It’s that time of year again ... no, not when turduckens appear on dinner tables nationwide and it becomes somehow acceptable to call the marshmallow a vegetable. It’s time for the 2009 edition of “Freeing the Grid,” an annual report card to states on their net metering and interconnection standards. Together, these two key policies empower energy customers (that’s you) to go solar and reduce your utility bills.

Although there is still plenty of room for improvement, this year’s report shows solid progress across most states—an indicator that these once-obscure policies are becoming accepted best practices. Oregon was this year’s star pupil. Meanwhile, there were still a number of states that didn’t even show up to class. Want to see if your state made the grade? Download 2009’s Freeing the Grid here from the report’s lead author, Network for New Energy Choices.

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Why solar energy trumps coal power

Solar power when the sun goes down — with help from United Technologies

Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power?

On Friday, Matt Yglesias made the point that only socialist state control seems capable of creating a robust nuclear power industry. After all, the only countries building nuke plants these days are the ones where governments are making the decisions. David Frum replied with a series of wildly overbroad assertions ranging from false to highly misleading, with no evidence or links to support them. (Nuclear power has an impressive effect on conservative error-to-word ratios.) Matt replied in turn, and in doing so echoed a familiar misunderstanding:

That said, obviously you need a certain amount electricity that can be relied upon irrespective of how windy it is or whether the sun is shining. So I’d happily see the nuclear share of the pie grow at the expense of coal and oil as the provider of that baseload electricity.

This notion has really grabbed the public imagination. It's become conventional wisdom that the grid can only incorporate a limited amount of renewable energy; ergo, we need coal and nuclear power plants for "baseload" electricity. Clean energy skeptics wave the word "baseload" around like a talisman.

There's far less to the claim than meets the eye, though. As Amory Lovins points out, it's a category error: baseload is a characteristic of aggregated demand, not of any particular kind of supply. He distills the counter-argument:

Baseload: The electricity system doesn’t rely on any plant’s ability to run continuously; rather, all plants together supply the grid, and the grid serves all loads. That’s necessary because no kind of power plant can run all the time, as Stewart says they must do to meet steady loads. I repeat: there is not and has never been a need for any particular plant or kind of plant to run all the time, and none can. All power plants fail, varying only in their failures’ size, duration, frequency, predictability, and cause. Solar cells’ and windpower’s variation with night and weather is no different from the intermittence of coal and nuclear plants, except that it affects less capacity at once, more briefly, far more predictably, and is no harder and probably easier and cheaper to manage. In short, the ability to serve steady loads is a statistical attribute of all plants on the grid, not an operational requirement for one plant. Variability (predictable failure) and intermittence (unpredictable failure) must be managed by diversifying type and location, forecasting, and integrating with other resources. Utilities do this every day, balancing diverse resources to meet fluctuating demand and offset outages. Even with a largely (or probably a wholly) renewable grid, this is not a significant problem or cost, either in theory or in practice—as illustrated by areas that are already 30-40% wind-powered.

Right now our power system might be characterized as Security Through Oversupply. We've built enough power plants to create the maximum level of power we might ever need at a given point in time; but since "peak load" times are relatively brief, most of the time dozens and dozens of large power plants are cycled down, sitting idle. As population and per-capita power use rise, the size of peak load is rising as well. The STO response is to build more plants.

The alternative will be Resilience Through Diversity: just-in-time, just-enough power from multiple, redundant, diverse sources spread over large geographical areas, managed by a reliable, intelligent power grid incorporating distributed storage. Peak load will be shaved by load spreading and efficiency; failures will be localized and self-healing rather than cascading and catastrophic; intelligence will replace brute power.

Utilities face, imminently, some very large investment decisions. Should they invest in nuclear and "clean coal" power because they will "have to" have some baseload power on the grid in 10-15 years when the plants are completed? No. For the next decade it will be a huge challenge just to get to the level of renewables integrated in Spanish and Italian grids today (30-40 percent). In the ensuing time, an enormous amount of money and engineering will go into grid resilience and intelligence. It is far too early to predict what level of renewables will be "impossible," but whatever that level turns out to be, it is certainly far distant.

This is the green pitch to utilities: Rather than spending the next decade or two building nuke and CCS plants, with all the attendant management hassles, public opposition, lawsuits, and cost overruns, why not spend it reducing demand, creating a more resilient grid, and diversifying the generation portfolio? The former is just a more expensive version of what exists now. The latter is a revolution, a platform for innovation that will make the internet look like, um, the electricity industry.

A pitch isn't enough, though. For a fusty industry like utilities, revolution is to be resisted, not celebrated. The key is not just asking utilities to use full cost accounting, but to start building such accounting into markets via regulation, legislation, and large-scale investment. Once the financial and legal incentives are correctly aligned, even utilities -- slow and regulator-dependent as they are -- will respond. Until then, until they really start trying, we shouldn't trust them about what parts of the old system are "necessary" in the new.

(For a longer and more detailed response to the "baseload" shibboleth, see Lovins' "Four Nuclear Myths" [PDF].)

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Freeing the grid

Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets

Making buildings more efficient: looking beyond price

WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama's Senate allies launched a major push Tuesday behind sweeping legislation to battle climate change, with time running short before a high-stakes global summit in December.

"Today, we begin the formal legislative process to lead the world in rolling back the urgent threat of climate change," said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the lead author of a Senate bill to create a cap-and-trade regime.

Obama, showing during a trip to Florida that he will not wait for lawmakers to act, was to unveil the largest-ever upgrade of the U.S. electricity grid, in a $3.4 billion bid to unleash a new era of renewable energy consumption.

Some 100 firms, manufacturers, utilities, and cities will get awards worth from $400,000 to $200 million to help build a nationwide "smart energy grid" to cut costs and improve reliability of the creaking system.

In Washington, Obama's secretaries of energy, interior and transportation, as well as his Environmental Protection Agency chief, were urging senators to act quickly to curb pollutants blamed for global warming.

The administration power-players were to appear before the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee as it opens three days of hearings on legislation written by Obama's Democratic allies to fight climate change.

Obama has said he wants to make as much progress as possible to reassure skeptics at the December global talks in Copenhagen that the United States is pressing ahead with aggressive climate change remedies.

But Obama aides have already warned that the legislation may clear Boxer's committee but not the full Senate before the U.N. climate change conference -- a delay that could cripple hopes of a major new international treaty.

Kerry crafted the legislation with the committee's chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who said as the hearing began that "our bill is the best way to proceed."

"It provides flexibility to businesses and powerful incentives to drive innovation. It helps consumers, workers, agriculture, transportation, energy efficiency, wildlife, cities, counties, and it will launch an economic transformation," she said.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved a cap and trade emissions regime in June, and the Senate is now poised to take up the measure with a new poll showing nearly six in 10 Americans support such a plan.

Under the expected cap-and-trade regime, the government would set the total level of domestic emissions allowable and then allocate quotas to companies.

Firms that emit less than their quota would be allowed to sell their surplus allocation to others that exceed theirs. Those in excess could also face fines.

The House bill calls for cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and by 83 percent by 2050. The Senate's slightly more ambitious bill calls for a 20-percent cut by 2020.

The Senate text also makes a push for nuclear energy research and training, and promotes natural gas as a clean energy source.

About sixty percent of respondents to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey said they favor such an approach, while 37 percent said they oppose it.

The survey's error margin was plus or minus three percentage points.

Obama's Republican foes have mostly rejected the administration's approach, with some warning it would inflict severe economic pain on traditional industries as the U.S. economy makes the transition to cleaner energy.

"The bill is no doubt ambitious, but it's also extremely costly," Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a longtime climate change doubter, said as the hearing began, disputing an Environmental Protection Agency study that found it would cost most U.S. families no more than 30 cents per day.

