EPA is readying climate rule for existing power plants as deadline approaches
Via The Washington Post
Juliet Eilperin | 05/21/14 @ 7:46 AM
Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press - Cattle graze near the Sacramento Municipal Utility District's Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Plant. A new climate policy would allow states and companies flexibility in how they will meet emissions standards.
With less than two weeks to go, the Environmental Protection Agency is readying a climate rule for existing power plants that requires steep carbon reductions while allowing states and companies broad flexibility in how they limit their overall greenhouse gas emissions.
While key aspects of the proposal are still under discussion, according to several individuals briefed on the matter, the measure will spur regional carbon trading regimes on the East and West coasts and is likely to spur a legal challenge from some utilities. As currently drafted, the rule would cut greenhouse gas emissions from the utility sector by 25 percent, individuals said, but the baseline for that reduction has not been finalized.
The EPA plan resembles proposals made by the Natural Resources Defense Council, which would allow states and companies to employ a variety of measures — including new renewable energy and energy efficiency projects “outside the fence,” or away from the power plant site itself — to meet their carbon reduction target. The exact level of reduction will vary by state, according to those familiar with the rule, and it will consist of a two-step process that will have smaller reductions at first and larger ones by 2030.
Coal-intensive utilities, coal mining companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, conservative think tanks and a dozen or so state attorneys general have lined up to challenge the basis for the EPA’s impending draft regulations for limiting carbon dioxide emissions at existing coal plants. They have taken aim both at the likelihood that the EPA will set emissions targets and at any approach that isn’t limited to a specific plant site.
“Any standard that is set predicated on reductions happening outside the fence line are illegal and would be overturned by the court,” said Joseph Stanko, who heads government relations at the law firm Hunton and Williams and represents several utility companies. “And I think they know that.”
The proposed rule, which will be announced June 2, represents the centerpiece ofPresident Obama’s climate action plan. Utilities account for roughly 40 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions, with much of it coming from the aging, coal-fired fleet.
“This is a magic moment for the President — a chance to write his name into the record books,” wrote Frank O’Donnell, who directs the advocacy group Clean Air Watch. “But history will ultimately judge this less by an excellent speech than by the final contents and outcome of this initiative.”
The EPA declined to comment on the draft rule. Both Bloomberg News and Reuters reported some of the proposals over the past few days.
Kelly Speakes-Backman, who is both commissioner of the Maryland Public Service Commission and chairs the board of directors of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a nine-state emissions trading compact, said in an interview last week that a “mass-based” system allows states and utilities to cut carbon in a more efficient and cost-effective way. Under this system, which is what the EPA is poised to adopt, states will have to meet an overall greenhouse gas limit rather than a specific rate per hour for each power plant.
“What are we ultimately trying to do? We’re trying to reduce carbon in the atmosphere,” she said, adding: “What RGGI has been doing sets almost a plug-and-play model for other states to adopt.”
Some, like Washington state, are eager to follow the example of the East Coast and California, both of whom have adopted emission-trading schemes. The RGGI program applies only to power plants while California’s system is much broader; the states participating in the RGGI system cut their emissions by more than 40 percent between 2005 and 2012.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is traveling this week to Utah, Washington and Oregon, where she will meet with each state’s governor and also hold public events. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) has pressed the EPA to adopt a strict carbon standard and is currently pushing for several policies so his state can meet its goal of reducing its overall emissions 20 percent by 2020.
Stu Clark, air program manager at the state’s Ecology Department, said the EPA has conducted “an unprecedented outreach” in crafting the rule. He added that depending on how stiff the requirements are, Washington may need to strike a regional compact with other states even though its utility sector is relatively clean.
“If it’s a really stringent standard, we will need to look at a broader suite of tools,” Clark said.
Other states are more resistant. Oklahoma Attorney General E. Scott Pruitt, for example, argued at the National Press Club Tuesday that the Clean Air Act gives states the power to determine what pollution standards should be and how to achieve them. Only later, he said, can the EPA reject a state’s plan and impose its own, so the EPA’s task now is to design a procedure and general emissions guidelines. He said it was reducing the states “from a substantive to an administrative role.”
“I find it offensive that the EPA feels regulators in states are not interested in air quality or pollution,” he said. And he said that the EPA has a “dictatorial attitude that as long as you agree with us, everything is kosher.”
Pruitt also said that EPA can only regulate single sites “unit by unit” rather than offer states and utilities the flexibility of meeting new guidelines through energy efficiency programs or renewable investments that might not be on the site of a regulated coal plant. Pruitt said that in such an approach “EPA is using its power to pick winners and losers.”
But David Doniger, policy director for NRDC’s climate and clean air program, said the EPA does have the authority to set an overall carbon limit. Since there was a limited amount of improvement to boost the efficiency of existing coal plants, he said, using the broader approach could help meet deeper reductions in carbon emissions at lower costs.
Doniger said that the EPA’s authority had been clearly recognized by the Supreme Court both in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut and in Massachusetts v. EPA. “I don’t think there’s much ambiguity there,” he said.
NRDC supports establishing a three-year baseline for power plant emissions, starting either in 2005 or 2008, and allow states and utilities to take credit for anything — new nuclear plants, energy efficiency, carbon capture and storage — that reduced carbon emissions.
Pruitt also attacked a plan drawn up for Kentucky that he said was based on “mass emissions.” He said it would act as a “cap and trade system — without the trading.”
In fact, the EPA’s proposal is likely to more closely resemble renewable portfolio standards already in effect in about 30 states and the District of Columbia. Those states would likely have an easier time meeting new guidelines for existing plants if the EPA opts for an “outside the fence” approach to power plants.
Utility executives say that the retirement of coal plants dating back to the Eisenhower era could also help meet targets if companies are allowed to average steps taken at one site with emissions at another.
Some companies who have invested heavily in nuclear power — such as Exelon, where nearly 91 percent of its fleet is nuclear — backs a strict carbon standard for existing plants. Joe Dominguez, Exelon’s senior vice president of governmental, regulatory affairs and public policy, said several of its 24 units may not be economically viable if the EPA’s proposal is not stringent.
“We think the reality is in the absence of carbon policy, it’s going to be difficult to keep the existing baseload of clean energy in service,” he said.
The wind industry is also lobbying for an “outside the fence” approach so that companies can add wind power as a strategy. “The EPA rule is going to be doable and affordable assuming wind and other renewables count,” said Tom Vinson of the American Wind Energy Association. Rob Gramlich, senior vice president for public policy at AWEA added: “if EPA rules only apply inside the fence, less stringent standards will be needed.”
Vinson said existing coal plants could achieve no more than 3 to 5 percent efficiency gains, far less than the carbon emission cuts the EPA is expected to demand.
While key aspects of the proposal are still under discussion, according to several individuals briefed on the matter, the measure will spur regional carbon trading regimes on the East and West coasts and is likely to spur a legal challenge from some utilities. As currently drafted, the rule would cut greenhouse gas emissions from the utility sector by 25 percent, individuals said, but the baseline for that reduction has not been finalized.
The EPA plan resembles proposals made by the Natural Resources Defense Council, which would allow states and companies to employ a variety of measures — including new renewable energy and energy efficiency projects “outside the fence,” or away from the power plant site itself — to meet their carbon reduction target. The exact level of reduction will vary by state, according to those familiar with the rule, and it will consist of a two-step process that will have smaller reductions at first and larger ones by 2030.
Coal-intensive utilities, coal mining companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, conservative think tanks and a dozen or so state attorneys general have lined up to challenge the basis for the EPA’s impending draft regulations for limiting carbon dioxide emissions at existing coal plants. They have taken aim both at the likelihood that the EPA will set emissions targets and at any approach that isn’t limited to a specific plant site.
“Any standard that is set predicated on reductions happening outside the fence line are illegal and would be overturned by the court,” said Joseph Stanko, who heads government relations at the law firm Hunton and Williams and represents several utility companies. “And I think they know that.”
The proposed rule, which will be announced June 2, represents the centerpiece ofPresident Obama’s climate action plan. Utilities account for roughly 40 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions, with much of it coming from the aging, coal-fired fleet.
“This is a magic moment for the President — a chance to write his name into the record books,” wrote Frank O’Donnell, who directs the advocacy group Clean Air Watch. “But history will ultimately judge this less by an excellent speech than by the final contents and outcome of this initiative.”
The EPA declined to comment on the draft rule. Both Bloomberg News and Reuters reported some of the proposals over the past few days.
Kelly Speakes-Backman, who is both commissioner of the Maryland Public Service Commission and chairs the board of directors of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a nine-state emissions trading compact, said in an interview last week that a “mass-based” system allows states and utilities to cut carbon in a more efficient and cost-effective way. Under this system, which is what the EPA is poised to adopt, states will have to meet an overall greenhouse gas limit rather than a specific rate per hour for each power plant.
“What are we ultimately trying to do? We’re trying to reduce carbon in the atmosphere,” she said, adding: “What RGGI has been doing sets almost a plug-and-play model for other states to adopt.”
Some, like Washington state, are eager to follow the example of the East Coast and California, both of whom have adopted emission-trading schemes. The RGGI program applies only to power plants while California’s system is much broader; the states participating in the RGGI system cut their emissions by more than 40 percent between 2005 and 2012.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is traveling this week to Utah, Washington and Oregon, where she will meet with each state’s governor and also hold public events. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) has pressed the EPA to adopt a strict carbon standard and is currently pushing for several policies so his state can meet its goal of reducing its overall emissions 20 percent by 2020.
Stu Clark, air program manager at the state’s Ecology Department, said the EPA has conducted “an unprecedented outreach” in crafting the rule. He added that depending on how stiff the requirements are, Washington may need to strike a regional compact with other states even though its utility sector is relatively clean.
“If it’s a really stringent standard, we will need to look at a broader suite of tools,” Clark said.
Other states are more resistant. Oklahoma Attorney General E. Scott Pruitt, for example, argued at the National Press Club Tuesday that the Clean Air Act gives states the power to determine what pollution standards should be and how to achieve them. Only later, he said, can the EPA reject a state’s plan and impose its own, so the EPA’s task now is to design a procedure and general emissions guidelines. He said it was reducing the states “from a substantive to an administrative role.”
“I find it offensive that the EPA feels regulators in states are not interested in air quality or pollution,” he said. And he said that the EPA has a “dictatorial attitude that as long as you agree with us, everything is kosher.”
Pruitt also said that EPA can only regulate single sites “unit by unit” rather than offer states and utilities the flexibility of meeting new guidelines through energy efficiency programs or renewable investments that might not be on the site of a regulated coal plant. Pruitt said that in such an approach “EPA is using its power to pick winners and losers.”
But David Doniger, policy director for NRDC’s climate and clean air program, said the EPA does have the authority to set an overall carbon limit. Since there was a limited amount of improvement to boost the efficiency of existing coal plants, he said, using the broader approach could help meet deeper reductions in carbon emissions at lower costs.
Doniger said that the EPA’s authority had been clearly recognized by the Supreme Court both in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut and in Massachusetts v. EPA. “I don’t think there’s much ambiguity there,” he said.
NRDC supports establishing a three-year baseline for power plant emissions, starting either in 2005 or 2008, and allow states and utilities to take credit for anything — new nuclear plants, energy efficiency, carbon capture and storage — that reduced carbon emissions.
Pruitt also attacked a plan drawn up for Kentucky that he said was based on “mass emissions.” He said it would act as a “cap and trade system — without the trading.”
In fact, the EPA’s proposal is likely to more closely resemble renewable portfolio standards already in effect in about 30 states and the District of Columbia. Those states would likely have an easier time meeting new guidelines for existing plants if the EPA opts for an “outside the fence” approach to power plants.
Utility executives say that the retirement of coal plants dating back to the Eisenhower era could also help meet targets if companies are allowed to average steps taken at one site with emissions at another.
Some companies who have invested heavily in nuclear power — such as Exelon, where nearly 91 percent of its fleet is nuclear — backs a strict carbon standard for existing plants. Joe Dominguez, Exelon’s senior vice president of governmental, regulatory affairs and public policy, said several of its 24 units may not be economically viable if the EPA’s proposal is not stringent.
“We think the reality is in the absence of carbon policy, it’s going to be difficult to keep the existing baseload of clean energy in service,” he said.
The wind industry is also lobbying for an “outside the fence” approach so that companies can add wind power as a strategy. “The EPA rule is going to be doable and affordable assuming wind and other renewables count,” said Tom Vinson of the American Wind Energy Association. Rob Gramlich, senior vice president for public policy at AWEA added: “if EPA rules only apply inside the fence, less stringent standards will be needed.”
Vinson said existing coal plants could achieve no more than 3 to 5 percent efficiency gains, far less than the carbon emission cuts the EPA is expected to demand.
Time for L.A. to embrace energy blessings of the sun: Opinion
Via Los Angeles Daily News Opinion
Allis Druffel and Lee Wallach. Posted 01/15/14, 2:32 PM PST
Los Angeles enjoys more than 300 days of sunshine a year, enough to power most of the city’s homes, businesses, schools, congregations, factories and warehouses with solar energy. But right now, L.A. is not taking advantage of this immense blessing: the city gets less than 2 percent of its power from the sun.
As people of faith, we believe that we have an obligation to generate power in a way that does not put our health and our environment at risk. Unfortunately, most of L.A.’s electricity currently comes from harmful fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming, thereby exacerbating extreme weather such as wildfires and droughts. Fossil fuel plants consume huge amounts of fresh water. They spew air pollution that can lead to serious health problems, including asthma, which affects more than one million people in Los Angeles County.
We represent Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim and Unitarian Universalist congregations that believe in solar power as a way to put religious values like environmental stewardship and social justice into action. Some of these congregations — including First Unitarian in Koreatown, St. Andrew’s Lutheran in Mar Vista and the Vedanta Society in Hollywood — have already installed solar rooftop panels on their own buildings. Solar energy allows communities of faith to reduce air pollution, protect people’s health, fight climate change and create local jobs.
Rooftop solar power also has direct economic benefits. Metropolitan Community Church in the Valley, for instance, used to pay $350 a month for electricity. After installing 90 solar panels on the church roof, the bills have dropped to $60 or $70. The church pays lease payments on the panels, but even so, the congregation is able to save money each month by using solar power.
Thousands of L.A. homeowners, small businesses, factories, schools, and apartment complexes are also reaping the environmental and economic benefits of choosing solar. But with only a tiny fraction of L.A.’s power coming from the sun, our city still has a long way to go. While campaigning last spring, Mayor Eric Garcetti called for the city of Los Angeles to get at least 20 percent of its power from local solar by 2020. According to research from Environment California Research & Policy Center, achieving 20 percent solar power by 2020 would reduce global warming pollution by over 1 million tons per year, cut smog-forming pollution by about 730,000 tons per year, and create an estimated 32,000 jobs.
Mayor Garcetti and the City Council can make this vision a reality by turning 20 percent solar by 2020 into an official city goal. They should also work with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to simplify permitting and billing procedures, expand incentive programs, and increase access to solar for nonprofit groups, multi-family housing units and low-income homeowners.
Los Angeles is at a pivotal juncture. The Department of Water and Power will need to replace more than 70 percent of its generating capacity over the next 15 years. DWP is making decisions right now that will affect our energy landscape for decades to come. The city faces a choice: new in-basin fossil fuel plants that will lock Angelenos into dirty power for decades, or an expanded commitment to renewable energy and rooftop solar power.
It’s time for our city to embrace the blessings of the sun.
Allis Druffel is with Southern California Interfaith Power and Light. Lee Wallach is with the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life of Southern California.
