EU Energy and Climate Change Policy After 2020

eu energy goals

In 2007, the European Union invented the catchy-sounding “20-20-20 for 2020” energy policy strategy, which was mainly designed to promote climate protection, foster renewable energies, and increase energy efficiency. The European Commission is already working on a detailed proposal for the design of a post-2020 target architecture and has started a public consultation to collect views from Member States and stakeholders.

The 2007 energy strategy symbolized the sustainable development paradigm which was mostly unquestioned at that time. The two other angles of the energy policy triangle â€" security of supply and competitiveness â€" have been somewhat marginalized in energy policy since 2007 because they are almost impossible to measure on the basis of quantifiable indicators, and thus very hard to implement legally. This does not mean, however, that the target architecture created in 2007 will simply be carried on. On the contrary: As soon as the Commission submits its detailed energy and climate policy proposals for 2030 by the end of 2013, all Member States will enter into conflict-laden negotiations, which the then 28 heads of state and government can only put an end to by reaching a consensus.

At the core of the debate will be the EU’s domestic emissions reduction target, on which the course of the international climate negotiations will have a significant effect. If the UN fails to pass a comprehensive and ambitious global climate treaty by 2015, it will be very difficult for the EU to agree on ambitious unilateral goals as well. But even if the UN climate negotiations for 2015 do not fail, it is unlikely for the intra-European compromise on the post-2020 framework to be consistent with the targets envisioned in the European Commission’s energy 2050 roadmap.

A new target architecture?

Since the emissions trading scheme now works Europe-wide without national allocation, the possibilities of burden-sharing between the more ambitious and the more hesitant EU Member States are rather limited. Governments with an exceptional level of commitment to climate policy have to focus on those sectors that are not part of the EU's emissions trading scheme. But new regulatory burdens in the transport or buildings sector are particularly sensitive issues prior to elections because the direct consequences of ambitious climate policies are much more noticeable for individual voters than stricter regulations for electricity producers would be.

Harsh conflicts are also to be expected in the area of renewable energies. If the current trend continues and the EU or some of its Member States fail to reach the goals for 2020, the willingness of the heads of state and government to once again agree to legally binding targets for the post-2020 period will be negatively affected. This will be even more true if the more ambitious Member States are unwilling to open up their support schemes to installations located in other regions of the EU or consider a Europeanization of support schemes in general. Rather, renewable energy pioneers would then focus on their domestic concepts in this sector and thus increasingly link those to industrial-policy considerations. Such a development would be equivalent to the failure of an overall European framework for renewable energies.

The likelihood of the energy efficiency target being renewed after 2020 is extremely low. The fact that the EU is unlikely to reach its 2020 goals and the tough negotiations on the energy efficiency directive have probably induced Member States even more to give in to their inclination and do without quantifiable limits on overall energy consumption.

Internal EU negotiations in a global context

No substantial discussions have taken place on the fundamental architecture or ambition levels of post-2020 targets, although Member States like the UK have already issued their negotiation positions. It is conceivable that disputes between Member States will not only delay the final decision but also lead to a compromise in the shape of vaguely formulated goals that may be open to a number of different interpretations.

The question of whether or not the European Union will once again agree to a comprehensive energy and climate framework depends strongly on the timing of the negotiations. If the EU Commission submits a detailed proposal on this matter by the end of 2013, negotiations between Member States could begin in the year 2014 and an agreement could be reached in 2015 at the earliest. It is rather unlikely, however, that the EU will be ready to agree to new legally binding domestic targets before the crucial UN climate summit takes place at the end of 2015.

Impending paradigm shift

The development of a European energy and climate strategy for the post-2020 period will constitute a litmus test for this policy area. Due to the complexity of the transformation process towards decarbonized European economies, the medium-term strategies of individual Member States remain unclear. At this point, the course and the result of the negotiations are difficult to predict.

Currently, it seems highly likely that during these negotiations the Central and Eastern European Member States will attempt to at least slow down the speed at which this transformation process is taking place, and these attempts will probably be successful. During the last European Council, the regular meeting of the European heads of state and government, the change in language was quite obvious. For the post-2020 EU energy policy strategy, "sustainability" will not longer be the main buzzword. In the coming years, "competitiveness" will take center stage.

Authored by:

Oliver Geden

Oliver Geden is a Senior Research Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, where he mainly works on the European Union’s energy and climate policy.

He received his Ph.D. from Humboldt University Berlin, has been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and worked as an external expert in the Federal Foreign Office’s Policy ...

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Wind Energy Growing Faster than Coal in China: False Math

In a recent Slate piece Ramez Naam argues:

In almost every way you cut it, China is already taking a much more aggressive approach toward climate change than the United States is.

This is a rather bold claim seems perfectly fitted to Carl Sagan’s statement “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Naam’s evidence is extraordinary, unfortunately it is also more than a bit inaccurate. He puts forward a bunch of evidence to support his claim. But let’s just consider this one:  ”China loves wind more than coal.”

An extraordinary claim indeed. What’s his evidence?

For all this investment in solar power, the energy source most commonly associated with China is coalâ€"dirty, dirty coal, the most CO2-intensive of all the fossil fuels. And yes, China does burn almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined. But in 2012, China actually deployed more new wind power than new coal power. In fact, wind power growth was more than double that of coal power growth in Chinaâ€"26 terawatt-hours of new wind generation in 2012 versus only 12 terawatt-hours of added coal generation in the same year.

Now, the inexorable growth of coal in China in the last decade is often news even to people who make some kind of living writing about energy, but could it possibly be slowing down? And could wind be growing faster than coal?

Consider how much coal capacity China has been installing in the last decade:

In 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 China added at least 50 GW of new coal plants each year. The average is slightly over 60 GW per year. In simple terms: since 2005 China has added the equivalent of more than five United Kingdom’s worth of electricity capacity, all in the form of coal. You will also note that the above projections (from the US government laboratory) are not exactly projecting a rapid decline in new coal plants.

So, what did happen in 2012?

Here is the basic arithmetic. China opened 50 GW of new coal plants in 2012 (according to the article Naam himself cites). In contrast China only added 15.9 GW of wind capacity. Capacity of course does not tell the whole story, a point often missed by people. Bloomberg New Energy Finance says that China’s wind farms had a capacity factor of 21.6% last year (though I must point out that where claims by BNEF are concerned you should consider investing in a bucket full of salt), which is roughly in line with most statistics I have seen. So, in real terms growth of coal plants is at least eight times greater than in wind farms. Compare this basic reality with Naam’s claim that wind is growing twice as fast as coal.