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China, India, U.S. commit to seal Copenhagen deal

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

As the Senate debated the Kerry-Boxer climate bill in Washington, President Obama travelled to Arcadia, Florida to announce a $3.4 billion investment in to modernize the U.S. energy grid. Have a look at this official White House press release on the president’s new smart grid proposal:

Speaking at Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, President Barack Obama today announced the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history, funding a broad range of technologies that will spur the nation’s transition to a smarter, stronger, more efficient and reliable electric system.  The end result will promote energy-saving choices for consumers, increase efficiency, and foster the growth of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. 

The $3.4 billion in Smart Grid Investment Grant awards are part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and will be matched by industry funding for a total public-private investment worth over $8 billion.  Applicants state that the projects will create tens of thousands of jobs, and consumers in 49 states will benefit from these investments in a stronger, more reliable grid.  Full listings of the grant awards by category and state are available here and here.  A map of the awards is available here.

An analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute estimates that the implementation of smart grid technologies could reduce electricity use by more than 4 percent by 2030.  That would mean a savings of $20.4 billion for businesses and consumers around the country, and $1.6 billion for Florida alone— or $56 in utility savings for every man, woman and child in Florida.

One-hundred private companies, utilities, manufacturers, cities, and other partners received awards today, including FPL which will use its $200 million in funding to install 2.6 million smart meters and other technology that will cut energy costs for its customers.  In the coming days, Cabinet Members and other Administration officials will fan out to awardee sites across the country to discuss how this investment will create jobs, improve the reliability and efficiency of the electrical grid, and help bring clean energy sources from high-production states to those with less renewable generating capacity.  The awards announced today represent the largest group of Recovery Act awards ever made in a single day and the largest batch of Recovery Act clean energy grant awards to-date.

Today’s announcement includes:

The combined effect of the investments announced today, when the projects are fully implemented, will:

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Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

One of the many tasks of running an electric utility is maintaining operating reserves and spinning reserves to handle seasonal peaks, and occasional generation failures.

Between peak demand that only occurs a few times a year, and the occasional shutdown for routine maintenance and response maintenance, utilities have to keep operating reserves -- backup equipment that is only run a few hours or at most a few days per year. This is not only a capital cost, but a maintenance cost and an administrative cost. Such capability may not be run often, but when it is needed, it is really needed. This means regular inspection and even occasional cold starts to make sure such backup will work when needed. Further this means administration and management to make sure such tests are actually done, since they are the sort of thing that can slip through the cracks.

Utilities also need spinning reserves: either power that is generated in excess of that consumed, or special types of storage and generation that can be brought online within milliseconds or nanoseconds. Some spinning reserves compensate for routine variations in demand. But, like operating reserves, a significant amount of spinning reserve exists as backup for equipment failure and for unexpected extreme demand spikes.

If you were a utility, wouldn't you love to buy power as needed for many operating reserve purposes thus needing to own, maintain, and administrate less of this seldom used equipment? Also, wouldn't you love to greatly reduce your need for spinning reserves?

Well if electric vehicles ever come into widespread use, electric utilities will get their chance to do this. Both battery electric vehicles (BEV) which run entirely on batteries charged from the grid, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) which run some of the time on batteries charged from the grid, and some of the time on liquid fuel could provide storage to substitute for most operating reserves and a significant portion of spinning reserves. On average, automobiles are on the road only an hour or two a day. (Yes some cars are driven much more than this, but others much less.) That means that a high percent of this battery capacity will be plugged into the grid 24 hours, even during peak automobile usage. For occasional use, such as seasonal peaks, demand spikes, and equipment failure, it would be quite possible to pull a little power from all or most cars plugged into the grid without taking too much from any single car. Car owners who let utilities do this would set their equipment so as not let their batteries be drained enough to cause them problems. As operating reserves were brought on line over the course of two to four hours, the power that had been taken would be restored. (The ability to rent battery use reduces but does not eliminate the need for operating reserves.)

Now there is an important point. Batteries today are expensive, BEV and PHEV battery packs even more so. In addition to cell costs, automobile battery packs need battery management, cooling, and shock protection - among other requirements. So at today's prices you would not use precious battery cycles for daily use. It makes no sense to meet daily peaking and routine spinning reserve needs with today's technology at today's cost. This is not a knock on two way connections between electric cars and the grid - often called V2G. Handling seasonal peaks, out of parameter demand spikes, and occasional equipment failures is amazing enough. There are other kinds of technology that can handle daily needs at a lower cost than V2G - utility scale batteries of various types. The profit in using car batteries to replace other forms of storage, or to replace generation, comes from displacing capital that can't be fully amortized in a reasonable period of time. It makes no sense to use it as a replacement for equipment that is run daily.

What about the improvements in electric car battery technology? I would indeed expect this. But I would also expect improvements in utility scale storage. Right now utility scale batteries are less expensive than electric car batteries for several reasons. They are bigger than car batteries, and thus provide economies of scale. Some utility scale batteries are much heavier per kWh than car batteries - a minor inconvenience for utility storage, a deal killer as the power source for an automobile. Utility scale batteries will continue maintain the first advantage of economies of scale, and depending on technology may maintain the second as well - a greater tolerance for high battery mass per unit of power than car makers can afford.

I would not emphasize this point, except that many in the renewable community confuse the potential of V2G to replace occasionally used capital with the ability to handle daily peaking, and to replace spinning reserves that protect against routine daily demand variations.

I recently ran into this statement from a staff member at the Institute for Local Self Reliance:

This makes it sound as though V2G could pretty much let the SMUD become mostly renewable based. Not quite. First of all a high percentage of SMUD power is hydroelectric. Hydroelectric power is highly dispatchable, good for base load, load following and peaking. So SMUD is already in good shape to add a lot of variable renewable energy. So what about 250 MW of wind? Well SMUD has about 2,500+ MW of power. 250 MW is a bit less than 10% of total of SMUD capacity.

Nameplate capacity is not a great way to compare power sources anyway. Wind generators (like other sources) don't run all the time, and mostly run at a lower rate than nameplate output. New large wind farms produce on average 35% to 40% of theoretical nameplate capacity (which is a big improvement over even a few years ago). SMUD sales in 2008 were slightly less than 13.4 million megawatt hours. 250 MW of wind farms at 40% utilization would supply about 876,000 megawatt hours, less than 7% of total consumption. This concrete example shows that V2G is extremely valuable, but does not fill the same functions as really large scale storage or long distance transmission. V2G, if electric car use was widespread enough to make it practical, would replace some extremely expensive functions. But, if we expect renewable electricity to replace most fossil fuels, we still need either larger scale storage than V2G can provide or long distance transmission, probably both.

Again, the misconception I'm correcting has  never been spread by the V2G community. V2G advocates, quite correctly, are excited about what car batteries could legitimately do to add grid stability and lower grid costs for either conventional or renewable sources.  It seems to be renewable advocates who are not V2G experts, and don't read work by V2G experts carefully enough who expect V2G to substitute for other technologies it is not suited to replace,  who get over-excited and attribute magic powers the V2G community has never claimed.

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Freeing the grid

Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?

‘Heretic’ battles straw man

The power grid: more feeble than you think.The trouble started on an August afternoon in a remote field in northern Ohio, miles from any town large enough to be marked on a standard road atlas. The only trace of humanity hung above the trees—an electrical cable known as the Harding-Chamberlin Line, carrying 345,000 volts of power.

By 3:00 the air temperature had risen to 90 degrees, and the cable itself had reached nearly 200 degrees Fahrenheit—roughly twice its average temperature. The aluminum core of the 3-inch-thick wire was expanding with the heat and beginning to sag.

