Our economy needs clean energy bills NOT partisan politics....
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-28-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.
And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.
Today’s post:
There was a chance that the bill originally sponsored by John Kerry and Lindsey Graham would do some very positive things to advance more clean energy and somewhat reduce pollution causing sources. Virtually no one liked all of it. But it had enough positive things that it had bipartisan support and support from utility companies and some other industry groups.
Now Senator Graham has withdrawn his support.
It seems he finds the narrow partisan bickering about immigration policy more important than supporting the future economy of the United States.
He has indicated that he understands China is making progress in clean energy whether the United States does or not and how important it is for the United States to be competitive with them.
To me, that makes his withdrawing support for the bill he helped form completely irresponsible.
Will his decision that partisan bickering is more important make us competitive in clean energy? No.
Ironically it may help solve the immigration problem by making our economy so bad no immigrants will want to come here!
I had thought that Senator Graham understood things like the likely coming of peak oil in 2014, just four years from now, as predicted by Kuwaiti scientists about 6 weeks ago. (They have their readings on the main supplies of oil in the Middle East -- which gives their prediction considerable credibility as they have inside information.)
It seems I overestimated both his knowledge of the situation and his ethics.
Will dumping the good things his bill would have accomplished postpone peak oil or the horrible damage to our economy if we don’t deal with it delay the arrival of peak oil.
Unfortunately, it will speed it up instead.
I just hope some of the more useful parts of his bill can now be passed separately.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The best way by far to add more green jobs....
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-21-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.
And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.
Today’s post:
What is the best way to add more green jobs?
Is it by trying to manipulate in what country they are added?
Not by a country mile.
We desperately need to add more jobs in the United States to get our unemployment rate down from 10 % or more to 4 % or less.
And, we are still doing less than 10 % in the United States as we need to do to add more solar and other renewable and clean energy. Plus we are still doing less than 10 % of what we need to do to make our homes, businesses, and other buildings more energy efficient.
In Texas recently, some people were agitating against buying wind power turbines from a Chinese company saying we needed to buy them from a company inside the United States.
The rationale for this was NOT that there was such a company inside the United States that made turbines that generated more electricity or were more reliable or were less expensive to install. It was that we need jobs here in the United States.
We DO need more jobs here and more green jobs here—LOTS of them; but this effort is extremely unproductive and unfortunate. It has the potential to anger the Chinese who acted in good faith. It may SLOW DOWN this project when it would pay us to help see to it that it is completed as quickly as possible. Worse, it does nothing to ensure that a better company inside the United States exists to fill the order. Worst of all, it ignores what we need to do to create more than 25 times more jobs and green jobs here than are at stake in this particular dispute.
First of all, jobs that make our homes, businesses, and other buildings more energy efficient are located mostly AT those homes, business facilities, municipal buildings, etc. That means they are ALL inside the United States.
If we did ten times as much of this as we do now, we’d add far more jobs than this misplaced effort has a prayer of creating.
For example, very few buildings in California are adequately heat proofed with insulation, double pane windows, and under the roof ventilation so that the summer heat no longer enters the buildings. Since that’s so, we need huge amounts of electricity every summer to run air conditioning that pumps heat out of those buildings when good heat proofing would have prevented the heat from getting into them in the first place.
Since we do not have a massive effort to fix this, there are thousands of creatable AND LOCAL jobs we do not now have.
I’m not sure how to fix that. But clearly it’s doable and of far more value in creating jobs soon and locally than trying to rip off a company in China.
The MUCH better news is on the other side.
There IS a way to add massive amounts of jobs in the United States and in California in building LOTS of solar installations.
The PROVEN multiplier of the jobs in building that much more solar already exists. We can build from 9 to 15 times more solar soon than we did last year!
Even better, this need not be delayed initially to build more transmission lines. (We will be very well served when there is a project to build those needed transmission lines comparable to when we built the Interstate Highway system. But it may take 20 or 30 years to get there. The good news is that there is ALSO a way to build solar that simply plugs into existing distribution lines. So no waiting for those new jobs is needed.)
FIT’s or feed-in tariffs are the secret strategy Germany has used to install HALF the world’s solar in a country that gets about as much sun as British Columbia in Canada.
It’s very simple. Installers of solar are offered guaranteed contracts by utilities over a fixed time period that both ensures the return of the capital to build them AND a decent return on that investment. The extra money that now takes over the current cost to generate electricity is then passed down to the ratepayers. This does tend to increase current rates but by only about 5%. BUT, it helps ensure that electricity will be reliably available AND since these installations produce electricity for decades after they are installed, it also means that future increases in rates will be dramatically less or even none at all where they would have been quite large otherwise.
The three key benefits to these projects are that
these contracts make it safe for banks to lend on them and even charge lower rates precisely because the payments are extremely sure to arrive;
LOTS of solar gets installed as a result;
AND, LOTS of local, installation jobs are created.
This means that EVERYONE who wants more local green energy jobs has something they can advocate that is GUARANTEED to produce them.
