily rare, it is reassuring to
see that the setbacks worked as intended,” said Walt Howard, the chief
executive of Noble, according to last week’s press release.
General Electric is testing the other turbines in the park, and turning
them back on after making sure they are properly wired.
Samuel Dyer, a councilman in nearby Beekmantown, told the local
newspaper, in rather colorful terms, that the Altona incident
frightened him. “Excuse my language,” he said.
Beekmantown has decided against turbines of its own.
In England, some imaginative theorists attributed a similar wind-park
mishap in January to the work intergalactic aliens, though it was later
blamed on “material fatigue.”
For real in
Alaska - Governor Palin achievement (with the Legislature)
With Turbines, Alaska Is Frontier for
Green Power
NYTIMES
By STEFAN MILKOWSKI
February 18, 2009
TOKSOOK BAY, Alaska — Beyond the fishing boats, the snug
homes and the tanks of diesel fuel marking this Eskimo village on the
Bering Sea, three huge wind turbines tower over the tundra. Their
blades spin slowly in a breeze cold enough to freeze skin.
One of the nation’s harshest landscapes, it turns out, is becoming
fertile ground for green power.
As interest in cleaning up power generation grows around the country,
Alaska is fast becoming a testing ground for new technologies and an
unlikely experiment in oil-state support for renewable energy. Alaskans
once cast a wary eye on anything smacking of environmentalism, but
today they are investing heavily in green power, not so much to reduce
emissions as to save cash.
In remote villages like this one, where diesel to power generators is
shipped by barge and can cost more than $5 a gallon in bulk,
electricity from renewable sources like wind is already competitive
with power made from fossil fuels. In urban areas along the state’s
limited road system, large wind and hydroelectric projects are also
becoming attractive.
Alaska produces more oil than any state except Texas, but most of it
leaves the state. Small markets and high transportation costs have kept
local fuel prices high. As oil prices spiked last year, the state’s
coffers overflowed with oil tax revenue, but the rising cost of diesel
and other fuels became a local crisis.
Gov. Sarah Palin and state lawmakers responded last year by pledging
$300 million over five years in renewable energy grants to utilities,
independent power producers or local governments. It is a substantial
sum for a state with only 670,000 residents.
“Oil used to be cheap and convenient,” said Steve Haagenson, appointed
last year by Ms. Palin as statewide energy coordinator. “Today, it’s
just convenient.”
Advocates of renewable energy here say Alaska, with its windy coasts,
untapped rivers and huge tidal and wave resources, could quickly become
a national leader. The state already generates 24 percent of its
electricity from renewable sources — almost exclusively hydroelectric —
and Ms. Palin last month announced a goal of 50 percent by 2025.
“Today’s current low oil prices should not lull Alaskans into a false
sense of security, as if these low prices are going to last,” she said.
Environmentalists concerned about the impacts of climate change,
already widely apparent in Alaska, have strongly backed the state
investments in renewable energy. But the driving force among
politicians was economic.
In many rural areas of the state, high fuel costs have resulted in
electricity prices of up to 75 cents or more per kilowatt-hour, five to
10 times the prices common in the Lower 48. Despite high installation
costs and the need for cold-weather engineering, wind turbines can
often produce power at a lower cost than diesel generators by
eliminating the need for fuel.
The Kotzebue Electric Association in northwest Alaska first
demonstrated the value of utility-scale wind power in Alaska in 1997.
Since then, nine other rural communities have added turbines, and
dozens more are pursuing projects.
A state review completed in 2008 found that wind power was technically
and most likely economically feasible in more than 100 Alaska villages,
according to Martina Dabo, who oversees wind power programs at the
Alaska Energy Authority, a public corporation whose mission is to
reduce the cost of energy.
Northern Power Systems, a small turbine manufacturer in Barre, Vt., has
capitalized on Alaska’s new interest in wind. The company initially
designed its 100-kilowatt turbine for operation at the South Pole, not
a huge market. “We said, ‘Hey, there’s a market in Alaska — let’s go
after it,’ ” said Brett Pingree, the company’s vice president for sales.
Northern Power now has turbines in eight Alaska villages, including
Toksook Bay, and is working on projects in 45 others.
Renewable energy is also becoming attractive along the Railbelt, the
area stretching from Seward to Fairbanks where most of the state’s
residents live. While electric prices are lower than in the remote
villages, renewable power would help guard against future price spikes.
A wind farm is under development for an island near Anchorage, and
other projects are being studied, including a pair of dams that could
meet the entire Railbelt demand.
“I think the Railbelt’s waking up to the reality that the era of cheap
natural gas is over,” said Chris Rose, who oversees a coalition of
public and private groups called the Renewable Energy Alaska Project.
While remote locations and limited demand hamper their development,
Alaska’s renewable resources are vast and diverse compared with those
of other states. According to Roger Bedard of the Electric Power
Research Institute, Alaska has more than half the country’s ocean wave
energy resources and more than 90 percent of its river current and
tidal resources.
In Toksook Bay, residents credit the wind turbines with keeping
electric bills from rising as fast as the price of oil.
“I think the turbines are very, very helpful,” said Alexie Jimmie, who
owns Bayview, one of the two stores in Toksook Bay. “Otherwise, we
probably would pay way more than what we are paying.”
The state subsidizes electricity for residential customers in rural
areas, but only to a degree. Mr. Jimmie’s recent monthly bills came to
$371.14 for his house and $713.12 for the small store where he sells
items like cereal and spark plugs.
Officials with the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative, which serves
Toksook Bay and 52 other communities, estimate the turbines in Toksook
Bay will pay for themselves through fuel savings in about 17 years, and
will last 20 to 25 years.
To make the most of the resource, the cooperative and other power
providers are developing systems with electronically controlled diesel
generators that can rapidly adjust their output, electric heaters that
can absorb excess power and other tools for dealing with the
variability of wind. The result is hybrid power systems that generate
25 percent or more of their power from wind on an annual basis.
“Right now Alaska is really the front-runner in wind-diesel
applications,” said Ms. Dabo of the Alaska Energy Authority. “We take
the steps from an engineering drawing board and really put those
systems into place.”
The Chena Hot Springs Resort near Fairbanks is testing new geothermal
technologies, and villages along the Yukon River are experimenting with
using river current to make power.
The plunge in oil prices has caused some lawmakers to question the
state’s ambitious investments in renewable energy, but Ms. Palin and
others argue it is critical to push ahead. The Alaska Energy Authority
released a hefty report last month assessing the feasibility of
alternative energy projects in every rural community in the state.
Village residents, who are still paying high prices because of the
spike in fuel costs last summer, like the idea of expanding the wind
farm there.
“Jobs are scarce,” said Francis Sipary, assistant manager at the
Nunakauiak Yupik Corporation store, “and members can’t afford to pay so
much dollars the way the economy’s going.”