I’ll conclude by pointing out that I am repeating myself with this post. However, this now appears to a zombie fact, and I expect it to be repeated quite in the too often fact free debate around energy.

Authored by:

Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson is a PhD Student in Mathematical Ecology at the University of Strathclyde.

His secondary interests are in energy and sustainability, and blogs on these issues at Carbon Counter.

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EU Tariffs on China Solar Panels Loom as Talks Fail

Europe will impose tariffs on imported Chinese solar modules, probably by June 6.

Last-minute talks between Chinese and European Commission (EC) officials failed to head off imposition of the tariffs, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The tariffs will average 47.6 percent and will affect 100-plus Chinese manufacturers found by an EC investigation to have been involved in dumping solar products at market-breaking low prices in the European Union (EU), as reported May 9 by GTM.

Suntech Power Holdings (STP) and subsidiaries will be charged tariffs of 48.6 percent; LDK Solar (LDK) will pay 55.9 percent; Trina Solar (TSL) will pay 51.5 percent; and JinkoSolar (JKS) will pay tariffs of 58.7 percent. Companies that did not cooperate with the investigation will pay a tariff of 67.9 percent.

EU imports of crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) panels, cells, and wafers were valued at $27.6 billion in 2011, which was more than half the global PV market, according to Bloomberg. The Chinese companies, Bloomberg added, owned almost no global PV market share in 2004 and 80 percent of it by 2011.

Solar products were more than 7 percent of China's total exports to the EU in 2011, the WSJ reported.

As Chinese and EU officials met for critical late-stage negotiations, German Chancellor Angela Merkel threw the weight of Germany’s powerful solar market behind stopping the tariffs. She promised Germany would make certain such talks were productive.

China is expected to retaliate with tariffs on European polysilicon used for solar module manufacturing after the EU finalizes the tariffs, Forbes reported. That could hurt Germany’s Wacker Chemie AG, one of the world's biggest polysilicon producers.

The decision “will not only harm jobs in China,” Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said at a joint press conference. “It will also affect development and endanger industry in Europe,” Bloomberg reported.

The low-priced solar products are directly related to manufacturing oversupply in China, according to GTM Research Senior Analyst Shyam Mehta.

China’s solar manufacturers offered to increase prices and limit exports to avoid tariffs but the offer was rejected by EC officials who suspected China’s government would take a harder line, according to WSJ.

This action is like the EU dropping a boulder on its own foot, Ministry of Commerce spokesman Shen Danyang was quoted as saying by Australia’s The Age.

Merkel promised Germany would work to prevent “permanent tariffs,” according to Forbes. This suggested the June 6 EC decision, which will be in effect for six months, may not be supported by a final EU member nation vote. “In general, the southern countries within the EU tend to vote in favor of trade protectionism, while the U.K. and Nordic countries tend to vote against,” Forbes added.

There is also a World Trade Organization complaint on the same issue to be settled later this summer, and a separate countervailing duties issue to be decided by the EC in December that would impose tariffs for five years.

Germany’s SolarWorld, the dominant EU panel manufacturer, called for the anti-dumping investigation in the wake of price drops of 75 percent in module prices, 42 percent in cells, and 40 percent in wafers between 2009 and 2012, the WSJ reported.

The competition left the once-dominant SolarWorld with “$1.2 billion in liabilities,” according to Reuters.

U.S. authorities finalized comparable AD and countervailing duty (CVD) tariffs in October 2012. Suntech’s rate is 35.97 percent, Trina’s is 23.75 percent, others must pay a 30.66 percent tariff and those caught in violation will have a 254.66 percent rate imposed. SolarWorld was part of the coalition of U.S. and EU solar panel manufacturing companies that called for U.S. tariffs.

Because the low prices have driven an unprecedented expansion in solar, distributors and installers oppose the tariffs. The EU-based Association for Affordable Solar Energy (AFASE) continues to lead an effort to block them. AFASE cited a study by Prognos, a German research consultancy, that found tariffs will compromise Europe’s economy.

A tariff of 20 percent, Prognos found, would put roughly 107,600 jobs at risk in the top five EU economies (EU-5) from 2013 to 2015, including 54,700 jobs in Germany. It would cost the EU-5 €13.6 billion, including a German loss of €7 billion. With tariffs of 35 percent or 60 percent, “these numbers are significantly higher.”

SolarWorld has acknowledged the tariffs have not protected U.S. solar manufacturers, SunEdison founder/Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (CASE) President Jigar Shah recently wrote in GTM. Instead, they have initiated an international trade war.

“The big winners will be the producers of coal, oil and natural gas, not solar manufacturers in the U.S., China, the EU or anywhere else,” Shah wrote. “We need to work together to create an international framework for a worldwide solar industry.”

Although the solar tariff decision would be the EU’s biggest ever, there are 31 ongoing trade investigations, according to The Age. Eighteen involve China. With the failure of the recent talks, another investigation, this one into dumping of Chinese telecommunications equipment, is expected to move ahead.

greentech mediaGreentech Media (GTM) produces industry-leading news, research, and conferences in the business-to-business greentech market. Our coverage areas include solar, smart grid, energy efficiency, wind, and other non-incumbent energy markets. For more information, visit: greentechmedia.com , follow us on twitter: @greentechmedia, or like us on Facebook: facebook.com/greentechmedia.

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Can We Solve Climate Change Through Carbon Capture and Storage?

carbon capture and storage

In Sunday’s Mail climate scientist Myles Allen tells us that our current climate policies are not going to solve the problem. All those wind farms, carbon taxes and cap and trade policies just won’t get the job done. On this I am happy to agree with him, existing policies are an incoherent contradictory mess. However his solution does not seem to offer much more hope than our existing and failing policies. In essence he is arguing that we just capture and store most of the carbon dioxide we emit.

He begins his argument:

There’s been a lot of talk about ‘unburnable carbon’ â€" the carbon we shouldn’t burn if we are to keep global temperature rises below 2C. A catchy phrase, but can we really tell the citizens of India of 2080 not to touch their coal?

And to those on the other side who think that solar and nuclear will someday become so cheap we will choose to leave that coal alone, I’m afraid you have some basic physics working against you.