If in California AND in the United States we had such feed-in tariffs closely modeled on those that work extremely well in Germany AND the majority of those were used for projects that connect to existing distribution networks, we could easily generate thousands if not hundreds of thousands of green jobs in the United States.
In addition, since we do not have this now in the United States as a whole and when California, our largest solar market, does get such FIT’s and they begin to create those jobs, this will make it far more likely that they will be then enacted for the United States as whole country.
So, since that’s happening in California now, if you want more jobs and green jobs in the United States, spend some time or money supporting the proposals to add effective Feed-in Tariffs in the California.
Here are some excerpts from an article emailed to me by Craig Lewis of the FIT Coalition.
“Can the U.S. or California Institute a Feed-In Tariff?”
“ The way to grow the PV market in the U.S. is with a Feed-in Tariff, according to the FIT Coalition.”
Since it’s PROVEN to work, that’s true -- AND a bit of an understatement as you’ll see shortly
“.... the U.S. solar market remains thwarted by tight financing, fragmented policies, and spotty permitting, as well as restrictive access to public lands. Arguably, policy trumps technology in matters of energy, and the U.S. has a long way to go in developing a favorable energy and solar policy.”
“Ted Ko of the FIT Coalition spoke….at the SVPVS at PARC in Palo Alto to advocate for feed-in tariffs as the best policy to get solar into the U.S. market….”
“... the FiT Coalition, and Craig Lewis' consultancy, RightCycle, all advocate for WDG (Wholesale Distributed Generation) -- deployments under 20 megawatts with the energy sold to the utility. These WDG deployments are on the distribution grid, not the transmission grid, and as such, don't require transmission build-out.”
“.... there is significant...benefit to WDG....distribution-interconnected generation is 35 percent more valuable than transmission-interconnected generation because of low transmission losses and not having to build out the transmission grid.”
“...solar's best bet is "smaller projects that can get us there fast with no transmission lines and can deliver 5 percent ratepayer savings." “
“The answer.... is getting a feed-in tariff imposed in California and in the U.S. ...."the most effective policy in the world for getting cost-effective renewable energy online. It's simple, fair and effective." “
“In California, the 2008 IEPR recommended instituting FiTs. The IEPR is a bi-annual report published by the California Energy Commission.”
“The FiT Coalition is pushing for REESA, the Renewable Energy and Economic Stimulus Act, to include a feed-in tariff. The Coalition claims that the FiT can make the 33 percent RPS real, on schedule, and achievable.....”
"a FiT is the reason that Germany installed fifteen times more solar than California." He also asserts that "Germany is the gold standard for FiTs."
“Here's a list of some FIT or FIT legislation activity in progress:
Municipalities
Gainesville, FL enacted a German style FiT in early 2009, which is sold out to 2016. This municipality has high rates in the 26 to 32 cent range.
California's SMUD launched a massive FiT early this year with low rates in the 14 to 15 cent range.
Discussions for FiTs are in the early stage with Palo Alto, California and several local utilities in Colorado.
States and Provinces
Vermont enacted the first statewide FiT in mid-2009.
Ontario, Canada has just enacted a comprehensive FiT.
REESA and AB1106 are now active in California.
National
HR6401 (Inslee) will be re-introduced in mid-2010."
************
California has installed more solar than anywhere else in the United States. This article ends with a graph showing that Germany has installed dramatically more solar every year than California has in 2006, 2007, & 2008.
This article says that Germany installed 10 times as much solar as Germany in 2009. That may be a touch off. A recent article on solar in the San Jose Mercury News had the numbers. In 2009, more solar was installed in California than ever before. But Germany only installed a bit over NINE times as much.
Meanwhile there is enormously more solar potential in CALIFORNIA than in Germany. The article says California has 50% more or 1.5 times as much. My analysis shows that it's likely closer to FIVE times as much. Even more important is that this is certainly true in the summer in California when the peak load on the grid for electricity is driven by air conditioning.
So to return to my main point…..
Why make an effort to prevent other countries from selling green products here that are made there when we can add over 10 times that many jobs here by advocating a policy that is already proven to increase solar installation jobs by that much?
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-21-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.
And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.
Today’s post:
What is the best way to add more green jobs?
Is it by trying to manipulate in what country they are added?
Not by a country mile.
We desperately need to add more jobs in the United States to get our unemployment rate down from 10 % or more to 4 % or less.
And, we are still doing less than 10 % in the United States as we need to do to add more solar and other renewable and clean energy. Plus we are still doing less than 10 % of what we need to do to make our homes, businesses, and other buildings more energy efficient.
In Texas recently, some people were agitating against buying wind power turbines from a Chinese company saying we needed to buy them from a company inside the United States.
The rationale for this was NOT that there was such a company inside the United States that made turbines that generated more electricity or were more reliable or were less expensive to install. It was that we need jobs here in the United States.