Rev. Rick Hoy of First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, Pastor Caleb Crainer of St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church and Rev. Dr. Robert Shore-Goss of Metropolitan Community Church in the Valley also contributed.
Organic mega flow battery promises breakthrough for renewable energy
Via Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
HARVARD TECHNOLOGY COULD ECONOMICALLY STORE ENERGY FOR USE WHEN THE WIND DOESN'T BLOW AND THE SUN DOESN'T SHINE
January 8, 2014
Michael J. Aziz (pictured) and others at Harvard University have developed a metal-free flow battery that relies on the electrochemistry of naturally abundant, small organic molecules to store electricity generated from renewable, intermittent energy sources. (Photo by Eliza Grinnell, SEAS Communications.)
Cambridge, Mass. – January 8, 2014 – A team of Harvard scientists and engineers has demonstrated a new type of battery that could fundamentally transform the way electricity is stored on the grid, making power from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar far more economical and reliable.
The novel battery technology is reported in a paper published in Natureon January 9. Under the OPEN 2012 program, the Harvard team received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) to develop the innovative grid-scale battery and plans to work with ARPA-E to catalyze further technological and market breakthroughs over the next several years.
The paper reports a metal-free flow battery that relies on the electrochemistry of naturally abundant, inexpensive, small organic (carbon-based) molecules called quinones, which are similar to molecules that store energy in plants and animals.
The mismatch between the availability of intermittent wind or sunshine and the variability of demand is the biggest obstacle to getting a large fraction of our electricity from renewable sources. A cost-effective means of storing large amounts of electrical energy could solve this problem.
The battery was designed, built, and tested in the laboratory of Michael J. Aziz, Gene and Tracy Sykes Professor of Materials and Energy Technologies at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Roy G. Gordon, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science, led the work on the synthesis and chemical screening of molecules. Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, used his pioneering high-throughput molecular screening methods to calculate the properties of more than 10,000 quinone molecules in search of the best candidates for the battery.
A prototype flow battery in Aziz's lab at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. (Photo by Eliza Grinnell. SEAS Communications.)
Flow batteries store energy in chemical fluids contained in external tanks—as with fuel cells—instead of within the battery container itself. The two main components—the electrochemical conversion hardware through which the fluids are flowed (which sets the peak power capacity), and the chemical storage tanks (which set the energy capacity)—may be independently sized. Thus the amount of energy that can be stored is limited only by the size of the tanks. The design permits larger amounts of energy to be stored at lower cost than with traditional batteries.
By contrast, in solid-electrode batteries, such as those commonly found in cars and mobile devices, the power conversion hardware and energy capacity are packaged together in one unit and cannot be decoupled. Consequently they can maintain peak discharge power for less than an hour before being drained, and are therefore ill suited to store intermittent renewables.
“Our studies indicate that one to two days' worth of storage is required for making solar and wind dispatchable through the electrical grid,” said Aziz.
To store 50 hours of energy from a 1-megawatt power capacity wind turbine (50 megawatt-hours), for example, a possible solution would be to buy traditional batteries with 50 megawatt-hours of energy storage, but they'd come with 50 megawatts of power capacity. Paying for 50 megawatts of power capacity when only 1 megawatt is necessary makes little economic sense.
For this reason, a growing number of engineers have focused their attention on flow battery technology. But until now, flow batteries have relied on chemicals that are expensive or difficult to maintain, driving up the energy storage costs.
The active components of electrolytes in most flow batteries have been metals. Vanadium is used in the most commercially advanced flow battery technology now in development, but its cost sets a rather high floor on the cost per kilowatt-hour at any scale. Other flow batteries contain precious metal electrocatalysts such as the platinum used in fuel cells.
The new flow battery developed by the Harvard team already performs as well as vanadium flow batteries, with chemicals that are significantly less expensive, and with no precious metal electrocatalyst.
“The whole world of electricity storage has been using metal ions in various charge states but there is a limited number that you can put into solution and use to store energy, and none of them can economically store massive amounts of renewable energy,” Gordon said. “With organic molecules, we introduce a vast new set of possibilities. Some of them will be terrible and some will be really good. With these quinones we have the first ones that look really good.”
Aspuru-Guzik noted that the project is very well aligned with the White House Materials Genome Initiative. “This project illustrates what the synergy of high-throughput quantum chemistry and experimental insight can do,” he said. “In a very quick time period, our team honed in to the right molecule. Computational screening, together with experimentation, can lead to discovery of new materials in many application domains.”
Quinones are abundant in crude oil as well as in green plants. The molecule that the Harvard team used in its first quinone-based flow battery is almost identical to one found in rhubarb. The quinones are dissolved in water, which prevents them from catching fire.
To back up a commercial wind turbine, a large storage tank would be needed, possibly located in a below-grade basement, said co-lead author Michael Marshak, a postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Or if you had a whole field of turbines or large solar farm, you could imagine a few very large storage tanks.
The same technology could also have applications at the consumer level, Marshak said. “Imagine a device the size of a home heating oil tank sitting in your basement. It would store a day’s worth of sunshine from the solar panels on the roof of your house, potentially providing enough to power your household from late afternoon, through the night, into the next morning, without burning any fossil fuels.”
By contrast, in solid-electrode batteries, such as those commonly found in cars and mobile devices, the power conversion hardware and energy capacity are packaged together in one unit and cannot be decoupled. Consequently they can maintain peak discharge power for less than an hour before being drained, and are therefore ill suited to store intermittent renewables.
“Our studies indicate that one to two days' worth of storage is required for making solar and wind dispatchable through the electrical grid,” said Aziz.
To store 50 hours of energy from a 1-megawatt power capacity wind turbine (50 megawatt-hours), for example, a possible solution would be to buy traditional batteries with 50 megawatt-hours of energy storage, but they'd come with 50 megawatts of power capacity. Paying for 50 megawatts of power capacity when only 1 megawatt is necessary makes little economic sense.
For this reason, a growing number of engineers have focused their attention on flow battery technology. But until now, flow batteries have relied on chemicals that are expensive or difficult to maintain, driving up the energy storage costs.
The active components of electrolytes in most flow batteries have been metals. Vanadium is used in the most commercially advanced flow battery technology now in development, but its cost sets a rather high floor on the cost per kilowatt-hour at any scale. Other flow batteries contain precious metal electrocatalysts such as the platinum used in fuel cells.
The new flow battery developed by the Harvard team already performs as well as vanadium flow batteries, with chemicals that are significantly less expensive, and with no precious metal electrocatalyst.
“The whole world of electricity storage has been using metal ions in various charge states but there is a limited number that you can put into solution and use to store energy, and none of them can economically store massive amounts of renewable energy,” Gordon said. “With organic molecules, we introduce a vast new set of possibilities. Some of them will be terrible and some will be really good. With these quinones we have the first ones that look really good.”
Aspuru-Guzik noted that the project is very well aligned with the White House Materials Genome Initiative. “This project illustrates what the synergy of high-throughput quantum chemistry and experimental insight can do,” he said. “In a very quick time period, our team honed in to the right molecule. Computational screening, together with experimentation, can lead to discovery of new materials in many application domains.”
Quinones are abundant in crude oil as well as in green plants. The molecule that the Harvard team used in its first quinone-based flow battery is almost identical to one found in rhubarb. The quinones are dissolved in water, which prevents them from catching fire.
To back up a commercial wind turbine, a large storage tank would be needed, possibly located in a below-grade basement, said co-lead author Michael Marshak, a postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Or if you had a whole field of turbines or large solar farm, you could imagine a few very large storage tanks.
The same technology could also have applications at the consumer level, Marshak said. “Imagine a device the size of a home heating oil tank sitting in your basement. It would store a day’s worth of sunshine from the solar panels on the roof of your house, potentially providing enough to power your household from late afternoon, through the night, into the next morning, without burning any fossil fuels.”
Clockwise, from left: Dr. Changwon Suh, Prof. Roy G. Gordon, Dr. Brian Huskinson, Dr. Suleyman Er, Dr. Michael Marshak, Prof. Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Prof. Michael J. Aziz, Michael Gerhardt, and Lauren Hartle. (Photo by Eliza Grinnell, SEAS Communications.)
“The Harvard team’s results published in Nature demonstrate an early, yet important technical achievement that could be critical in furthering the development of grid-scale batteries,” said ARPA-E Program Director John Lemmon. “The project team’s result is an excellent example of how a small amount of catalytic funding from ARPA-E can help build the foundation to hopefully turn scientific discoveries into low-cost, early-stage energy technologies.”
Team leader Aziz said the next steps in the project will be to further test and optimize the system that has been demonstrated on the bench top and bring it toward a commercial scale. “So far, we've seen no sign of degradation after more than 100 cycles, but commercial applications require thousands of cycles,” he said. He also expects to achieve significant improvements in the underlying chemistry of the battery system. “I think the chemistry we have right now might be the best that’s out there for stationary storage and quite possibly cheap enough to make it in the marketplace,” he said. “But we have ideas that could lead to huge improvements.”
By the end of the three-year development period, Connecticut-basedSustainable Innovations, LLC, a collaborator on the project, expects to deploy demonstration versions of the organic flow battery contained in a unit the size of a horse trailer. The portable, scaled-up storage system could be hooked up to solar panels on the roof of a commercial building, and electricity from the solar panels could either directly supply the needs of the building or go into storage and come out of storage when there’s a need. Sustainable Innovations anticipates playing a key role in the product’s commercialization by leveraging its ultra-low cost electrochemical cell design and system architecture already under development for energy storage applications.
“You could theoretically put this on any node on the grid,” Aziz said. “If the market price fluctuates enough, you could put a storage device there and buy electricity to store it when the price is low and then sell it back when the price is high. In addition, you might be able to avoid the permitting and gas supply problems of having to build a gas-fired power plant just to meet the occasional needs of a growing peak demand.”
This technology could also provide very useful backup for off-grid rooftop solar panels—an important advantage considering some 20 percent of the world’s population does not have access to a power distribution network.
William Hogan, Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and one of the world’s foremost experts on electricity markets, is helping the team explore the economic drivers for the technology.
Trent M. Molter, President and CEO of Sustainable Innovations, LLC, provides expertise on implementing the Harvard team’s technology into commercial electrochemical systems.
“The intermittent renewables storage problem is the biggest barrier to getting most of our power from the sun and the wind,” Aziz said. “A safe and economical flow battery could play a huge role in our transition off fossil fuels to renewable electricity. I'm excited that we have a good shot at it.”
In addition to Aziz, Marshak, Aspuru-Guzik, and Gordon, the co-lead author of the Nature paper was Brian Huskinson, a graduate student with Aziz; coauthors included research associate Changwon Suh and postdoctoral researcher Süleyman Er in Aspuru-Guzik’s group; Michael Gerhardt, a graduate student with Aziz; Cooper Galvin, a Pomona College undergraduate; and Xudong Chen, a postdoctoral fellow in Gordon’s group.
This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (OCI-1053575), an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and the Fellowships for Young Energy Scientists program of the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter, which is part of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
Team leader Aziz said the next steps in the project will be to further test and optimize the system that has been demonstrated on the bench top and bring it toward a commercial scale. “So far, we've seen no sign of degradation after more than 100 cycles, but commercial applications require thousands of cycles,” he said. He also expects to achieve significant improvements in the underlying chemistry of the battery system. “I think the chemistry we have right now might be the best that’s out there for stationary storage and quite possibly cheap enough to make it in the marketplace,” he said. “But we have ideas that could lead to huge improvements.”
By the end of the three-year development period, Connecticut-basedSustainable Innovations, LLC, a collaborator on the project, expects to deploy demonstration versions of the organic flow battery contained in a unit the size of a horse trailer. The portable, scaled-up storage system could be hooked up to solar panels on the roof of a commercial building, and electricity from the solar panels could either directly supply the needs of the building or go into storage and come out of storage when there’s a need. Sustainable Innovations anticipates playing a key role in the product’s commercialization by leveraging its ultra-low cost electrochemical cell design and system architecture already under development for energy storage applications.
“You could theoretically put this on any node on the grid,” Aziz said. “If the market price fluctuates enough, you could put a storage device there and buy electricity to store it when the price is low and then sell it back when the price is high. In addition, you might be able to avoid the permitting and gas supply problems of having to build a gas-fired power plant just to meet the occasional needs of a growing peak demand.”
This technology could also provide very useful backup for off-grid rooftop solar panels—an important advantage considering some 20 percent of the world’s population does not have access to a power distribution network.
William Hogan, Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and one of the world’s foremost experts on electricity markets, is helping the team explore the economic drivers for the technology.
Trent M. Molter, President and CEO of Sustainable Innovations, LLC, provides expertise on implementing the Harvard team’s technology into commercial electrochemical systems.
“The intermittent renewables storage problem is the biggest barrier to getting most of our power from the sun and the wind,” Aziz said. “A safe and economical flow battery could play a huge role in our transition off fossil fuels to renewable electricity. I'm excited that we have a good shot at it.”
In addition to Aziz, Marshak, Aspuru-Guzik, and Gordon, the co-lead author of the Nature paper was Brian Huskinson, a graduate student with Aziz; coauthors included research associate Changwon Suh and postdoctoral researcher Süleyman Er in Aspuru-Guzik’s group; Michael Gerhardt, a graduate student with Aziz; Cooper Galvin, a Pomona College undergraduate; and Xudong Chen, a postdoctoral fellow in Gordon’s group.
This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (OCI-1053575), an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and the Fellowships for Young Energy Scientists program of the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter, which is part of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
Power struggle: Green energy versus a grid that's not ready
Minders of a fragile national power grid say the rush to renewable energy might actually make it harder to keep the lights on.
Via LA Times
Evan Halper. December 2, 2013 | 7:57 p.m.
A scientist studies a wind turbine simulation at the Energy Systems Integration Facility in Golden, Colo.
(Dennis Schroeder / National Renewable / December 3, 2013)
(Dennis Schroeder / National Renewable / December 3, 2013)
WASHINGTON — In a sprawling complex of laboratories and futuristic gadgets in Golden, Colo., a supercomputer named Peregrine does a quadrillion calculations per second to help scientists figure out how to keep the lights on.
Peregrine was turned on this year by the U.S. Energy Department. It has the world's largest "petascale" computing capability. It is the size of a Mack truck.
Its job is to figure out how to cope with a risk from something the public generally thinks of as benign — renewable energy.
Energy officials worry a lot these days about the stability of the massive patchwork of wires, substations and algorithms that keeps electricity flowing. They rattle off several scenarios that could lead to a collapse of the power grid — a well-executed cyberattack, a freak storm, sabotage.
But as states, led by California, race to bring more wind, solar and geothermal power online, those and other forms of alternative energy have become a new source of anxiety. The problem is that renewable energy adds unprecedented levels of stress to a grid designed for the previous century.
Green energy is the least predictable kind. Nobody can say for certain when the wind will blow or the sun will shine. A field of solar panels might be cranking out huge amounts of energy one minute and a tiny amount the next if a thick cloud arrives. In many cases, renewable resources exist where transmission lines don't.
"The grid was not built for renewables," said Trieu Mai, senior analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
The frailty imperils lofty goals for greenhouse gas reductions. Concerned state and federal officials are spending billions of dollars in ratepayer and taxpayer money in an effort to hasten the technological breakthroughs needed for the grid to keep up with the demands of clean energy.
Making a green energy future work will be "one of the greatest technological challenges industrialized societies have undertaken," a group of scholars at Caltech said in a recent report. The report notes that by 2030, about $1 trillion is expected to be spent nationwide in bringing the grid up to date.
The role of the grid is to keep the supply of power steady and predictable. Engineers carefully calibrate how much juice to feed into the system as everything from porch lights to factory machines are switched on and off. The balancing requires painstaking precision. A momentary overload can crash the system.