This claim about the “basic physics working against you” is probably just as apt for Allen’s solution, but I’ll get to that later.

Instead of relying on building nuclear power plants, solar panels, or electric cars, Allen proposes that we largely just bury carbon:

Fortunately, there is a solution. It is perfectly possible to burn fossil carbon and not release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: you have to filter it out of the flue gases, pressurise it, and re-inject, or ‘sequester’, it back underground.

If you’re using fossil carbon to drive a car or fly a plane, you just have to pay someone else to bury CO2 for you.

The only thing that actually matters for climate policy is whether, before we release too much, we get to the point of burying carbon at the same rate that we dig it up.

How much can we bury? Perhaps as much as 50% by the 2040s, and this may not cost that much:

Even on relatively pessimistic estimates, if the sequestered fraction rises at one per cent per 10 billion tonnes, it would be getting on for 20 years before the cost of carbon capture would exceed the £100 per year and rising that the average UK household already pays in assorted windfarm subsidies.

The impact on petrol prices is even less dramatic: 50 per cent carbon capture, which we might reach by the 2040s, might add 10p to the cost of a litre of petrol. That’s well under what we already pay in fuel taxes which, we are told, are supposed to help stop climate change.

50% sounds quite good, and will get us most of the way to solving the climate problem. But, what would capturing 50% of carbon emissions involve? In many respects it’s just the reverse of the oil industry, but instead of pumping the stuff out of the ground and burning it, we take it from the air, liquefy it and then pump it underground. This oil industry comparison has been made brilliantly by Vaclav Smil and provides a serious reality check on any proposal to capture a significant amount of CO2 emissions:

Let us assume that we commit initially to sequestering just 20 percent of all CO2 emitted from fossil fuel combustion in 2010, or about a third of all releases from large stationary sources. After compressing the gas to a density similar to that of crude oil (800 kilograms per cubic meter) it would occupy about 8 billion cubic metersâ€"meanwhile, global crude oil extraction in 2010 amounted to about 4 billion tonnes or (with average density of 850 kilograms per cubic meter) roughly 4.7 billion cubic meters.

This means that in order to sequester just a fifth of current CO2 emissions we would have to create an entirely new worldwide absorption-gathering-compression-transportation- storage industry whose annual throughput would have to be about 70 percent larger than the annual volume now handled by the global crude oil industry whose immense infrastructure of wells, pipelines, compressor stations and storages took generations to build.

Let’s rephrase this calculation. To capture half of global CO2 emissions would involve shoving around, and pumping underground, volumes of liquefied CO2 that are more than four times greater than that of the global oil industry. Allen proposes that we can get this in place in about thirty years. This scaling up is truly mind boggling, just think about the number of pipes we would need to build. Imagine also if we doubled CO2 emissions by the 2040s (a not unrealistic proposition if we made CCS the cornerstone of climate policy). How a CCS industry this big can be put in place by the 2090s, let alone the 2040s is pretty doubtful.

And this ignores the incredible legal issues around where to put these CO2 dumps (and I suspect they will be called dumps). The difficulty getting communities to host underground radioactive waste depositories (or dumps) does not exactly indicate that communities will be leaping over each other to accept CO2 dumps that may start leaking and killing people (at least that’s how predictable scaremongering campaigns will phrase it.)

So no, the laws of physics and the numbers seem to be against Allen’s solution. This of course is not to say carbon capture and storage does not have a role to play (think about the difficulties of making billions of tonnes of steel without coal.) However, it’s clear the solution to climate change must principally involve an energy transition away from fossil fuels, reduced deforestation and a more rational use of energy.

Authored by:

Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson is a PhD Student in Mathematical Ecology at the University of Strathclyde.

His secondary interests are in energy and sustainability, and blogs on these issues at Carbon Counter.

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It’s Official: $1 Invested in EPA Yields $10 in Benefits

This article first appeared on the Environmental Defense Fund website
by Gernot Wagner

EPA

The Office of Management and Budget is nerd heaven: a bunch of people getting their professional kicks from analyzing federal regulation. This bean counting may sound painfully lacking in glamour, but it’s incredibly important. OMB’s annual report to Congress on the benefits and costs of all major rules adopted by most federal agencies over the past 10 years shows how efficiently, or inefficiently, those agencies are functioning.  And the conclusion is clear: the Environmental Protection Agency comes out on top.

Image Credit: OMB’s “Draft 2013 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations"

Image Credit: OMB’s “Draft 2013 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations”

These numbers are based on the 2013 draft report, so they could still change. But the pattern is the same as in any of theirreports from the past few years, including the final 2012 report that came out last week.

None of this is to diminish the contributions of the other government agencies, but if you are a do-gooder trying to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people, EPA is the place to be.

One of the driving forces behind this rule is the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, an extraordinary achievement for clean air and public health. Because of these standards, all coal fired power plants will for the first time be required to control their emissions of toxic air pollutants â€" including mercury, arsenic and acid gases. Forty years after the Clean Air Act signed by Richard Nixon, twenty after the landmark Amendments signed by George H.W. Bush, we are finally getting around to regulating mercury from burning coal.

The analysis of the benefits of reducing mercury pollution demonstrates just how much we underestimate the benefits of environmental protections. For example, when it comes to reducing mercury pollution, the benefits are based on EPA’s estimates of increased wages of (higher IQ) children born to families that catch freshwater fish for their own consumption.

Think about that one for a second. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin in all its forms, but the EPA estimates do not include mercury that is inhaled or that enters our bodies through other means. And there is nothing in the estimates about the fact that mercury harms the brains of our kids, regardless of whether it influences their future earning potential.

In a sense, this analysis is the moral equivalent of arguing that we should have child labor laws because keeping kids in school makes for more productive workers later on. This kind of reasoning, alas, is  why economists are often called names unfit for a family-friendly blog. It’s the most reductionist argument you can find in favor of reducing mercury. (In fact, the bulk of the benefits that were quantified by EPA are due to inextricably connected benefits in reducing deleterious particulate pollution.)

Costs, by the way, are relatively well estimated, since businesses are all-too willing to share them. So yes, there are costsâ€"but they are small relative to benefits. And costs, as opposed to benefits, are typically overestimates. They are largely based on current available control technologies. They don’t consider that industry may invent an entirely new and unexpected way of complying with regulations at lower cost. This happens over and over again, and it comes with a name: entrepreneurial ingenuity. Works every time.