Five hundred miles due east of that meadow I was sitting at my desk in New York City when, at 4:09 p.m., my computer suddenly shut down. The lights, music, and air-conditioning died. I heard a strange lurching sound as the elevator in my building froze with passengers trapped on board. I rushed to the window along with my officemates and was amazed to see traffic snarling to a halt up the entire length of Broadway as street signals went black. The Verizon landlines were dead and our cell phones had no signals. We hurried down eleven flights of stairs, into streets already thickening with crowds of evacuees. Storefronts, groceries, and cafés were darkened. Subway stations were emptying of travelers as word spread that the trains had no power and hundreds of people were stuck underground. It was 2003, and like most New Yorkers, we initially jumped to the same conclusion—another terrorist attack.

What had in fact happened to us, and to a majority of the residents of the metropolitan areas of New York, Newark, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and Toronto, was a blackout—larger than any other blackout in recorded history. One of the greatest achievements in industrial engineering, the 93,600 miles of electrical cable known as the Eastern Interconnection, had been brought to its knees. All because of unseen events in that distant Ohio meadow where an overloaded wire had drooped into high tree branches and short-circuited, triggering a massive cascade effect throughout the aging power grid.

As night fell, I walked up to Times Square to see its flashing billboards snuffed out, leaving the commercial El Dorado quaint and sheepish. I passed the main post office building and Bryant Park, where thousands of stranded commuters were sprawled in a mass slumber party, using their suit jackets and briefcases as pillows. Candlelight flickered in apartment windows, and I looked up past the walls of darkened buildings at a sky so brilliant with stars I could make out the soft haze of the Milky Way and the faint pulses of orbiting satellites.

Before-and-after satellite images of the event tell the story. In the before picture there is a thick streak of foamy white across the northeastern portion of the United States and southeastern Canada. In the after is just a scattering of faint droplets, the rest absorbed into the blackness of space. Fifty million Americans were without power.

*

Little finds it's tough to break that addiction.Up to that point, I had spent most of my brief career as a journalist trying to gain a better understanding of the causes of just such events—an understanding of the strengths and vulnerabilities of America’s energy landscape.

Fancying myself an amateur gumshoe, I had traveled throughout the country, from Ashland, Ore., to Tampa Bay, Fla., to write about the architects and early adopters of emerging energy technologies that could provide alternatives to fossil fuels: solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels, and hybrid-electric cars such as the Toyota Prius. I began studying and writing about the legislation that was being drafted (and blocked) to push these innovations into the mainstream. I began criticizing the federal government’s failure to take action on climate change and its unwillingness to encourage the development of clean, efficient, next-generation energy technologies.

But when the August 2003 blackout hit, I recognized one major blind spot in my understanding of energy. Nothing I’d learned in my reporting had quite prepared me for the feeling of utter helplessness and paralysis that a blackout of that scale would cause. It was the first time, for me and for millions of Americans, that the story of energy was conveyed in human terms. Here I was crisscrossing the country, chasing after innovators and wagging fingers at the government, but I’d completely neglected to examine the role of energy in my own life.

So one morning I took a small, quiet, but personally momentous tour around my office. My aim was to count the things in my midst that were, in one way or another, tied to fossil fuels.

Since nearly all plastics, polymers, inks, paints, fertilizers, and pesticides are made from petrochemicals, and all products are delivered to market by trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes, there was virtually nothing in my office—my body included—that wasn’t there because of fossil fuels.

There I sat at a desk made of Formica (a plastic), wearing a sweatshirt made of fleece (a polymer) over yoga pants made from Lycra (ditto), sipping coffee shipped from Zimbabwe, eating an apple trucked from Washington, surrounded by walls covered with oil-derived paints, jotting notes in petroleum-derived ink, typing words on a petrochemical keyboard into a computer powered by coal plants. Even the supposedly guilt-free whole-grain cereal I had for breakfast and the veggie burger I ate for lunch came from crops treated with oil-derived fertilizers. My purse yielded another trove of specimens: capsules of Extra-Strength Tylenol made from acetaminophen (a substance, like many commercial pain relievers, that is refined from petroleum); glossy magazines and a packet of photographs printed with petrochemicals; mascara, lip balm, eyeliner, and perfume that, like most cosmetics, have key components derived from oil.

I had understood this intellectually before—that the energy landscape encompasses not just oil fields, coal mines, gas stations, and the vast network of copper wires that feeds electricity to our homes and offices. It’s also the cornfields in America’s heartland, the battlefields of Iraq, and the medical labs that produce penicillin, Novocain, chemotherapy drugs, and many other treatments and cures. It’s the cosmetics shelves and magazine racks in our drugstores. It’s the constantly humming, behind-the-scenes network of ships, planes, trains, and trucks that transport products to our store shelves. It’s even our own bodies, which we routinely drape in synthetic fabrics like spandex and nylon, and feed with crops that were fertilized by fossil fuels, and stitch up with plastic sutures.

Once I connected the dots between so many seemingly disparate elements of my life—my car, my clothes, my email, my makeup, my burger, even my health—I saw an energy landscape far more vast and complex than I’d ever imagined. I realized also that this thing I’d thought was a bad word—oil—was actually the source of many creature comforts I use and love, and many survival tools I need.

But if fossil fuels are a part of everything we do, how do we go about removing them from the picture? How can we kick America’s addiction to fossil fuels, given its sheer magnitude?

The father of a friend of mine who is now a successful businessman defined his approach to problem-solving in terms he learned through painful experience as a boy growing up on a farm in Ohio: When a cow gets stuck in a ditch, first, you have to get the cow out of the ditch.  Second, you have to figure out how the cow got into the ditch. Third, you have to figure out how to stop the cow from getting into the ditch in the future.  I want, like a majority of Americans today, to get myself out of the ditch of fossil-fuel dependence. But to do it right, I—and we—need to understand the roots of the problem, to understand how, during the 20th century, fossil fuels became so thoroughly woven into the fabric of our lives.

The story of America is, in sum, the story of a power trip; to understand it, I had to go on my own. In January 2007, I set out to explore the most extreme frontiers of our energy landscape—from its deepest wells to its tallest towers. I wanted to pull at the threads of connection between fossil fuels and everyday American life and see what places they led me to, however odd or unexpected. They led me, as it turned out, to some very strange spots, from deep-sea oil rigs to Kansas cornfields, NASCAR tracks to dank city manholes, Pentagon offices to my local produce aisle.

My goal as I describe this journey is not to cast judgment on what has gone wrong in America’s energy landscape—as I have said, I’m guilty myself of buying into and even relishing it. Instead, I want simply to understand this landscape, and to celebrate its successes for all their unintended consequences. It was, after all, American ingenuity that led us down the path of fossil fuel dependence. 

And it's that same ingenuity that can change our future course and lead us to an actual, factual “green” future free from fossil fuels.

This piece was excerpted from Amanda Little's book Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells—Our Ride to the Renewable Future.

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Freeing the grid

A Penny Saved Is…

Oil: enough energy to melt glaciers!

As the world meets this December to set plans to halt global warming, it is expected America and other industrial nations will commit to a daunting task: reduce CO2 emissions 80% by 2050. In just 40 years, a complete revolution in how we use and supply our power must happen, or the world will face catastrophic effects of runaway climate changes.

As a new power plant typically lasts 40-50 years, many scientists are now arguing we must simply stop building new power systems that use significant amounts of fossil fuels. They argue we must move to a high reliance on the wind and the sun for our electricity.