Mr. Sipary, who like many people here hunts and fishes, added that the
turbines were nice for another reason. They can be seen from a boat 20
miles at sea, so the people of Toksook Bay now use the wind turbines to
find their way home
Wind Energy Groups Seeking Economic Stimulus Aid
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:54 p.m. ET
January 30, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Wind power advocates are pushing for billions in tax
incentives and grants in the $819 billion recovery package moving
through Congress, hoping to offset an economic slowdown affecting the
industry.
Expansion of wind energy, a key part of rural development throughout
the Midwest and Great Plains, could depend on how the stimulus plan is
overhauled by the Senate next week and eventually resolved by
congressional negotiators.
Wind power posted gains last year, with electricity generated by wind
turbines increasing by 50 percent and 13,000 additional jobs in wind
turbine and component manufacturing, the American Wind Energy
Association reported this past week. President Barack Obama has called
for a doubling of renewable energy production in three years, a
potential boon for wind power.
But the financial meltdown has slowed demand for wind turbines,
siphoned off available financing and put many projects on hold.
''With the banks and insurance companies backing away from or out of
this investment in wind market, that really has put a damper on wind,''
said Bob Gates, an executive with Clipper Windpower Inc., a
Carpinteria, Calif.-based turbine maker. ''It's gone flip-flop in four
months.''
The House-passed bill and the Senate plan would offer $13 billion over
10 years to extend a production tax credit through 2012 -- the credits
currently expire each year -- and provide tax breaks for investments in
renewable energy. The House version also includes a grant program that
covers 30 percent of the upfront costs of wind energy investments.
The Senate version includes the tax breaks but does not offer the grant
program, which would allow wind and solar industries to convert tax
credits into grants from the Energy Department.
Wind power advocates say the grant program is needed because tax
credits have been hampered by the recession. The projects require large
upfront financing and have traditionally attracted investors who use
the credits to offset tax liabilities. But few of these investors are
profitable now.
Clipper Windpower announced about 90 layoffs earlier this month, mainly
at a manufacturing plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and several
wind-related manufacturers have announced similar cuts.
''Without this grant program or something very much like it, we're
looking at a very difficult year in 2009 and maybe 2010 as well,'' said
Greg Wetstone, senior director for government and public affairs at the
American Wind Energy Association.
Several Midwest states are hoping to increase their stake in wind
energy, pointing to the potential for rural development. Wetstone's
organization estimates that North Dakota has nation's largest wind
energy potential, followed by Texas, Kansas and South Dakota.
''We're just scratching the surface with the potential we have with
wind energy,'' said Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D.
Proponents in Congress said the extension of the production tax credit
would help. Wind farm developers would see a tax credit for every
kilowatt-hour of electricity they produce extended through the end of
2012.
''We've got to get some certainty in these tax incentives and that
means extending the production tax credit,'' said Sen. John Thune,
R-S.D.
Mexico
Turns Toward
Alternative Energy
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:43 p.m. ET
January 22, 2009
LA VENTOSA, Mexico (AP) -- Mexico inaugurates one of the world's
largest wind farm projects on Thursday as the nation looks for
alternative energy, in part to compensate for falling oil production.
Mexico is trying to exploit its rich wind and solar potential after
relying almost exclusively on petroleum for decades. With oil
production down by 9.2 percent in 2008, Mexico now is turning to
foreign companies, mainly Spanish, to tap its renewable riches.
''The intensity of wind in various parts of the country can make our
plants among the most efficient in the world,'' said Energy Secretary
Georgina Kessel.
The new, $550 million project is in a region so breezy that the main
town is named La Ventosa, or ''Windy.'' Winds blow across the narrow
isthmus between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean at 25 to 36
kph (15 to 22 mph), a near-ideal rate for turbines. Gusts have been
known to topple tractor trailers.
Spanish energy company Acciona Energia says the 2,500-hectare
(6,180-acre) farm should generate 250 megawatts of electricity with 167
turbines, 25 of which are already operating. The rest should be on line
by the end of the year, making the project the largest of its kind in
Latin America.
It will produce enough energy to power a city of 500,000 people while
reducing carbon monoxide emissions by 600,000 metric tons each year.
Esteban Morras, Acciona board member, said the project could be just
the start for Mexico.
''This country has great potential for wind development and should take
advantage,'' he said.
The project is also a joint venture with Cemex Inc., and will provide
25 percent of the Mexican cement giant's energy needs, fulfilling the
company's goal of using alternative fuels.
Mexico hopes to boost the nation's wind energy capacity, mainly at La
Ventosa, to 5,000 megawatts -- about 10 times its current output. Wind
energy now accounts for less than 2 percent of electricity production.
But the project hasn't been welcomed by local residents, who say they
see few benefits and aren't being paid enough for use of their lands.
Protesters argue that foreign companies build the turbines, rent the
land, run the project and produce the power for companies like
U.S.-owned retailer Wal-Mart.
''They promise progress and jobs, and talk about millions in investment
in clean energy from the winds that blow through our region,'' a
leftist farm group known as the Assembly in Defense of the Land said in
a statement. ''But the investments will only benefit businessmen, all
the technology will be imported ... and the power won't be for local
inhabitants, but rather will be sold to companies like Wal-Mart.''
The group is calling on supporters to ''defend the land we inherited
from our ancestors.'' But so far it hasn't been able to stop the
project.
Acciona, for its part, says the construction of the project created 850
jobs.
Local residents, largely Zapotec Indians, are accustomed to foreigners'
coveting their land. The United States demanded rights to transport
goods over the isthmus in the 1850s, and foreigners tried to build a
railway alternative to the Panama Canal there.
Wind company
shuts doors in Rutland
DAY
Posted on Jan 7, 8:39 AM EST
RUTLAND, Vt. (AP) -- A Connecticut company working to install a
wind-power project on Grandpa's Knob in Castleton, Vt., is closing its
Rutland office.
Brad King, the local project manager for Essex, Conn.-based Noble
Environmental Power, says the company has not given up plans for the
wind farm in Vermont and will continue to gather data from
meteorological towers installed on the ridge last year.
In October, the company laid off workers in New York and stopped work
at two wind farms in that state in connection with the failure of Lehman Brothers, one of its chief
backers.
Noble's CEO Walter Howard released a brief statement Monday saying the
poor economic outlook prevents the company from speculating on its 2009
development plans.
Climate Entrepreneur
Seeks EU Help
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:13 a.m. ET
December 10, 2008
OSTEND, Belgium (AP) -- Taller than any of the country's soaring
cathedrals, six off-shore windmills rise up from the gray, choppy North
Sea waters, ready to start delivering green electricity and reward a
euro150 million ($200 million) investment.