These omissions and shortcomings on either side of the equation only stand to bolster the most important claim: benefits outweigh costs more than 10 to 1 for all major EPA regulations adopted in the past decade.

For every dollar invested, Americans get $10 worth of benefits. I’ll take that ratio any day.


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Bonn: Addressing Climate Change Threats to “Water in the Anthropocene”

Member of the Global Water System Project meet in Bonn to discuss Concerned about the availability and sustainability of water resources now and in the future, experts from around the world have gathered in Bonn, Germany to “synthesize major global water research achievements in the last decade and help assemble the scientific foundations to articulate a common vision of Earth’s water future.”

A “capstone event” for the Global Water Systems Project (GWSP), “Water in the Anthropocene” is expected to result in the recommendation of “priorities for decision makers in the areas of earth system science and water resources governance and management.”

Water in the Anthropocene

Human population and activities have expanded and intensified to the point where they have altered the Earth’s fundamental regulatory processes and mechanisms, including our planet’s climate and hydrological cycles, posing grave threats to humanity’s sustainability, according to GWSP, which has put together a list of startling facts regarding humanity’s impact on the natural environment and its fundamental life-support systems and mechanisms:

  • Humanity uses an area the size of South America to grow its crops and an area the size of Africa for raising livestock
  • Due to groundwater and hydrocarbon pumping in low lying coastal areas, two-thirds of major river deltas are sinking, some of them at a rate four times faster on average than global sea level is rising
  • More rock and sediment is now moved by human activities such as shoreline in-filling, damming and mining than by the natural erosive forces of ice, wind and water combined
  • Many river floods today have links to human activities, including the Indus flood of 2010 (which killed 2,000 people), and the Bangkok flood of 2011 (815 deaths)
  • On average, humanity has built one large dam every day for the last 130 years. Tens of thousands of large dams now distort natural river flows to which ecosystems and aquatic life adapted over millennia
  • Drainage of wetlands destroys their capacity to ease floods-a free service of nature expensive to replace
  • Evaporation from poorly-managed irrigation renders many of the world’s rivers dry â€" no water, no life. And so, little by little, tens of thousands of species edge closer to extinction every day.

Threats to water resources now extend “far beyond ‘classic’ drinking water and sanitation issues and includes water quality and quantity for ecosystems at all scales,” according to GWSP.

“The fact is, as world water problems worsen, we lack adequate efforts to monitor the availability, condition and use of water â€" a situation presenting extreme long term cost and danger,” GWSP co-chair Claudia Pahl-Wostl was quoted in a press release.

“Human water security is often achieved in the short term at the expense of the environment with harmful long-term implications. The problems are largely caused by governance failure and a lack of systemic thinking in both developed and developing countries.

“Economic development without concomitant institutional development will lead to greater water insecurity in the long-term. Global leadership is required to deal with the water challenges of the 21st century.”

“Humanity changes the way water moves around the globe like never before, causing dramatic harm,” continued Joe Alcamo, chief scientist of the UN Environment Programme and former co-chair of the GWSP, a keynote speaker at the Bonn conference. “By diverting freshwater for agricultural, industrial and municipal use, for example, our coastal wetlands receive less and less, and often polluted, freshwater. The results include decreased inland and coastal biodiversity, increased coastal salinity and temperature, and contaminated agricultural soils and agricultural runoff.”

Added co-chair and GWSP founding member Charles Vörösmarty, “By throwing concrete, pipes, pumps, and chemicals at our water problems, to the tune of a half-trillion dollars a year, we’ve produced a technological curtain separating clean water flowing from our pipes and the highly-stressed natural waters that sit in the background. We treat symptoms of environmental abuse rather than underlying causes. Thus, problems continue to mount in the background, yet the public is largely unaware of this reality or its growing costs.”

Image credit: dsearls, courtesy flickr

By Andrew Burger

The post Experts Gather in Bonn to Address Threats to “Water in the Anthropocene” appeared first on Global Warming is Real.

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Community Solar May Be Next Big Thing In Australia Renewables

This post first appeared on RenewEconomy

The momentum for a big push into community solar projects appears to be gathering pace, with several different organisations planning public launches in the next month, and suggestions that several dozen projects could be built on NSW rooftops in coming years.

First Solar CdTe Solar Panels.

Among plans revealed this week are the launch of a community solar network Farming the Sun in the northern Rivers region, to be followed soon by similar groups in New England and the Riverina. This is the work of community energy advocate Embark and Starfish Enterprises, which has identified 7 different projects of at least 80kW that could be commissioned in the next 18 months.

A Newcastle community group has also emerged with a plan to launch a “crowd-funding model â€" similar to that used successfully by Mosaic in the US â€" to develop projects in its region. Meanwhile, a new organisation known as the Community Power Agency was launched on Wednesday to help the development of community energy projects.

The announcements come as news circulates that the NSW government’s Office of Environment and Heritage has approved funding for up to 9 groups to either conduct feasibility studies into their business  models, or provide funds for the groundwork for particular projects.

Community ownership of renewable projects has yet to take off in Australia, even if in countries like Germany it accounts for around half of renewables investments.

Australia has two community-owned wind farms â€" the Hepburn Wind project near Daylesford in Victoria and in Denmark, near Albany in WA-  but community owned solar projects are tipped to be a compelling proposition because of plunging cost of solar and their ability to compete with retail prices rather than wholesale prices.

Farming the Sun Project director Adam Blakester, of Starfish Enterprises, said the  business model for the community projects his consortium is proposing is similar to that of the 400kW community solar project announced late last year for the Lend Lease development in Sydney’s Darling Harbour.

He said his group’s immediate goal was to secure half a dozen MOUs in the next couple of months with potential hosts of community solar projects. The funds allocated to his organisation by OEH, as well as contributions from the Earth Welfare Foundation, and Starfish itself,  will amount to half the “establishment costs” of the projects, which would include approvals, design, grid connection and prospectus. The other half of the costs would come from the hosts â€" which could be businesses, factories, schools, or council facilities.

Blakester said the model would work on a minimum 80kW array, with an upper limit of 400-500kW. It was important that all the electricity was consumed on-site, so the economics were for “behind the meter” consumption, displacing the retail electricity rate rather than the wholesale one.

“It is financially viable. You don’t offer get opportunity to drive compelling marketing or community education program that is commercially viable over 25 years in their own right,” he said. The minimum shareholding would equate to around 1kW â€" which would be in the range of $2,200 to $2,800.