Abundant Power. The U.S. has enormous wind resources, capable of generating over 20% of U.S. electricity from wind by 2030 (PDF), according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The sunlight falling on our deserts, parking lots, and rooftops has even more power -- enough to supply 69% of U.S. electricity by 2050 according to published studies.

Other renewable power sources -- such as geothermal energy, municipal waste-to-energy, and biomass -- will also play a role, but they pale in size compared to the gargantuan resources of wind and sunlight.

How We Use Energy vs. How Nature Provides. Though nature provides all the energy we may need, there is a problem. We demand power literally "at the flick of a switch", not just when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.

This basic fact about how we use power versus how nature supplies clean energy has caused many to discount the idea that wind or solar power can ever supply more than a small fraction of our electricity. Critics of renewable electricity call it "intermittent" and "unreliable". They say we can't "catch the wind", nor can we command the sun to always shine.

These critics see two possible choices for the future. We can develop more stable supplies of renewable energy by coupling wind and solar projects with storage. Failing that, they argue we should give up on renewables as a primary source of electricity, and instead build more nuclear power.

The flaw in the nuclear path, beyond its tremendous cost, long lead times, and imported fuel, is that nuclear is not actually "dispatchable" power. Nuclear plants are designed to run all the time at fairly steady output -- meaning nuclear power cannot provide the "peaking power" now provided by gas turbines. Thus, a nuclear path would still rely heavily on fossil fuel power plants to "ramp up" on a daily basis to provide the power needed during these daily swings.

A truly dispatchable system providing over 80% reductions in carbon emissions, therefore, must rely on some form of energy storage. The energy storage can allow us to fully utilize wind and sunlight as our main power sources -- supplying both "base load" power and dispatchable daily peaking power with energy from these inexhaustible supplies.

Energy Storage and Today's Grid. Despite critics, wind farms and solar photovoltaics are already feeding zero-fuel-cost power into today's electric grid with little or no energy storage. At current levels, the fluctuations in wind and solar output are backed up by the same "load-following" and "peaker" natural gas power plants that already must handle wild fluctuations in customers' demands for electricity. Indeed, the DOE's "20% Wind by 2030" scenario modeled how wind could supply this very significant portion of U.S. electricity needs even with no storage of the wind power.

As long as natural gas remains cheap and acceptable to use, many argue that developing ways to store wind or solar energy may be a case of "a solution in search of a problem". They note natural gas peaking plants are cheap to build and don't need to operate much more than they already do, to provide firming power to renewables.

"Different sectors like to associate with wind power,' the NY Times quoted Robert E. Gramlich, policy director at the American Wind Energy Association. "But we don't want to give anyone the impression that storage is needed to integrate wind. Even growing 20-fold, storage isn't needed."

A Better Way. Though wind and solar can be integrated without storage for a long time to come, energy storage proponents argue that coupling wind or solar power with utility scale energy storage is a "Better Way". If stored wind or solar energy instead of natural gas plants can be used to generate power when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining, less natural gas will be burned to provide dispatchable power.

Though storage will cost money, burning less natural gas will save money on fuel costs. Also, there are now times when excess wind farm kWh's have been sold onto the grid at extremely low prices or even given away, because they occurred in the middle of the night when there was very low demand for power. Storing that wind energy, for sale of kWh's the next day when prices are higher, would generate more revenue. While less dramatic, solar power production can also be shifted to higher-demand periods, from solar noon to late afternoon/early evening when utilities typically experience maximum summer peak demands.

The most important motivator, however, to find a "Better Way" is the need to achieve phenomenal reductions in CO2 emissions. While it may take until 2030 to reach a 20% contribution to the grid, what then? Going beyond this level will require dispatchable renewable power. Twenty years is within the lifetime of any new power plant built today, so storage proponents argue we should already be building to achieve minimum levels of fossil fuel use.

Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES). A proven technology, ready to use now, for economical storage of massive amounts of renewable power is to compress air at very high pressures, and store this compressed air in large underground caverns, depleted wells, or aquifers. When the wind turbines and solar plants reduce output, and power is needed, the compressed air is released and run through turbines to generate power:

Source: Scientific American

Because the caverns or aquifers are so large, hundreds of hours of output can be stored, providing the ability to cover very long "doldrum" wind periods or stretches of cloudy days. Most CAES turbines can also run in natural gas-only mode in the extreme event the cavern becomes fully depleted. A reliable, fully dispatchable electricity generation system is provided.

CAES has a well established track record at scale. A 280 MW plant in Hunthorf, Germany has run since 1978, and a 110 MW plant at McIntosh, Alabama has been in continuous operation since 1991.

CAES systems use gas turbines almost identical to normal natural gas peaking turbines. However, they only use about 1/3 the natural gas, because 2/3 of the natural gas energy in a regular turbine is used to compress air before it enters the turbines, and this compressed air would now be supplied by the stored air. Natural gas would still be needed to heat the air before it enters the turbines.

CO2 Reductions. While not a 100% carbon free power system, a wind or solar coupled CAES power plant system can achieve >80% reductions in fossil fuel use. A baseload CAES/wind system (designed to provide at least 85% Capacity Factor power to the grid) would typically provide half of its total power directly from the wind farm to the grid, without cycling through the CAES plant. The other half of kWh's supplied to the grid would come from stored energy in the CAES, at about 1/3 normal fossil fuel use. Total fossil fuel use per delivered kWh would thus drop to roughly 1/6 of a normal fossil fuel plant, an over 80% reduction in CO2 output.

A carbon-free electric system is also possible, with CAES plants fitted with thermal storage. The thermal storage would store heat from compressing the air, for later use to heat the air going to the turbines. Known as "adiabatic" CAES plants, the stored thermal energy replaces the need for natural gas, causing the entire system to run on renewable power alone. Because thermal storage is costly, it is not expected CAES plants installed in the next decade will include it. However, a regular CAES plant can later be retrofitted with thermal storage, when it becomes more economical or society demands zero-carbon power.

Geological Formations Suitable for CAES. A nationwide network of CAES plants could use the same types of geological formations, and depleted gas wells, as are currently used to store most of the nation's natural gas supplies. Wide areas of the U.S. -- most notably the wind-rich central states -- have these formations and depleted wells:

Source: Coha and Louks (1991)

Cost of Renewable/CAES Power Systems. Because the caverns, aquifers, and wells are already there, CAES offers very economical energy storage.

Estimates for CAES plants range from $750/kW of generating capacity up to about $1,200/kW, with the difference being primarily the number of hours of energy storage. A wind farm/CAES system (taken as a whole) capable of providing baseload capacity factors of 85% could be built for around $5,900/kW of equivalent baseload capacity, including the wind farm itself and the CAES facility. While this is far more than a natural gas plant, it is comparable to a new coal fired power plant and at least 1/3 less costly than the same capacity if added through nuclear power.

Unlike a nuclear or coal plant, the CAES plant would be fully dispatchable power, able to increase and decrease its output along with fluctuating customer demand. This flexibility is a major advantage for usefulness to the electric grid.

Total costs/kWh from this system would also be competitive. Estimates indicate that if the wind farm is built with the 30% Federal Tax Credit (still available through 2012), a total wind/CAES system could deliver baseload power to the grid at about 10.5 cents/kWh. This cost would rise to about 13.0 cents/kWh without the wind Tax Credit. (Effectively, the Tax Credit if used wisely could pay for the CAES plant to convert an intermittent wind farm into firm, dispatchable power.)

Though more expensive than kWh's from a new baseload natural gas power plant (which would probably be about 9 cents/kWh), a wind/CAES system would be well protected from future fuel cost increases. Also, at 10.5-13.0 cents/kWh, the baseload wind/CAES system would only be about half the cost/kWh from a new nuclear power plant.