Once fully operational this month, the C-Power turbines will produce
enough power for 60,000 people. The ultimate plan for the farm is more
ambitious: To expand the facility tenfold and create the world's
largest far-shore windfarm -- enough to light up a city of
600,000. But project manager Filip Martens needs hundreds of
millions of dollars in funding -- and with the financial crisis putting
a break on bank lending -- he's turning to a summit of European Union
leaders on Thursday and Friday for help.
''If we want to face our challenges on global warming we have to do
something more than only go to see Al Gore's movie,'' said Martens,
referring to the acclaimed documentary about global warming by the
former U.S. vice president.
''Of course, this doesn't come for free, but not doing anything will
cost us more than investing now that we still have the time for it.''
Martens wants EU leaders to come up with support programs that would
make it easier to get subsidies or offer loan guarantees to make
funding for such projects easier.
And since it depends on fickle wind, he wants EU help to interconnect
wind farms into a ''trans-European power network'' that would improve
reliability of power supplies and make wind power more attractive to
investors.
Climate change and employment take center stage at the traditional
yearend summit in Brussels -- held on the last days of an international
climate change conference in Poland aimed at drafting a replacement to
the Kyoto Protocal on global warming. Squeezed between green
promises and an economy bleeding red, European leaders are in a tough
spot: Many feel that expensive climate change goals should be relaxed
in favor of the immediate needs of jacking up growth and employment.
Only last year, the EU agreed on an ambitious program to cut greenhouse
gas emissions by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. Leaders
at a March summit also agreed that 20 percent energy used by the
27-nation bloc by 2020 will come from renewable sources like sun and
wind. They became known as the ''20-20-20'' targets and were
music to Martens' ears: The establishment of the European climate
commitments came as Martens was locking up investment for the first six
C-Power windmills, which tower 180 meters (590 feet) each.
''It came just at the right moment, the pivotal moment,'' he said. It
helped him clinch the first financing, which was led by Dexia bank.
Now -- as he seeks euro500 million ($640 million) for 24 new turbines
-- the European economy is slipping into recession, banks have seen
their share prices evaporate and loans have become hard to secure.
''In the market the risk readiness of banks has reduced
substantially,'' said Martens. So negotiating is ''more cumbersome,
more complex, more time consuming.''
The EU has a lot at stake in not letting projects like C-Power falter.
The bloc set the global standard fighting climate change with the
''20-20-20'' targets and has to prove now it was not bluffing at a time
when U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has committed to a major
government spend on green projects.
''It is a question of credibility,'' said European Commission President
Jose Manuel Barroso on Tuesday.
But as they enter the Brussels summit, EU nations are divided between
those who want to stay the course and those who want softer
targets. Poland is leading a group of nations lobbying to scale
down climate change commitments, and together with leaders of eight
other coal-dependent eastern European nations, it could turn the summit
into an acrimonious cliffhanger. The problems go beyond the
polluting coal belt. Italy, too, is hesitant to stretch its weak
economy and wants to dilute the 2007 targets.
That's setting up a major confrontation: ''Anything that questions the
20-20-20 targets? No. This, for us, is not negotiable,'' said Barroso.
Pickens Delays His Wind Farm Plan
NYTIMES
By Kate Galbraith
November 12, 2008, 8:21 am
Former oilman T. Boone Pickens said Tuesday that he was putting his
wind power ambitions on hold. (Photo: Richard Perry/The New York
Times)T. Boone Pickens is delaying his plans to build the world’s
largest wind farm, according to The Arizona Republic, which cited his
remarks at a conference on Tuesday in Phoenix.
The Texas oilman, who has created a stir by his endorsement of wind
power as part of a national strategy to reduce dependence on foreign
oil, cited the fall in natural gas prices, a competing source of
electricity generation, as a deterrent.
Mr. Pickens insisted that wind remained part of a national strategy,
however, and predicted that energy prices would go back up.
From The Arizona Republic:
Until natural-gas prices rise, Pickens said his wind farm and most
others in the country will not go forward because electricity from gas
plants will be more economical. Still, he was confident prices would
rise.
He said Americans haven’t understood the nation’s energy challenges
because prices have been low, until last summer when oil hit a record
$147 a barrel.
“You haven’t had the leadership in Washington to tell us what the
problem was,” he said. “The American people did not realize where we
were. When oil went to $100, I had a story to tell.”
According to Reuters, Mr. Pickens has already put in orders for $2
billion in wind turbines, which will be delivered beginning in 2010.
The credit crisis had already forced Mr. Pickens to delay an expensive
power transmission project in the Texas Panhandle.
The fall in natural gas prices may be a boon to Mr. Pickens other goal,
however — to get millions of cars and trucks running on natural gas.
Huge Offshore Wind Farm Wins Approval
NYTIMES
By Ken Belson
October 3, 2008, 1:03 pm
What wind turbines would look like at varying distances from the shore.
(Illustration: P.S.E.G.)Regulators in New Jersey on Friday awarded
rights to build a huge offshore wind farm in the southern part of the
state to Garden State Offshore Energy, a joint venture that includes
P.S.E.G. Renewable Generation, a subsidiary of P.S.E.G. Global, a
sister company of the state’s largest utility.
The selection, which includes access of up to $19 million in state
grants, is part of New Jersey’s Energy Master Plan, which calls for 20
percent of the state’s energy to come from renewable sources by 2020.
It also comes on the heels of decisions by Delaware and Rhode Island to
let energy companies install offshore wind farms.
Energy experts say that these approvals could prompt regulators in New
York to support projects off the south shore of Long Island and New
York City.
The proposal by Garden State Offshore Energy includes installing 96
turbines to produce as much as 346 megawatts of electricity, enough to
power about 125,000 homes a year. The turbines would be arranged in a
rectangle about a half-mile long by one-third of a mile wide. The
project, which would cost more than $1 billion, would not start
producing electricity until 2013.
The turbines, though, would be between 16 and 20 miles off the coast of
New Jersey’s Atlantic and Ocean counties, and thus in much deeper water
than other proposed projects. Deepwater Wind, which will work with
P.S.E.G to build the wind farm, said it can affordably build turbines
in 100 feet of water with the same technology used to build oil and gas
rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and other locations.
Because the wind blows more reliably during the day further off shore,
the company hopes to get better prices for the power it produces. And
by putting the turbines that far offshore, the company hopes to diffuse
opposition from environmentalists and residents who say that turbines
diminish ocean views and damage wildlife.
“People don’t have to choose between clean energy and a clear view,”
said Nelson Garcez, the vice president of renewable generation at
P.S.E.G.
Mr. Garcez said the deepwater turbines would produce enough power to
help the company break even in about seven years.
The next step is for Garden State Offshore Energy to seek permits from
state and federal agencies to build offshore. The company will also
have to get commitments from manufacturers to build the turbines, which
would be assembled in New Jersey and could potentially create hundreds
of new jobs.
