Contentious round of voting Saturday night, and the heavy threat of the president's veto pen, but if we can get through the political fog, the House may well have accomplished something truly monumental.
Two big pieces in the energy bill worth noting, and following closely in any subsequent compromise. Both are transformative for our electricity markets -- an area where past energy bills (at least since 1993) have favored the status quo over true reform. In addition, with >50 GW of already identified potential for zero-carbon electricity from industrial waste heat sources (compare to the entire US nuclear fleet at 100 GW), this has the potential to massively reduce carbon emissions associated with power generation, to a degree not likely (at least in the near term) from any other legislative activity:
- Subtitle E. This section mandates the EPA to inventory all the places where it is possible to generate electricity from industrial waste heat, and then provides (a) $10/MWh credit to the project, to be shared with the utility (a nice incentive) if the project has to export onto utility wires, and (b) a requirement that the utility must provide competitive pricing for any purchased electricity. This latter point is truly transformative, as under present rules too many of these facilities are intentionally undersized to only serve the needs of the host, since you cannot otherwise get a fair price from the monopoly utilities. The details are subtle, but can essentially be understood to be nearly-net-metering for all clean energy facilities, without the arbitrary size caps that states have passed to date (which are good for solar, but don't significantly impact total MWh of clean energy since they don't apply for generation of any real size).
- The RPS. As I've said many times (Here, and more recently here), I don't like RPS rules. They're an inefficient way to reduce carbon and confuse paths with goals. That said -- and as David capably points out -- they are better than nothing, and as long as we don't have a carbon program, maybe this is the best we can do. So in that spirit, I'm glad to see this RPS finally passed. But the part that makes me truly hopeful is that this RPS included provisions for CHP and energy efficiency. What I like about this is that -- academic claims to the contrary notwithstanding -- a pure RPS will never pass, because you simply can't convince the majority of Senators that their states will not be net exporters of money to the couple states that have a lot of wind. And so for 15 years we have sought perfection and achieved nothing on the RPS front. It's been clear for at least the last 10 that the only way to get progress was to get compromise -- a political reality that the right has always been quicker to grasp than the left.
In the debate this week, the House first ratcheted from 20% to 15% but still didn't have the votes. Then they added CHP/EE and they got the votes. There is a lesson there. We finally got something, and -- much like my general feeling on RPS as a concept -- something is better than nothing. My naive hope is that this reality may finally stick with the purists in the environmental community, so that we can collectively work on making change rather than arguing amongst ourselves over who is the prettiest.
This all, of course, may still be vetoed by the president, or get jumbled up in conference in the Senate. But it's a heck of a start.
John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles
George Voinovich (R-Ohio) [UPDATED]
Al Franken (D-Minn.)
Comments
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calvinjones Posted 4:27 am
06 Aug 2007
Can we peal back the gloss please? What does this mean?
A renewable energy target of 20% would be good 15% not nearly as good but progress...what is the curent level?
What is the current level of CHP + Renewables?
How would energy efficiency be measured...i`m asuming the rather solid metric of reduction in deman would not be used, rather there would be refrence to some sort of fictional baseline?
Devil is in the details.
It is entirely possible that current renewables+chp could be only a few % from the target and a poorly a high end baseline could be reduced to a slight imporvement on busines as usuall to give a few more percent (with total demand and carbon going up all the while).
Interested in climate change?
http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com
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Sean Casten Posted 5:17 am
06 Aug 2007
When the House realized they didn't have the votes to get 20%, they tried again at 15% but still didn't have the votes. This led to an amendment from Doyle & Terry suggesting that energy efficiency also be added into the mix, such that new EE and cogen (with the latter earning a credit only to the extent that the new facility is more efficient than the separate baseline) would also be able to trade up to 27% of the total RPS, or 27% x 15% = 4% of the total. This got the votes to pass, in large part because now the industrial, non-windy states could participate.
Politics being the art of the possible, we got it done, and done in a way that is really hard to game. I rarely praise Washington energy bills, but this one so far looks really good.
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GreenEngineer Posted 6:02 am
06 Aug 2007
Does the House bill specify the measurement standard, or how EE savings are to be quantified for purposes of the RPS?
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Sean Casten Posted 6:16 am
06 Aug 2007
It is fuzzy. The good thing about it is that (unlike many EE bills I have seen) it does not explicitly exclude anything. The bad thing is that it is not clear about how it decides what it says to include.
The broad eligibility is as follows:
EE - "electricity savings adjusted to reflect any associated increase[s]... at the facility." Great spirit, but really hard to quantify, as you correctly point out. The key on this will clearly be at the DOE on implementation, should it get through the Senate.
Recycled energy - "a reduction in electricity consumption that is attributable to electrical or mechanical power, or both, produced by modifying an industrial or commercial system that was in operation before July 1, 2007 in order to recapture energy that would otherwise be wasted". This one is fairly straightforward, and easy to see how to quantify, since the relevant equipment is all metered.
Combined Heat and Power - "the increment of electricity output... that is attributable to the higher efficiency of the combined system (as compared to the efficiency of the separate production of the electricity and thermal outputs) shall be considered electricity savings..."
For what it's worth, they do stipulate that the M&V protocols are to be developed by June 30, 2009, so there is time to set this up properly before then.
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farnishk Posted 1:20 am
07 Aug 2007
"Green Pork Projects". Green Pork!!?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!
Have these people never heard of irony?
Thank goodness the naysayers are irrelevant dinosaurs who should be buried to make the same oil they so dearly crave.
Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
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