California has taken some of the earliest steps to address the problems. The California Public Utilities Commission last month ordered large power companies to invest heavily in efforts to develop storage technologies that could bottle up wind and solar power, allowing the energy to be distributed more evenly over time.
Whether those technologies will ever be economically viable on a large scale is hotly debated. The commission mandate nonetheless requires companies to produce enough storage by 2024 to power about 1 million homes.
"Energy storage has the potential to be a game changer for our electric grid," Commissioner Mark Ferron said.
Some utility officials warn, however, that the only guarantee is that ratepayers will be spending a lot. The commission's goals, while laudable, "could cost up to $3 billion with uncertain net benefits for customers," Southern California Edison declared in a filing.
But regulators are desperate to move past the status quo. Already, power grid operators in some states have had to dump energy produced by wind turbines on blustery days because regional power systems had no room for it. Officials at the California Independent System Operator, which manages the grid in California, say renewable energy producers are making the juggling act increasingly complex.
"We are getting to the point where we will have to pay people not to produce power," said Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster, a system operator board member.
A bigger fear is that the grid is becoming more vulnerable to collapse, leaving the public exposed to the kind of blackouts that hit San Diego, parts of Arizona and a chunk of Baja California on a blistering hot September day in 2011.
Rush-hour traffic jammed as streetlights went dark. Flights were grounded. Pumping stations came to a halt, causing sewage to flow onto beaches. People were trapped in office elevators and on rides at Sea World.
An employee's misstep at a substation near Yuma, Ariz., caused that blackout, but energy experts see it as a harbinger of the sorts of problems that could become frequent if the nation fails to refashion its outmoded power grid.
Foster has been working with other regulators and power company executives to redesign the system. The work involves ideas for mapping and building vast networks of electrical lines, industrial-scale solar- and wind-power plants and backup natural gas plants that can keep the lights on when shifts in weather cause renewable sources to falter. That's the tangible stuff they can easily explain.
But the grid is also built on an antiquated tangle of market rules, operational formulas and business models. It makes for a formidable riddle.
Planners are struggling to plot where and when to deploy solar panels, wind turbines and hydrogen fuel cells without knowing whether regulators will approve the transmission lines to support them.
"One of the biggest challenges is you can't create a market for these resources without solving the demands of moving electricity from one physical place to another," said Neil Fromer, executive director of Caltech's Resnick Sustainability Institute. "But you can't solve that problem until you understand what the market structure looks like."
Back in Colorado, Peregrine is furiously working to map out grid scenarios involving wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy. Sharing space with Peregrine at the Energy Systems Integration Facility is a "visualization room" with a 16-foot screen that creates 3-D images of how different wind patterns interact with turbines, or how molecules interact inside a solar cell.
Federal regulators see an expanded role for themselves as the best hope for powering the nation with as much as 80% renewable energy within the next 35 or so years. Maintaining stability will hinge increasingly on interstate cooperation, they say.
But state regulators are reluctant to cede authority. That's particularly true in California, where bitterness over the energy crisis of more than a decade ago remains intense and makes officials reluctant to cede an inch of jurisdiction to Washington.
Regardless of who wins that power struggle, some of those involved in the day-to-day business of keeping the lights on in California say the limitations of the grid will undermine efforts by activists to move more quickly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
At the Independent Energy Producers Assn. in Sacramento, which represents owners of renewable and gas power plants, Executive Director Jan Smutny-Jones says proposals by academics and others to move California to as much as 80% renewable energy within the next two decades are bumping up against the challenges of avoiding another San Diego-type blackout.
"Some day that may be the way the world is going to work," he said. "But in the next five or six years, it is not."
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Tesla's Huge Battery Deal Suggests Sales Could Quintuple Within 4 Years
Via Forbes
TECH | 10/30/2013 @ 5:24AM
Tesla stores could be awfully busy in the years to come if the companies bet right on batteries.
Tesla Motors and battery supplier Panasonic went back to the drawing board. Two years ago, the two firms made a deal under which Panasonic would supply Tesla with enough batteries to build 80,000 cars over 4 years. With Tesla on track to deliver more than 21,000 vehicles this year alone and having already set a goal ofdoubling production by the end of next year, a new supply agreement with Panasonic was needed. Today, the two companies announced that Panasonic will supply nearly 2 billion battery cells to Tesla over the coming 4 years, for both the Model S sedan and the forthcoming Model X, sport utility vehicle. With the largest Tesla pack using around 7000 cells, the quantity involved is enough for close to 300,000 vehicles. Given that sales will grow over time, it seems likely Tesla is preparing to reach 100,000+ vehicles sold in the final year of the agreement — five times the 2013 total.
It is certainly the case a supply deal represents no kind of certainty demand for that many vehicles will result, but even entering into the arrangement shows Tesla is confident popularity of the company’s vehicles will remain strong. The company just started selling in Europe this summer where the car quickly became a hit in Norway and CEO Elon Musk was recently in Germany making his case for the Model S there. Asia is next up for Tesla, where one Chinese buyer was so eager to be the first to own a Tesla, he paid $410,500 for the privilege.
What’s remarkable about the Panasonic-Tesla agreement is that the entire lithium-ion cylindrical battery industry (the type Tesla uses) was consuming 660 million cells a year and this agreement represents 500 million annually for Tesla alone. The cells are used mostly in laptop computers and rechargeable flashlights as well as Tesla’s cars. (Other electric vehicles use much larger cells). What isn’t clear at this point is whether the new agreement is for a unique-to-Tesla cell. I spoke with the company when it showed off its battery-swapping technology in June and execs discussed the possibility of a slightly larger cell that would allow for a simplified battery pack design. But as two recent Tesla vehicle fires have shown, the company also has taken great pains to limit the risk of the batteries exploding and the high cell count combined with a substance called “intumescent goo” helps insure this.
In addition, the cells Tesla currently use are a standard model called an 18650. If the company has committed to a unique design from Panasonic, it would presumably be at least a couple of years before it went into use to allow Tesla time for other manufacturers to ramp up production of the design. Even with the new supply agreement, the forthcoming $35,000 sedan some are referring to as the Model E will require perhaps another billion cells annually on its own. The agreement announced today makes no mention of that vehicle.
Finally, while it is worth mentioning the 100,000 figure is an extrapolation, the 18650 cells grow in capacity over time. Tesla might use some of that capacity to offer greater range to buyers but the improved battery performance also means that fewer cells could be needed as the agreement runs its course. In other words, these 2 billion cells might represent even more cars than the above-mentioned estimates. If demand for Model S and X proves less robust than Tesla hopes, it is certainly possible some of this battery production could be shifted to the Model E, but Tesla seems to be preparing for a bigger share of the luxury vehicle market than it could have imagined even 2 years ago.
Air Pollution in China Shuts Down City of 11 Million
Via LegalPlanet
The airpocalypse is back. What should Chinese leaders do about it?
Alex Wang - October 22, 2013
On Sunday, the start of the heating season in northern China brought the “airpocalypse” back with a vengeance (although some might say it never left). Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province and home to 11 million people, registered fine particulate (PM2.5) pollution levels beyond 500 on the Chinese Air Quality Index, which is considered hazardous to human health. Measurements in some parts of the city reached 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter. As a result, authorities forced primary and middle school closures and the shutdown of the airport and local highways.
By contrast, Los Angeles, where I am now based and which typically has some of the worst air quality in the US, had US EPA AQI levels for PM2.5 between 48 and 108.
(STR/AFP/Getty Images)
China’s severe air pollution problems and the high cost to human health, economic productivity, and quality of life are by now well known. The question is whether Chinese leaders are prepared to do what it takes to solve the problem, and, if their stated resolve is genuine, will they have the ability to implement?
As I have talked about previously, there have been some positive signs in 2013. Regulators have engaged in an impressive flurry of policy-making on air pollution, including an extensive “Atmospheric Pollution Prevention Action Plan,” a timetable for developing new fuel quality standards, and emergency measures to protect citizens and reduce pollution on the worst air quality days. Leaders have pledged billions of US dollar equivalent in air pollution investments (see here). And authorities have announced an intention to link bureaucratic promotions to performance against air quality goals, perhaps one of the clearest signals that the leadership is taking air quality problems more seriously (I recently published an article describing how this system works).
But Chinese citizens are not interested in mere expressions of resolve. The key will be in the implementation, and skeptics know that China’s problems in this regard are legion.
In recent years, scholars have talked about China’s “authoritarian resilience,” or the ability of the leadership to learn and adjust to rapidly changing problems. Pro-China commentators like Eric Li have argued that China’s current governance system is well suited to the challenges China is facing. The proof, they say, is in China’s return to wealth and power under Communist Party rule.
China’s extreme air pollution problems, however, are a daily reminder to Chinese citizens (and the world) of a critical failure in governance. The leaders of the country therefore have the chance to prove themselves, and demonstrate that their approach to rule really can serve the people.
(This blog was cross-posted to the Asia Society’s Chinafile.com site. See here for the entire “conversation” with Isabel Hilton and others).
As I have talked about previously, there have been some positive signs in 2013. Regulators have engaged in an impressive flurry of policy-making on air pollution, including an extensive “Atmospheric Pollution Prevention Action Plan,” a timetable for developing new fuel quality standards, and emergency measures to protect citizens and reduce pollution on the worst air quality days. Leaders have pledged billions of US dollar equivalent in air pollution investments (see here). And authorities have announced an intention to link bureaucratic promotions to performance against air quality goals, perhaps one of the clearest signals that the leadership is taking air quality problems more seriously (I recently published an article describing how this system works).
But Chinese citizens are not interested in mere expressions of resolve. The key will be in the implementation, and skeptics know that China’s problems in this regard are legion.
In recent years, scholars have talked about China’s “authoritarian resilience,” or the ability of the leadership to learn and adjust to rapidly changing problems. Pro-China commentators like Eric Li have argued that China’s current governance system is well suited to the challenges China is facing. The proof, they say, is in China’s return to wealth and power under Communist Party rule.
China’s extreme air pollution problems, however, are a daily reminder to Chinese citizens (and the world) of a critical failure in governance. The leaders of the country therefore have the chance to prove themselves, and demonstrate that their approach to rule really can serve the people.
(This blog was cross-posted to the Asia Society’s Chinafile.com site. See here for the entire “conversation” with Isabel Hilton and others).
Battery-Stored Solar Power Sparks Backlash From Utilities
Via BloombergBy Ehren Goossens & Mark Chediak - Oct 8, 2013
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The dispute threatens the state’s $2 billion rooftop solar industry and indicates the depth of utilities’ concerns about consumers producing their own power. People with rooftop panels are already buying less electricity, and adding batteries takes them closer to the day they won’t need to buy from the local grid at all. Photographer: Sam Hodgson/Bloomberg
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California’s three biggest utilities are sparring with their own customers about systems that store energy from the sun, opening another front in the battle that’s redefining the mission of electricity generators. Edison International (EIX), PG&E Corp. and Sempra Energy (SRE) said they’re putting up hurdles to some battery backups wired to solar panels because they can’t be certain the power flowing back to the grid from the units is actually clean energy. The dispute threatens the state’s $2 billion rooftop solar industry and indicates the depth of utilities’ concerns about consumers producing their own power. People with rooftop panels are already buying less electricity, and adding batteries takes them closer to the day they won’t need to buy from the local grid at all, said Ben Peters, a government affairs analyst at Mainstream Energy Corp., which installs solar systems. “The utilities clearly see rooftop solar as the next threat,” Peters said from his office in Sunnyvale, California. “They’re trying to limit the growth.” California is the largest of the 43 states encouraging renewables by requiring utilities to buy electricity from consumer solar installations, typically at the same price that customers pay for power from the grid. The policy, known asnet metering, offers a way for households to reduce their bills. It underpinned a 78 percent surge in the state’s residential installations in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Battery Costs Solar systems with batteries attached have gained a foothold in the market as costs fall, allowing customers more flexibility for using their own power at night or when local supplies fail. The systems average about $12,000 to $16,000, adding about 25 percent to the cost of rooftop power plants, according to Outback Power Inc., an Arlington, Washington-based provider of battery-backed solar systems. Matthew Sperling, a Santa Barbara, California, resident, installed eight panels and eight batteries at his home in April. “We wanted to have an alternative in case of a blackout to keep the refrigerator running,” he said in an interview. Southern California Edison rejected his application to link the system to the grid even though city inspectors said “it was one of the nicest they’d ever seen,” he said. “We’ve installed a $30,000 system and we can’t use it,” Sperling said. Utilities say the storage systems open the possibility of fraud. The issue is whether all the electricity being sold through the net metering program is generated only by renewable sources, as required. Consumers in theory can fill the batteries with power from the grid and then send it back designated as renewable energy. With the solar-battery systems, there’s no way to determine the source of the energy. Solar suppliers say that’s not happening. Storage Rules Power-market regulations and the industry’s ability to monitor flows from solar systems haven’t kept pace with the technology, said Gary Stern, director of regulatory policy at Southern California Edison, a unit of Edison International. “Our rules are not really caught up to effectively include issues with energy storage,” Stern said in a phone interview from Rosemead, California. The company doesn’t want to “discourage solar” and is working with regulators to come up with “reasonable policies” for battery-storage systems, said Vanessa McGrady, a Southern California Edison spokeswoman. State regulators are aware of the problem and are working on guidance to offer both solar installers and utilities, according to Terrie Prosper, a spokeswoman for the California Public Utilities Commission in San Francisco. ‘Some Complaints’ There have been some complaints from developers in Southern California Edison’s territory that Edison has inconsistently applied the benefits of net energy metering to energy-storage projects,” Prosper said in an e-mail. The commission is working with all three utilities “to provide formal direction on these issues in the coming months.” The utilities said they would approve systems that have panels and batteries if they had two meters to verify that only solar energy is sold to the grid. Such a configuration would boost installation costs by at least $1,300, according to Neal Reardon, the state utility regulator’s interim supervisor of customer generation. The dispute is expanding as California promotes wider use of batteries. Regulators in June proposed that the top three utilities procure 1.3 gigawatts of storage capacity by 2020. The state has set a goal of obtaining 33 percent of its power from renewables by 2020, the nation’s strongest requirement. With more electricity coming from intermittent sources such as wind and sunlight, storage systems will be an important tool to manage the grid. Falling Prices Demand for the systems may grow as prices decline. Battery costs are forecast to fall 57 percent to $807 a kilowatt-hour in 2020 from $1,893 for a kilowatt-hour of storage capacity now, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The global market for solar systems combined withenergy storage will rise to $2.8 billion in 2018 from less than $200 million this year, according to Boston-based Lux Research Inc. About 391 megawatts of solar panels were fitted at customer sites across the state last year, according the California Solar Initiative. The price to install residential projects has declined 15 percent to $3.71 a watt in the second quarter from $4.35 a year earlier according to the Washington-based trade group SEIA. Battery systems are the latest innovation that’s unraveling the traditional monopoly utilities have enjoyed in supplying consumers with electricity. Two decades ago, federal regulators opened the system to independent power producers, eating away at the utility’s control of generation. The battery systems will put more customers out of reach. Rejected Applications “What we are seeing now as a fairly rare event may be more common by the end of the decade,” said Southern California Edison’s Stern. Mainstream began hearing in May that Southern California Edison was rejecting some of its clients from the net metering program. As many as 60 projects with panels and batteries have been turned down by California utilities, the company estimated. PG&E Corp. (PCG), the owner of California’s biggest utility, has also rejected standard net metering applications from customers with both panels and batteries, and referred them to another program that requires an interconnection fee. “The key is that the full retail net energy metering credits and subsidies are only available to renewable facilities,” Lynsey Paulo, a PG&E spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. San Diego Gas & Electric, a unit of Sempra Energy, said it hasn’t received any such applications, and it would deny them if it did. Sempra slipped less than 0.1 percent to $85.43 at the close in New York. PG&E climbed 1.5 percent and Edison gained 1.1 percent. ‘State of Flux’ “Technically, a customer who now has a combined system that includes both rooftop solar panels and battery storage, the battery storage may not qualify for net energy metering under current rules,” said Stephanie Donovan, a spokeswoman for San Diego Gas & Electric. “The rules are in a state of flux.” Mainstream’s Peters said Southern California Edison is now rejecting systems that are identical to ones it had approved in the past. The developer had been installing two to three solar-storage projects a week in Southern California at the start of this year. That’s dropped to zero in recent weeks, and some orders have been canceled. “Net metering is the lifeblood of solar in America,” Peters said. “That’s why this seemingly inconsequential issue is getting so much attention.” Solar panel owners aren’t trying to “game the system,” said Adam Browning, executive director of the San Francisco-based lobbying group Vote Solar Initiative. “The next step is that people with solar and batteries will find a way to make it work without utilities.” To contact the reporters on this story: Ehren Goossens in New York at[email protected]; Mark Chediak in San Francisco at [email protected] To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at [email protected] Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Danny Kennedy, co-founder of Sungevity Inc., talks about the growth outlook for the solar-power industry. Kennedy speaks with Tom Keene, Sara Eisen and Scarlet Fu on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance." (Source: Bloomberg)
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Clean Energy Jobs Quarterly Report Q2 2013:
Announcements from the second quarter of 2013
ISO Chair Bob Foster on California’s Energy Future without San Onofre
Via The Planning Report
July 3, 2013
Southern California Edison recently decided to shut down the San Onofre nuclear power plant after trouble with faulty generators. This month, TPR consulted Long Beach Mayor, ISO Chair, and former SCE president Bob Foster on the impact the closure will have on energy supply in the Southland, and how the state plans to counter the impending power loss. Foster also talks demand response, California’s energy future (he thinks: renewables), and the revolutionary role storage technology will play in fostering a green energy grid. While San Onofre presents a challenge, Foster notes California’s energy agencies are more capable than ever of meeting such challenges together.