The decision by New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities comes just over
a week after the Long Island Power Authority and Con Edison said that
they would study whether it is economically feasible to build a wind
farm about 10 miles off the south shore of Queens. In August, Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg said the city would solicit proposals from
companies interested in building offshore wind farms and placing
turbines atop buildings in the city.
The projects being approved in neighboring states could increase the
chances that offshore wind farms could also win approval in New York,
where a vast majority of wind turbines are on land and upstate.
“It’s like a rising tide lifting all boats,” said Peter Iwanowicz, the
director of the New York State Climate Change Office in Albany. “More
projects in the Northeast helps with public acceptance that we need
more clean electrons and helps us guard against rising fossil fuel
prices and water levels on the coast.”
-----------------------
COMMENT (as in former Governor Christie Whitman?)
1.October 3rd,
2008
1:35 pm The commitment of investment funds for the NJ windfarm is the
first step in energy independence for NJ and for the US at large. Our
local, state and Federal government leaders need to enable this form of
energy production so we are no longer beholden to the likes of Iran,
Saudi Arabia, and Russia. In 10 years time, the US could be exporting
electricity!
— Posted by C. Whitman
Bloomberg
Offers Windmill Plan
NYTIMES
By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: August 19, 2008
In a plan that would drastically remake New York City’s skyline and
shores, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is seeking to put wind turbines on
the city’s bridges and skyscrapers and in its waters as part of a
wide-ranging push to develop renewable energy.
The plan, while still in its early stages, appears to be the boldest
environmental proposal to date from the mayor, who has made energy
efficiency a cornerstone of his administration.
Mr. Bloomberg said he would ask private companies and investors to
study how windmills can be built across the city, with the aim of
weaning it off the nation’s overtaxed power grid, which has produced
several crippling blackouts in New York over the last decade.
Mr. Bloomberg did not specify which skyscrapers and bridges would be
candidates for windmills, and city officials would need to work with
property owners to identify the buildings that would best be able to
hold the equipment.
But aides said that for offshore locations, the city was eyeing the
generally windy coast off Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island for turbines
that could generate 10 percent of the city’s electricity needs within
10 years.
“When it comes to producing clean power, we’re determined to make New
York the No. 1 city in the nation,” Mr. Bloomberg said as he outlined
his plans in a speech Tuesday night in Las Vegas, where a major
conference on alternative energy is under way.
He later evoked the image of the Statue of Liberty’s torch, saying he
imagined it one day “powered by an ocean wind farm.”
But the mayor’s proposal for wind power faces several serious
obstacles: People are likely to oppose technologies that alter the
appearance of their neighborhoods; wind-harnessing technology can be
exceedingly expensive; and Mr. Bloomberg has less than 18 months left
in office to put a plan into place.
Turning New York City into a major source of wind power would likely
take years, if not decades, and could require a thicket of permits from
state and federal agencies. Parts of New York’s coastline, for example,
are controlled by the federal government, from which private companies
must lease access.
Mr. Bloomberg is known for introducing ambitious proposals that later
collapse, as did his congestion-pricing plan for Manhattan.
But aides said he was committed to developing alternative energy
sources in the city, and wanted to jump-start the discussion now.
“In New York,” he said in his speech, “we don’t think of alternative
power as something that we just import from other parts of the nation.”
Asserting the seriousness of his intentions, aides said, Mr. Bloomberg
met privately with T. Boone Pickens, the oil baron who is trying to
build the world’s largest wind farm in Texas, to discuss possibilities
for such technology in New York.
And on Tuesday afternoon the city issued a formal request to companies
around the country for proposals to build wind-, solar- and water-based
energy sources in New York. “We want their best ideas for creating both
small- and large-scale projects serving New Yorkers,” Mr. Bloomberg
said.
Rohit Aggarwala, the director of the city’s Office of Long-Term
Planning and Sustainability, said that turbines on buildings would
likely be much smaller than offshore ones. Several companies are
experimenting with models that look like eggbeaters, which the
Bloomberg administration says could be integrated into the spires atop
the city’s tall buildings. “”You can make them so small that people
think they are part of the design,” Mr. Aggarwala said.
“If rooftop wind can make it anywhere, this is a great city,” he said.
“We have a lot of tall buildings.”
Creating an offshore wind farm, he said, requires “pretty much the same
level of difficulty as drilling an oil rig, but you don’t have to pump
oil.”
“You could imagine going as much as 15, 20, 25 miles offshore, where
it’s virtually invisible to land,” he said.
Mr. Aggarwala said that developing renewable energy for New York would
take considerable time. “Nobody is going to see a wind farm off the
coast of Queens in the next year,” he said.
But “the idea of renewable power in and around New York City is very
realistic,” he said. “The question is what type makes the most sense
and in what time frame. That is what we are trying to figure out.”
The city has experimented with wind power before. It put a turbine on
city-owned land at 34th Street and the East River several years ago,
but found that the technology was not efficient enough to expand.
The mayor’s plan includes the widespread use of solar panels, possibly
on the roofs of public and private buildings. One proposal is to allow
companies to rent roofs for solar panels and sell the energy they
harvest to residents.
The city is already using tidal turbines under the East River that
provide energy to Roosevelt Island. That technology could be widely
expanded under the mayor’s proposal.
Rebuilding
a Dutch Tradition, One Windmill at a Time
NYTIMES
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
Published: July 22, 2008
ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands — The Dutch are building windmills again. Up
and down the coast, out from port cities like this one, you can see
them: white and tall and slender as pencils, their three slim blades
turning lazily in the North Sea breeze.
These generate electricity, of course, rather than grind grain. The
government has already built one enormous farm of mills far off the
coast, where they’re inoffensive to tourists, and there are plans for a
second farm. Yet it is also building, and rebuilding, mills like the
squat, homely ones that have seemingly always dotted the Dutch
countryside, and reflect as much the nature of the country as do tulips
or Gouda cheese.
“Revival might be a bit strong,” said Leo Endedijk, director of the
Dutch Mills, a group that supports mill restoration. Yet last year the
government, concerned that one of the foremost symbols of the
Netherlands was about to disappear out of neglect, approved an $80
million program to build or restore 120 mills, of roughly 1,040 still
standing. That has created a backlog of work for previously strapped
mill restorers.
“We have special companies, very specialized mill makers and
restorers,” said Mr. Endedijk, in an office in the shadow of De Gooyer,
a soaring 18th-century mill now housing a popular brewery. “They would
not have the capacity to restore 120 mills.”
The need to find renewable sources of energy is driving the Dutch to
build the modern mills, which Mr. Endedijk insists be called turbines,
not mills. “We as an organization don’t work with modern wind
turbines,” he sniffed, adding, as if to underscore the gap between the
traditional and the contemporary, that while the four blades of
traditional windmills turn counterclockwise, the three of modern wind
turbines go clockwise.