“Community solar can be the next big thing,” he said. “It’s very compelling for anyone looking at green power rather than black power product. It could spread like wildfire”.

Community Power Agency co-founder Nicky Ison said there were around 40 community energy projects underway across the country. Her agency would provide support and advocacy, briefing state and federal politicians to ensure that legislative and other barriers were removed, and to encourage the establishment of a community energy fund.

Co-founder Jarra Hicks said the biggest challenges to community solar projects were finding the funding to do the feasibility studies to get projects to the point that they are ready for the community to invest in. Connecting in to the electricity grid and selling the power at a fair price is also a barrier faced by many projects.

Meanwhile, a Newcastle-based community group hopes to repeat the success of US-based Mosaic by using crowd-funding techniques to help finance community solar projects in the region.

CLEANaS, which stands for the Clean Energy Association of Newcastle and Surrounds, is a not for profit association which is launching the Lighthouse Community Renewable Energy project.

Daniel MacDonald from CLEANaS said the group would be targeting solar systems of around 70kW to 200kW, which can be owned by the community and hosted on the roof of a business or community facility. The owners would sign a power purchase agreement with the host, and would expect to make a return on investment.

MacDonald said the group was looking at a type of crowd-funding model that has been successfully deployed by Mosaic in the US. “We are looking to create a tool kit that will give a template that will be available to other groups in Newcastle and surrounding areas,” he said.

MacDonald said he was sure that the “time was right” given the trends in energy demand, the falling cost of solar PV, the corporate interest in sustainability and managing costs, and the interest from communities in investing in clean energy.

“The big carbon bubble will burst at some stage. And Newcastle is the best placed region to become a new energy hub for Australia. Being able to get ourselves in front of businesses that are using fossil fuels, and to transition that to community owned clean energy. It’s a great place to do it.”

Giles Parkinson (77 Posts)

Giles is the founding editor of RenewEconomy.com.au, an Australian-based website that provides news and analysis on cleantech, carbon and climate issues.   Giles is based in Sydney and is watching the (slow, but quickening) transformation of Australia's energy grid with great interest.


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10 Reasons Canada Needs to Rethink the Tar Sands

alberta tar sandsCanada’s right-wing Prime Minister is in New York trying to convince lawmakers that the tar sands are okay, and that the Keystone XL pipeline should go ahead.

At the same time, Canada’s environment minister is in London trying to convince politicians there that tar sands crude is the same as regular sweet crude, and should not be subject to a polluter tax.

As a Canadian it blows my mind that we can have the second largest deposits of oil in the world, but our government remains billions in debt and one in seven Canadian children live in poverty.

I feel like we are being played for fools here in Canada, because foreign owned oil companies like ExxonMobil, British Petroluem and PetroChina (71% of oil sands production is owned by foreign shareholders) are making billions exporting raw tar sand from our country, while us citizens are dealing with all the nasty downsides.

Time for a tar sands reality check.

Here's the top 10 reasons Canada needs to rethink their unrelenting desire to expand tar sands operations:

1. The Canada tar sands isn't just an environmental issue, it is also a social justice, human rigths and health issue. A higher incidence of rare and deadly cancers has been documented in First Nations communities downstream of the oil sands by doctors, the Alberta Health Department and First Nations since 2007.

2. Like birds? Me too. Did you know that over 30 million birds will be lost over the next 20 years due to tar sands development? 

3. 95% of the water used in tar sands surface mining is so polluted it has to be stored in toxic sludge pits. That’s 206,000 litres of toxic waste discharged every day.

4. Canada's tar sands make Hoover Dam look like lego blocks, because we are home to 2 of the top 3 largest dams in the world. The dams are used to hold back all that toxic sludge produced by mining tar sands.

5. Producing a barrel of oil from the oil sands produces 3.2 to 4.5 times more greenhouse gases than conventional oil produced in Canada or the United States. To put that in perspective, a Honda Accord burning tar sands gas has the same climate impact as driving a Chevy Suburban using conventional gas.

6. According to an annual climate change performance index, because of the tar sands, Canada's climate performance is the worst in the entire western world. We rank 58th out of 61 countries on the index, beating out only Kazakhstan (59th), Iran (60th) and Saudi Arabia (61st).

7. 11 million litres of toxic wastewater seep out of the tailing pits into the boreal forest and Athabasca river every day. That’s 4 billion litres a year. Anyone want to go fishing?

8. Norway has saved $644 billion in its petroleum production investment fund. Meanwhile, Alberta, where all the tar sands deposits are, has only saved $16 billion. There is no Canadian federal fund.

9. The International Energy Agency says up to two thirds of known fossil reserves must be left in the ground to avoid a 2°C global temperature rise. MIT reports that when a global price on carbon emerges to prevent climate change, it will make the oil sands economically non-viable.

10. And if you think the tar sands are going away, think again.The oil sands underlie approximately 140,000 square kilometres of Alberta â€" an area about the size of Florida. Oil sands leases cover about 20% of the province’s land area. If the oil companies have it their way, the tar sands operations are on a trajectory to triple in size, with literally no end in sight. 

So there you go. The tar sands are paying off for the oil companies, while everyday Canadians see little upside, and a whole lot of downside. 

Thanks to the Tar Sands Reality Check project for putting all these facts together, and getting them signed off by top experts. 

Photo courtesy of Pembina Institute.

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A Mother’s Day Climate Change Message from the Moms Clean Air Force

by Dominique Browning

It is time to fight with your momâ€"about something important. That’s my Mother’s Day message to daughtersâ€"and sons, moms and dads, aunts and uncles.

Running Moms Clean Air Force has been eye-opening in many ways, not the least of which is combatting the sadness, if not paralysis, that afflicts us, from time to time, in the face of a planet-altering problem: climate change. We don’t believe there’s anything we can do until we actually begin to feel the power of our voices.

How does that happen? It happens when we start to talk to each other, and realize we’re all staying awake at night worrying about the same thing: our children’s futures. It happens when we talk to our elected representatives, who only care about issues we care about. It happens when we drive out of office politicians who don’t listen. It happens when grandmothers go to jail to protect our sacred right to clean air. It happens when Senators tell us to “Call off your moms” or when a President challenges us to “Show me a movement!” â€"and we do.