Pump Water Up and Let it Fall Back Down. Pumped hydro-electric storage is just that simple -- when you want to store energy, use electricity to pump water to a high level. Then, whenever power is needed, let the water fall through hydroelectric turbines to generate power. You don't get all your electricity back (about 22% is lost), but you get it when you need it. This enables you to accept power from renewable sources when not needed, and store it for use later.

Pumped hydro storage is the largest utility energy storage method in the world, with 20,800 MW already in use in the U.S. However, its use has slowed because of limited sites for hydroelectric power dams.

Enter Riverbank Power Corporation, with its simple idea: combine two well-established technologies into one. First, use standard deep mining techniques to create a large cavern 2,000 feet deep, under a body of water such as a river or abandoned quarry. Then, install 4 gigantic 250 MW hydroelectric turbines at the bottom of shafts, for a massive 1,000 MW power supply available on demand. When power is needed, let water fall down the shafts and generate power. When renewable power is available, pump the water back up.

Source: Riverbank Power

Riverbank Power is now actively exploring 15 sites in the U.S. and Canada, for selection of its first five 1,000 MW pumped hydro (AquabankTM) facilities. Wiscasset, ME is high on the list, where Riverbank has already performed successful bore hole tests of the underlying rock. The Wiscasset site is very symbolic, as it is the home of the former Maine Yankee nuclear power plant, decommissioned more than a decade ago. A boon to Riverbank Power is the site is still set up to connect directly to the transmission grid.

Costs. Because Riverbank Power has to dig out its own cavern, its cost to construct is significantly higher than a CAES plant -- estimated at $2 Billion for the 1,000 MW facilities, or roughly $2,000/kW. Also, instead of dozens or hundreds of hours of storage, Riverbank plants are designed to run for 6 continuous hours before the water would need to be pumped back up. The timetable is good for hour-to-hour or minute-to-minute fluctuations but not long stretches with no wind or sun.

Riverbank is confident of its business plan, and is not asking for taxpayer or utility dollars. Its turbines use no fossil fuels, and the facility should last 100 years. The company plans to buy power at cheap prices, and sell power when it is needed more, at a higher price.

If it does that for 100 years, the Company feels it should pay for the initial $2 Billion investment many times over, while creating jobs and giving green energy developers a solid market for their power.

Batteries to Store Power When and Where Needed. While both CAES and pumped hydro storage plants hold the promise of very large scale economical storage, they both require special siting. CAES requires an available underground cavern, well, or aquifer, while pumped hydro requires a water resource. Batteries, however, can go virtually anywhere, and take almost no lead time compared to the larger projects.

Xtreme Power is a company out there today, already selling product, by identifying customers who have needs and who are willing to pay for solutions. The company has a systems approach employing modular battery packs that can be scaled to provide Mwh of power storage, together with power electronics control systems.

Xtreme Power can shift 4 hours of power to a later time, for roughly 5-10 cents/kWh. In many electricity markets, the difference in value between different times of the day can more than pay for this cost.

The company has some large scale systems going in before the end of this year, and plans to deliver at least 75 - 100 Mwh of power storage in 2010, with more that can be delivered. Most of its customers are large solar and wind developers, who are eager for a solution and ready to pay for it now.

NGK Insulators

Sodium Sulfur (NaS) Batteries. Another battery solution which is also already commercially available is sodium sulfur. Xcel Energy has a 1 MW NaS battery installation underway from NGK Insulators to store up to 7.2 Mwh (in other words, over 7 hours of power), of wind energy for use when most needed. The system will be adjacent to an 11-MW wind farm owned by Minwind Energy LLC, in Luverne, Minnesota.

Let's Not Store These Ideas For Later. When renewable energy was still a long way off, the solution to energy storage seemed to be the unattainable "Holy Grail". It was always to be found, yet never found.

Now, however, the answers are actually here, and they are simpler and plainer than we expected, Store air. Pump water. Use advanced batteries. Like Indiana Jones in his Last Crusade, we need to know when the true Grail is right in front of us.

As Michael Breen from Xtreme Power told me, "Let's stop jabbering about it ... We just need more demonstration units so the industry can talk about this more intelligently."

This is now happening. Is the Holy Grail finally found?

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

Freeing the grid

Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?

Solar Roadways

A while back I mentioned Solar Roadways, a clean-energy idea that appears kind of kooky, at least on the surface. (See what I did there?) The notion is to replace paved surfaces with rugged, specially built solar panels.

The Solar Road Panels would contain not just solar panels but LED lighting (to enable real-time communication with drivers), heating units (to prevent icing), high-voltage power transmission lines, and even electric-vehicle recharging stations. It's transportation, power, and grid infrastructure in the same place.

At the limit, if all paved surfaces in the U.S. were replaced with 15% efficiency solar panels, the resulting distributed power network could provide three times the electricity the nation consumes, with zero carbon emissions and no additional power grid infrastructure. (Yes, I'm aware manufacturing, installing, and maintaining it would generate emissions, as with any infrastructure project.)

So crazy it just might work? Apparently the Dept. of Transportation thinks so: Solar Roadways has received a $100,000 contract from DOT to build a prototype:

The Solar Roadways will collect solar energy to power businesses and homes via structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon, to be placed in parking lots and roadways in lieu of petroleum-based asphalt surfaces.

The Solar Road Panels will contain embedded LEDs which "paint" the road lines from beneath to provide safer nighttime driving, as well as to give up to the minute instructions (via the road) to drivers (i.e. "detour ahead"). The road will be able to sense wildlife on the road and can warn drivers to "slow down". There will also be embedded heating elements in the surface to prevent snow and ice buildup, providing for safer winter driving. This feature packed system will become an intelligent highway that will double as a secure, intelligent, decentralized, self-healing power grid which will enable a gradual weaning from fossil fuels.

... Fully electric vehicles will be able to recharge along the roadway and in parking lots, finally making electric cars practical for long trips.

It is estimated that is will take roughly five billion (a stimulus package in itself) 12' by 12' Solar Road Panels to cover the asphalt surfaces in the U.S. alone, allowing us to produce three times more power than we've ever used as a nation - almost enough to power the entire world.

There are some cost estimates on the site. They argue that roadways could be solarized for roughly the same net cost we'd pay for power plants, grid infrastructure, and asphalt.

As usual with large-scale, visionary ideas like this, it's difficult to agree on a cost-benefit analysis. The costs are mostly quantifiable -- multiply cost of panel by 5 billion, etc. -- but the benefits are not. Many are speculative or unpredictable, many are avoided costs. What are the benefits of not building coal plants and grid infrastructure? Not paying for accidents from ice and wildlife? Not having centralized, brittle power infrastructure?

New infrastructure does not merely replace old infrastructure; it provides a platform for new kinds of innovation. Who knows what would grow out of massively distributed power, a national smart grid, or an electrified vehicle fleet? What would it mean to have an overabundance of clean electricity?

Decisions about projects of such scope can't be made with a mathematical formula. There are irreducible elements of aspiration and faith, values and ethics, fear and desire -- just as there were in America's decisions to wage war, guarantee health care for seniors and the poor, go to the moon, or extend broadband internet access. Conservatives and Blue Dogs tell us we can't afford it, presuming a shared understanding of what it's worth.

Think not just about solar roadways, but more generally about the goal of clean, abundant energy, economic renewal, and a livable climate. What's that worth? And why do the Blue Dogs get to decide?

Related Links:

Freeing the grid

Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?

‘Heretic’ battles straw man

On Friday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration released new monthly statistics for renewable energy output as well as output of traditional forms of power.  The good news is that renewable energy in May, the latest month for which statistics have been compiled, is at its all-time highest level, accounting for 13% of total power.  The bad news, however, is that the vast majority of this, about 9.4%, comes from traditional hydropower.  The other renewables -- wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal -- accounted for just 3.6%.   Wind accounts for 1.8%, biomass 1.3%, geothermal 0.4%, and solar 0.3% of the total. 