We DO need more jobs here and more green jobs here—LOTS of them; but this effort is extremely unproductive and unfortunate. It has the potential to anger the Chinese who acted in good faith. It may SLOW DOWN this project when it would pay us to help see to it that it is completed as quickly as possible. Worse, it does nothing to ensure that a better company inside the United States exists to fill the order. Worst of all, it ignores what we need to do to create more than 25 times more jobs and green jobs here than are at stake in this particular dispute.
First of all, jobs that make our homes, businesses, and other buildings more energy efficient are located mostly AT those homes, business facilities, municipal buildings, etc. That means they are ALL inside the United States.
If we did ten times as much of this as we do now, we’d add far more jobs than this misplaced effort has a prayer of creating.
For example, very few buildings in California are adequately heat proofed with insulation, double pane windows, and under the roof ventilation so that the summer heat no longer enters the buildings. Since that’s so, we need huge amounts of electricity every summer to run air conditioning that pumps heat out of those buildings when good heat proofing would have prevented the heat from getting into them in the first place.
Since we do not have a massive effort to fix this, there are thousands of creatable AND LOCAL jobs we do not now have.
I’m not sure how to fix that. But clearly it’s doable and of far more value in creating jobs soon and locally than trying to rip off a company in China.
The MUCH better news is on the other side.
There IS a way to add massive amounts of jobs in the United States and in California in building LOTS of solar installations.
The PROVEN multiplier of the jobs in building that much more solar already exists. We can build from 9 to 15 times more solar soon than we did last year!
Even better, this need not be delayed initially to build more transmission lines. (We will be very well served when there is a project to build those needed transmission lines comparable to when we built the Interstate Highway system. But it may take 20 or 30 years to get there. The good news is that there is ALSO a way to build solar that simply plugs into existing distribution lines. So no waiting for those new jobs is needed.)
FIT’s or feed-in tariffs are the secret strategy Germany has used to install HALF the world’s solar in a country that gets about as much sun as British Columbia in Canada.
It’s very simple. Installers of solar are offered guaranteed contracts by utilities over a fixed time period that both ensures the return of the capital to build them AND a decent return on that investment. The extra money that now takes over the current cost to generate electricity is then passed down to the ratepayers. This does tend to increase current rates but by only about 5%. BUT, it helps ensure that electricity will be reliably available AND since these installations produce electricity for decades after they are installed, it also means that future increases in rates will be dramatically less or even none at all where they would have been quite large otherwise.
The three key benefits to these projects are that
these contracts make it safe for banks to lend on them and even charge lower rates precisely because the payments are extremely sure to arrive;
LOTS of solar gets installed as a result;
AND, LOTS of local, installation jobs are created.
This means that EVERYONE who wants more local green energy jobs has something they can advocate that is GUARANTEED to produce them.
If in California AND in the United States we had such feed-in tariffs closely modeled on those that work extremely well in Germany AND the majority of those were used for projects that connect to existing distribution networks, we could easily generate thousands if not hundreds of thousands of green jobs in the United States.
In addition, since we do not have this now in the United States as a whole and when California, our largest solar market, does get such FIT’s and they begin to create those jobs, this will make it far more likely that they will be then enacted for the United States as whole country.
So, since that’s happening in California now, if you want more jobs and green jobs in the United States, spend some time or money supporting the proposals to add effective Feed-in Tariffs in the California.
Here are some excerpts from an article emailed to me by Craig Lewis of the FIT Coalition.
“Can the U.S. or California Institute a Feed-In Tariff?”
“ The way to grow the PV market in the U.S. is with a Feed-in Tariff, according to the FIT Coalition.”
Since it’s PROVEN to work, that’s true -- AND a bit of an understatement as you’ll see shortly
“.... the U.S. solar market remains thwarted by tight financing, fragmented policies, and spotty permitting, as well as restrictive access to public lands. Arguably, policy trumps technology in matters of energy, and the U.S. has a long way to go in developing a favorable energy and solar policy.”
“Ted Ko of the FIT Coalition spoke….at the SVPVS at PARC in Palo Alto to advocate for feed-in tariffs as the best policy to get solar into the U.S. market….”
“... the FiT Coalition, and Craig Lewis' consultancy, RightCycle, all advocate for WDG (Wholesale Distributed Generation) -- deployments under 20 megawatts with the energy sold to the utility. These WDG deployments are on the distribution grid, not the transmission grid, and as such, don't require transmission build-out.”
“.... there is significant...benefit to WDG....distribution-interconnected generation is 35 percent more valuable than transmission-interconnected generation because of low transmission losses and not having to build out the transmission grid.”
“...solar's best bet is "smaller projects that can get us there fast with no transmission lines and can deliver 5 percent ratepayer savings." “
“The answer.... is getting a feed-in tariff imposed in California and in the U.S. ...."the most effective policy in the world for getting cost-effective renewable energy online. It's simple, fair and effective." “
“In California, the 2008 IEPR recommended instituting FiTs. The IEPR is a bi-annual report published by the California Energy Commission.”
“The FiT Coalition is pushing for REESA, the Renewable Energy and Economic Stimulus Act, to include a feed-in tariff. The Coalition claims that the FiT can make the 33 percent RPS real, on schedule, and achievable.....”