My friends and I have been talking recently about…prison. Do we have to go to jail to prove our commitment to fighting climate change? Is a hunger strike a measure of how much you care? Many of us can’t leave work, leave children, leave homeâ€"that doesn’t mean we aren’t serious.

Now is not the time to be judgmental or smug about the paths we are choosingâ€"except for one: doing nothing. Unacceptable. Now is not the time for any activist to claim the moral high ground. After all, many dedicated people have been working very hard to fight climate change for decades now. We lost cap and trade. But we won something huge: a national conversation. For the first time.

Now is not the time to decide that Washington DC battles over legislation and regulation are hopeless and ineffectual. They are not. If, for just one small example, we can protect the mercury regulations (MATS) that were passed last yearâ€"now crippled by legal assaultsâ€"we will do more to cut carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants than stopping the Keystone pipeline.

Now is not the time for the environmental movement to take accusatory aim at each other. The problem is too big, too entrenched, and too complicated to say that there is only one simple solution. After all, everyone fighting the fossil fuel enemy is still … burning fossil fuels.

Instead, I propose that we fight with our mothers.

Moms Clean Air Force is just at the beginning of what we know is going to be a long journey. But already it reminds me of being a feminist in the sixties and seventies. It meant a lot, when I was fifteen, attending consciousness-raising sessions, that Grown Up Womenâ€"my own mother’s age!â€"were leading the way, demanding parity and equality, exposing injustice. They were unafraid, outspoken, and passionate. They believed in a different future.

We believe in that too. Mothers matter. The best solution to feeling depressed about the future is to uniteâ€"and take action. Give until it feels good. In honor of Mother’s Day, remember how important it is for mothers to be fighting with their daughtersâ€"and vice versa. There’s more power in sharing power. Our daughters and sons will soon be running this country; we can show them, by working right alongside them, that being a responsible parent means being an engaged citizen. So roll up your sleeves, and get into a good fight with your mother.

After you’ve given her those flowers, of course.

Dominique Browning is the Senior Director of Moms Clean Air Force.

Authored by:

Joseph Romm

Joe Romm is a Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress, which New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called "the indispensable blog" and Time magazine named one of the 25 "Best Blogs of 2010." In 2009, Rolling Stone put Romm #88 on its list of 100 "people who are reinventing America." Time named him a "Hero of the Environment″ and “The Web’s most influential ...

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Can Solar Energy Keep the Lights On in the UK?

According to some the UK is potentially facing the lights going out by 2015, for the simple reason that a lot of old coal plants are being shut down. (My view is that this is overplayed, but I’ll save that for a later post.)

The essence of the argument is that peak electricity demand will come dangerously close to total available electricity capacity; demand exceeding supply will result in blackouts. These blackouts aren’t likely to occur at random of course. Electricity demand varies greatly during the day, because insomniacs aside most of us aren’t doing a great deal at five am. And demand is higher in winter, because it’s colder and people feel a greater need to turn the lights on. This graph of UK electricity demand summarizes the situation:

ukdemand

UK seasonal demand profile in 2006 (source)

Demand peaks around 6 pm in Winter, basically people come home from work, cook, turn the lights and the TV on. And noticeably demand is much higher in winter than the rest of the year. To put some firmer numbers on this here is the monthly peak in electricity demand in the UK last year.

UKMonthly

Monthly peak in UK electricity demand in 2012

It reached its highest point at 6 pm on 12th December, at just over 56 GW (note: the source for this is the National Grid’s data, which is slightly lower than actual demand). However, between April and September demand never went above 45 GW. So, quite clearly we are only likely to run into capacity problems in Winter.

So, if we want to keep the lights on, what kind of power plant do we need? Basically anything that can reliably add hundreds of megawatts or preferably gigawatts to supply at 6 pm in Winter is ideal. Obviously, nuclear, gas and coal and any other dispatchable power plant will do. Though new coal plants are out of the question, and nuclear plants won’t be built by 2016.

Wind? There are occasions total wind farm output goes to around 1% of installed capacity (e.g the lowest output in December 2012 was 83 MW out of a total of over 5,000 MW installed capacity), so it’s very unlikely that we can rely on wind at the gigawatt scale. If we built 30 GW by 2016 (an improbably figure), we have to assume that total wind farm output will regularly dip below 1 GW. Also, the chances of the UK getting new large scale storage techniques online by 2015 are essentially zero, so wind has a limited ability to keep the lights on.

How about solar?

In last week’s Guardian Jeremy Leggett had a post that seems to argue that solar is the UK’s best option for keeping the lights on. After running through, and seemingly dismissing other options, Leggett concludes “So what are we left with? Solar. That’s it.” Now, the evidence I have already shown should give a rather large hint about what is wrong with this line of argument, and Leggett alludes to the gist of it by saying:

“I have said that all forms of energy have their downsides. Solar’s are that it doesn’t work at night.”

Unfortunately this line of thought is not taken very far at all.

The basic problem: electricity demand peaks in Winter at 6 pm,  and anyone who has spent any time in the UK will know that the total sunlight at 6 pm in December is a rather easy number to remember: zero. This rather trivial engineering barrier probably does not worry an unscrupulous solar sales man, but it should worry the rest of us.

But perhaps we can store the stuff. This again faces some simple engineering problems. Even if we could get a lot of storage online by 2016 solar panels are not exactly going  full tilt in Winter. Here is monthly solar production in Germany last year:

GermanySolar

Despite having more solar capacity in December than May (around 30 GW compared to 26 GW) total solar production was almost ten times lower in December.

Think about how much solar power Germany got on 12th December last year. It peaked at 1.6 GW, and that’s with a total capacity of about 30 GW. The UK, with its slightly cloudier climate and more northerly location cannot expect to do much better. Storing a trickle of solar energy in the middle of the day for use at night does not appear to be get us very far in preventing blackouts.

Transparency in Energy Markets   Actual solar power generation

So, the sales pitches of solar entrepreneurs aside solar power will not be keeping the UK’s lights on.

Authored by:

Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson is a PhD Student in Mathematical Ecology at the University of Strathclyde.

His secondary interests are in energy and sustainability, and blogs on these issues at Carbon Counter.

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Energy Finance: German Solar Four Times Higher Than Finnish Nuclear Energy

Germany’s solar program will generate electricity at quadruple the cost of one of the most expensive nuclear power plants in the world, according to a new Breakthrough Institute analysis, raising serious questions about a renewable energy strategy widely heralded as a global model. 

