Locally Owned Wind And Solar Will Build Support For Climate Policy

Just one link today. John Farrell hits it out of the park in his piece @ the Huffington Post -   “The One Thing Obama's Climate Policy Can't Leave Out”. Spoiler alert! It’s locally owned renewables. Though I’m not optimistic the administration will address barriers to local owned wind and solar, John’s correct about ownership building the necessary public support for climate policy in the U.S. It’s the ONLY way we will start to lower CO2 emissions here. John quotes  "Andrew Cumbers of the UN Research Institute for Social Development explains the ongoing strength of the Danish commitment to renewable energy:

“The participation of communities in the ownership and development of the technology has been a critical factor in the successful growth of renewable energy capacity. Surveys suggest around 70 per cent of the population are in favor of wind farms with only around 5 per cent against”.  

A lot of Midwest energy advocates (and their funders, for that matter) keep pushing for energy efficiency measures and utility scale renewables. The quote -   “whose bread I eat is whose song I sing”, (Thanks Ed Woolsey) often attributed to Warren Buffet, comes to mind.    I should just point out that the countries mentioned in the article are kicking our butts building wind and solar, so maybe we should consider adopting their local ownership ideas. But let’s look at the current approach favored by Midwest energy advocates a little deeper. 

Energy efficiency – I’m going to get into this in more detail soon, but for today, let’s consider this: Most climate scientists are advocating for an 80% reduction in co2 emissions.  Fellow energy advocate  Ed W. points out that the most optimistic projections of the percentage EE (energy efficiency) can lower co2 emissions is about 30%. Ed also notes that Iowa electric usage has grown by an average of just under 4% a year over the last 20 years.  It kind of looks like Energy efficiency will barely hold the line on co2 emissions. Since the math is not exactly working here, Maybe it’s time to discuss the best policy for getting a lot more renewable energy built in this country.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve become keenly interested in EE since my solar PV system was installed. I’ll list some of the EE plans I have for our farm soon. 

However, some Midwest energy advocates still stubbornly cling to the mantra – “first everyone needs to do all the EE available before we talk renewables”.   Or “EE is the lowest cost method of reducing co2”.  With the current cost of solar PV, don’t bet on it. At any rate, I’m confident that this “EE first” message will prevail at conferences and nonprofit newsletters for the foreseeable future.  It’s encouraging to see a lot more folks supporting local owned wind and solar these days. But, loosely translated, Midwest advocates have been giving the public the message that they need to change their behavior, and spend _ sacrifice to help lower co2. Meanwhile, opportunities to invest in and benefit from wind and solar remain with Wall Street, not main street. Like Farrell, I hope the Obama administration has figured this out this strategy hasn’t been working too well. We’ll soon see.     

MidAmerican wind project property tax update coming

And also some other interesting stories to check of course! 

Iowa’s elected officials keep bragging about our state leading in renewable energy (we do have some wind energy installed here).  I found this story that lists per capita co2 emissions by state. Iowa is the ninth highest in co2 emissions, even though some days wind turbines generate an equivalent of 20% of our electrical load.  

 So what’s up? I’ve heard in the renewable energy circles for a while that a lot of Iowa wind electricity is exported to surrounding states to serve their renewable energy mandates. A number of surrounding states score better on this chart than we Iowegians, so maybe there’s something to that.  Can anyone send some data my way on this? Since the Midwest can be cost effectively powered by renewables (credit Ed W), it’s kind of sad that none of Midwest states rank very well on this chart.  Looks like a strong local ownership renewables program would keep more of our wind generation in this state benefitting Iowans instead of our neighbors.  

Germany’s wind and solar is heavily owned by farmers and citizens, not utilities. In this post, Frances Moore Lappe notes -   “Something is working in Germany. But why is it working? For me, Germany demonstrates that sane steps to carbon freedom are possible where democracy functions -- where private industry is not in control of public policy. Consider this: In a recent global study of the effectiveness of laws governing money's role in politics, on a scale of 100 Germany scored highest at 83.

And the U.S.? We tied Tajikistan for the sad score of 29.”

Ouch! Though I’ve told fellow energy advocates for quite a while that campaign fund disclosure would help a lot of the issues they work on. She goes on to mention – “Private and corporate contributions are not limited but transparency laws are strict: Contributions of more than 10,000 euro per year must be disclosed.” I just love it when a story reinforces something I believe. Quite different from the “spooky pac” scene in the U.S. 

And finally, David Roberts at Grist.org has posted a mini- series on how the utility industry and the agencies that regulate them function, and how they need to change to address climate change .  He realizes how boring this issue can be to non-energy wonks, so he has included cute photos of wildlife to keep readers awake.       

Distributed Generation News

NRG, Led by CEO David Crane, one of the biggest independent utility scale electricity providers in the country, is switching their business model to a residential and distributed model.

A quote from the Bloomberg article - The other part of the package is the growing underground network of pipes that delivers gas to about half the homes in the country. Crane wants to provide customers with fuel cells and microturbines, which produce electricity from gas.

“The individual homeowner should be able to tie a machine to their natural gas line and tie that with solar on the roof and suddenly they can say to the transmission-distribution company, ‘Disconnect that line.’ ” Crane said.

A lot of companies have been promising affordable residential natural gas turbines for a while, Looks like Mr. Crane has his eye on one.  