"a FiT is the reason that Germany installed fifteen times more solar than California." He also asserts that "Germany is the gold standard for FiTs."
“Here's a list of some FIT or FIT legislation activity in progress:
Municipalities
Gainesville, FL enacted a German style FiT in early 2009, which is sold out to 2016. This municipality has high rates in the 26 to 32 cent range.
California's SMUD launched a massive FiT early this year with low rates in the 14 to 15 cent range.
Discussions for FiTs are in the early stage with Palo Alto, California and several local utilities in Colorado.
States and Provinces
Vermont enacted the first statewide FiT in mid-2009.
Ontario, Canada has just enacted a comprehensive FiT.
REESA and AB1106 are now active in California.
National
HR6401 (Inslee) will be re-introduced in mid-2010."
************
California has installed more solar than anywhere else in the United States. This article ends with a graph showing that Germany has installed dramatically more solar every year than California has in 2006, 2007, & 2008.
This article says that Germany installed 10 times as much solar as Germany in 2009. That may be a touch off. A recent article on solar in the San Jose Mercury News had the numbers. In 2009, more solar was installed in California than ever before. But Germany only installed a bit over NINE times as much.
Meanwhile there is enormously more solar potential in CALIFORNIA than in Germany. The article says California has 50% more or 1.5 times as much. My analysis shows that it's likely closer to FIVE times as much. Even more important is that this is certainly true in the summer in California when the peak load on the grid for electricity is driven by air conditioning.
So to return to my main point…..
Why make an effort to prevent other countries from selling green products here that are made there when we can add over 10 times that many jobs here by advocating a policy that is already proven to increase solar installation jobs by that much?
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Wind Power MUCH faster but some new nuclear will help....
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-14-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.
And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.
Today’s post:
Point one:
In the near term, getting more electricity that involves no coal, natural gas, or oil and produces no CO2, can best be done and & is already being done dramatically faster by simply building a bit more wind generation.
Further, we are already setting up to switch from using oil for vehicles to using electricity.
Wind generated electricity is still a bit less expensive to build per kilowatt produced than solar and is already competitive with coal. Solar is catching up; but we have a lot of untapped potential for wind power still; and as the real costs of mining coal and burning it without pollution begin to be included in its pricing, wind will be far cheaper.
And, we are just getting started building more wind generation of electricity. We can clearly build more at triple the rate we have been. Even better, in 2009 it was recently reported that 10 megawatts of wind generation were added in the United States. One the stories reporting it noted that this is the amount of electricity that THREE nuclear power plants would produce.
So, if we begin to build three times a many wind generators per year, we can add the electricity generation of NINE new nuclear power plants per year.
One reason for this is threefold. Much smaller wind generators are now available. They now have the tax incentives that have been in place already for the big windmills I just found out. And, without reducing the output apparently, existing wind farms can come close to doubling their output on the same land they already own or lease by adding these smaller wind generators.
With good reason, T. Boone Pickens has noted the corridor between Iowa and West Texas, the reason the United States may be the “Saudi Arabia” of wind.
By building a combination of both large and small wind generators in this area and in the smaller areas in the United States where there is a lot of wind such as the three areas in California now in use and the proposed offshore area off the East coast, we can easily build 30 megawatts of new wind generated electricity per year. In fact, since in some areas individual homeowners can already cost justify building their own small wind generator, we may be able to do even better than that. In addition, some small wind generators are already being added to many skyscraper sized tall office building in many cities.
My source for some of this information was the online article from NPR: “SCIENCE FRIDAY” from NPR with Ira Flatow from (Friday, 4-9-2010). (The transcript became available later.)
And, this source quotes Mike Bergey, the president of Bergey Windpower Company in Norman, Oklahoma. His company makes one of the small sized wind power generators. He said that in some communities with their wind access and the current tax credits, they can get as short as a three year payback for installing one of his company’s systems!
Although wind is not always blowing in any one of these locations, by beginning to install many wind generators in thousands across the United States, Canada, and Mexico adding new transmission lines and smart grid technology, this will solve that problem in part.
And, when this new wind generated electricity is added to the current power plants and more photovoltaic and thermal solar and some new geothermal this will become a reasonably reliable 24 hour system and will rely far less on the generation of electicity that can be done reliably 24 hours a day that the existing fossil fuel using power plants provide.
At that point we can possibly retrofit some to these plants to use Bloom Energy’s technology to power this with fuel cells instead of burning the fuel which will be more efficient and far less polluting.
Certainly we will begin to need NO new coal fired plants despite increasing the amount of electricity generated.
That all said, it would be helpful if we had another way to add more electricity to the grid that was available 24-7 and that did NOT use fossil fuels.
That leads me to my second point:
Point two:
Some more nuclear power plants would help do just that.
Here’s the first reality check however for those who think we can build 45 new nuclear plants at all quickly. It was in an online NPR article, yesterday, 4-13:
“Nuclear analyst Matthew Bunn at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government says it'll have to be a long swim for nuclear power to slow global warming. Right now, he says, only four new nuclear plants are built every year worldwide.”