The findings challenge the idea that solar photovoltaic is a disruptive, scalable, “shelf-ready” technology with a cost advantage over nuclear. Energy analysts frequently point to Finland’s advanced nuclear project at Olkiluoto, which is seven years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, and solar in Germany as indicative of future cost trends working against new nuclear technologies and in favor of solar. 

Proponents of Germany’s Energiewende, which now involves jettisoning the country’s nuclear fleet by 2023, argue that solar and wind can make up the difference in lost capacity. A straightforward cost comparison between the two programs over the same 20-year period, however, reveals the costs of this proposition. 

The Finnish European pressurized reactor (EPR), with an estimated total cost of $15 billion, will generate over half as much energy as the entire existing German solar program, which will run to roughly $130 billion. The total cost of electricity produced by German solar will be 32 cents per kilowatt-hour versus 7 cents per kilowatt-hour for the Areva-Siemens nuclear plant in Finland â€" a more than four-fold difference. Two such nuclear plants would generate slightly more than Germany’s solar panels, at less than a fourth the total cost.

The $15 billion estimate for Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 reactor is based on fixed1 and variable costs ($0.02/kWh).2 The reactor will generate about 225 TWh in a 20-year timeframe,3 more than half of what all of Germany’s solar panels installed between 2000 and 2011 will generate over their 20-year feed-in tariff contracts.

The construction of Unit 3 of Finland’s Olkiluoto nuclear power plant â€" approved by the Finnish government in 2005 and built by a consortium involving the French company Areva and Germany’s Siemens â€" has come under fire for construction delays and cost overruns. The 1,600-megawatt project, which aims to meet 10 percent of Finland’s energy demand, is being built on an island in the Baltic Sea.

Initially expected to cost $4.2 billion and take four years to complete, Unit 3 is now estimated to cost at least $11.1 billion and will not enter into service before 2016.4 Olkiluoto 3 is the first of four advanced European Pressurized Reactors (EPRs), with others under construction in France and China. Finland’s project has been criticized as an example of “all that can go wrong in economic terms with new reactors.”5

German solar panels installed between 2000 and 2011 will cumulatively supply about 400 terawatt-hours (TWh) to the grid by 2031. Between 2000 and 2031 Germany’s electricity ratepayers will pay about $130 billion for the solar PV generation from these panels installed between 2000 and 2011 in the form of 20-year feed-in tariff contracts,6 at an average cost of 32 cents a kWh.

Moreover, solar panels do not last as long as nuclear reactors and also give reduced output as they age. After three decades a single nuclear plant with the same output of Olkiluoto would generate about as much electricity as all of the German panels installed in the last decade.7 Over its entire 60-year lifetime, the EPR will generate between 589-757 TWh, depending on capacity factor.8

Assuming a 0.5 percent degradation rate for solar PV cells (a widely used figure), the 24.7 GW of solar PV capacity installed in Germany will generate 786 TWh over 40 years, or 604 TWh over 30 years (solar PV lifetimes are commonly considered in the 25-30 year range),9 just a slightly higher output range than that of a single EPR. After a 30 to 40 year period some panels may continue to generate electricity but most will be taken offline or replaced, and owners will incur new capital and installation costs.

Over its entire 60-year lifetime the EPR will provide electricity at a rate of 3.5-3.9 cents per kWh, compared to 16.5-21.5 cents per kWh for solar panels over their 30-40 year lifetimes.10

Authored by:

Alex Trembath

Alex Trembath is a policy associate in the Energy and Climate Program at Breakthrough. He is the lead or co-author of several Breakthrough publications, including the 2012 report "Beyond Boom and Bust: Putting Clean Tech on a Path to Subsidy Independence" and "Where the Shale Gas Revolution Came From." Alex is a graduate of University of California at Berkeley where he received his Bachelor's ...

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Nuclear Energy Industry Re-Energizing after Fukushima

The Fukushima incident has contributed to the lay belief that nuclear energy is a risk not worth taking. Although, according to the data of the non-profit World Nuclear Association only a very limited number of accidents occurred in over 14,500 cumulative reactor-years of commercial nuclear power operation in 32 countries. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima are the most notorious examples of “Houston, we have a problem” crisis situations. Is it possible to find balance between reasonable public concerns and nuclear generation crucial for economic growth? Russian experience in the reconstruction of global nuclear confidence can offer some interesting solutions in post-Fukishima world.

Nuclear energy use goes hand in hand with irrational fears especially in so-called developed countries. A popular genre of post-apocalyptic drama[1] has been thrilling Western consumers with pictures of polluted wastelands and toxic rains for several decades. No wonder Fukushima triggered the downfall of atomic industry in the EU: Germany adopted a total ban, Switzerland and Spain banned the construction of new reactors. Independent data analysis shows that the roots of these radical decisions lie in the sphere of crowd psychology â€" politicians influenced by the green lobby had to stop the atomic panic. However, all energy specialists know: the impact of potential human errors in the nuclear sector has considerably decreased. According to the OECD report on risk statistics, natural gas and the nuclear industry appear to be the safest energy sources. The contrast is especially striking in comparison with other realistic energy options (see a timeline by The Guardian Datablog). “Of those we have identified, six accidents in the US and five in Japan. The UK and Russia have had three apiece”, - Simon Rogers wrote counting accidents with nuclear reactors after the Japanese tragedy in 2011.

 Source: Paul Scherrer Institut, 1998, considering 1943 accidents with more than 5 fatalities. One TW.yr is the amount of electricity used by the world in about 5 months.

It explains why many sovereign governments like China, India and Iran want Russia’s Atomstroyexport as their contractor, despite the fact that they have their own peaceful atomic programs. Last April Finnish Fennovoima also invited Atomstroyexport (along with Toshiba) to take part in building the sixth nuclear reactor in the country. The first two Finnish reactors were built by Russian specialists, the third and fourth by the Swedish company. The fifth reactor is now under construction by German and French companies.

The Iranian facility in Bushehr is a unique example of engineering expertise. Russian specialists solved many technological problems and successfully integrated German structural elements into the new reactor. In the late 1990s Siemens AG (Germany) quit the project mostly for political reasons, leaving behind tons of old hardware. Nevertheless, with the help of Iranian scientists the reactor of Bushehr nuclear power plant’s Unit 1 was brought up to 100 per cent of its projected capacity on August 30, 2012, the representative of Atomstroyexport announced last year. Setting all ideological considerations aside, the completion of the project in such a highly seismic area was truly a landmark event for the whole industry. Bushehr facility successfully passed a harsh stress-test during the latest earthquake in Iran.