Via The Planning Report
July 3, 2013
Southern California Edison recently decided to shut down the San Onofre nuclear power plant after trouble with faulty generators. This month, TPR consulted Long Beach Mayor, ISO Chair, and former SCE president Bob Foster on the impact the closure will have on energy supply in the Southland, and how the state plans to counter the impending power loss. Foster also talks demand response, California’s energy future (he thinks: renewables), and the revolutionary role storage technology will play in fostering a green energy grid. While San Onofre presents a challenge, Foster notes California’s energy agencies are more capable than ever of meeting such challenges together.
Bob Foster, Mayor of Long Beach
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"We need new kinds of facilities, new gas facilities, to meet [demand]. And they’re being built. And ultimately, as I said, if we get storage that can solve a lot of those issues." -Mayor Bob Foster |
As the Mayor of Long Beach, Chair of California’s ISO, and the former president of Southern California Edison, few in California have more expertise than you to speak to the significance of SCE’s decision to permanently close San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. What impact will decommissioning have on the state and region’s energy supply, and what provisions have been made by SCE and the State to meet demand heretofore reliant on nuclear power from San Onofre?
As far as the company, Edison, goes, they’ve made that decision based on economics. I’m not close enough to tell you whether it’s right or wrong. Obviously they felt that the long-term potential of that facility was in doubt, and it’s better to cut losses early. It’s been almost 30 years in operation, and there’s an issue with steam generators, which I’m sure will be the subject of litigation for some time. Whatever the company’s calculus is, they’ve already made it.
For the state and for the region, decommissioning does pose some issues short term and long term. Short term, we’ve been anticipating this at the ISO because it’s been doubtful that unit 3 and maybe unit 2 could restart, so for 2013 and 2014 we’ve reconfigured an existing 220 kV line called Barre-Ellis, going from two circuits to four. That gives us greater flexibility.
North of the facility, Huntington Beach units 3 and 4 were converted. Those are two old power plants that were retired. We’ve converted those to what are called synchronous condensers. Those will be able to provide voltage support. Just like water in a hose needs pressure to move, transmission lines needs voltage energy to move electricity. The problem with losing San Onofre is not just capacity—the system needs to be able to maintain its voltage levels to be able to function properly. Those synchronous condensers are like electric motors; they will provide that voltage support.
We’ve done a lot of capacitor bank upgrades at Santiago, Viejo, and Johanna substations—those have all been installed and have been in service since May.
There are new resources coming online. At El Segundo, the plant was repowered to 564 MW. That should be fully available at the end of this month. Sentinel is fully available with 800 MW, and a new plant in Walnut Creek at 500 MW is now fully on line and operating.
In addition, we’re going to do a number of Flex Alerts. Those are fully funded by the investor-owned utilities and authorized by the California Public Utilities Commission. And we’re going to utilize, to the extent that we possibly can, demand response, which involves having people cut back on their use in return for getting paid or receiving credit on their bill. Demand response and energy efficiency are part of the state’s mandated loading order as well. If we have to use it, we’ll turn to it. Obviously we’re going to try to make sure all the power plant facilities are well maintained and available for service. So that’s the short run.
In the long run, you have an issue—all the coastal plants, that’s about 7400 MW facilities from Ormond Beach all the way down to Encina, are all scheduled to go from the present system of once-through cooling with ocean water to a different system, probably cooling towers. Now how many of them get repowered, I don’t know. But that 7400 MW, and we’re going to need to either delay the once-through cooling, or repower these facilities.Advertisement
Now with San Onfore retiring the amount of ocean water used in once-through cooling drops substantially. Maybe there’s a reason for a delay—I’m not saying we are going to ask for a delay, but that’s one of the possibilities. All of the agencies involved—the Public Utilities Commission, the California Energy Commission, the ISO, the Air Board, the Water Board, and the Governor’s Office—are, over the next 90 days, going to crack a long term plan for dealing with the San Onofre retirement.
Now that could be a lot of things. It will probably include some upgrades and new transmission; it could well include some additional plants or some distributed generation at the substation level; new renewables where it could come online and work properly—all of those will be considered, as well as demand-response, which I personally think has great potential, particularly if we can get a market where people who can aggregate efficiency in demand response can get paid for it.
But I can’t tell you anything about how that’s going to work right now because it’s all going to be put into a long term plan, which will be presented to the various agencies. I’m fairly confident we’ll be able to solve this and deal with San Onofre being out. There’s a great advantage to having all the agencies working well together, which they have done for several years. As you know, I’ve been involved in energy for almost 30 years in this state and I don’t think I’ve seen the agencies work as well together as I have in the last three or four years. So I’m pretty confident we’ll be able to solve this.
This is a problem; it’s not a crisis. This can be managed, and we intend to do that.
Regarding how the “problem” will be managed, you have, in prior TPR and VerdeXchange interviews, advocated Demand Response. Elaborate why demand response is always an attractive but difficult alternative to pursue.
First, the demand response that we have now is largely just paying people not to operate. The demand response of the future, if we can create a market, is a combination of potentially having people cut back on their operations, but more importantly to start installing hardware for efficiency—replacing incandescent and even fluorescent lights with LEDs; putting in variable-speed motors. If you have a market, you can have very skilled entrepreneurs to aggregate those and get paid for it to compete for new generation for efficiency gains. Without it you’re relying on regulation or one-off programs. That’s one reason why our capacity market, which we are hopefully in the process of developing, is so important to demand-response. I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface with demand-response and efficiency.
I’ve been involved with efficiency all my life. I was instrumental in the creation of Title 24. I think the efficiency gains in demand response hold a large potential to be able to meet our future needs. Advertisement
With San Onofre’s closure, what do you see the energy mix for California and Southern Californians being in the next decade? What policies and regulations will most affect the state’s energy portfolio mix?
We’re on a path for 33 percent renewables for 2020. I think we’ll likely exceed that. In addition, there’s a vast impetus for rooftop solar, speared on by a lot of issues, from the declining cost of solar and the rate structure itself.
The rate structure, its last two blocks are really high in most utility service areas. So it’s a very fertile ground to put independent systems in. When you add all that up, the future is going to be largely renewables, with gas-powered generation backing it up, and obviously some hydro. Until we can get effective and economically competitive storage systems, that, I think, will be the mix.
Once we get, and I hope we will, storage systems that are economically competitive, then the world changes. Then even a larger portion of renewables becomes doable and probable. In the foreseeable future it’s going to be substantial additions of solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewables on the edges, and gas-powered generation backing it up. The integration of those renewables, because of their intermittency, poses issues on the system; you have to ramp up and down.
We need new kinds of facilities, new gas facilities, to meet that need. And they’re being built. And ultimately, as I said, if we get storage that can solve a lot of those issues.
Elaborate on what is presently being built?
I mentioned transmission; upgrades on capacitors; being able to put devices at the distribution level which condition power—those things are all being installed and looked at. In addition on the generation side, we are adding in Walnut Creek, for example, a brand new 500 MW plant that can ramp up and down extraordinarily quickly. Those are the kinds of things you are going to need as you get more solar, particularly rooftop solar.
The grid has to be stable. Even on a spring day, not even a summer day, you see what we can in the ‘duck chart’, which is a graph that shows load over time, a substantial drop in demand because people are running off of their solar power systems. Around 4:30, you see it start ramping up as those systems become ineffective. It shows up on our system as a huge increase in demand. In 2016, that ramp might be 13,000 MW in two hours. So we have to have the capacity on the system to be able to meet that. There are a couple plants that have those characteristics, such as the Oakley power plant.
That’s what the ISO is responsible for. We’re responsible for reliability. We look at this every day and do our best to meet that. The agencies like the PUC, Energy Commission, Air and Water, and the Governor’s Office have been remarkably cooperative. This is the best organization and integration that I’ve ever seen.
As Mayor of the City of Long Beach, one of California’s largest cities, does this change in the energy mix and the closure of San Onofre affect your city?
Well, as Edison customers it affects us, but it affects all of Southern California, probably more so in southern Orange County and in San Diego. That’s a load pocket. It could be a problem; we recognize what the problem is; we’re managing to it; and I think we’ll be successful.
Lastly, with SCE June decision to decommission San Onofre, Is nuclear in California dead as a future energy source?
I’d never say anything is dead, but it’s certainly on life support.
As far as the company, Edison, goes, they’ve made that decision based on economics. I’m not close enough to tell you whether it’s right or wrong. Obviously they felt that the long-term potential of that facility was in doubt, and it’s better to cut losses early. It’s been almost 30 years in operation, and there’s an issue with steam generators, which I’m sure will be the subject of litigation for some time. Whatever the company’s calculus is, they’ve already made it.
For the state and for the region, decommissioning does pose some issues short term and long term. Short term, we’ve been anticipating this at the ISO because it’s been doubtful that unit 3 and maybe unit 2 could restart, so for 2013 and 2014 we’ve reconfigured an existing 220 kV line called Barre-Ellis, going from two circuits to four. That gives us greater flexibility.
North of the facility, Huntington Beach units 3 and 4 were converted. Those are two old power plants that were retired. We’ve converted those to what are called synchronous condensers. Those will be able to provide voltage support. Just like water in a hose needs pressure to move, transmission lines needs voltage energy to move electricity. The problem with losing San Onofre is not just capacity—the system needs to be able to maintain its voltage levels to be able to function properly. Those synchronous condensers are like electric motors; they will provide that voltage support.
We’ve done a lot of capacitor bank upgrades at Santiago, Viejo, and Johanna substations—those have all been installed and have been in service since May.
There are new resources coming online. At El Segundo, the plant was repowered to 564 MW. That should be fully available at the end of this month. Sentinel is fully available with 800 MW, and a new plant in Walnut Creek at 500 MW is now fully on line and operating.
In addition, we’re going to do a number of Flex Alerts. Those are fully funded by the investor-owned utilities and authorized by the California Public Utilities Commission. And we’re going to utilize, to the extent that we possibly can, demand response, which involves having people cut back on their use in return for getting paid or receiving credit on their bill. Demand response and energy efficiency are part of the state’s mandated loading order as well. If we have to use it, we’ll turn to it. Obviously we’re going to try to make sure all the power plant facilities are well maintained and available for service. So that’s the short run.
In the long run, you have an issue—all the coastal plants, that’s about 7400 MW facilities from Ormond Beach all the way down to Encina, are all scheduled to go from the present system of once-through cooling with ocean water to a different system, probably cooling towers. Now how many of them get repowered, I don’t know. But that 7400 MW, and we’re going to need to either delay the once-through cooling, or repower these facilities.Advertisement
Now with San Onfore retiring the amount of ocean water used in once-through cooling drops substantially. Maybe there’s a reason for a delay—I’m not saying we are going to ask for a delay, but that’s one of the possibilities. All of the agencies involved—the Public Utilities Commission, the California Energy Commission, the ISO, the Air Board, the Water Board, and the Governor’s Office—are, over the next 90 days, going to crack a long term plan for dealing with the San Onofre retirement.
Now that could be a lot of things. It will probably include some upgrades and new transmission; it could well include some additional plants or some distributed generation at the substation level; new renewables where it could come online and work properly—all of those will be considered, as well as demand-response, which I personally think has great potential, particularly if we can get a market where people who can aggregate efficiency in demand response can get paid for it.
But I can’t tell you anything about how that’s going to work right now because it’s all going to be put into a long term plan, which will be presented to the various agencies. I’m fairly confident we’ll be able to solve this and deal with San Onofre being out. There’s a great advantage to having all the agencies working well together, which they have done for several years. As you know, I’ve been involved in energy for almost 30 years in this state and I don’t think I’ve seen the agencies work as well together as I have in the last three or four years. So I’m pretty confident we’ll be able to solve this.
This is a problem; it’s not a crisis. This can be managed, and we intend to do that.
Regarding how the “problem” will be managed, you have, in prior TPR and VerdeXchange interviews, advocated Demand Response. Elaborate why demand response is always an attractive but difficult alternative to pursue.
First, the demand response that we have now is largely just paying people not to operate. The demand response of the future, if we can create a market, is a combination of potentially having people cut back on their operations, but more importantly to start installing hardware for efficiency—replacing incandescent and even fluorescent lights with LEDs; putting in variable-speed motors. If you have a market, you can have very skilled entrepreneurs to aggregate those and get paid for it to compete for new generation for efficiency gains. Without it you’re relying on regulation or one-off programs. That’s one reason why our capacity market, which we are hopefully in the process of developing, is so important to demand-response. I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface with demand-response and efficiency.
I’ve been involved with efficiency all my life. I was instrumental in the creation of Title 24. I think the efficiency gains in demand response hold a large potential to be able to meet our future needs. Advertisement
With San Onofre’s closure, what do you see the energy mix for California and Southern Californians being in the next decade? What policies and regulations will most affect the state’s energy portfolio mix?
We’re on a path for 33 percent renewables for 2020. I think we’ll likely exceed that. In addition, there’s a vast impetus for rooftop solar, speared on by a lot of issues, from the declining cost of solar and the rate structure itself.
The rate structure, its last two blocks are really high in most utility service areas. So it’s a very fertile ground to put independent systems in. When you add all that up, the future is going to be largely renewables, with gas-powered generation backing it up, and obviously some hydro. Until we can get effective and economically competitive storage systems, that, I think, will be the mix.