That suggests that a goal of building ONE new nuclear power plant per year for the next 10 years would be a realistic goal.
Remember that we just built three times that much wind generation in 2009 and are well able to build the equivalent of more like TEN times that much wind generation per year for the next several years.
That’s why we can build new clean energy in that time so much faster with wind than with nuclear.
Then, in addition to the fact the U.S. government may have to almost finance these new plants to get them built, the main subject of NPR article I just referenced, there are several other considerations to make these power plants as safe to have built as possible.
It’s clearly a large part of the solution to the nuclear waste issue to instead enrich it at the reactor site or in a breeder reactor to begin with where it becomes plutonium and is then reused for many, many years.
That helps to avoid transporting nuclear and radioactive materials and makes our finite supply of uranium last dramatically longer.
But, plutonium can be made into nuclear weapons. So that means EVERY one of these new reactors must be built in an area in the United States that is centrally located and away from the coasts in a politically stable state and to be placed there initially, one that is somewhat conservative politically.
Then the U.S. government needs to use its armed forces to protect this site 24-7 as long as it contains any such materials – essentially forever.
Needless to say, that suggests we can’t afford to build very many of these a year.
The good news is that one a year for the next 10 years may still be doable and possibly safe if done well. And, with this central location, these 10 reactors would add a stability anchor producing electricity 24-7 to the grid eventually allowing close to all of the rest of it to be from renewable sources &/or extremely clean fossil fuel plants that use Bloom Energy’s fuel cells and recycle the CO2 into biofuels with algae.
The four states where these 10 new nuclear plants might best be built are North Dakota, likely in the Southwest corner of the state where they could be paired with wind generation; South Dakota in the Western part of the state, again paired with wind generation; Nebraska in the Western part of the state, again paired with wind generation; and in Utah paired with solar thermal and solar photovoltaic installations.
Then once those four areas are connected across the country with the grid, we will have a very robust system even with the majority of it eventually being from renewable sources.
I think it will take a LOT of work just to build that many nuclear plants and keep each one safe. I DO think it’s probably desirable and worth doing if we take peak oil and global warming seriously. (I think we are fools or horribly misinformed if we do not.)
However, the idea that we can build 45 new nuclear plants even in 10 years strikes me as both horribly unsafe and about as realistic a goal as asking Harry Potter to use his wand to make that much electricity for us.
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-14-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.
And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.
Today’s post:
Point one:
In the near term, getting more electricity that involves no coal, natural gas, or oil and produces no CO2, can best be done and & is already being done dramatically faster by simply building a bit more wind generation.
Further, we are already setting up to switch from using oil for vehicles to using electricity.
Wind generated electricity is still a bit less expensive to build per kilowatt produced than solar and is already competitive with coal. Solar is catching up; but we have a lot of untapped potential for wind power still; and as the real costs of mining coal and burning it without pollution begin to be included in its pricing, wind will be far cheaper.
And, we are just getting started building more wind generation of electricity. We can clearly build more at triple the rate we have been. Even better, in 2009 it was recently reported that 10 megawatts of wind generation were added in the United States. One the stories reporting it noted that this is the amount of electricity that THREE nuclear power plants would produce.
So, if we begin to build three times a many wind generators per year, we can add the electricity generation of NINE new nuclear power plants per year.
One reason for this is threefold. Much smaller wind generators are now available. They now have the tax incentives that have been in place already for the big windmills I just found out. And, without reducing the output apparently, existing wind farms can come close to doubling their output on the same land they already own or lease by adding these smaller wind generators.
With good reason, T. Boone Pickens has noted the corridor between Iowa and West Texas, the reason the United States may be the “Saudi Arabia” of wind.
By building a combination of both large and small wind generators in this area and in the smaller areas in the United States where there is a lot of wind such as the three areas in California now in use and the proposed offshore area off the East coast, we can easily build 30 megawatts of new wind generated electricity per year. In fact, since in some areas individual homeowners can already cost justify building their own small wind generator, we may be able to do even better than that. In addition, some small wind generators are already being added to many skyscraper sized tall office building in many cities.
My source for some of this information was the online article from NPR: “SCIENCE FRIDAY” from NPR with Ira Flatow from (Friday, 4-9-2010). (The transcript became available later.)
And, this source quotes Mike Bergey, the president of Bergey Windpower Company in Norman, Oklahoma. His company makes one of the small sized wind power generators. He said that in some communities with their wind access and the current tax credits, they can get as short as a three year payback for installing one of his company’s systems!
Although wind is not always blowing in any one of these locations, by beginning to install many wind generators in thousands across the United States, Canada, and Mexico adding new transmission lines and smart grid technology, this will solve that problem in part.
And, when this new wind generated electricity is added to the current power plants and more photovoltaic and thermal solar and some new geothermal this will become a reasonably reliable 24 hour system and will rely far less on the generation of electicity that can be done reliably 24 hours a day that the existing fossil fuel using power plants provide.