All of the sources of renewables grew, but the growth rates were modest.  Wind grew year-on-year by 12.5% and solar by only 3.5%.  These growth rates might be passable for mature technologies with a huge starting base.  However, for comparatively new technologies with a tiny denominator, these growth rates are not impressive.  True, the data do not reflect the full force of the Investment Tax Credit (for solar installations) extended last fall and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed this winter -- because of the lag in the data.  Still they tell at best a story of an industry surviving the recession.  They do not tell a story of economic rebirth based on the promise of a low-carbon future.

There are reasons to hope clean energy would be growing much faster than these rates--the goal of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, essential to addressing climate change, and the goal of creating a new wave of clean technology-driven growth.  (The goal of energy security is less dependent on renewable technologies since coal is present in the United States but is nonetheless also served by replacing oil in our nation's energy mix.) 

However, there are also reasons to expect clean energy to be growing far faster than it is: the declining cost curves of renewables relative to fossil fuels, the large subsidies the government has put in place and the huge push America is making, from the president's speeches to the T.Boone Pickens Plan for energy independence on down.  In many states, renewable energy is even mandated through a Renewable Electricity Standard.  Looking abroad, Germany produces 7% of its power from wind, about four times what the U.S. does, and Spain's solar power capacity grew 364% in 2008.  Now that is the type of growth needed to have a real effect!  The fact is, U.S. growth rates in renewable industry are not meeting reasonable expectations for clean energy growth, let alone desirable targets.

I have been studying the question of why clean technology is moving so slowly into the marketplace in the United States and my research suggests that adoption of clean technology and renewable energy must be about more than pricing and incentives.  It is about decision-making and removing obstacles to the deployment of clean energy.  These obstacles are present, once you peer into the complex world of the electricity industry, in a host of non-economic barriers to implementation.

To understand why clean energy is not -- even with large incentives in place -- displacing dirtier forms of energy, it is important to recall the extraordinarily complex nature of the industry.  Like all large industries, the electricity industry has incumbents.  These incumbents--unlike, say, car manufacturers or computer companies -- are protected by regulation.  During the 1990s, the industry was partially deregulated so that market forces were introduced in some parts of the industry in some regions.  However, the work of regulatory reform proceeded only part way, leaving the industry in a sort of limbo.  Today, some regions of the country have wholesale competition.  Others have limited retail competition.  Still others have wholly vertically integrated companies supplying their customers with soup-to-nuts service unchanged from a half century ago.  And there is limited trade in electricity -- this in an era when frozen dinners served in the United States are made in Thailand and fresh flowers cut in Bolivia.

Indeed, the electricity industry is quite rare today in remaining geographically divided.  With some exceptions, it is illegal for a utility in one region to sell to customers in another.  There is effectively no such thing as national competition. There are, of course, many precedents for these legalized restraints on trade.  Banking used to be organized this way prior to reforms in the 1980s and 1990s.  Telecommunications after the breakup of Ma Bell but before the 1996 Telecom bill and development of national communications services was similarly organized by region.  In the case of electricity, besides the legal restraints on trade, there are major physical restraints in the form of lack of capacity on the grid to move power where it is needed.

The absence of universal market allocation of power means that decision making -- of what types of power to buy, what types of clean technology to implement, and what types of infrastructure to build -- is left frequently to a small group of decision makers who are also incumbents and have a rational bias towards decisions supporting their incumbent position.  A transformative technology, for example, could reduce the value of their legacy assets.  Building a new transmission line to connect wind power to the grid may make a plant they own obsolete.  It may therefore be entirely rational for them to discourage rather than encourage the deployment of new technology. 

It would be one thing if the decision makers were acting on their own.  However, typically they make decisions under the rate-base system that provides a guaranteed rate of return on anything they can place in the rate base.  This would ordinarily incent them toward over-investment.  However, since regulators oversee these rate cases and generally try to lower costs, the decision makers at utilities have a conflicting mandate to gain a high rate of return but also keep costs down.  This can lead to a bias toward investments that pay off immediately and against investments that pay off longer term.

The upshot is that getting the type of growth rates of renewables needed to unlock the economic and social potential of clean energy is likely to take more than economic incentives and mandates.  It may well require reform to remove obstacles to the deployment of new technology.

The energy bills now working their way through Congress contain some measures to address these problems.  But my research suggests more work needs to be done.

Related Links:

Freeing the grid

Fair, Ambitious & Binding: Essentials for a Successful Climate Deal

Treat energy efficiency like a utility

If the Texas company EEStor is running a scam, it's a frakking brilliant one. For years the otherwise tight-lipped outfit has been promising a capacitor that can quickly charge, quickly discharge, and hold enormous amounts of energy -- on all accounts, performance far beyond any battery on the market, or even contemplated. If it performs as promised, the EESU (Electrical Energy Storage Unit) will revolutionize the electric vehicle market. It will enable cost-effective, high-capacity storage for renewable electricity sources. It can radically increase the utility of portable electronics. It would be an honest-to-god game changer.

It sounds too good to be true, and quite a few people think it is. But the company has passed some initial tests; it has signed an exclusive contract with Lockheed Martin; electric car company ZENN is ready to put EESUs in vehicles and begin selling them in short order.

And now, there's a leaked interview with EEStor CEO Dick Weir (who never talks to the media, and who doesn't appear aware the interview will be published; journalist Tyler Hamilton, one of the few to have interviewed him, vouchsafes that it's his voice) in which he claims that he'll have a pre-production prototype EESU done by the end of the year.

If this is a bluff, it is one of the ballsier, more elaborate bluffs the cleantech world has ever seen.

Here are a few of the remarkable things Weir says, as related by Hamilton:

* On EEStor's value: “If we make an EESU ... God only knows what we'll be valued then.”

* He has two patents on grid-load levelling. “You can put 45 percent more electricity on the grid and do nothing more than put our batteries on there. ... that electricity could supply the electricity to the electric vehicle market as it emerges ... we make wind and solar real ... you can make a wind farm operate like a coal-fired plant and it's really cost-effective.”

* On storage for PCs and handhelds. “We can take a battery for a cell phone and give you three to five times more energy storage that would never degrade on you and you can charge in seconds.”

* How quick to market for EESU electric car? “Need is always a wonderful thing, and the need is very high for our technology ... there's nothing corrosive, harmful or explosive in our technology ... there's nothing, there's no chemistry part of our product. It's all solid state ... I think also ZENN is going to happen very, very quickly ... people will want that electric car. They'll be able to test it, don't get me wrong, but they'll be able to pass those tests quickly because we've got the UL.”

* On EESU status: “I'm already out there putting EESUs together and I'm still in June. I'm ahead of schedule.” Says ZENN will get pre-production prototypes by the end of this year. “Once I do that, all hell is going to break loose for ZENN as well as EEStor.”

* Ending note: “We've done our homework, and you'll see the results when we get into 2010 ... you'll see a very effective and constant ramp-up to our production capabilities.”

I wouldn't invest in this company, but I can probably spare a little hope.

More on EEStor:

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Freeing the grid

Winning the clean energy race: a new strategy for American leadership

SolarReserve’s 24/7 solar power plant

It was the best of half-centuries, it was the worst of half-centuries ...

Broadly speaking, there are only three things we can do to lower CO2 emissions: switch fuels, use energy more efficiently, or use less energy (conserve).