But the fast pace of change in the modern Netherlands is reviving
interest in the old mills. As immigration changes the face of Dutch
cities and globalization spreads its veil of uniformity over life in
the Netherlands, many among the Dutch are looking for their roots.
“It’s a little bit of national pride,” said Lukas Verbij, whose
company, Verbij Hoogmade, is one of the leading mill builders and
restorers.
Some of the renewed interest in mills is driven by the search for
traditional food and drink. Patrick Langkruis, whose bakeshop, Het
Bammetje, features 28 different kinds of bread and 35 different rolls,
uses only flour ground by a traditional mill. “The taste is fuller,
there’s more flavor,” he said. “It’s also because the grains are ground
slowly.”
His supplier is Karel Streumer, who has been grinding out ordinary and
exotic grains for the last eight years at his mill, De Distilleerketel,
or distillery pot, in Delfshaven, on the edge of Rotterdam. He uses
technology — huge mill stones and enormous wooden gears that make
visitors feel they’re inside an immense and ancient clock — that has
not changed since the mill was built in 1727.
Mr. Streumer, 54, his shock of curly white hair perpetually dusted with
flour, is one of a growing number of millers who are taking over
restored or rebuilt mills. In addition to wheat, he said, counting off
his products on a dusty hand, he grinds familiar grains like corn, rye
and oats, and some unfamiliar ones, like grain sorghum, or milo, and
spelt (a kind of wheat). One customer arrives once a month from
Frankfurt to pick up 55 pounds of mashela, or pearl millet, which is
widely used in African cooking.
Curiously, though the revival of the mills is a back-to-the-roots
thing, many customers are natives of a wide range of countries, Mr.
Streumer said, including Ethiopia, Morocco and Turkey. “Eighty percent
of my customers are not natives of the Netherlands,” he said.
One of them is Samson Tesfai, whose restaurant, the Taste of Africa,
specializes in dishes of his native Eritrea, which he fled in 1986
because of the fighting between his homeland and Ethiopia. Each week,
he said, he buys mashela, sorghum, ground corn and wheat flour from Mr.
Streumer to use in the ethnic dishes he prepares. “We can find it
elsewhere,” said Mr. Tesfai, 43. “But this is a good address, with a
good product, so why go somewhere else?”
Neither the spread of ethnic restaurants, with increased immigration,
nor the return to traditional tastes among the Dutch is enough to keep
millers like Mr. Streumer in business. Without a crew of volunteers who
help out on weekends, he said, the mill would not be profitable. “It’s
hard to make the money to keep the mill in good shape, and to pay
employees, too,” he said. “We are not professionals.”
So the mills remain a matter of the heart, rather than the pocketbook.
Except, of course, for builders like Mr. Verbij, 48. He represents the
fourth generation of his family to run the company, which was founded
in 1868 and employs about 20 master wood and metal workers.
“A wave of building is coming,” Mr. Verbij said, when the government
releases its latest round of subsidies. “Every owner could apply,” he
added. “It’s a kind of lottery.”
He just finished a $1.9 million project to rebuild with traditional
technology a mill in the town of Soest that was destroyed in 1930. So
attached were the townspeople to their mill, he said, one woman donated
money from the sale of her home.
Not only the Dutch but all the world seems to love a windmill. Mr.
Verbij has built four in Japan, beginning with one in Osaka in 1989.
And despite the crush of work in the Netherlands, he now finds time to
work on three mills in the United States, including restoration of the
giant Murphy Windmill in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, one of the
world’s largest, which was built in 1905 and is badly dilapidated.
“It’s our biggest project,” Mr. Verbij said. “It’s nice to see all
those people happy at the sight of a windmill.”
Connection
to wind power here
Renault to Develop Electric Cars For Israel
In
the NYTIMES
By REUTERS
Published: January 21, 2008
Filed at 1:00 p.m. ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The
Renault-Nissan alliance on Monday signed
a deal to begin mass producing electric cars as part of an Israeli-led
project to develop alternative energy sources and slash oil dependency.
Renault-Nissan Chief Executive
Carlos Ghosn said the cars, with a range of about 100 km in city
driving and up to 160 km on the highway, will accelerate from zero to
100 kph in 13 seconds and have a top speed of 110 kph -- similar to
many gasoline-powered cars.
Ghosn said a key reason why the
company chose Israel to launch the project is because 90 percent of
Israelis drive less than 70 km a day and all major urban centers are
within 150 km of each other. For Israel the cars would mean less
dependency on oil imports, mostly coming from Russia.
The cars, to be made in Europe, will
run on a battery developed by Nissan and Japan's and
will be available in 2011. A prototype is already on the road in Israel
and various models will be sold by Renault and Nissan.
"It will be the most environmentally
friendly mass-produced car on the market," Ghosn said at a Fuel Free
Transportation ceremony at the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert, adding the main appeal of the cars is that they were as "normal
as possible" while operating quietly.
He said the car would cost the same
or less than comparable gasoline engine autos and would have a lifetime
warranty.
Ghosn said Renault-Nissan will also
market the cars in yet to be determined European countries and Asia and
later to the United States.
"We expect this car to be
successful," Ghosn told reporters. "We want to make sure we mass market
10,000 to 20,000 cars a year in Israel ... We are determined to make it
a success."
ENERGY SUBSCRIPTIONS
Israel's government will offer tax
incentives on the cars and Project Better Place, a venture-backed
company, will set up a recharging grid using electricity from renewable
sources.
"The state of Israel has set itself
the goal of making our lives here better and cleaner, with less
dependence on gasoline and petroleum," Olmert said. "By the end of the
next decade, we will be completely free of petroleum and its
by-products as the fuel which powers transportation in Israel."
Project Better Place is headed by
former Shai Agassi, who said Israel's
grid would be powered by 200 megawatts generated by wind and solar
power sources.
"For the first time in history, all
the conditions necessary for electric vehicles to be successfully
mass-marketed will be brought together in a partnership between the
Renault-Nissan Alliance and Project Better Place in Israel," the two
sides said in a statement.
Consumers will buy their car and
subscribe to an energy supply, including the use of the battery, on the
basis of kilometers driven, similar to the way mobile phones are sold.
Israeli President Shimon Peres said
he wanted Israel to push forward with the electric car plan because oil
has become the "greatest polluter of our age and the greatest financier
of terrorism."
California-based Project Better
Place said it will set up a network of 500,000 charging points in
Israel. The car's computer will indicate when recharging is needed and
the nearest charging point.
The initial $200 million investment
in Project Better Place is led by holding company Israel Corp
<ILCO.TA> and includes investment bank Morgan Stanley
<MS.N>, venture capital firm Vantage Point and a group of private
investors.