At that point we can possibly retrofit some to these plants to use Bloom Energy’s technology to power this with fuel cells instead of burning the fuel which will be more efficient and far less polluting.
Certainly we will begin to need NO new coal fired plants despite increasing the amount of electricity generated.
That all said, it would be helpful if we had another way to add more electricity to the grid that was available 24-7 and that did NOT use fossil fuels.
That leads me to my second point:
Point two:
Some more nuclear power plants would help do just that.
Here’s the first reality check however for those who think we can build 45 new nuclear plants at all quickly. It was in an online NPR article, yesterday, 4-13:
“Nuclear analyst Matthew Bunn at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government says it'll have to be a long swim for nuclear power to slow global warming. Right now, he says, only four new nuclear plants are built every year worldwide.”
That suggests that a goal of building ONE new nuclear power plant per year for the next 10 years would be a realistic goal.
Remember that we just built three times that much wind generation in 2009 and are well able to build the equivalent of more like TEN times that much wind generation per year for the next several years.
That’s why we can build new clean energy in that time so much faster with wind than with nuclear.
Then, in addition to the fact the U.S. government may have to almost finance these new plants to get them built, the main subject of NPR article I just referenced, there are several other considerations to make these power plants as safe to have built as possible.
It’s clearly a large part of the solution to the nuclear waste issue to instead enrich it at the reactor site or in a breeder reactor to begin with where it becomes plutonium and is then reused for many, many years.
That helps to avoid transporting nuclear and radioactive materials and makes our finite supply of uranium last dramatically longer.
But, plutonium can be made into nuclear weapons. So that means EVERY one of these new reactors must be built in an area in the United States that is centrally located and away from the coasts in a politically stable state and to be placed there initially, one that is somewhat conservative politically.
Then the U.S. government needs to use its armed forces to protect this site 24-7 as long as it contains any such materials – essentially forever.
Needless to say, that suggests we can’t afford to build very many of these a year.
The good news is that one a year for the next 10 years may still be doable and possibly safe if done well. And, with this central location, these 10 reactors would add a stability anchor producing electricity 24-7 to the grid eventually allowing close to all of the rest of it to be from renewable sources &/or extremely clean fossil fuel plants that use Bloom Energy’s fuel cells and recycle the CO2 into biofuels with algae.
The four states where these 10 new nuclear plants might best be built are North Dakota, likely in the Southwest corner of the state where they could be paired with wind generation; South Dakota in the Western part of the state, again paired with wind generation; Nebraska in the Western part of the state, again paired with wind generation; and in Utah paired with solar thermal and solar photovoltaic installations.
Then once those four areas are connected across the country with the grid, we will have a very robust system even with the majority of it eventually being from renewable sources.
I think it will take a LOT of work just to build that many nuclear plants and keep each one safe. I DO think it’s probably desirable and worth doing if we take peak oil and global warming seriously. (I think we are fools or horribly misinformed if we do not.)
However, the idea that we can build 45 new nuclear plants even in 10 years strikes me as both horribly unsafe and about as realistic a goal as asking Harry Potter to use his wand to make that much electricity for us.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
In California, PG & E's proposed new rates would be harmful....
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-7-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.
And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.
Today’s post:
This recently came to my attention because of the very negative media coverage of
PG E’s recent rate proposal to California’s Public Utilities Commission.
There are two grave problems with their proposal.
I. They switch away from the current rate structure that incentivizes energy conservation and the building of renewable energy sources for electricity generation and has a track record of success in those two ways to one that does not do so.
That is totally wrong and is more than adequate grounds for having their new rates denied.
II. They do not propose rates with much of a total increase overall to deal with several issues they should be funding soon but are not adequately funding now as far as I’ve read.
By itself that is troubling but not sufficient to decline their new rates.
But, it suggests that PG & E has not thought through what it should be doing to position itself well for the future or it would be asking for a slightly greater overall rate increase to begin to fund those actions.
I think the people in the California Public Utilities Commission should be asking PG & E why it has not asked for a slight overall rate increase to begin to fund those actions.
But the most important thing is that our PUC turn down PG & E’s new rate structure that they have recently proposed.
I. The problem is that the heaviest users of electricity in California are those who live in the warmest and hottest parts of the state who use abundant amounts of air conditioning during the warmest and hottest summer days.
The current rates are high enough for such users to incentivize retrofits to these buildings that both prevent heat from entering them in other ways and better insulate them. Preventing the heat from getting in dramatically reduces the cost of using electricity to pump the heat out after the fact.
The current rates are high enough to cause such users to install solar energy on their buildings and on canopies over their parking lots. And, since such installations produce the most electricity in California during hot, sunny weather, that dramatically reduces the load on electricity generated by burning natural gas. That reduces the likelihood of brown outs during peak demand because the solar electricity also peaks at that time. Lastly, this set of things removes a good bit of the pressure on PG & E to build more natural gas burning electricity generation capacity and gives them time to build more solar that feeds into the grid.