John Farrell discusses talk of using Master Limited Partnerships to advance renewable energy in the U.S. (spoiler alert! He doesn’t like them). Yet another tax program that local residents won’t be able to use, but absentee energy developers will.  Maybe looking at political donations is just as important as designing the right kind of renewable policy in the States.   

Ontario is reining in their Feed In Tariff program, because … “Anger over large wind farms, especially in southwestern Ontario, cost the Liberals several seats in the 2011 election, when they were reduced to a minority government.” As I’ve said before, if you want to have more support for renewable energy programs, encourage more locally owned wind… It looks like Ontario’s renewable adoption will be slowed now. The good news is their "micro fit" program stays intact, showing Ontario's commitment to locally owned renewables.

Since we’re discussing politics today, one of my energy policy buddies ( I’ll give him credit if he wants) has been saying for a while that DG advocates should reach out to Tea Party legislators for policy support. Looks like he’s right. These folks understand free markets, National Security, and self-reliance.

 Finally, everybody is writing about the utility battle against Net Metering. That’s the reason I’m an advocate for feed in tariffs (FiTs) over net metering. Under net metering, a utility customer essentially leaves the distribution system, though he still pays a facility charge to be connected to the grid. Under a FiT program, the customer adds a “sell meter” to their residence, and continues to buy electricity each month, helping to maintain the distribution system. In short, utilities are merely buying from additional sources, rather than losing customers.   So, IMO, FiTs are fairer to utilities, better for low income electric customers, easier to finance, gets the customer a fair price for the renewable energy unit sold, etc. 

My solar PV system has operated for a little over a year , I feel that I’m not compensated for the benefits  this system brings to the other members of the distribution system, Though I deliver peak electricity to the system, I’m compensated at an absurdly low wholesale rate. Avoided transmission costs are another benefit I’m not paid for.  

Also, a lot of energy efficiency advocates frequently wring their hands about lack of consumer interest in adopting efficiency measures. Maybe they should start advocating for distributed generation. The price of solar makes it competitive with a lot of efficiency upgrades… and if you want to see a homeowner excited about saving electricity, talk to him after he’s had his solar array installed for a while. I should dedicate a post about  living with solar at some point in the near future, as I seem to straying on my message here, But HEY! FiTs are the superior policy tool for advancing renewables in this country.   

More Reasons For Distributed Wind and Solar

My last post sent me looking for more information on grid security. This post by Amory Lovins turned up -  “Does a Big Economy Need Big Power Plants?” A quote – “Moreover, the 2008 Defense Science Board report “More Fight, Less Fuel” advised U.S. military bases to make their own power onsite, preferably from renewables, because the grid is vulnerable to long and vast disruptions.”

It looks like the military is serious about addressing grid security issues, and about developing micro grids- judging from this post on smartgridnews. In fact, smartgridnews has numerous articles about grid security. There are a number of articles there about enhancing grid security from low tech threats, like this. Or the problem of just seven bullets- one - on an actual recent substation attack, or another about foreign armies using cyber-attacks. 

The utilities have got our backs, and are addressing these issues…Right? 

Here’s another from that website - “Utilities to FERC: We don't need your security measures, but thanks”. Less than 25% of investor owned utilities have adopted FERC security recommendations. The coops and munis are doing better, but less than 50% have complied. Most of these links deal with malice, but let’s not forget about equipment failures and Mother Nature.    

Have you ordered your solar panels and batteries yet?

Distributed Wind and Solar

Here’s some links to Distributed Generation(DG) articles to check out. The first, by Steve Pullins for smartgridnews , clear back in 2008, was among the first I that saw that pointed out DG was on a real growth trend (just not in Iowa). Anyway, Nationally, DG (he calls it Grid Divorce) grows at a rate of 33% a year. If the trend continues, He says   “it will lead to 55 million U.S. meters (half of the nation) going off-grid by 2028.  How many utilities will survive if they lose half of their revenue?” 

A few years later, a lot of folks have identified this trend. Here’s a good one by David Roberts, “Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities”.

A fun quote – “It’s worse than that, though. Solar power peaks at midday, which means it is strongest close to the point of highest electricity use — “peak load.” Problem is, providing power to meet peak load is where utilities make a huge chunk of their money. Peak power is the most expensive power. So when solar panels provide peak power, they aren’t just reducing demand, they’re reducing demand for the utilities’ most valuable product.”  Roberts, and others for that matter, spend a lot of time discussing ratepayer increases as a result of this, and initially that might be true, as utilities try to pass losses onto their customers from stranded assets. However, as the solar percentages increase ( in Germany for example) , the price of electricity plunges during the day,  supporting the quote above , but also pointing  to the fact that Germans may soon pay much less for electricity than their U.S. counterparts.  Oh, and German renewables are heavily locally owned. Dare we say WIN –WIN?  The takeaway, I think, is that legislators need need to set the right policy in place to minimize upfront consumer impacts (hint, I don't think they're doing that yet). Right now the utilities are building a bunch of generation facilities and transmission lines that we may just not need a few years down the road as DG starts to take over. Currently, our politicians are listening to utility pleas for "Business as Usual".     

Finally, we may want to root for a more distributed – diversified electrical grid, instead of the centralized model our utility friends keep telling us is only way to generate electricity. Check the video referenced in the link.  I’ll also throw in another link on this issue for you insatiable readers.