Israel Corp, which will invest $100
million, said it had signed agreements with the other investors. The
Ofer family, which controls Israel Corp, will invest $30 million
through a private firm while the other investors will put in $70
million.
Federal
Agency Gives Proposed Cape Cod Wind Farm Initial Environmental
Approval
DAY
By Andrew Miga , Associated Press Writer
Published on 1/16/2008
Washington — A key federal agency gave preliminary environmental
approval to a proposed wind farm off Cape Cod on Monday, providing a
boost to the project that has sparked a long, loud and bitter public
fight in the region.
A report by the Minerals Management Service said plans by developer
Cape Wind Associates to build 130 windmills across 25 miles of federal
waters in Nantucket Sound would pose no major environmental problems.
The agency looked at the project's effect on several areas, including
water quality, wildlife, air traffic, the fishing industry, recreation
and tourism.
After a public comment period on its report, the agency, which will
decide the project's fate, is expected to make a final decision this
year. Public hearings will be held in March in West Yarmouth,
Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and Boston.
Various federal and state agencies have been reviewing the wind farm
plans since November 2001.
“The draft environmental impact statement is a crucial step forward in
completing our review of the Cape Wind Energy Project,” said Minerals
Management Service director Randall Luthi in a statement.
The proposal would build the nation's first offshore wind farm — with
turbines rising up to 440 feet above sea level when the tallest blades
point straight up. It has been controversial since it was proposed more
than six years ago, pitting some of the state's top politicians against
each other.
Supporters says the project is a safe, clean way to create renewable
energy and new jobs. They say the wind farm would enhance energy
independence while providing lower energy costs, a healthier
environment and new jobs.
The Conservation Law Foundation, a long-time advocate of the project,
said the environmental report was a good sign for the project.
“Cape Wind is one of the nation's most promising clean energy
projects,” said foundation president Philip Warburg in a statement.
“When built, its 130 turbines will deliver clean energy to thousands of
households, making an immediate impact in the region's efforts to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and end our dependency on dirty fossil
fuels.”
Opponents fear possible environmental and economic effects on Cape
Cod's tourist and fishing industries. The project also has drawn
criticism from commercial fishermen, cruise lines, wildlife advocates
and Cape Cod representatives.
Two of the state's most powerful figures have lined up on opposite
sides of the wind farm.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., whose family's Hyannis Port compound
would have a clear view of the farm, opposes it, citing risks to
fishing, navigation, aviation and the sanctuary of Nantucket Sound.
Kennedy also has branded the project a government handout to a
developer who stands to gain from huge tax breaks.
Meanwhile, Gov. Deval Patrick, who has pledged to boost the state as a
center for alternative energy, supports the Cape Wind project and has
said the state needs to invest in environmentally friendly energy
technology.
Huge expansion for wind
turbines
The aim is for 20%
of EU energy to come from renewables by 2020
I-BBC
9 Dec 2007
There could
be more than two offshore wind turbines per mile of UK coastline under
plans being set out by ministers. Business Secretary John Hutton
says he wants to open up British seas to allow enough new turbines - up
to 7,000 - to power all UK homes by the year 2020.
He acknowledged "it is going to change our coastline", but said the
issue of climate change was "not going away".
The thrust of the idea was backed by Tory Alan Duncan: "We're an island
nation. There's a lot of wind around."
Mr Duncan added, on BBC One's Politics Show: "We should use that
offshore capacity for generating electricity that's clean and secure.
"So yes, I think it's inevitable and a good thing that there will be
more offshore wind."
Self-sufficient'
Ministers want 20% of Britain's energy needs to come from renewable
energy sources by 2020, and see wind power as a major element of
it. Mr Hutton told the Politics Show there would have to be a
switch to low carbon energy production to combat the threat of climate
change. He also said the UK needed to become more self sufficient
in energy terms: "I do not want in 20 year's time to find that whether
the lights go on in the morning is down to some foreign government or
someone else."
The announcement on Monday, giving the "green light" for the next stage
of offshore wind energy, was part of a long-running process, he
added. Mr Hutton accepted that, as things stood, the amount of
energy he hoped to see produced would need 7,000 turbines. But he
would not give a specific figure, saying that the next generation of
turbines could be bigger and generate more energy.
"Offshore wind is a major untapped resource for us," he said.
"It is going to change our coastline, yes for sure. There is no way of
making that shift to a low carbon technology without there being change
and without that change being visible and evident to people.
"We've got a choice as a country whether we rise to the challenge... or
stick our head in the sand and hope it (climate change) goes away. It
is not going to go away."
Weather cover
The other choice was, he said, whether it was "easier to have these
developments offshore rather than onshore".
Asked what would happen if there was no wind for a few days, Mr Hutton
said that was why there had to be a mix of energy sources - including
nuclear power - to cover for calmer weather periods. Friends of
the Earth's renewable energy campaigner, Nick Rau, said the group
welcomed the government's announcement.
"The potential power that could be generated by this industry is
enormous," he said.
"Making Britain a world leader in this form of energy will create jobs,
boost the economy and help put Britain at the forefront in the battle
to combat climate change."
Wind turbines have proved to be controversial onshore and
offshore. There have been concerns about their visual impact, the
impact on wildlife such as birds and the offshore ones' impact on
shipping and fishing.
Sweden Turns to a Promising Power
Source, With Flaws
By MARK LANDLER
Published: November 23, 2007
MALMO, Sweden — Steadying himself on the heaving foredeck of an
inspection ship recently, his face flecked by spray, Arne Floderus
pronounced it a good day for his new offshore wind farm.
A 30-mile-an-hour wind was twirling the fingerlike blades of a turbine
380 feet above his head. Around him, a field of turbines rotated in a
synchronized ballet that, when fully connected to an electrical grid,
would generate enough power to light 60,000 nearby houses.
“We’ve created a new landmark,” said Mr. Floderus, the project manager
of the $280 million wind park, one of the world’s largest, which was
built by the Swedish power company Vattenfall.
The park, in a shallow sound between Sweden and Denmark, testifies to
the remarkable rise of wind energy — no longer a quirky alternative
favored by environmentalists in Denmark and Germany, but a mainstream
power source used in 26 nations, including the United States.
Yet Sweden’s gleaming wind park is entering service at a time when wind
energy is coming under sharper scrutiny, not just from hostile
neighbors, who complain that the towers are a blot on the landscape,
but from energy experts who question its reliability as a source of
power.
For starters, the wind does not blow all the time. When it does, it
does not necessarily do so during periods of high demand for
electricity. That makes wind a shaky replacement for more dependable,
if polluting, energy sources like oil, coal and natural gas. Moreover,
to capture the best breezes, wind farms are often built far from where
the demand for electricity is highest. The power they generate must
then be carried over long distances on high-voltage lines, which in
Germany and other countries are strained and prone to breakdowns.