Once we get, and I hope we will, storage systems that are economically competitive, then the world changes. Then even a larger portion of renewables becomes doable and probable. In the foreseeable future it’s going to be substantial additions of solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewables on the edges, and gas-powered generation backing it up. The integration of those renewables, because of their intermittency, poses issues on the system; you have to ramp up and down.
We need new kinds of facilities, new gas facilities, to meet that need. And they’re being built. And ultimately, as I said, if we get storage that can solve a lot of those issues.
Elaborate on what is presently being built?
I mentioned transmission; upgrades on capacitors; being able to put devices at the distribution level which condition power—those things are all being installed and looked at. In addition on the generation side, we are adding in Walnut Creek, for example, a brand new 500 MW plant that can ramp up and down extraordinarily quickly. Those are the kinds of things you are going to need as you get more solar, particularly rooftop solar.
The grid has to be stable. Even on a spring day, not even a summer day, you see what we can in the ‘duck chart’, which is a graph that shows load over time, a substantial drop in demand because people are running off of their solar power systems. Around 4:30, you see it start ramping up as those systems become ineffective. It shows up on our system as a huge increase in demand. In 2016, that ramp might be 13,000 MW in two hours. So we have to have the capacity on the system to be able to meet that. There are a couple plants that have those characteristics, such as the Oakley power plant.
That’s what the ISO is responsible for. We’re responsible for reliability. We look at this every day and do our best to meet that. The agencies like the PUC, Energy Commission, Air and Water, and the Governor’s Office have been remarkably cooperative. This is the best organization and integration that I’ve ever seen.
As Mayor of the City of Long Beach, one of California’s largest cities, does this change in the energy mix and the closure of San Onofre affect your city?
Well, as Edison customers it affects us, but it affects all of Southern California, probably more so in southern Orange County and in San Diego. That’s a load pocket. It could be a problem; we recognize what the problem is; we’re managing to it; and I think we’ll be successful.
Lastly, with SCE June decision to decommission San Onofre, Is nuclear in California dead as a future energy source?
I’d never say anything is dead, but it’s certainly on life support.
California Energy Commission Awards $1.7 Million for Military Microgrid Project
Via SOLAR THERMAL magazine
Thermal Energy Storage and Building Energy Efficiency
SACRAMENTO – The California Energy Commission is supporting microgrid technology by funding a research demonstration project at Camp Pendleton in San Diego.
“Investing in microgrid research and testing is critical for meeting California’s clean, renewable energy goals,” said Energy Commission Chair Robert B. Weisenmiller. “This project will evaluate new and emerging technologies in a real world environment while providing reliable and secure energy to the military base at Camp Pendleton.”
The Commission approved a $1.7 million award to San Diego-based Harper Construction Company, Inc., to demonstrate a set of intelligent microgrids that use community scale renewable resources within an existing utility grid at the Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton. The project will integrate on-site flat-plate and concentrating photovoltaic (PV) technology with energy efficiency, energy storage and other technologies to provide reliable power and support critical base functions. The project includes $1.1 million in match funding from the grant recipient and subcontractors.
A microgrid is a small-scale version of the traditional larger power grid that draws energy from clean sources such as the wind and sun, as well as from conventional sources. It is able to connect to the larger electric grid, but can also work independently.
The Camp Pendleton project is one of several Commission funded microgrid demonstrations taking place at U.S. military installations. The Commission recently approved a $2 million award to Concurrent Technologies Corporation to share costs in a U.S. Department of Defense vehicle-to-grid demonstration project at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. Vehicle-to-grid technology allows two-way power transmission so that electric vehicle batteriescan provide electricity to the grid as needed during peak hours, and charge during off-peak hours.
The Camp Pendleton microgrid project is one of 11 research and development awards totaling $15,761,267 that were approved at the Commission’s June 12 business meeting.
The other award recipients are:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, located in Berkeley (Alameda County), will receive $2 million to develop and demonstrate an innovative Web-based tool for small and medium-sized businesses to determine building energy performance, identify operational improvements using conventional and emerging energy efficiency technologies, and assess impacts of these improvements on indoor environmental quality. The tool will be field-tested to verify its accuracy. The project includes $254,790 in match funding from the cities of San Francisco, San Jose, Berkeley, Fremont, Santa Clara, and software company C3.
California Institute for Energy and Environment, of Berkeley (Alameda County) will receive $1,629,399 to demonstrate the use of plug-in low-energy personal comfort systems. These systems are a low wattage desk fan, a low wattage foot warmer, and heating/cooling elements in office chairs. These would be networked into the building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system to provide feedback for the HVAC’s control systems. These devices are also occupant controlled. If left on, the devices will turn themselves off after a period of time which will allow optimized control of HVAC systems in integrated building applications. The work will be done by the University of California, Berkeley. The project includes $192,500 in match funding from the Regents of the University of California and UC Berkeley.
Altex Technologies Corporation of Sunnyvale (Santa Clara County) will receive $1,582,817 to develop and demonstrate a waste heat and solar heat driven cooling and heating system called the Building Energy Efficient Cooling and Heating (BEECH) System for commercial buildings. Waste heat refers to heat produced by mechanical equipment for which there is no use. The BEECH system aims to utilize waste heat to reduce overall commercial building heating and cooling energy consumption. The project includes $176,000 in match funding from Altex.
View Inc., of Milpitas (Santa Clara County) will receive $1,542,233 to demonstrate an integrated design for renovating an existing commercial building in Sunnyvale (Santa Clara County) using eight technologies. Three of these technologies are emerging: electric chromatic tinted windows; advanced sky lighting; and extreme insulation/night flushing. Five mature technologies will also be used: HVAC; LED lighting; plug-load management; renewable power; and building controls. Using a “passive” first approach to this construction project will result in overall reduced energy needs for this building and will allow the contractor to further reduce costs by using the smallest HVAC system allowed by code. The installation of a 90 kW photovoltaic system will produce 100 percent of the building’s power requirements, meaning it will be a Zero Net Energy building that does not consume more energy than it produces. The contractor plans to prove this construction design will provide an immediate payback, a net-positive cash flow, and a higher rate-of-return than conventional construction. The project includes $1,533,326 in match funding from WTA-Matilda.
The Levy Partnership, located in Riverside (Riverside County), will receive $1,433,568 to develop cost-effective advanced roof and wall systems for factory built homes. Improving the roof and wall components is expected to reduce heating and cooling costs for these homes. The project includes $299,781 in match funding from the Levy Partnership.
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) of Palo Alto (Santa Clara County) will receive $1,351,283 to research, install, measure, and evaluate cost-effective comprehensive efficiency retrofits to lower energy costs for the low-income multifamily housing industry. The project includes $1,142,800 in match funding from EPRI and project partner, LINC Housing.
University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles County), will receive $1,335,074 to conduct research in new phase change materials to store thermal energy for wall assemblies, and to develop associated software tools. Heat is absorbed or released when the materials change from solid to liquid or vice versa. The materials’ big advantage is that they absorb thermal energy. This means that they can remove, or at least reduce, the need for heating and cooling in some buildings. Their impact is similar to that of adding thermal mass to the building. Unlike air conditioning systems, they require no maintenance. The use of phase change materials and associated software tools can contribute to zero net energy commercial buildings, which do not consume more energy than they produce, or to reduce the energy needs of buildings through passive designs that require low or no energy to operate.
University of California, Davis, (Yolo County) will receive $1,167,103 to conduct detailed field studies to document and verify actual performance, energy savings, and cost characteristics for advanced lighting, lighting controls, HVAC, and other emerging technologies. The data will be used to create a guide for conducting technology assessments. The project includes $121,600 in match funding. Match funding will be a combination of cash and subcontractor in-kind labor from UC Davis and ICF International, a subcontractor.
Enovative Group, located in Venice (Los Angeles County), will receive $1,061,800 to develop approaches and best practices to reduce the amount of natural gas used in hot water systems in large multifamily residential complexes. The project includes $12,000 in match funding from the Enovative Group.
Chromasun, Inc., of San Jose (Santa Clara County) will receive $935,100 to demonstrate an energy efficient technology called the Solar Thermal Heat Pump for water heating and air conditioning in the hospitality industry. The solar system uses only half the natural gas of conventional boilers to provide all of a large commercial facility’s hot water. The system will be demonstrated in a hotel. The hot water will be used in an absorption chiller (Heliosorber) to provide both cooling for buildings and hot water for the hotel’s shower, pool, spa, and laundry. The project can potentially save approximately 45,000 therms of natural gas and 152,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per year for a 300-room resort hotel. The project will include $404,192 in match funding from Southern California Gas, Energy Concepts, SunWater Solar, and Chromasun.
# # #
The California Energy Commission is the state’s primary energy policy and planning agency. Created by the Legislature in 1974 and located in Sacramento, six basic responsibilities guide the Energy Commission as it sets state energy policy: forecasting future energy needs; licensing thermal power plants 50 megawatts or larger; promoting energy efficiency and conservation by setting the state’s appliance and building efficiency standards; supporting public interest energy research that advances energy science and technology through research, development, and demonstration programs; developing renewable energy resources and alternative renewable energy technologies for buildings, industry and transportation; planning for and directing state response to energy emergencies. For more information, visit: www.energy.ca.gov or www.energy.ca.gov/releases/.
SACRAMENTO – The California Energy Commission is supporting microgrid technology by funding a research demonstration project at Camp Pendleton in San Diego.
“Investing in microgrid research and testing is critical for meeting California’s clean, renewable energy goals,” said Energy Commission Chair Robert B. Weisenmiller. “This project will evaluate new and emerging technologies in a real world environment while providing reliable and secure energy to the military base at Camp Pendleton.”
The Commission approved a $1.7 million award to San Diego-based Harper Construction Company, Inc., to demonstrate a set of intelligent microgrids that use community scale renewable resources within an existing utility grid at the Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton. The project will integrate on-site flat-plate and concentrating photovoltaic (PV) technology with energy efficiency, energy storage and other technologies to provide reliable power and support critical base functions. The project includes $1.1 million in match funding from the grant recipient and subcontractors.
A microgrid is a small-scale version of the traditional larger power grid that draws energy from clean sources such as the wind and sun, as well as from conventional sources. It is able to connect to the larger electric grid, but can also work independently.
The Camp Pendleton project is one of several Commission funded microgrid demonstrations taking place at U.S. military installations. The Commission recently approved a $2 million award to Concurrent Technologies Corporation to share costs in a U.S. Department of Defense vehicle-to-grid demonstration project at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. Vehicle-to-grid technology allows two-way power transmission so that electric vehicle batteriescan provide electricity to the grid as needed during peak hours, and charge during off-peak hours.
The Camp Pendleton microgrid project is one of 11 research and development awards totaling $15,761,267 that were approved at the Commission’s June 12 business meeting.
The other award recipients are:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, located in Berkeley (Alameda County), will receive $2 million to develop and demonstrate an innovative Web-based tool for small and medium-sized businesses to determine building energy performance, identify operational improvements using conventional and emerging energy efficiency technologies, and assess impacts of these improvements on indoor environmental quality. The tool will be field-tested to verify its accuracy. The project includes $254,790 in match funding from the cities of San Francisco, San Jose, Berkeley, Fremont, Santa Clara, and software company C3.
California Institute for Energy and Environment, of Berkeley (Alameda County) will receive $1,629,399 to demonstrate the use of plug-in low-energy personal comfort systems. These systems are a low wattage desk fan, a low wattage foot warmer, and heating/cooling elements in office chairs. These would be networked into the building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system to provide feedback for the HVAC’s control systems. These devices are also occupant controlled. If left on, the devices will turn themselves off after a period of time which will allow optimized control of HVAC systems in integrated building applications. The work will be done by the University of California, Berkeley. The project includes $192,500 in match funding from the Regents of the University of California and UC Berkeley.
Altex Technologies Corporation of Sunnyvale (Santa Clara County) will receive $1,582,817 to develop and demonstrate a waste heat and solar heat driven cooling and heating system called the Building Energy Efficient Cooling and Heating (BEECH) System for commercial buildings. Waste heat refers to heat produced by mechanical equipment for which there is no use. The BEECH system aims to utilize waste heat to reduce overall commercial building heating and cooling energy consumption. The project includes $176,000 in match funding from Altex.
View Inc., of Milpitas (Santa Clara County) will receive $1,542,233 to demonstrate an integrated design for renovating an existing commercial building in Sunnyvale (Santa Clara County) using eight technologies. Three of these technologies are emerging: electric chromatic tinted windows; advanced sky lighting; and extreme insulation/night flushing. Five mature technologies will also be used: HVAC; LED lighting; plug-load management; renewable power; and building controls. Using a “passive” first approach to this construction project will result in overall reduced energy needs for this building and will allow the contractor to further reduce costs by using the smallest HVAC system allowed by code. The installation of a 90 kW photovoltaic system will produce 100 percent of the building’s power requirements, meaning it will be a Zero Net Energy building that does not consume more energy than it produces. The contractor plans to prove this construction design will provide an immediate payback, a net-positive cash flow, and a higher rate-of-return than conventional construction. The project includes $1,533,326 in match funding from WTA-Matilda.
The Levy Partnership, located in Riverside (Riverside County), will receive $1,433,568 to develop cost-effective advanced roof and wall systems for factory built homes. Improving the roof and wall components is expected to reduce heating and cooling costs for these homes. The project includes $299,781 in match funding from the Levy Partnership.
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) of Palo Alto (Santa Clara County) will receive $1,351,283 to research, install, measure, and evaluate cost-effective comprehensive efficiency retrofits to lower energy costs for the low-income multifamily housing industry. The project includes $1,142,800 in match funding from EPRI and project partner, LINC Housing.
University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles County), will receive $1,335,074 to conduct research in new phase change materials to store thermal energy for wall assemblies, and to develop associated software tools. Heat is absorbed or released when the materials change from solid to liquid or vice versa. The materials’ big advantage is that they absorb thermal energy. This means that they can remove, or at least reduce, the need for heating and cooling in some buildings. Their impact is similar to that of adding thermal mass to the building. Unlike air conditioning systems, they require no maintenance. The use of phase change materials and associated software tools can contribute to zero net energy commercial buildings, which do not consume more energy than they produce, or to reduce the energy needs of buildings through passive designs that require low or no energy to operate.
University of California, Davis, (Yolo County) will receive $1,167,103 to conduct detailed field studies to document and verify actual performance, energy savings, and cost characteristics for advanced lighting, lighting controls, HVAC, and other emerging technologies. The data will be used to create a guide for conducting technology assessments. The project includes $121,600 in match funding. Match funding will be a combination of cash and subcontractor in-kind labor from UC Davis and ICF International, a subcontractor.
Enovative Group, located in Venice (Los Angeles County), will receive $1,061,800 to develop approaches and best practices to reduce the amount of natural gas used in hot water systems in large multifamily residential complexes. The project includes $12,000 in match funding from the Enovative Group.
Chromasun, Inc., of San Jose (Santa Clara County) will receive $935,100 to demonstrate an energy efficient technology called the Solar Thermal Heat Pump for water heating and air conditioning in the hospitality industry. The solar system uses only half the natural gas of conventional boilers to provide all of a large commercial facility’s hot water. The system will be demonstrated in a hotel. The hot water will be used in an absorption chiller (Heliosorber) to provide both cooling for buildings and hot water for the hotel’s shower, pool, spa, and laundry. The project can potentially save approximately 45,000 therms of natural gas and 152,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per year for a 300-room resort hotel. The project will include $404,192 in match funding from Southern California Gas, Energy Concepts, SunWater Solar, and Chromasun.