Each of these things are what PG & E AND the State of California should be doing and expanding for the reasons I just explained. But adding in the desirability of combating global warming and protecting the economy from collapse when we reach and pass Peak Oil by increasing energy efficiency and building much more sources for renewable energy and it is essential that we continue to incentivize this with the current rates.
The current rate structure provides enough incentive to do them we are making some progress towards getting them done. These current rates therefore are benefitting PG & E and the State of California.
I very strongly suggest that the PUC turn down these new rates for these reasons. They are MUCH worse than the current rates.
II. PG & E’s proposed rates do NOT have much of a total increase overall to deal with several issues they should be funding soon but are not adequately funding now as far as I’ve read.
For example, with somewhat higher rates such as an increase overall of 1 % plus inflation for the next 5 years but using the existing rate structure, PG & E could fund some of the following things that they perhaps should be planning to do. (Given the importance of the things on the following list, a larger increase would be helpful but more than this modest increase during a severe recession would not be wise.)
1. They could offer slightly lower rates to homeowners and businesses and other groups that retrofit their building with much better heat proofing and insulation and/or that buy much more efficient air conditioners and/or that install onsite solar photovoltaic arrays.
2. They could work with a large bank to and add some funds to both make these loans safer for the bank and that subsidize lower rates to the people making these energy efficient upgrades.
The combination of those two things would double down the incentives to large users of electricity in hot and sunny areas in California. They would use perhaps half as much energy AND get a small extra price break.
Since that will get more energy efficiency and renewable energy installed, it will make the supply of summer electricity more reliable and allow PG & E the time to build more solar thermal and solar photovoltaic installations instead of adding more natural gas burning plants to generate electricity.
3. PG & E could work out a joint financing program with communities that adapt the Berkeley plan to make these retrofits more affordable and the loan to go with the property but also use this plan to participate in the savings created so that the installation of solar or Bloom Energy’s new fuel cells by individuals and groups at their site or location makes PG & E some money instead of removing that electricity from PG & E’s revenue stream.
In addition, PG & E and some good electrical engineers should work out a safe way for such users to be able to continue their energy use off the grid during times when the grid is temporarily shut down. This will also increase the incentives, particularly for businesses and medical facilities to add such distributed generation. I understand this is not currently allowed or safe. But there are reasons that the technical and procedural solutions to make this possible should be put in place immediately or very soon.
4. If the United States does build more nuclear reactors it may be safer for security reasons, for earthquake safety, and for reasons of political feasibility to build them in Arizona, Nevada, or Utah. But PG & E can and should be funding planning to support the building of such reactors if they are built and guarantee some electricity purchases in exchange for access to the electricity once it is available.
5. Between added energy efficiency, far more solar generated electricity, and perhaps new some nuclear, PG & E should be making and beginning to fund some plans for the sharp increase in people using their electricity to power vehicles over the next 20 to 30 years. Far more all electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are already on their way. And, that trend will at least double as we begin to approach peak oil.
(The Kuwaiti’s just did a credible analysis that suggests this will happen in 2014 just four years from now. The real economic impact may take another 10 or 20 years to have large effects.
But clearly the time to make plans to deal with it is now.)
6. Given Bloom Energy’s new technology that uses natural gas to efficiently make electricity with no release of oxides of Nitrogen or particulates, PG & E should be funding projects to see if some of its existing natural gas burning plants might be replaced by this technology and that future plants built to generate electricity from natural gas use this technology.
7. But there is an even more significant development from this technology. At some point in the next 10 years this technology will be used to substitute for gasoline burning and diesel burning engines in hybrids and plug-in hybrids. So it’s a bit longer range, but PG & E should be funding some plans in two directions. First, to deal with increases in the price of natural gas due to this increased demand which may happen worldwide and perhaps to plan to be a provider of natural gas or natural gas and electricity fueling stations for these vehicles in their service area.
8. PG & E should at least double the amount of installations of large solar thermal and solar photovoltaic energy farms and to build the power lines needed to bring the electricity from some these plants not already near transmission lines.
That set of things will take some money to design well and to test, let alone to roll out. But PG & E should be asking for at least some new money to begin the process by asking for some moderate overall rate increases now.
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-7-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.
And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.
Today’s post:
This recently came to my attention because of the very negative media coverage of
PG E’s recent rate proposal to California’s Public Utilities Commission.
There are two grave problems with their proposal.
I. They switch away from the current rate structure that incentivizes energy conservation and the building of renewable energy sources for electricity generation and has a track record of success in those two ways to one that does not do so.
That is totally wrong and is more than adequate grounds for having their new rates denied.
II. They do not propose rates with much of a total increase overall to deal with several issues they should be funding soon but are not adequately funding now as far as I’ve read.
By itself that is troubling but not sufficient to decline their new rates.
But, it suggests that PG & E has not thought through what it should be doing to position itself well for the future or it would be asking for a slightly greater overall rate increase to begin to fund those actions.
I think the people in the California Public Utilities Commission should be asking PG & E why it has not asked for a slight overall rate increase to begin to fund those actions.
But the most important thing is that our PUC turn down PG & E’s new rate structure that they have recently proposed.
I. The problem is that the heaviest users of electricity in California are those who live in the warmest and hottest parts of the state who use abundant amounts of air conditioning during the warmest and hottest summer days.
The current rates are high enough for such users to incentivize retrofits to these buildings that both prevent heat from entering them in other ways and better insulate them. Preventing the heat from getting in dramatically reduces the cost of using electricity to pump the heat out after the fact.
The current rates are high enough to cause such users to install solar energy on their buildings and on canopies over their parking lots. And, since such installations produce the most electricity in California during hot, sunny weather, that dramatically reduces the load on electricity generated by burning natural gas. That reduces the likelihood of brown outs during peak demand because the solar electricity also peaks at that time. Lastly, this set of things removes a good bit of the pressure on PG & E to build more natural gas burning electricity generation capacity and gives them time to build more solar that feeds into the grid.
Each of these things are what PG & E AND the State of California should be doing and expanding for the reasons I just explained. But adding in the desirability of combating global warming and protecting the economy from collapse when we reach and pass Peak Oil by increasing energy efficiency and building much more sources for renewable energy and it is essential that we continue to incentivize this with the current rates.
The current rate structure provides enough incentive to do them we are making some progress towards getting them done. These current rates therefore are benefitting PG & E and the State of California.
I very strongly suggest that the PUC turn down these new rates for these reasons. They are MUCH worse than the current rates.
II. PG & E’s proposed rates do NOT have much of a total increase overall to deal with several issues they should be funding soon but are not adequately funding now as far as I’ve read.
For example, with somewhat higher rates such as an increase overall of 1 % plus inflation for the next 5 years but using the existing rate structure, PG & E could fund some of the following things that they perhaps should be planning to do. (Given the importance of the things on the following list, a larger increase would be helpful but more than this modest increase during a severe recession would not be wise.)
1. They could offer slightly lower rates to homeowners and businesses and other groups that retrofit their building with much better heat proofing and insulation and/or that buy much more efficient air conditioners and/or that install onsite solar photovoltaic arrays.
2. They could work with a large bank to and add some funds to both make these loans safer for the bank and that subsidize lower rates to the people making these energy efficient upgrades.
The combination of those two things would double down the incentives to large users of electricity in hot and sunny areas in California. They would use perhaps half as much energy AND get a small extra price break.
Since that will get more energy efficiency and renewable energy installed, it will make the supply of summer electricity more reliable and allow PG & E the time to build more solar thermal and solar photovoltaic installations instead of adding more natural gas burning plants to generate electricity.
3. PG & E could work out a joint financing program with communities that adapt the Berkeley plan to make these retrofits more affordable and the loan to go with the property but also use this plan to participate in the savings created so that the installation of solar or Bloom Energy’s new fuel cells by individuals and groups at their site or location makes PG & E some money instead of removing that electricity from PG & E’s revenue stream.
In addition, PG & E and some good electrical engineers should work out a safe way for such users to be able to continue their energy use off the grid during times when the grid is temporarily shut down. This will also increase the incentives, particularly for businesses and medical facilities to add such distributed generation. I understand this is not currently allowed or safe. But there are reasons that the technical and procedural solutions to make this possible should be put in place immediately or very soon.
4. If the United States does build more nuclear reactors it may be safer for security reasons, for earthquake safety, and for reasons of political feasibility to build them in Arizona, Nevada, or Utah. But PG & E can and should be funding planning to support the building of such reactors if they are built and guarantee some electricity purchases in exchange for access to the electricity once it is available.
5. Between added energy efficiency, far more solar generated electricity, and perhaps new some nuclear, PG & E should be making and beginning to fund some plans for the sharp increase in people using their electricity to power vehicles over the next 20 to 30 years. Far more all electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are already on their way. And, that trend will at least double as we begin to approach peak oil.
(The Kuwaiti’s just did a credible analysis that suggests this will happen in 2014 just four years from now. The real economic impact may take another 10 or 20 years to have large effects.
But clearly the time to make plans to deal with it is now.)
6. Given Bloom Energy’s new technology that uses natural gas to efficiently make electricity with no release of oxides of Nitrogen or particulates, PG & E should be funding projects to see if some of its existing natural gas burning plants might be replaced by this technology and that future plants built to generate electricity from natural gas use this technology.
7. But there is an even more significant development from this technology. At some point in the next 10 years this technology will be used to substitute for gasoline burning and diesel burning engines in hybrids and plug-in hybrids. So it’s a bit longer range, but PG & E should be funding some plans in two directions. First, to deal with increases in the price of natural gas due to this increased demand which may happen worldwide and perhaps to plan to be a provider of natural gas or natural gas and electricity fueling stations for these vehicles in their service area.
8. PG & E should at least double the amount of installations of large solar thermal and solar photovoltaic energy farms and to build the power lines needed to bring the electricity from some these plants not already near transmission lines.
That set of things will take some money to design well and to test, let alone to roll out. But PG & E should be asking for at least some new money to begin the process by asking for some moderate overall rate increases now.
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