Our CO2 conversations too often focus on one of those three in isolation: Coal bad. Recycled waste heat good. Conservation isn't an energy policy. Each assertion is both narrowly true and broadly incorrect, to the extent that each simplifies three prongs into one.

To understand why, try to answer a simple question: if we shifted our power generation fleet to preferentially dispatch natural gas plants instead of coal plants, how much would CO2 emissions fall?

That would seem to be an easy bit of math: just measure the CO2/MWh of each plant, multiply the difference by the MWh switch, and we have our answer, right? Turns out it's a tad complicated, for the simple reason that the fuel switching strategy is also an efficiency strategy. Does a newly dispatched gas plant look like one of the old, 30% efficient, natural gas-fired Rankine "steamers," or does a newly dispatched gas plant look like one of the new, 50% efficient combined cycle gas turbines? What about the coal plant that gets turned off?

Better still, let's ask an easy question: how has the CO2 signature of our nation's coal and gas-fired power fleet changed with time?

DOE/EIA keeps voluminous records of fossil fuel consumption and power generation by fuel type. On the following charts, I've divided total fleet fuel use by total fleet MWh and then multiplied by a consistent 0.06 tons of CO2/mcf of natural gas / 2.7 tons CO2/ton of coal to yield the following:

Interesting. From 1960-1990, there was no statistically significant change in gas fleet CO2 emissions, which held steady at 0.63-0.65 tons/MWh. Then all of a sudden in the 1990s, the fleet transformed itself, reducing its CO2-intensivity by 25% in just 10 years. What happened?

In a word: competition. The introduction of competitive access in the 1992 Energy Policy Act (and subsequent FERC rulings) brought forth a flood of natural gas plants, many of which were nearly twice as fuel efficient as the old junk that the grid had previously relied on. Prior to that point, costs were simply something that you passed along to customers. After that point -- for much of the grid -- cost control was a route to greater profits. Not surprisingly, generator owners suddenly got religion on cost-control. And when your number one cost is fuel, that means they got religion on fuel control. That's good.

Now let's look at what happened to the coal fleet during the same period:

From 1960-1970, the coal fleet holds steady at 1.17 tons/MWh, but then starts an inexorable upward trend. While the gas fleet became more efficient with time (after 1990, at least), the coal fleet is steadily less efficient. Way less in fact -- to the point that the CO2 emissions associated with a MWh of coal-derived electricity are 18% higher today than they were in 1960.

What happened here? Two things:

1. Unintended consequences. 1970 saw the passage of the Clean Air Act, a deeply flawed bill. It was good in terms of what it did for regulated pollutants, but lousy in terms of what it did for unregulated ones (e.g., CO2). By effectively mandating pollution control approaches that impose parasitic loads on coal plants, the CAA is directly responsible for lowering coal plant energy efficiency, so that we now burn way more coal per MWh than we did before passage. We therefore emit way more CO2 per unit of useful electricity. That's not to ignore the beneficial elements of the CAA, from sulfur to particulate control, but simply to point out that an environmental regulation that encourages energy inefficiency leaves much to be desired.

2. Dispatch considerations. As noted here, the last 30 years have seen virtually no construction of new baseload power plants in the US, but have seen a steady increase in the annual load factor of currently existing baseload plants. In other words, plants that used to spend most of their life turned off now spend most of their life turned on. In the coal fleet, that means that the least efficient stuff runs more now than it used to. So in addition to the unintended consequences of the Clean Air Act, we also have the simple fact of steadily growing electricity demand that causes us to pull our power from ever-more-undesireable sources.

Why didn't the competitive forces unleashed by the 1992 EPACT also drive up the efficiency of our coal fleet, like they did for gas? Again, it's an easy answer: competition. Coal plants are lousy investments. No one builds them who has to put their own money at risk.

One last thing

Here's the tragedy: If we had run the gas fleet at a constant fuel efficiency from 1960-present, we would have emitted an additional 1.3 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That's 1.3 billion tons not in the atmosphere today thanks to energy efficiency.

On the other hand ... if we had run the coal fleet at a constant fuel efficiency from 1960-today, we would have emitted nearly 9 billion fewer tons of CO2 into the atmosphere over the last fifty years.

1,300,000,000 steps forward, 9,000,000,000 steps back.

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Freeing the grid

Business Week has a provocative article this week by Michael Mandel on innovation -- or the collapse of it -- in America. According to Mandel, many of our current woes stem from a failure to innovate over the last decade since the glory years of the late 1990s. While most Americans still take pride in our innovation, Mandel provides some sobering statistics: the wages of young college graduates -- precisely the group that should be succeeding in the information economy -- declined 24% between 1998 and 2007. The U.S. trade balance in high tech goods flipped from a $30 billion surplus in 1998 to a $53 billion deficit in 2007. Mortality statistics actually worsened for those 45 to 54, belying talk of medical breakthroughs.

All of this leads to my topic for today: making good on the promise of clean technology. Now one of the hottest areas in Silicon Valley and an area that the Obama Administration believes is key to powering prosperity, clean technology has -- as John Doerr has said -- more potential for wealth creation than information technology. Yet despite numerous technology breakthroughs, the clean energy and technology space has yet to generate the type of home runs on a company level or growth on an economy-wide level needed to reinvigorate the American economy and get wages moving upwards again.

In my view, there is no question that innovation is the key to America's economic future. The wealthiest country in the world cannot compete with low-wages countries on labor costs. To sustain high wages, our people must create new industries in which competition is based on new capabilities and, in effect, scientific magic, not on who can make widgets for less. We have the best scientific infrastructure and system for financing innovation on earth. Nonetheless, as Mandel points out, our system has not delivered on an economy-wide level for the last decade. 

It is tempting to blame this on the policies of the Bush Administration. And the Obama Administration has begun to reverse a reliance on financial engineering, as opposed to real engineering, to get us back in the business of creating new products. However, to really get innovation back into high gear, I believe more steps are needed.

Within clean technology, a very promising area of innovation is the smart grid. However, virtually none of the money for smart grid included in the ARRA bill will go to young entrepreneurs -- burrito-eating Stanford grads, as Doerr once described them. Because of a 50% cost-sharing requirement and large average size for grants, most will go to large regulated utilities. Moreover, the entire clean energy industry is hampered by a key difference between the energy industry and, say the Internet industry: the presence of incumbent players with an interest not in innovation but rather in preserving incumbency.

Many young clean technology companies find themselves in the role of selling to a small group of customers, most heavily regulated and unusually conservative. In a given geographic region, they may therefore have only one customer, creating a so-called monopsomy. Monopsomies, the flip side of monopolies, provide exceptional buying power to a single gatekeeper who can, if desired, not buy a product at all. A real life example of a monopsomist is a coffee buyer in a remote region who may have virtually unlimited power over small growers. Oil companies, similarly, enjoy government tax credits, market power and other incumbent advantages that can work against companies offering alternative technologies. So long as these sorts of gate-keepers and roadblocks to innovation exists, clean energy will fail to realize its promise.

What is the way around roadblocks to innovation in the energy sector? The answer, broadly speaking, is to get the end user or consumer involved.

The consumer is a great arbiter of product quality. Unlike a middleman, incumbent or gatekeeper, the consumer's highest priority is features for money expended. In software, computers, electronics and sectors where the consumer is empowered, the consumer has driven innovation.

Two policy ideas stand out as ways to get the consumer involved in energy decision making. First, the smart grid itself, if developed in an open way, will drive innovation by allowing software developers, producers of services and others to build products around an open standard. On the other hand, the smart grid, if developed in a closed or proprietary way, will merely perpetuate the market power of insiders. The key is to set a standard that allows plug and play capability so that entrepreneurs can develop products for customers around it. Just as coffee consumers, once informed about fair trade, have begun to buy fair trade coffee, consumers, if given the choice, will buy products and services around the grid based on their preferences.