# # #
The California Energy Commission is the state’s primary energy policy and planning agency. Created by the Legislature in 1974 and located in Sacramento, six basic responsibilities guide the Energy Commission as it sets state energy policy: forecasting future energy needs; licensing thermal power plants 50 megawatts or larger; promoting energy efficiency and conservation by setting the state’s appliance and building efficiency standards; supporting public interest energy research that advances energy science and technology through research, development, and demonstration programs; developing renewable energy resources and alternative renewable energy technologies for buildings, industry and transportation; planning for and directing state response to energy emergencies. For more information, visit: www.energy.ca.gov or www.energy.ca.gov/releases/.
Update: SoCal Edison closing San Onofre nuclear plant;
will store fuel onsite (timeline, photos)
Via 89.3 KPCC Southern California Public Radio
Ed Joyce | June 7th, 2013, 9:19am
California Senator Barbara Boxer told the chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission she wants public hearings and an investigation before any restart of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. The San Onofre nuclear plant has been offline since a radioactive leak from a damaged steam generator tube January 31, 2012. Southern California Edison has submitted a restart plan to the NRC.
Update 10 a.m. Edison International Chairman Ted Craver told reporters Friday that closing the troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station would take decades, cost a lot, leave hundreds unemployed and result in spent nuclear fuel that would be stored "for a very long time" directly on the plant's current site.
According to Craver, the company has a $2.7 billion decommissioning fund that can be used for the closure of San Onofre. But the money to make up for the loss of the San Onofre plant will come from California ratepayers, company insurance claims, Edison shareholders and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which produced the equipment that led to the problems at San Onofre.
Craver's comments came in a conference call with reporters following Southern California Edison's announcement Friday morning that it was closing the plant permanently after concluding that the continuing uncertainty about when or if the plant might return to service was not good for customers or investors.
The plant has been shut down since January 2012 after a small radiation leak led to the discovery of unusually rapid wear inside hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water in the nearly new generators.
In the conference call with reporters, Craver said the retirement and decommissioning of the nuclear plant would be a "decades-long process."
"Spent nuclear fuel [from the San Onofre nuclear plant] will be stored on the site for a very long time," said Craver.
Craver said there is enough storage capacity on the site to handle the spent fuel from both of the shutdown units.
The number of San Onofre nuclear employees will be cut by 900 from 1,500 to 600 over the next couple of months, according to Southern California Edison President Ron Litzinger.
Craver says he's talked with the California Public Utilities Commission, San Diego Gas and Electric and other California agencies about "long-range planning" after the shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear plant.
"[Energy] from San Onofre nuclear plant will have to be replaced and we need to figure out how to [do that]," Craver said.
"We should be pretty good on the voltage starting this summer [for Orange County]," said Litzinger.
After the announcement, about 30 anti-nuclear activists gathered near the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in a celebratory mood as they shared their reaction to the closure of the plant.
Ray Lutz of Citizens’ Oversight Project told KPCC's Lauren Osen that his group will now turn to the hundreds of employees who currently work at the plant whose jobs are now in jeopardy.
Gene Stone, from Residents Organized for a Safe Environment, said the coalition that formed to oppose the restart of San Onofre will try to regroup to pressure the closure of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant along the Pacific Ocean in Central California (see map below).
Stone also thanked some Southern California Edison employees who shared details about the status of the plant, whom he called “whistleblowers.”
Arnie Gundersen is a nuclear engineer and co-author of a report by the Fairewinds Associates, a nuclear watchdog group.
The report criticized Edison and the NRC for not being more forthcoming about just how historically off-the-charts the damage is in comparison to the rest of the nuclear industry. Gundersen was later criticized by the nuclear industry.
On Friday, he said he was surprised by the closure because the larger nuclear industry was pressuring Edison to keep the plant open.
“I knew I was right all along,” Gundersen said. “I hate to use the word vindication because it has a negative connotation. I’m happy.”
CHART: CALIFORNIA'S POWER MIX
Nuclear power made up 15% of the state's power mix in 2011.
Previously:Southern California Edison Friday said it will close the troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (or SONGS).
The twin-domed nuclear plant, on the seaside border of San Diego and Orange counties, hasn't produced electricity since January 2012, after a small radiation leak led to the discovery of unusually rapid wear inside hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water in the nearly new generators.
"SONGS has served this region for over 40 years,” said Ted Craver, Chairman and CEO of Edison International, parent company of SCE in a news release, “but we have concluded that the continuing uncertainty about when or if SONGS might return to service was not good for our customers, our investors, or the need to plan for our region’s long-term electricity needs
Last month, SCE's parent, Edison International, raised the possibility of retiring the plant if it can't get one reactor running later this year. With questions about whether the plant can restart and who picks up the tab, "there is a practical limit to how much we can absorb of that risk," Edison Chairman Ted Craver told Wall Street analysts.
SCE's news release said that in connection with the decision, SCE estimates that it will record a charge in the second quarter of between $450 million and $650 million before taxes ($300 million - $425 million after tax), in accordance with accounting requirements.
“This is very good news for the people of Southern California,” said Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth. “We have long said that these reactors are too dangerous to operate and now Edison has agreed. The people of California now have the opportunity to move away from the failed promise of dirty and dangerous nuclear power and replace it with the safe and clean energy provided by the sun and the wind.”
The four steam generators at San Onofre — two per reactor, each with 9,727 alloy tubes — function something like a car radiator, which controls heat in the vehicle's engine. The generator tubes circulate hot, radioactive water from the reactors, which is used to make steam to turn turbines that produce electricity.
Overall, investigators found wear from friction and vibration in 15,000 places, in varying degrees, in 3,401 tubes inside the four replacement generators.
“Looking ahead,” said Ron Litzinger, SCE’s President, “we think that our decision to retire the units will eliminate uncertainty and facilitate orderly planning for California’s energy future.”
The twin-domed nuclear plant, on the seaside border of San Diego and Orange counties, hasn't produced electricity since January 2012, after a small radiation leak led to the discovery of unusually rapid wear inside hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water in the nearly new generators.
"SONGS has served this region for over 40 years,” said Ted Craver, Chairman and CEO of Edison International, parent company of SCE in a news release, “but we have concluded that the continuing uncertainty about when or if SONGS might return to service was not good for our customers, our investors, or the need to plan for our region’s long-term electricity needs
Last month, SCE's parent, Edison International, raised the possibility of retiring the plant if it can't get one reactor running later this year. With questions about whether the plant can restart and who picks up the tab, "there is a practical limit to how much we can absorb of that risk," Edison Chairman Ted Craver told Wall Street analysts.
SCE's news release said that in connection with the decision, SCE estimates that it will record a charge in the second quarter of between $450 million and $650 million before taxes ($300 million - $425 million after tax), in accordance with accounting requirements.
“This is very good news for the people of Southern California,” said Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth. “We have long said that these reactors are too dangerous to operate and now Edison has agreed. The people of California now have the opportunity to move away from the failed promise of dirty and dangerous nuclear power and replace it with the safe and clean energy provided by the sun and the wind.”
The four steam generators at San Onofre — two per reactor, each with 9,727 alloy tubes — function something like a car radiator, which controls heat in the vehicle's engine. The generator tubes circulate hot, radioactive water from the reactors, which is used to make steam to turn turbines that produce electricity.
Overall, investigators found wear from friction and vibration in 15,000 places, in varying degrees, in 3,401 tubes inside the four replacement generators.
“Looking ahead,” said Ron Litzinger, SCE’s President, “we think that our decision to retire the units will eliminate uncertainty and facilitate orderly planning for California’s energy future.”
Litzinger noted that the company has worked with the California Independent System Operator, the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in planning for Southern California’s energy needs and will continue to do so.
“The company is already well into a summer reliability program and has completed numerous transmission upgrades in addition to those completed last year,” Litzinger said. “Thanks to consumer conservation, energy efficiency programs and a moderate summer, the region was able to get through last summer without electricity shortages. We hope for the same positive result again this year,” Litzinger added, “although generation outages, soaring temperatures or wildfires impacting transmission lines would test the system.”
SCE said with the retirement of Units 2 and 3, San Onofre anticipates "reducing staff over the next year from approximately 1,500 to approximately 400 employees, subject to applicable regulatory approvals. The majority of such reductions are expected to occur in 2013."
“This situation is very unfortunate,” said Pete Dietrich, SCE’s Chief Nuclear Officer, noting that “this is an extraordinary team of men and women. We will treat them fairly.” SCE will work to ensure a fair process for this transition, and will work with the Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) and the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers (IBEW) on transition plans for the employees they represent.
Michael Peevey, the president of the CPUC, said in a statement that the agency will determine who should pay the costs for the outage at San Onofre Units 2 and 3. Costs for the outage were recently estimated at exceeding $800 million.
"SONGS has been a vital part of the Southern California electric supply system since 1968 when Unit 1 began operation, followed by Units 2 and 3 in 1983-1984," said Peevey in the statement. "Unit 1 was retired in 1992 and now SCE has announced the retirement of Units 2 and 3. The challenge now facing Southern California’s electric system and economy is what comes next."
The problems at San Onofre center on steam generators that were installed during a $670 million overhaul in 2009 and 2010. After the plant was shut down, tests found some generator tubes were so badly eroded that they could fail and possibly release radiation, a stunning finding inside the nearly new equipment.
The generators, which resemble massive steel fire hydrants, control heat in the reactors. At San Onofre, each one stands 65 feet high, weighs 1.3 million pounds and has 9,727 U-shaped tubes inside, each 0.75 inches in diameter. Hundreds of the tubes had been taken out of service because of damage or as a preventative step.
TIMELINE: SAN ONOFRE NUCLEAR PLANT SHUTDOWN
“The company is already well into a summer reliability program and has completed numerous transmission upgrades in addition to those completed last year,” Litzinger said. “Thanks to consumer conservation, energy efficiency programs and a moderate summer, the region was able to get through last summer without electricity shortages. We hope for the same positive result again this year,” Litzinger added, “although generation outages, soaring temperatures or wildfires impacting transmission lines would test the system.”
SCE said with the retirement of Units 2 and 3, San Onofre anticipates "reducing staff over the next year from approximately 1,500 to approximately 400 employees, subject to applicable regulatory approvals. The majority of such reductions are expected to occur in 2013."
“This situation is very unfortunate,” said Pete Dietrich, SCE’s Chief Nuclear Officer, noting that “this is an extraordinary team of men and women. We will treat them fairly.” SCE will work to ensure a fair process for this transition, and will work with the Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) and the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers (IBEW) on transition plans for the employees they represent.
Michael Peevey, the president of the CPUC, said in a statement that the agency will determine who should pay the costs for the outage at San Onofre Units 2 and 3. Costs for the outage were recently estimated at exceeding $800 million.
"SONGS has been a vital part of the Southern California electric supply system since 1968 when Unit 1 began operation, followed by Units 2 and 3 in 1983-1984," said Peevey in the statement. "Unit 1 was retired in 1992 and now SCE has announced the retirement of Units 2 and 3. The challenge now facing Southern California’s electric system and economy is what comes next."
The problems at San Onofre center on steam generators that were installed during a $670 million overhaul in 2009 and 2010. After the plant was shut down, tests found some generator tubes were so badly eroded that they could fail and possibly release radiation, a stunning finding inside the nearly new equipment.
The generators, which resemble massive steel fire hydrants, control heat in the reactors. At San Onofre, each one stands 65 feet high, weighs 1.3 million pounds and has 9,727 U-shaped tubes inside, each 0.75 inches in diameter. Hundreds of the tubes had been taken out of service because of damage or as a preventative step.
TIMELINE: SAN ONOFRE NUCLEAR PLANT SHUTDOWN
Farm Subsidies Leading to More Water Use
Via The New York Times
By Ron Nixon | Published: June 6, 2013
WASHINGTON — Millions of dollars in farm subsidies for irrigation equipment aimed at water conservation have led to more water use, not less, threatening vulnerable aquifers and streams.
From Wyoming to the Texas Panhandle, water tables have fallen 150 feet in some areas — ranging from 15 percent to 75 percent — since the 1950s, scientists say, because the subsidies give farmers the incentive to irrigate more acres of land. Other areas, including several Midwestern states, have also been affected.
The Environmental Quality Incentives Program, first authorized in the 1996 farm bill, was supposed to help farmers buy more efficient irrigation equipment — sprinklers and pipelines — to save water.
But the new irrigation systems have not helped conserve water supplies, studies show. And researchers believe that the new equipment may be speeding up the depletion of groundwater supplies, which are crucial to agriculture and as a source of drinking water.
The program is getting renewed attention this week as the Senate works to complete a $955 billion, five-year farm bill. It voted Thursday 75 to 22 to hold a final vote on the bill early next week.
Two Western Democrats, Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, have introduced legislation that would ensure that water saved by taxpayer-financed irrigation systems would stay in underground water tables or streams and not be used by farmers to expand their growing operations.
Mr. Udall had planned to offer his bill as part of the farm legislation, but it never came up for a vote. Mr. Blumenauer will introduce his legislation when the House begins working on its version of the bill this month.
“Farmers and the American public recognize that conservation of our resources is good for our crops, our land and our nation’s future,” Mr. Udall said while introducing the bill last month. “America’s farmers have a long history of innovation and adaption of new technologies and practices. Our legislation would encourage those who seek to implement new practices that increase quality production through sound management of our precious resources.”
A study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, this year concluded that Kansas farmers who received payments under the conservation subsidy were using some of their water savings to expand irrigation or grow thirstier crops, not to reduce consumption.
Another study by researchers at New Mexico State University in 2008, which studied an area running from Colorado to New Mexico, came to the same conclusion.
“Policies aimed at reducing water applications can actually increase water depletions,” the researchers said.
According to data from the Environmental Working Group, a Washington research group, the government has provided about $4.2 billion in conservation subsidy payments to landowners since 1997. About $1 billion has been used to help agricultural producers increase the efficiency of irrigation.
Five states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Texas and Utah — account for nearly half of the program’s spending on irrigation equipment, data from the Environmental Working Group shows.
“This is a critical issue because groundwater is important for a number of reasons, and not just agriculture,” said Craig Cox, a senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group. The incentive program “has done a lot of good in helping farmers practice better conservation, but its needs some changes.”
Mr. Cox said environmental organizations do not want lawmakers to cut financing for the water conservation subsidy. They want the program changed so farmers receiving payments would be restricted from increasing their water use.
According to the United States Geological Survey, while the population has nearly doubled over the last 50 years, water consumption has tripled. Farm irrigation accounts for 80 percent of the water use nationwide, according to the Agriculture Department. Western states, where water resources have been diminishing for years, make up some of the largest users of water through irrigation.
“Given that we just had the worst drought in the last 50 years, lawmakers need to really look at this program and how it’s having the opposite effect of what was intended,” Mr. Cox said. “Buying better equipment does not save water. Irrigation is the poster child for why we need reform.”
Tesla Motors Repays its Government Loan in Full
Via Greentech MediaStephen Lacey | May 22, 2013
The electric vehicle company becomes the first to pay back the Department of Energy.
In a much-anticipated development, Tesla Motors said today that it had fully paid the government back for a $465 million loan it received in 2010 from the Department of Energy (DOE).
The company announced it had wired $451 million to the government, which accounted for the entire loan and interest. Tesla founder Elon Musk said earlier this spring at a DOE-sponsored conference that the company would be able to pay off the loan five years earlier than expected. Turns out, the loan was repaid nine years earlier.
The half-billion-dollar loan was used to build two manufacturing plants in California -- one for the Model S sedan and another for battery, motor and electrical equipment assembly. Accessing the loan meant that Tesla had to hit certain production milestones and raise private matching funds.
After meeting its targets, the loan was repaid through $1 billion raised in last week's stock offering.