In the United States, one of the areas most suited for wind turbines is
the central part of the country, stretching from Texas through the
northern Great Plains — far from the coastal population centers that
need the most electricity.
In Denmark, which pioneered wind energy in Europe, construction of wind
farms has stagnated in recent years. The Danes export much of their
wind-generated electricity to Norway and Sweden because it comes in
unpredictable surges that often outstrip demand.
In 2003, Ireland put a moratorium on connecting wind farms to its
electricity grid because of the strains that power surges were putting
on the network; it has since begun connecting them again.
In the United States, proposals to build large wind parks in the
Atlantic off Long Island and off Cape Cod, Mass., have run into stiff
opposition from local residents on aesthetic grounds.
As wind energy has matured as an industry, its image has changed — from
a clean, even elegant, alternative to fossil fuels to a renewable
energy source with advantages and drawbacks, like any other.
“The environmental benefits of wind are not as great as its champions
claim,” said Euan C. Blauvelt, research director of ABS Energy
Research, an independent market research firm in London. “You’ve still
got to have backup sources of power, like coal-fired plants.”
Mr. Blauvelt publishes an annual report on wind energy in which he
discusses its flaws. People in the industry would accuse him of
propagating myths, he said. Now, the criticism is more tempered.
“One of the big problems with wind is that people tend to get hyped up
about it, very emotional,” Mr. Blauvelt said. “The difference is that
the arguments are becoming more rational.”
None of this is to say that wind power has peaked. On the contrary, Mr.
Blauvelt figures the industry is adding capacity at a five-year
compound annual growth rate of 26.3 percent. That is faster than
hydroelectric power in its early days and twice the recent growth rate
of nuclear energy.
The United States, which is considered a pioneer in wind, added more
generating capacity in 2006 than any year on record. With 11,575
megawatts, the United States is the world’s third largest wind country,
after Germany and Spain, and it is adding more capacity than any other.
Among new countries with significant wind capacity are Britain, Canada,
Italy, Japan and the Netherlands.
“What we’re seeing is a second wave of countries, which are starting to
invest more heavily,” said Christian Kjaer, the chief executive of the
European Wind Energy Association in Brussels.
He said wind energy would benefit from two parallel trends: rising oil
prices and a global push to tax carbon-dioxide emissions. “It’s very
good way of hedging against volatile oil prices and potentially
volatile carbon costs,” Mr. Kjaer said.
In Germany, where 20,000 wind turbines generate 5 percent of the
electricity, advocates say wind will be critical to meeting the
government’s goal of generating at least 20 percent of all power from
renewable methods by 2020. But the industry’s growth is slowing for a
variety of reasons.
Germany is running out of places to put the turbines because of
restrictions on the location and height of the devices. And rising raw
material prices are making wind farms more expensive to build.
“Under the current circumstances, Germany’s climate protection targets
are not achievable,” said Hermann Albers, the president of the German
Wind Energy Association.
Open land is not a problem in the United States, but wind parks have
faced resistance, particularly in scenic locales near the shore. A
private developer, Cape Wind, wants to erect 130 turbines in Nantucket
Sound, off Cape Cod. It has drawn protests from some well-connected
locals, including the Kennedy family.
Cape Wind said it hoped to obtain all the necessary permits by next
year, which would enable it to be up and running by 2011. “It’s been a
long road,” said Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for the developer.
For a socially conscious society like Sweden, wind turbines exert a
fashionable appeal.
Today, they account for less than 1 percent of Sweden’s electricity
generation. But the government wants to increase annual wind power
production to 10 terawatt hours, or 10 trillion watt hours, by 2015
from less than 1 terawatt hour now (the park off Malmo will produce a
third of a terawatt hour).
Vattenfall hopes to develop an even larger off-shore park in the Baltic
Sea, between Sweden and Germany. In all, the government has identified
49 sites that are suitable for wind parks.
Sweden has historically invested little in wind projects because it has
two reliable sources of energy, nuclear and hydro, which each supply
roughly half its power. And because hydro is renewable, Sweden already
does well on the environmental balance sheet.
But these energy sources have their vulnerabilities: hydro, to low
water levels; nuclear, to technical breakdowns. The Swedish government
has also pledged not to build any new nuclear power plants.
“One of the key energy priorities for Sweden is to establish a third
leg of energy production,” said Anders Nyberg, political adviser in the
Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications.
Of course, Sweden does not need to build wind parks to get wind power.
It could simply buy more surplus wind power from Denmark, which it
uses, as does Norway, to pump underground water into elevated
reservoirs. The water is later released during periods of peak electric
demand to drive hydroelectric stations.
In this way, hydro acts as a form of storage for wind energy —
addressing one of wind power’s biggest shortcomings. Sweden’s strength
in hydro makes it a good candidate for greater development of wind
power, according to analysts.
Sweden is subsidizing wind power through “green” certificates, which
favor the use of renewable energy. The small extra cost is passed on to
consumers.
While Swedes staunchly support wind energy, they are as susceptible to
the not-in-my-backyard opposition as people elsewhere. For years,
residents opposed the wind farm near Malmo, known as Lillgrund,
particularly after the builders obtained permission to raise the height
of the towers. But the campaign to block the project failed.
Still, Mr. Floderus said the process took far too long, and Vattenfall
is urging the government to speed up the approvals next time.
As his inspection ship followed a zigzag course through a field of 48
turbines, Mr. Floderus pointed to Malmo’s two other landmarks, visible
in the distance: Oresund Bridge, a 10-mile engineering marvel that
connects Malmo with Copenhagen, and the Turning Torso, an eye-popping
54-story skyscraper designed by the Spanish architect Santiago
Calatrava.
Soon, Mr. Floderus said, the whirling blades of the Lillgrund wind
turbines would take their place alongside those landmarks as symbols of
the modern age.
Regulators consider
7 alternative energy projects for contracts
DAY
Posted on Dec 25, 12:04 PM EST
NEW BRITAIN, Conn. (AP) -- State energy regulators have recommended
seven Connecticut alternative power projects for long-term, subsidized
electricity generation contracts.
The projects range from wood-fired power operations to fuel cell
projects, and are part of a state program that subsidizes greener ways
of generating energy. The Department of Public Utility Control
recently recommended the seven projects from 11 finalists, and is
slated to vote Jan. 9 on the draft ruling. The projects would
receive contracts paying above-market rate prices for up to 20 years,
and electricity customers will fund the subsidies through their monthly
bills.
The projects include a proposed plant at Kofkoff Egg Farms in Bozrah,
which would generate electricity through a process burning a mixture of
wood and chicken manure.
Another is a $130 million plant proposed in Plainfield to burn wood and
construction and demolition waste using a similar process.