Second, it is time to revisit the issue of electricity reform to offer greater choice to consumers. Electricity reform began in the 1990s but came to a halt. Since then, we have learned what structures make markets work best and competition should be extended to the consumer level.

Finally, the government should be more flexible in how it supports research and development for clean technologies, to make more money available to smaller, more nimble firms as opposed to entrenched incumbents. While it may be possible for governments playing catch up to to bet on strategic industries, as Japan did after World War II, when it comes to innovation, picking winners should be avoided. No single analyst or committee, no matter how smart, can substitute for trial, error and the verdict of the marketplace.  However, government can encourage open standards and a level playing field to encourage numerous solutions to problems.  And by making money generally available not only to large players but to small ones, it can help rekindle innovation.

These three steps will help accelerate innovation in the clean technology space. And innovation is what is needed to raise wages, create jobs and get America's economic engine hitting on all cylinders once again. 

Cross-posted at the NDN Blog.

Related Links:

Freeing the grid

Home Economics of the JP Green House, Part 1

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

In recent weeks, there has been a flurry of activity surrounding new transmission lines. With hearings and legislation in Washington, D.C. and multi-state transmission corridor projects on the drawing board, there are a lot of questions.

Are they needed? Can low-carbon generation be met otherwise? Is the project just an excuse to expand the reach of coal-fired power plants rather than supporting a clean energy project?

These are important questions, and last week the Sierra Club and 25 other environmental organizations laid out our vision for how to reform federal electric transmission policy to help promote a clean energy future in a letter to Carol Browner, assistant to President Barack Obama on energy and climate change issues.

Here's the gist of it. Responsible planning of electrical transmission lines and transmission reform must be part of a comprehensive clean energy policy. Significant reforms in how electrical transmission lines in this country are planned, sited, built, and managed are needed.

Transmission policy reform must result in new lines that serve clean renewable resources rather than expand the carbon-intensive power generation. Coal currently accounts for more than 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and contributes to the continued deterioration of air quality in the country's most vulnerable communities.

But electric transmission policy reform in advance of a comprehensive national climate policy can have the real but unintended effect of facilitating more, not less, greenhouse gas pollution. Already coal giants like American Electric Power and Allegheny Power have proposed "green" transmission lines that would go directly to and from coal-fired power plants, crossing Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland, and helping to significantly expand coal generation. Similar projects are popping up across the western part of the United States as well as the coal industry takes advantage of the public's desire for clean energy to further strengthen its hold on American electricity.

This is why we must ensure that transmission line plans are not automatically rebranded as "green" projects when it's clear they only exacerbate pollution and greenhouse gases.

In many cases improving efficiency and better utilizing existing transmission infrastructure can make new transmission lines unnecessary. There are also many times when extensive lines are unnecessary because local renewable energy projects can distribute their power locally. And as we shutdown the existing coal fleet over the next two decades we can free up the existing transmission system for clean energy.

But we will still need some new transmission lines; and to ensure that new lines are designed, sited, built, and operated to serve clean renewable electric generation, we will need robust safeguards. Repowering the nation must also protect the wildlife and natural resources that help keep American communities healthy, safe, and prosperous. We should not blindly go forward with transmission plans without reviewing environmental impacts on the chosen sites, and we must provide the public with ample opportunities for meaningful involvement. Regional, state, and federal wildlife, lands, and resource agencies should be full partners in future transmission planning processes.

Meeting our country's energy needs with clean renewable energy will require significant investments that must be undertaken immediately, but these investments must not exacerbate global warming emissions. Improving our country's electrical transmission infrastructure should not be a way to continue our reliance on dirty power sources such as coal, but an investment in a different, cleaner future. New projects, if need is demonstrated and we have exhausted all other options, should go to truly clean, renewable energy sites, not coal fronts.

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Freeing the grid

Just a reminder: I'm at the Earth2Tech Green:Net '09 conference all day today. It looks like about half the people here are media, but if you don't find the dozens of other outlets for commentary sufficient, you can follow along with the action on my Twitter feed.

(Needless to say, Earth2Tech also has extensive coverage.)

Related Links:

Freeing the grid

Fair, Ambitious & Binding: Essentials for a Successful Climate Deal

Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power?

All day tomorrow (Tuesday) I'll be at Green:Net, a greentech conference sponsored by the excellent blog Earth2Tech.

Specifically, the conference will be about how the tools that created the net and net architecture will help to revolutionize energy. You can check out the line-up here. Looks like there's a big appetite for this stuff -- the event is completely sold out.

The entire day is packed. You can follow the play-by-play on my Twitter feed; I'll try to do some kind of wrap-up on the blog later this week.

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Freeing the grid

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Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power?

This post originally appeared at the Wonk Room.

Glenn Beck, the conservative ideologue whose show is mocked by fellow Fox News anchors, recently attacked plans to modernize our electric grid. After Carol Browner, President Obama's climate and energy adviser, said that a smart grid means "we can get to a system where an electric company will be able to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air conditioner won't operate at its peak, you'll still be able to cool your house, but that'll be a savings to the consumer," Beck argued that would lead to "one-world government" with "Czar Browner" in charge of everyone's air conditioners:

On Fox News, Beck snorted, "Gosh, that would be great if I could just keep turning the air conditioner up and the government won't let me do it. That's fantastic." Watch it:

In reality, Browner was describing demand-side management technology, the kind of grid modernization that corporate executives from Wal-Mart's Lee Scott to American Electric Power's Mike Morris have called an essential advance. Our antiquated power grid, a national embarassment which threatens our energy future, needs to be upgraded to a digital network just as the analog phone system gave way to the Internet.

Beck's rant assumes that an "electric company" and "the government" are one and the same. In fact, eight-four percent of the United States retail electric power market is provided by private companies. Over 120 million customers are served by the private market, versus 21 million served by public utilities, most of which are small municipal entities. The concept that Carol Browner would have control over a national thermostat is frankly bizarre:

During his diatribes on his Fox News show and his radio program, Beck also called cap-and-trade — which would establish a multi-billion-dollar private market in pollution allowances — "one of my favorite socialist ideas." Although global warming is increasing the deadly heat waves that worry him so, Beck further claimed "the only thing that has become incredibly clear on the science of climate change is that they can't decide whether to call it global warming or call it climate change."

It's not surprising that someone who can't tell the difference between capitalism and socialism doesn't understand much about science either.

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Lynne Kiesling is a senior lecturer in the Department of Economics and in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, a member of the GridWise Architecture Council, and the proprietor of the excellent blog Knowledge Problem. She has written the best general introduction to the smart grid available (and I've read a lot of them!). If you're looking for a better understanding of grid issues, take the time to read them:

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• One of my favorite bright green ideas: objects as a service, sometimes called "product service systems," a fascinating and potentially revolutionary idea desperately in search of a better name.

• Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's semi-secret memo on the company's environmental efforts. Meh.

• The Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center has an interesting report on "Large Blackouts in North America: Historical trends and policy implications." No, really, it's interesting!

• Steve Beshear, governor of Kentucky, is kicking off a Clean Energy Corps Pilot Program, a public-private partnership that will work to do energy efficiency retrofits in low-income households -- eventually, if all goes well, to expand the program to 10,000 households across the state. Kick ass.

• An outfit called Show@ has a fascinating series of interactive maps -- you can see maps based on crops, energy, environment, and minerals (and numerous subcategories therein). Here's a map of the U.S. sized proportionately to the prevalence of coal-fired power -- it tells you everything you need to know about the politics of carbon policy:

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Freeing the grid

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Clean energy opportunities

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Freeing the grid