Tesla became a negative target during the 2012 presidential election, when Mitt Romney called the company a "loser" during a debate.
In a statement, Musk thanked the Energy Department, Congress and taxpayers for helping the company. “I hope we did you proud," he wrote.
Earlier this week, the 100,000th plug-in electric vehicle was sold in the U.S. -- a number far below expectations for EVs, but proof that the market is starting to accelerate.
Below is Eric Wesoff's article on Tesla's latest quarterly earnings:
Tesla shares surged 12 percent in after-hours trading on news that the company reached profitability in Q1 for the first time in its ten-year history, with a profit of $15 million on sales of $562 million for the quarter -- a record for the EV producer.
Tesla produced 400 or more Model S vehicles per week and a total of 5,000 units in the quarter, beating estimates. All sales, so far, are in North America.
Revenue for Q1 was $562 million at a 17 percent gross margin. Sales of zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) credits, as covered yesterday, accounted for $68 million, but will not be anticipated in the future nor expected for the company's Q4 guidance of 25 percent gross margin. (Note that Q1 margins would be in the 5 percent range absent the ZEV credits.)
Tesla raised its 2013 guidance to selling 21,000 electric vehicles (instead of 20,000) this year.
According to reports, California provides Tesla with $35,000 in zero-emission vehicle credits, which Tesla sells to automakers. In addition, Tesla receives other state and federal monies.
Tesla expects operational expenses and R&D expenses to increase next quarter as more dealerships and service centers are built.
Barclays writes that the investment bank is "agnostic as to whether Tesla can break into the mass affluent Gen III market, and downright skeptical of its ability to become a true mass-market automaker," adding, "In addition, GAAP revenue and EPS will likely be faced with a headwind from GAAP accounting around the new loan product, which will lead to some revenues being deferred."
In the meantime, Tesla is beating guidance and making money.
Israeli and American Universities Team Up for Renewable Energy
Via Jspace
By staff on 3/12/2013 at 2:32 PM
Photo credit: Jspace
Israeli and US scientists will team up on renewable technology, thanks to a partnering between two leading universities in the field.
Ben-Gurion University and the University of Michigan have each pledged $1 million for a three-year joining for research to develop renewable technologies.
“We live in a global economy. Universities need to globalize their activities because we need to solve problems that are larger than one country can manage alone,” saidStephen Forrest, vice president for research at the University of Michigan.
“When faculty at universities from across the world come together, they bring different cultures and different objectives, and when you mix them, you get a lot more than just the sum of the parts.”
Forrest added his respect for the entrepreneurial spirit of Israel, which he witnessed over the course of several trips to the Jewish state.
“There’s an enormous number of startups that come out of Israel,” he said. “We have a lot to learn from them.”
The pairing will see researchers at both schools work on advanced vehicle fuels, solar energy and thermoelectric materials.
“We look forward to collaborating with the U-M researchers on the challenging issues related to renewable energy,” said BGU’s vice president and dean for research and development, Moti Herskowitz, “and trust that the agreed model of collaboration has the potential of generating novel scientific and technological information with potential applications.”
As part of the program, scientists at the universities will be able to apply for grants in the specified fields of study. Grant requests can be submitted beginning this month, with six slots open for the first year.
The partnering was announced yesterday, following a signing last week.
Crowdfunding Clean Energy
Via The New York Times
By David Bornstein | March 6, 2013, 9:00am
If you wanted to get large numbers of people actively engaged in helping to solve global warming, how might you go about it? For years, the main approach in the environmental movement has been to sound the alarm bell and implore people to consume less, switch to green products, recycle, and speak up to companies and politicians. It hasn’t always been an easy sell. However, if the approach of a promising Oakland-based start-up takes hold, there may be another line of action that could become available to ordinary people: directly financing renewable energy.
In January, a company called Mosaic, made a splash in the renewable energy world when it introduced a crowd-funding platform that makes it possible for small, non-accredited investors to earn interest financing clean energy projects. When Mosaic posted its first four investments online – solar projects offering 4.5 percent returns to investors who could participate with loans as small as $25 — the company’s co-founder, Billy Parish, thought it would take a month to raise the $313,000 required. Within 24 hours, 435 people had invested and the projects were sold out. The company had spent just $1,000 on marketing. All told, Mosaic has raised $1.1 million for a dozen solar projects to date. Now it is connecting with other solar developers to identify new projects for financing. More than 10,000 people have already signed on and are standing by to invest.
Investors and partners at the Youth Employment Partnership ribbon cutting
ceremony on Dec. 11, 2012, in East Oakland
Photo credit: Mosaic
ceremony on Dec. 11, 2012, in East Oakland
Photo credit: Mosaic
A generation and a half after the first Earth Day, we may be witnessing the coming of age of solar power. Last year, when Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company floated an $850 million bond offering for the Topaz Solar Farm, in California, it was the first time a public bond offering for a U.S. photovoltaic power project had been deemed “investment grade.” The offering was oversubscribed by more than $400 million and the company is now planning a second round to raise potentially $1.265 billion more. And last month, it was reported that First Solar, a manufacturer of solar panels, had signed an agreement with the El Paso Electric Company to sell its power for less than half the cost of power from typical coal plants. In 2011, almost half of the 208 gigawatts of electric capacity added globally came from renewable power, primarily wind and solar (pdf), and almost half of the additional power capacity in the European Union came from solar alone.
A big reason is cost. Over the past five years, the price of photovoltaic panels has declined by about 80 percent. We’re used to hearing about Moore’s Law, which refers to the steady and predictable increases in power and decline in cost of integrated circuits. Swanson’s Law holds that each time global manufacturing capacity of photovoltaic cells doubles, the costs fall by 20 percent.
From 1977 to 2013, the price per watt of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells dropped from about $77 per watt to 74 cents per watt. Couple that with another innovation — the spread of companies that lease, rather than sell, solar power systems – add in some tax incentives — and decentralized solar has become a viable option for many homeowners and businesses. This is a far cry from the time when buying a solar system meant paying upfront for 25 or 30 years of power.
If it seems far-fetched to imagine millions of Americans becoming mini energy producers, just look at Germany, where 51 percent of the country’s clean energy production is owned by individuals or farmers, while major utilities control just 6.5 percent of it.
One of the Mosaic financed systems now sits atop a 26,000-square-foot building in Oakland’s San Antonio neighborhood owned by the nonprofit Youth Employment Partnership, which provides education and workforce skills training to a thousand teenagers each year. YEP’s system, which cost about $265,000, was financed by a combination of its own funds, government and private grants, and a crowdfunded loan. Its utility bills have dropped by 85 percent. Because of the grants, YEP is leasing its system for 10 years and will have the ability to purchase it for a low price after that period. (Without subsidies, the lease would likely run for 20 or 25 years.) YEP’s monthly utility and lease outlays are less than before. “By year 10 we can own the system outright and then most of our power will be free,” explained its executive director, Michele Clark. “But what really matters is that it frees up money that we can use for our case management and mental health work.”
If electricity costs continue to rise – for many consumers, they have tripled since 1980 – the economics will prove more favorable. “If you buy solar, you fix your energy costs for the next 25 years or longer,” explains Marco Krapels, executive vice president of Rabobank, a major solar financier, who is a member of Mosaic’s board of directors. “You can have power independence. And it happens to be clean.”
There is another benefit, added Clark. The system aligns with YEP’s educational mission. “We have this great little computer program that shows us the electricity we’re producing,” she said. “We look at it on sunny days and see it at the top of the chart and discuss it. Then we take our students on field trips to the roof.”
Last June, Bloomberg New Energy Finance published a report (pdf) estimating that the expected continuing surge in demand for solar systems over the next nine years in the United States would require $62 billion in new financing. That’s a big gap. Even though more than half of American adults say they are “alarmed” or “concerned”about global warming and about a quarter of the nation’s rooftops are suitable for solar power installations (pdf), including two thirds of those in New York [1], only a small number of U.S. banks are involved in financing solar projects. Many lack the expertise to evaluate the risks; others have little interest in modest power projects. “Solar is still by and large an asset class that’s not well understood,” said Krapels, of Rabobank.
But peer-to-peer lenders like Prosper.com and Lending Club – once considered improbable businesses — have revealed new possibilities. Combined, they have brokered over $1.8 billion in loans, offering lower interest rates and higher returns than borrowers or lenders could get from banks. At the same time, crowdfunders like Kickstarter, RocketHub, Indiegogo, Seedmatchand the aptly named Crowdfunder, have helped groups raise hundreds of millions of dollars for a multitude of projects and business ventures. Kiva has built a bridge that has allowed individuals to lend over $400 million to microfinance institutions. Now, we’re seeing the early application of this idea to clean energy, with Mosaic and others, including SunFunder and Milaap.
How many people will want to participate? How quickly could the pipeline of investments grow? How will the investments perform? All these are open questions. But other crowdfunders have solved them. Currently, one bottleneck is the time and expense of due diligence for each deal. Mosaic is a founding member of a working group called TruSolar which is developing standards to streamline this process and ensure project quality. Mosaic is also drawing on the experience of online business lenders like On Deck Capital andKabbage, which leverage large data sets to evaluate lending risks cost effectively. “We’re building a portal for solar developers to submit project information electronically in an efficient manner that automates initial credit screening and analysis,” says Parish. “This will make the loan process much simpler, faster and more transparent for borrowers — and improve project quality for our investors.”
Another concern is panel quality, explains Conrad Burke, global marketing director for DuPont Photovoltaic Solutions, which is also a TruSolar member. As costs have plummeted, solar module manufacturers have had to fight for survival. “In such an overcapacity situation, corners are being cut,” he said. Some manufacturers have compromised on the quality of things like panel backsheets, which protect solar cells. “We’ve seen panels which are less than 10 years old deteriorating or failing,” he added. “You have companies which are two or three years old warrantying products for 25 years. We have to raise awareness about this. The industry can ill afford a black eye.”
All power systems fail at times, but if solar modules are not highly reliable over their warranty periods, the economic argument for their use is much weaker.
Crowdfunding holds particular promise for the developing world, where financing for renewable energy is even harder to come by — and where distributed solar power is an urgent need, observes Justin Guay, of the Sierra Club’s international climate program. The irony is that very poor people in the developing world who lack electricity pay far more for kerosene and candles than they would for solar energy. Over a decade, a poor family may spend $1,800 on these energy sources, five or six times what it would take to install a home solar system that could power lights, cellphones, computers, television, and so forth.
Today, with NGO, businesses and microfinance networks reaching into villages and shantytowns around the world, an infrastructure exists to deploy solar systems using a sustainable leasing business model. Just replacing kerosene — a fire hazard and contributor to pulmonary disease – with solar would yield enormous health benefits, reduce greenhouse gases, improve quality of life and expand economic and educational opportunities.
But the money needs to be fronted. “Large international financial organizations like the World Bank are not structured to do it,” says Guay. “Their bread and butter is to push out a huge coal plant or a hydro dam. If we’re looking at a distributed renewals future, crowdfunding is an exciting approach, particularly if it is coupled with the ability to invest through mobile phones.”
The biggest levers remain government policies. Domestically, if the U.S. government changed regulations around Real Estate Investment Trusts and Master Limited Partnerships (a bill recently introduced by Senator Chris Coons aims to do the latter), it could open up billions for renewable energy investments. Internationally, governments and multilaterals could reduce the perceived risk of solar investments through loan guarantees and other incentives.
But all that takes political will. Which gets back to the crowdsourcing ethos: let everyone participate in the solution and they will get more engaged. “Even if people invest $25, it helps them to think about energy in a completely new way,” says Parish. “They can be an energy producer, not just an energy consumer, and it will help them understand how our energy system works.”
“If we are going to solve this problem,” he adds, “We need to build a propositional movement, not just an oppositional movement. We’ll need to tap into people’s enlightened self interest.”
FOOTNOTES
[1] Solar power does best in the south, of course — a system in San Diego provides about 50 percent more energy over the course of a year than a similar one in Seattle (pdf) — but it is suitable for northern areas, too. New York City is home to 560 solar projects that generate 11.5 megawatts of power. But the city has the rooftop capacity to increase its solar output 500 fold. Theoretically, it could supply 40 percent of its peak electricity needs from solar. (For a look at the city’s rooftop capacity in detail, check out thiscool interactive map developed by Sustainable CUNY. According to the calculations, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s roof has enough space to generate the carbon saving equivalent of 6,600 trees – more than a quarter of the total in Central Park.)
Better Place shuts down US, Australian operations
Via The Jerusalem Post
By GLOBES/DUBI-GEDALYAHU | February 6, 2013
Electric car venture to focus on Israel and Denmark, company headquarters move from Palo Alto to Israel
Better place car charging Photo: Better Place
Electric car venture Better Place Inc. is pulling the plug on its operations in Australia and the US, and will focus on Israel and Denmark.
In a statement, the company said, "Following the decision by Better Place to focus on delivering on its strategy in Denmark and Israel, where the complete infrastructure is in place and commercial operations are fully underway, consultations are underway with a view to securing an orderly wind-down of its non-core activities in North America and limiting any further investment in Australia beyond its current commitments."
Better Place will close its office in Palo Alto, California, where the company started out, and Tel Aviv will become its global headquarters. The measures are part of Better Place's recovery plan, but they are a bitter blow to its international prestige and global plans originally drawn up by Shai Agassi. Agassi lived in Palo Alto before founding the company.
Better Place's Palo Alto office was responsible for highly publicized ventures and exposure, such as the deployment of the company's battery recharging network in Hawaii, and collaboration with the San Francisco municipality, which included an electric taxi pilot, and plans to deploy a network of recharging stations along the US West Coast.
In Australia, Better Place planned to deploy a network of battery recharging stations in major cities, and a venture with GM Holden Ltd. to develop electric cars with replaceable batters. The fate of this joint venture is unclear.
These plans are apparently one of the reasons why Evan Thornley resigned as Better Place CEO in January, after just three months in the job. He previously served as CEO of Better Place Australia.
Regarding Australian and the US, Better Place added, "The company’s priority in those markets is to ensure that existing engagements to key partners, customers, and suppliers will be honored and Better Place retains the option to resume roll-out in these markets when circumstances permit.
"Better Place continues to make progress in its two core markets, Denmark and Israel, where sales of new electric cars are gathering momentum. Better Place is working with its existing and potential partners on a number of marketing and other initiatives which should further accelerate recruitment of new members."
Having raised a $5.5m round, OurCrowd's investment platform helps keep Israel's Startup Nation funded
Via The Next Web
By Shira Abel, Wednesday, 6 Feb '13, 11:38am
Image credit: Thinkstock
OurCrowd has launched as the Funders Club / Angel Listcrowdfunding platform for accredited investors who want to invest in Israeli startups. It’s just closed $5.5 million in Series A funding and successfully closed 12 company funding rounds from accredited investors in its first quarter of operation with an average deal size of $500,000. The total capital raised for companies and the platform now totals over $12 million.
One of the interesting things about OurCrowd, besides being Israel-only focused, would be the hybrid model of the company. The Partners invest their own money into the fund – making it a mix of angel and VC. As such, the deal-flow is highly vetted and curated as the incentives are aligned. If the fund loses money, so do the partners. They receive over 100 deals a month – although I suspect that amount will be even higher now that it’s officially launched and the PR push has started.
The first deals completed on the site so far include:
- AbesMarket.com – Abes is an awesome online organic ecommerce site that makes my inner-hippy really happy. It’s been around for a few years now. Recently, Richard Demb, one of the co-founders has relocated back to Chicago and is building the sales and marketing team there. The other co-founder, Jon Polin, and R&D are staying in Israel, as is typical for most Israeli companies. The Leading Organic E-Commerce Site, co-investment with Accel Partners, Index, and Carmel Ventures.