"Our project will not only provide clean, renewable energy for
Connecticut consumers, but a portion of our fuel will come from
recycling the clean wood component of construction and demolition
material, which is a real economic and environmental benefit," said
Daniel Donovan, managing member of NuPower LLC, which is proposing the
Plainfield plant.
The project has been criticized by some environmental groups, who worry
about whether the plant would endanger public health by burning
construction debris laced with arsenic, lead and other toxins.
Nancy Alderman, president of North-Haven based Environmental and Human
Health Inc., said health advocates remain concerned about the project
despite Donovan's assurances.
"We are very displeased. Our cancer rates are among the highest in the
country. This is something Connecticut should not be approving," she
said.
State statutes prohibit the burning of construction and demolition
waste, according to the DPUC. However, the plant is exempt from that
rule because it received funding before May 1, 2006, from the Renewable
Energy Investment Fund.
Besides projects using wood to generate energy, the DPUC also
recommended fuel cell projects in Waterbury, Stamford and Milford.
The Waterbury and Stamford projects would pump electricity into the
region's power grid while using waste heat from the fuel cell process
to heat and cool hospitals in the cities.
The 9-megawatt Milford project would be the largest fuel cell
installation by capacity in the world, said R. Daniel Brdar, chairman
and CEO of FuelCell Energy, Inc. of Danbury, which will manufacture the
fuel cells for the three projects.
"These selections firmly establish fuel cells' role in deploying
ultra-clean energy capacity," Brdar said.
The other two recommended green-energy projects are a proposal for a
plant powered by landfill gas in the South Norwalk section of Norwalk,
and a small biomass facility proposed for East Canaan section of North
Canaan.
“We skipped the 20th century altogether. Thomas Edison
himself
wired this campus. We’ve got Edison Electric plaques all over the
place.”
About New York: Contemplating
Heaven, but Drilling Deep Down
NYTIMES
By JIM DWYER
November 19, 2008
For millions of years, invisible streams of water have run deep in the
earth below Manhattan at a constant temperature of 65 degrees, a source
of energy that seems beyond exhaustion — and beyond reach. But eight
months ago, a seminary in Chelsea began to pump water from those
streams to heat its buildings in the winter and cool them in the
summer.
“It’s forever noiseless, forever pollution-less, forever carbon-free,”
said Maureen Burnley, the executive vice president of the General
Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church.
For the seminary, and now about 60 other places in Manhattan, the
unseen bounty of the earth is being harvested by geothermal pumps.
Manhattan is geologically suited for these deep wells. From a depth of
1,500 to 1,800 feet, the pumps deliver the consistently moderate
temperatures of underground water to the surface, where it works like a
refrigerant. It carries energy.
“In the summer, you take the heat from the buildings and put it in the
ground,” Ms. Burnley said. “In the winter, you take the relative warmth
of the ground and put it in the buildings.”
By the standards of city life, General Theological is an ancient place,
its buildings cast in soaring Victorian architecture, its land donated
in the 19th century by Clement Clarke Moore, reputedly (but not
certainly) the author of “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” By geological
time, the seminary does not have the longevity of the wink of an eye.
As the first raw winds of winter belted along 10th Avenue this week,
Ms. Burnley sat in her office on 21st Street and picked a small hunk of
rock off a shelf.
“Feel the density of that,” she said.
It was a piece of 500-million-year-old Manhattan schist, cut from the
ground below the seminary. The piece fit easily in the palm of her
hand, but felt as if it weighed close to a pound.
“Drill through that,” Ms. Burnley said, “and you’ve got a well to the
end of time.”
So far, General Theological has drilled seven wells to the end of time
— or 150 to 180 stories deep, at least. The seminary has plans for 15
more. When the project is complete, it will be the largest system of
geothermal pumps in the Northeast, said Carl Orio, the chairman of
Water Energy Distributors, a consultant and contractor that worked on
the project.
The seminary has about 200 students, most of whom are studying to
become Episcopal priests. About five years ago, it commissioned a study
on its physical plant, which was expensive to heat and impossible to
cool.
“We wanted to come into the 21st century,” Ms. Burnley said. “We
skipped the 20th century altogether. Thomas Edison himself wired this
campus. We’ve got Edison Electric plaques all over the place.”
The initial plans did not call for geothermal pumps, but the seminary’s
consultants recommended that they be considered. Conventional heating
and cooling systems have a much lower installation cost, but require
fuel. A study projected that the pumps would take about 9 years to pay
for themselves after the entire system was installed. Now, the
projection is 19 years.
“Because we’ve been here 200 years, this investment makes sense,” Ms.
Burnley said. “It won’t be the five-year return on investment that
businesses want, but that’s fine. We’re going to be around.”
To reach the 65-degree water, the seminary drilled far below the city’s
Third Water Tunnel, which is about 500 feet down, and far below
Cameron’s Line, the point where an oceanic plate smashed into the
prehistoric North American continent.
The first phase of the project was estimated to cost $6 million, but
ended up costing $9 million for heating and cooling capacity in 80,000
of the buildings’ 260,000 square feet, according to Dennis Frawley, who
managed the project for the seminary.
The increase was almost entirely the result of monitoring demanded by
various arms of 10 government agencies that were involved in oversight,
he said. Some neighbors worried that the drilling would cause
earthquakes. The city was particularly concerned about damage to its
water tunnel.
“When we were first getting started, we had drilling companies that
said, ‘You can start a well on 20th Street and by the time you get down
1,500 feet, you’ve drifted to 21st Street,’ ” Mr. Frawley said. “We
were allowed 3 degrees of tolerance — we couldn’t drift more than 75
feet on 1,500. Some of our wells drifted 10 feet, some were 20 feet.
The worst was a well that drifted 35 feet.”
Underground water in Manhattan flows generally to the south, said
Frederick Stumm, a scientist with the United States Geological Survey
who has done extensive mapping of the island to help the city plan the
Third Water Tunnel.
“The rock has been sort of brutalized by continental collisions,” Mr.
Stumm said. “The rock has been under stress over the years, and it
creates patterns of fractures in the rock.” Ground water finds its way
down into these fractures, which form a network.
And it’s not just water down there. “We encountered rubies at about
1,000 feet,” Ms. Burnley said.
The rubies, said Mr. Frawley, were formed into the rock. “Nothing in
the way of a large scale,” he said. “We weren’t turning the seminary
into the ‘Deadwood’ movie set.”
For precious gems, “it’s easier to go to Macy’s,” Ms. Burnley said.
S O U R C E S O
F I N F O R M A T I O N :
WHAT IS GEOTHERMAL ENERGY?
http://geothermal.inel.gov/
GEOTHERMAL MAP OF NORTH AMERICA:
http://www.smu.edu/geothermal/2004NAMap/Geothermal_MapNA_7x10in.gif
: