SOLAR TODAY Blog

Our air-quality columnist Robert Ukeiley pointed out this morning that in April, for the first time, non-hydro renewable electric generation totaled more than 5 percent of the American total. Poking around in the monthly report from the Energy Information Administration, we learn that for April, non-hydro generation amounted to about 15.3 terawatt-hours, compared to 287.8 terawatt-hours from all energy sources. This computes out to 5.33%.

Doesn't sound like much, but recall that in 2009 wind and solar capacity in the United States grew roughly 40%, and that growth rate has been pretty consistent over the past five years. If we project that growth rate forward, and assume that hydro, coal and nuclear power sources will NOT grow (that's a pretty safe bet over the next 10 years), then wind, solar, biomass and geothermal sources can be expected to provide more than 10% of all electric power by the middle of 2012, 20% by 2014, 25% by 2015, and 50% by 2017. At that point, renewables replace coal.

By 2018, renewables can provide 75% of all electric power. Existing hydro and nuclear facilities easily make up the rest, and we're more-or-less carbon free. By 2019 we're at 100%. The nuclear plants can retire, and we can even give the rivers back to the salmon.

What happens to the coal industry in that scenario? We can expect a lot of kicking and screaming, but there's probably not much room for coal mines to cut prices enough to compete with free wind and sun. One thing I learned trying to run a profitable website is that it's very hard to compete with free.

This calculation may be a pipe dream, but it makes me feel a lot better about the flat refusal of conservative legislators to deal with climate and energy issues. Maybe, just maybe, market forces can save the world.

By Seth Masia
SOLAR TODAY deputy editor

Last Friday, MIT released a report advocating natural gas as a "bridge" fuel to displace both coal and petroleum motor fuel while more sustainable energy sources come on line. Notable by its absence from the report was any summary of the water- and air-quality issues created by natural gas drilling. Because the report comes in the wake of the network debut of the award-winning documentary Gasland, the omission seemed startling.

Frank Clemente of Penn State, usually an apologist for coal and oil, has a nice summary of the MIT-gas-drilling situation at Energy-Facts.org.

Here in Colorado, natural gas producers have been fracking new wells on the West Slope for a decade. The result has been serious contamination of the groundwater in a region that has precious little water to begin with. We're also worried about heavy-metal poisoning of streams from uranium mining, which is set for another boom.

It's a little-known fact that Colorado decommissioned its only nuclear power reactor some 18 years ago, replacing it with a gas turbine. We'd love to see gas turbines displace our remaining coal plants, but hope that as each conversion is done the steam circuit also include a trough field for concentrating solar, and a geothermal well. We have plenty of coal and gas and uranium here. We also have plenty of sun, wind and hot rock. What we don't have is fresh water.

Climate Progress blogger says: Deploy without delay

By Seth Masia
SOLAR TODAY Deputy Editor

Buried on page 95, midway through his chapter titled "The Clean Energy Solution," Joe Romm summarizes the only workable strategy for saving the planet from catastrophic climate change. That strategy focuses on rapid commercialization of existing renewable energy technologies. Our plan, he says, must be "Deployment, deployment, deployment, R&D, deployment, deployment, deployment."

That's a powerful message for wind, solar and geothermal businesses to run with.

Straight Up is a collection of short articles from Romm's blog ClimateProgress.org. If you read that blog, you're probably a passionate fan. If you don't, you should know that Romm, an MIT Ph.D. in physics, ran a number of renewable energy programs at the Department of Energy from 1993 to 1998. Since then, he has consulted with a number of major corporations on energy issues, written several books and joined the Center for American Progress as a senior fellow. He has consistently beaten the drum for fast commercialization of concentrating solar power (CSP), wind, photovoltaics (PV) and geothermal energy sources. These are mature, scalable technologies that must overcome policy barriers, not technical hurdles.

Straight Up, however, is not mainly a book advocating policy and tax code changes. It's a collection of spirited and readable critiques of the delaying forces -- the corporations and institutions who want to see no changes in national policies and tax codes that now work to make them rich. In particular, Romm eviscerates the American news establishment for ignoring climate catastrophe issues, even while journalists around the world have made climate the story of the century.

The book is going to upset some pure-science folks: Romm notes that a favorite delaying tactic is to call for research breakthroughs before carbon-neutral energy sources can be competitive. He summarizes critical data proving that mature and scalable renewable sources are at grid parity now and can be profitably commercialized wherever utilities have incentive to use them.

Straight Up probably won't convert true believers in a fossil fuel future, but it may stiffen the spines of some renewable energy advocates. It's full of solid fact-based arguments, properly referenced within the text (no footnotes!), along with a lot of low-carbon fire and brimstone.

The book's release date is April 19, in time for Earth Day, but it can be ordered at Amazon.com now at a pre-publication price of $19.75.

By Seth Masia
Solar Today deputy editor

On Wednesday afternoon, the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado held a panel discussion on "The Challenge of Renewable Energy." Three scientists argued passionately for more research funding on renewable technologies, without advocating faster implementation of existing technologies. That was disappointing.

More startling was the assertion, by a renewable technologies scientist at one of our national laboratories, that Germany has been successful in implementing distributed PV using a policy that "forces consumers to buy renewab le energy at very high prices." Several audience members promptly objected, loudly, that this is not a fair description of a feed-in tariff.

Here are the facts: Germany's feed-in tariff adds about five percent to the average residential power bill. As the largest market within the European grid, Germany gets its electricity through a mix of coal (49%), nuclear (28%), natural gas (10%), wind (4%), hydro (4.5%) and biomass (2%) sources (these numbers are subject to rounding errors). About 1 percent of the total generation comes from local PV installations.

The average residential rate for electricity in Germany is about 30 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to about 11 cents in the U.S. But German households are a great deal more energy-efficient than American homes. The average annual electric consumption for a German household is about 3340 kilowatt hours, compared to 11,040 kWh in the U.S.

Bottom line: the average German household spends about $1000 annually for electricity, and the average American household spends about $1214.

Former President George W. Bush will address Windpower 2010, the annual conference of the American Wind Power Association, in Dallas on May 25.

AWEA slipped this announcement quietly into its own blog earlier in the week.

Bush, now a resident of Dallas, helped launch the booming Texas wind power industry as governor in the late ‘90s, and signed a 20% RPS for Texas. But as president he opposed greenhouse gas regulation and any form of national renewable energy standard.

Windpower 2010, scheduled for May 23-26, follows immediately after Solar 2010, the National Solar Conference running in Phoenix, May 17-22.

Solar and wind power can supply the vast majority of North Carolina's electricity needs, according to a major report released last week by a Duke University research group.

Combined with generation from hydroelectric and other renewable sources, such as landfill gas, only six percent of electricity would have to be purchased from outside the system or produced at conventional plants.

"Even though the wind does not blow nor the sun shine all the time, careful management, readily available storage and other renewable sources, can produce nearly all the electricity North Carolinians consume," explained Dr. John Blackburn, the study's author. Dr. Blackburn is Professor Emeritus of Economics and former Chancellor at Duke University.

"Critics of renewable power point out that solar and wind sources are intermittent," Dr. Blackburn continued. "The truth is that solar and wind are complementary in North Carolina. Wind speeds are usually higher at night than in the daytime. They also blow faster in winter than summer. Solar generation, on the other hand, takes place in the daytime. Sunlight is only half as strong in winter as in summertime. Drawing wind power from different areas -- the coast, mountains, the sounds or the ocean -- reduces variations in generation. Using wind and solar in tandem is even more reliable. Together, they can generate three-fourths of the state's electricity. When hydroelectric and other renewable sources are added, the gap to be filled is surprisingly small. Only six percent of North Carolina's electricity would have to come from conventional power plants or from other systems."

Jim Warren, Executive Director of the North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network (NC WARN), added, "Utilities and their allies are pressing policy-makers to allow construction of expensive and problem-ridden nuclear reactors - with ratepayers and taxpayers absorbing enormous financial risks. Prof. Blackburn's groundbreaking study demonstrates that such risks are not necessary. Solar, wind and other renewable sources can meet nearly all of North Carolina's energy needs."

Dr. Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), explained why his center published Dr. Blackburn's report. "This is a landmark case study of how solar and wind generation can be combined to provide round-the-clock electric power throughout the year. North Carolina utilities and regulators and those in other states should take this template, refine it, and make a renewable electricity future a reality." Dr. Makhijani is the author of Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy.

Dr. Blackburn's report, Matching Utility Loads with Solar and Wind Power in North Carolina: Dealing with Intermittent Electricity Sources, is available online at http://www.ieer.org/reports/NC-Wind-Solar.html along with an Executive Summary.

T. Boone Pickens, the 81-year-old billionaire oilman now campaigning for national energy independence, last week told the Wall Street Journal he doesn't have time to wait around for Congressional action. He wants the Natural Gas Act, HR 1835 and SB 1408, passed and signed by Memorial Day.

Pickens, who has invested about $62 million in his Pickens Plan, has laid plans to build vast wind farms in Texas, and he wants to convert eight million trucks from diesel to natural gas. He also wants the federal government's roughly six million vehicles to use only domestic fuel. To avoid buying fuel "from the enemy," Pickens said, he embraces electric vehicles and any other fuel produced within the United States.

According to the Congressional Research Service, HR 1835, titled "New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2009" amends the Internal Revenue Code to --

• allow an excise tax credit through 2027 for alternative fuels and fuel mixtures involving compressed or liquefied natural gas;
• allow an income tax credit through 2027 for alternative fuel motor vehicles powered by compressed or liquefied natural gas;
• modify the tax credit percentage for alternative fuel vehicles fueled by natural gas or liquefied natural gas;
• allow a new tax credit for the production of vehicles fueled by natural gas or liquefied natural gas; and
• extend through 2027 the tax credit for alternative fuel vehicle refueling property expenditures for refueling property relating to compressed or liquefied natural gas and allow an increased credit for such property.

By Seth Masia
SOLAR TODAY deputy editor

In 2004, Colorado voters passed Amendment 37, establishing a 10% renewable electricity standard to be met by 2015. The bill was championed by Lola Spradley, a Republican state senator, and it garnered a 52% voter majority in the face of determined  opposition by Xcel Energy, the state's largest utility company.

The resulting build-out of solar and wind resources was so successful, so quickly, that in the following session the legislature bumped the RES up to 20% by 2020. 

By Richard Crume
Solar Today contributor

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has collaborated with AWS Truewind to compile the first comprehensive update of wind energy potential by state since 1993.  By calculating the annual wind energy generation that could be produced in each of the 48 contiguous states, NREL and AWS Truewind have provided energy planners and the public information useful in judging which states have the best potential for wind turbine installations.  And the winners are Texas, followed by Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Montana.  At the bottom of the list are Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, and Mississippi.

And the bottom line? The United States has about three times as much wind power potential as previously thought. In fact, onshore potential alone could generate nine times our annual need.

The nationwide credit crunch is affecting sales for least one big wind turbine manufacturer. Vestas Americas of Portland, Oregon, has just announced the layoff of 144 positions, or about 6 percent of its North American workforce, citing a slump in sales due to tight financing for new projects.

According to OregonLive.com, this news comes as a setback for Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski and Portland Mayor Sam Adams, who have been working hard to land a major Vestas Americas expansion. Offering up to $35 million in incentives, Kulongoski and Adams had hoped to entice the company into building a new 400,000 square foot headquarters facility in Portland's South Waterfront area. Now the project is in doubt.

Despite weakness in the U.S. wind turbine market, Vestas Americas expects worldwide demand to increase later in the year, and the company is bullish about prospects for future growth. The world's top manufacturer of wind turbines, Vestas Americas forecasts 2010 global earnings of around $9.6 billion, and a newly announced project to build 33 wind turbines in New Hampshire has fueled optimism for a turnaround in the U.S. market.