- Sherpa – (Doesn’t have a landing page yet. The marketer in me is dying at the lost emails that could have been collected from a landing page. Every time a company loses out on the opportunity to market itself properly a unicorn dies). The new Internet information venture from Bob Rosenschein, founder and CEO of Answers.com (sold to Summit Partner’s AFCV Holdings for $127 million), co-investment with Cedar.
- TradeOS – An operating system for automating international business-to-business (B2B) trade founded by Zvi Schreiber, the founder and CEO of Tradeum.com. (sold to Vertical Net for $450 million). Much of the development team of TradeOS is located in Ramallah, West Bank.
- Parko – Solving the pain of finding public street parking. These guys are great, I mentored them at Seedcamp and loved what they are doing the moment I heard it. I used to live in Tel Aviv, and finding a parking spot could easily take 40 minutes to an hour (my current commute home when there’s no traffic). Imagine it taking no time at all, assuming you’re willing to pay for a spot (and really – who isn’t by the time you’ve been searching for 30 minutes? I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago and would have given my left kidney for parking in Pacific Heights.) Parko recently won the Israel Mobile Challenge Competition sponsored by Google.
- Fireblade – (Website not up yet. Oh the pain – see Sherpa above – Fireblade could have gotten started on its email list.) When it launches, Fireblade will protect websites from malicious bots and scraping, co-investment with Jeffrey Citron’s (founder of Vonage) KEC Holdings.
- Consumer Physics – (Website also not up yet, and no sign up for emails. Again.) When it launches it will be a pocketspectrometer for smart phones, enabling a variety of consumer apps, co-investment with Khosla Ventures. I have absolutely no idea why one would need a spectrometer in a smart phone – but I’m sure I’m missing something here because the team at OurCrowd rocks – so in this case I’m just going to assume it’s me that’s confused.
The investment team at OurCrowd rocks. Jon Medved is known in Israel as one of the top investors in the country and has been through all of the country’s ups and downs when it comes to startup companies and investing. Israel has recently been a controversial place to invest, as statistics show that exits are smaller than in those in Silicon Valley.
According to Jon, “Despite the recent doom and gloom about the Israeli investment scene, the pace of startup formation is unprecedented and OurCrowd plans to feed these early stage companies with much-needed investment fuel via a whole new crowdfunding model.”
He added, “OurCrowd represents the first real global crowdfunding investment platform for startups given the wide interest outside of Israel in the Start-up Nation phenomena, we think it’s natural for the Web to be used to hook our community of investors up.”
Obama to visit Israel within weeks
Via The Times of Israel
Israeli leaders welcome the news; details were agreed in a presidential phone call to Netanyahu last week; US advance teams already in Israel and West Bank
By Times of Israel Staff | February 5, 2013, 8:24 pm
By Times of Israel Staff | February 5, 2013, 8:24 pm
President Barack Obama meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White
House in Washington on March 5, 2012 (photo credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
House in Washington on March 5, 2012 (photo credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
President Barack Obama is to visit Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan in the next few weeks, at the heart of a wider tour of the Middle East.
Israeli television broke news of the trip on Tuesday night, and said the White House had confirmed it would take place next month or in April, and that the details were agreed by Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a January 28 phone call.
“The start of the president’s second term and the formation of a new Israeli government offer the opportunity to reaffirm the deep and enduring bonds between the United States and Israel and to discuss the way forward on a broad range of issues of mutual concern, including Iran and Syria,” White House Spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday. “Additional details about the trip — including the dates of travel — will be released at a later time.”
The Prime Minister’s Office also confirmed the meeting, saying the two leaders had agreed that Obama would visit once Netanyahu has built his new coalition.
US advance teams are already in Israel and the West Bank preparing for the visit, the Channel 10 news report claimed. The trip will be Obama’s first to Israel as US president; he visited in 2008 as a candidate.
Emanuel Rosen, the station’s experienced diplomatic reporter, said the visit indicated that Obama believes Netanyahu is ready to try to make substantive progress in negotiations with the Palestinians. Indeed, the report said, it was likely that areas of agreement on key issues had already been reached between the American and Israeli leaderships, since Obama had indicated in the past that he would come to Israel only when he truly believed it would enable a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
The US, the TV report said, was pressing for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks “without preconditions.” That has been Netanyahu’s demand, while the Palestinians have demanded a West Bank settlement freeze.
The report said Obama had been considering a visit for later in the year, perhaps to coincide with an annual conference hosted by President Shimon Peres. The news that he was heading here as early as next month, the report said, underlined the sense of potential progress in the diplomatic arena.
The report said Obama would be making “a working visit” and would not be accompanied by members of his family. His Middle East trip would also include visits to Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, the TV report said, though this was not confirmed by the White House.
The upcoming visit by the newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry will also prepare the ground for Obama’s arrival.
The news of Obama’s visit came on the day that Israel swore in its 120-member new Knesset, following elections two weeks ago which left Netanyahu poised to forge a new governing coalition.
In recent days, Netanyahu has spoken often of a desire to resume peace talks with the Palestinians, and directly called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to join him at the negotiating table. On Tuesday, in a speech to the new Knesset members, he vowed to steward a “prudent” diplomatic process, speaking of seeking agreements but also of maintaining Israel’s capacity to effectively protect itself against security threats.
Former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, head of the new Hatnua party, welcomed news of the visit, saying she hoped it would mark a resumption of peace talks. Livni is reportedly being wooed by Netanyahu to join his coalition. Labor’s Shelly Yachimovich said she hope the president’s trip would mark a “breakthrough” in contacts with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu and Obama have maintained a correct but sometimes obviously strained relationship over the years.
They have publicly differed over how to thwart Iran, with Obama refusing to accede to a call from Netanyahu to set “red lines” which, if crossed by Tehran in its nuclear weapons drive, would trigger US-led military intervention.
Last month, furthermore, days after Obama was quoted as castigating Netanyahu for ostensibly turning Israel into a pariah nation and threatening its long-term survival, Netanyahu hit back by declaring that if he were to capitulate to demands for a retreat to the pre-1967 lines, “we’d get Hamas 400 meters from my house.”
According to Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, Obama had lately begun repeating the mantra that Israel under Netanyahu “doesn’t know what its own best interests are.”
The key focus of Obama’s reported criticism was Netanyahu’s settlement construction policies, which recently included plans for thousands of homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in response to the Palestinian Authority’s successful gambit to gain nonmember observer state status from the UN in November.
“With each new settlement announcement, in Obama’s view, Netanyahu is moving his country down a path toward near-total isolation,” Goldberg wrote. “And if Israel, a small state in an inhospitable region, becomes more of a pariah — one that alienates even the affections of the U.S., its last steadfast friend — it won’t survive. Iran poses a short-term threat to Israel’s survival; Israel’s own behavior poses a long-term one.”
Goldberg added that, as regards Netanyahu’s handling of the Palestinians, “the president seems to view the prime minister as a political coward, an essentially unchallenged leader who nevertheless is unwilling to lead or spend political capital to advance the cause of compromise.”
Goldberg said Kerry wants to try to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, but Obama “is thought to be considerably more wary. He views the government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as weak, but he has become convinced that Netanyahu is so captive to the settler lobby, and so uninterested in making anything more than the slightest conciliatory gesture toward Palestinian moderates, that an investment of presidential interest in the peace process wouldn’t be a wise use of his time.”
A presidential visit would suggest, however, that Obama has reconsidered.
Auto execs share insights on
the industry and what's next
Via Los Angeles Times
General Motors' MarkReuss and Ford's Mark Fields talk to The Times about in-dash technology, fuel economy, electric cars and the prospects for the auto industry at large.
December 08, 2012 |By Jerry Hirsch, Los Angeles Times
It's hard to get America's most senior auto executives together in the same building to address the same topics, but we managed to do it with Mark Reuss, president of General Motors Co.'s North American operations, and Mark Fields, the newly appointed chief operating officer of Ford Motor Co.
They came to town for the Los Angeles Auto Show, which ends Sunday. Even then, they weren't in the same room — so we just asked them identical questions, in separate interviews, to create this virtual debate.
Both executives address key issues facing the industry, including the future of in-dash technology, fuel economy, electric cars and the prospects for the industry at large. They don't always agree.
Do vehicle embedded features such as MyFord Touch or Cadillac Cue make sense when smartphones can do many of the same tasks with fewer glitches? Why not use architecture that allows people to use phone apps for vehicle infotainment?
Reuss: There is no way that the auto industry in the long haul should be carrying all that technology in a car. Phones will move faster in technology than anything we can put into a car. Embedding those functions in a car and then trying to guess where phones are going is not a solution. We will experiment with technology in Cadillac, but that's not where the mainline brands will be going.
Fields: It is very clear that for younger consumers, staying connected in their lives is hugely important whether they are in their bedrooms, walking outside or in their cars. That's why we started Sync and MyFord Touch.
In the future, you might end up seeing a hybrid of embedded technology and smartphone connectivity. There are certain things that we want to ensure, such as safety and integration into the rest of the vehicle. There could be some issues with just plugging in a smartphone and allowing it to do a lot of vehicle functions. We're already engaging in those discussions, thinking like a technology company.
The U.S. auto industry has been one of the better-performing segments of the U.S. economy recently but is still well below the 16 million to 17 million vehicles it once sold regularly. Can it shift to a higher gear?
Fields: We expect the market to continue to improve based on two factors. One is the age of the car park out there. [Registration data show the average age of vehicles on the road today is 10 to 11 years.] Cars are old and trucks are old. Look at that, combined with the fuel economy consumers can get from new cars right now, and there are some good reasons to buy. And then there is the gradual improvement of the economy.
This is a great business … but when you look out on the horizon in North America, do I think we will go back to the days of 18 million units anytime soon? No. But when you look at the components that set demand, I think it is very encouraging. The opportunities and growth in front of us are pretty substantial.
Reuss: It can happen based on population growth and the car-park age. But sales are throttled by the variance in consumer confidence and in jobs.
The industry is in a place it has never been in before. It has break-even point of just 11 [million] to 12 million units. [Automakers are expected to sell about 14.5 million vehicles in the U.S. this year]. That's providing profits to invest in good cars, even if we haven't seen that quick sales growth.
That's a great place to be... You could really be happy driving 98% of the stuff that is on display here.
What's the deal with electric vehicles? They garnered a lot of attention when automakers started selling them again two years ago, but sales are poor.
Reuss: The range has to grow and the cost of the battery and the car has to come down. The quickest way for the cost to come down is to build a platform-specific electric vehicle. Otherwise, you will always have a battery that is heavier than what you want and have less range than you want.
Our Spark EV will work, because it is already small and lightweight and close to what you want to do in a platform-specific vehicle.... We will sell a few thousand, and we are doing it in California, where there already is interest and some infrastructure for electric vehicles.
I don't think you will see bigger people-carrier EVs. It's just a harder sell. Who wants to be stranded with your family [because the battery drained down] and pay a lot of money to do it?
Fields: The simple answer is that we don't know what percentage of the marketplace battery-electric vehicles will occupy next year or even five years from now. Our strategy is to align our manufacturing so that wherever it goes, we will be able to flex.
Demand for full-electric vehicles depends on a lot of factors, including getting the cost down lower, and the price of fuel and the infrastructure to be able to support mass EVs with charging stations, etc.
It is so dynamic right now. At gas at $3.40 a gallon, will sales of EVs bump up appreciably? If gas is $5 a gallon, you would get another answer. Whatever the continuum, we will be able to meet the demand.
What single feature or attribute of a vehicle is the consumer most focused on right now?
Fields: I think fuel economy is now embedded in people's minds, no matter what the price of oil is. In the 1970s to get fuel economy you had to get really small, inconvenient vehicles, but now you don't have to compromise on size or performance.
Reuss: It is reliability and durability. You can do the styling right, the technology right and price right. But if you don't have the durability and reliability, you won't get retention. People won't buy your car again. No one wants to be accused of buying something stupid. Fuel economy would be the next reason to buy.
[email protected]
Sweden runs out of garbage,
forced to import from Norway
Via Mother Nature Network
Thu, Oct 25 2012 at 9:30 AM
forced to import from Norway
Via Mother Nature Network
Thu, Oct 25 2012 at 9:30 AM
Sweden, a recycling-happy land where a quarter of a million homes are powered by the incineration of waste, is facing a unique dilemma:
The nation has run out of much-needed fuel.
The nation has run out of much-needed fuel.
Sweden, birthplace of the Smörgåsbord, Eric Northman, and the world’s preferred solar-powered purveyor of flat-pack home furnishings, is in a bit of a pickle: the squeaky clean Scandinavian nation of more than 9.5 million has run out of garbage. The landfills have been tapped dry; the rubbish reserves depleted. And although this may seem like a positive — even enviable — predicament for a country to be facing, Sweden has been forced to import trash from neighboring countries, namely Norway. Yep, Sweden is so trash-strapped that officials are shipping it in — 80,000 tons of refuse annually, to be exact — from elsewhere.
You see, Swedes are big on recycling. So big in fact that only 4 percent of all waste generated in the country is landfilled.
Good for them! However, the population's remarkably pertinacious recycling habits are also a bit of a problem given that the country relies on waste to heat and to provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes through a longstanding waste-to-energy incineration program. So with citizens simply not generating enough burnable waste to power the incinerators, the country has been forced to look elsewhere for fuel. Says Catarina Ostlund, a senior advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency: “We have more capacity than the production of waste in Sweden and that is usable for incineration.”
Public Radio International has the whole story (hat tip to Ariel Schwartz at Co.Exist), a story that may seem implausible in a country like garbage-bloated America where overflowing landfills are anything but scarce.
As mentioned, the solution — a short-term one, according to Ostlund — has been to import (well, kind of import) waste from Norway. It’s kind of a great deal for the Swedes: Norway pays Sweden to take its excess waste, Sweden burns it for heat and electricity, and the ashes remaining from the incineration process, filled with highly polluting dioxins, are returned back to Norway and landfilled.
Ostlund suggests that Norway might not be the perfect partner for a trash import-export scheme, however. “I hope that we instead will get the waste from Italy or from Romania or Bulgaria or the Baltic countries because they landfill a lot in these countries," she tells PRI. "They don’t have any incineration plants or recycling plants, so they need to find a solution for their waste."
You see, Swedes are big on recycling. So big in fact that only 4 percent of all waste generated in the country is landfilled.
Good for them! However, the population's remarkably pertinacious recycling habits are also a bit of a problem given that the country relies on waste to heat and to provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes through a longstanding waste-to-energy incineration program. So with citizens simply not generating enough burnable waste to power the incinerators, the country has been forced to look elsewhere for fuel. Says Catarina Ostlund, a senior advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency: “We have more capacity than the production of waste in Sweden and that is usable for incineration.”
Public Radio International has the whole story (hat tip to Ariel Schwartz at Co.Exist), a story that may seem implausible in a country like garbage-bloated America where overflowing landfills are anything but scarce.
As mentioned, the solution — a short-term one, according to Ostlund — has been to import (well, kind of import) waste from Norway. It’s kind of a great deal for the Swedes: Norway pays Sweden to take its excess waste, Sweden burns it for heat and electricity, and the ashes remaining from the incineration process, filled with highly polluting dioxins, are returned back to Norway and landfilled.
Ostlund suggests that Norway might not be the perfect partner for a trash import-export scheme, however. “I hope that we instead will get the waste from Italy or from Romania or Bulgaria or the Baltic countries because they landfill a lot in these countries," she tells PRI. "They don’t have any incineration plants or recycling plants, so they need to find a solution for their waste."