 

 

Source: Mehr News Agency 

After 2011 Rosatom went global and concentrated on its key export project- the NPP-2006. This reactor combines both active and passive safety systems. Innovative solutions include advanced molten core catchers, passive heat decay removal system and other updated protection elements. At the same time US-Japanese and European companies are primarily developing passive nuclear safety systems because power outage reports influenced their risk analyses.

Earlier in the 20th century the Three Mile Island incident in the US (1979) lead to massive anti-nuclear protests and inspired the sociological theory of “system or normal accidents” by Charles B. Perrow, which both significantly slowed down the research in the US civil nuclear industry. In short, the theory holds that high-risk systems are prone to failures however well they were managed. Western companies simply lacked field data on various types of accident situations.

In contrast, since Chernobyl Russian specialists have become really paranoid about disaster prevention and safety issues both on practical and theoretical levels. For instance, Russian reactors can withstand the direct impact of a falling plane. (Who could have ever expected such precaution would be necessary in the pre-9/11 world?) If Rosatom’s modern NPP had been installed in Japan, the Fukushima incident might not have occured. Or, at least, the consequences would have been not so devastating.

On April 26th Russia mourned the 25th anniversary of the tragic events at Chernobyl. It was a painful lesson to learn. Russia has done its homework and now its nuclear power plants are the most reliable and technologically advanced atomic facilities on the market. One cannot but hope that politicians all over the world will understand that sometimes it is necessary to put safety concerns before lucrative business deals with politically “comfortable” partners. Paraphrasing one famous advertising motto, in the nuclear industry you should really get the best or nothing. Such strategy may help decision-makers on nuclear projects to strike the happy medium between environmental concerns and actual energy demands.


[1] See, for example, famous book “The Road” by American novelist Cormac McCarthy and many other TV shows and computer games, not to mention Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons”.

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Sterling's Weekly Free Energy Review on SmartScarecrow Show: May 9, 2013

By Sterling D. Allan
May 13, 2013

(I got a little hot under the collar several times.)

Interview with Andrea Rossi About 1 MW E-Cat Plant Delivery • A Word about the Yildiz Demo Fundraiser and Perceived Letdown • The Gyrokinetic Plasma Engine by RGEnergy Posts Indiegogo Campaign • RAR Energia Ltda Gravity Motor • We Bought a Goddamn Tesla Museum • Technologies for Energy Systems -- Conference in Germany, May 11-12 • Revolution-Green.com News Arrives

Recording 

Show Notes

Exotic

  • Featured / Top 5: Nuclear > Cold Fusion > Rossi >
    Interview with Andrea Rossi About 1 MW E-Cat Plant Delivery - We discussed the latest E-Cat plant status; the initial military customer plant status; the glowing-hot-cat, and safety considerations at this early stage, and their postponing of domestic product roll-out; the Hot-Cat research and work toward electricity generation; the Hot-Cat 3rd party test conditions and status, ... (PESN; May 7, 2013)
  • LENR-to-Market Weekly -- May 9, 2013 - Highlights this week include: Interview with Rossi about recent 1 MW plant delivery, glowing Hot-cat, safety, team, electricity prospects, 3rd party tests; Nanospire listing in market report; new live test at MFMP; Gerald Celente on "the biggest element"; Rossi file opposition to Pianteli patent. (PESN)
  • Featured: Gravity Motors >
    RAR Energia Ltda Gravity Motor - This Brazilian company is building a huge demonstration prototype with tons of steel; and it will allegedly be capable of producing 30 kW continuous. The University of Illinois reports that a prototype is scheduled to be built nearby in Gilman. The biggest barrier is mental, though the capital cost and engineering issues will need to be addressed as well to make it economically feasible. (PESWiki and PureEnergyBlog; May 3, 2013)
  • Featured: Events > Tesla > Tower > Museum >
    We Bought a Goddamn Tesla Museum - On May 2, 2013, the last remaining laboratory of scientist, visionary and inventor Nikola Tesla was sold to dba Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, a 501 (c) 3 not-for-profit corporation dedicated to saving and restoring Wardenclyffe, with the aim of turning it into a science learning center and museum. (PESWiki; May 8, 2013)
  • Featured: Events >
    Technologies for Energy Systems -- Conference in Germany, May 11-12 - Adolf and Inge Schneider are hosting a two-day conference that will include lectures and demonstrations. Topics include LENR, noble gas engines, Coler generator, and "clock energy converter as an open-source system - with demo!" Presentations will be made by Dr. hc Josef Gruber, Prof. Dr-Ing. Konstantin Meyl, Dr. Thorsten Ludwig, ... (PESWiki; May 6, 2013)
  • Featured: News > Outlets >
    Revolution-Green.com News Arrives - Launched as a protest against our news coverage of both conventional and unconventional free energy modalities, we nonetheless wish them well. More perspectives is healthy. It decreases the chance that good things will be overlooked, and increases the speedy detection of bogus or fraudulent operations. Nevertheless, beware of divide and conquer effects. We need unity, not schism. (PESWiki; May 5, 2013)

Conventional

Off Topic

  • Fundraisers > Kevn's PES Graphics >
    PES Logo Designer Presents ChessPas - My brother-in-law, Kevn Lambson, who designed the PES Logo that we all love, is running a cool kickstarter campaign for a Chess-on-the-Run game he designed. If only for entertainment value, you should go check it out. Or better yet, do a pre-order; maybe it could double as a belated Mother's day present. (PureEnergyBlog; May 8, 2013)

See also

Page posted by Sterling D. Allan
Last updated May 10, 2013
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The Military Microgrid as Smart Grid Asset

military microgridNever-fail military microgrids are breaking new ground in distributed energy management. Now one of them is getting connected to the grid at large.

That’s the news from Fort Bliss, Texas, where the U.S. Army and Lockheed Martin cut the symbolic ribbon Thursday on the first Department of Defense grid-tied microgrid. The project, started in 2010, uses renewable energy (a 120-kilowatt solar array) and energy storage (a 300-kilowatt battery system), as well as the base’s existing backup generators, and ties it into a miniature grid via Lockheed’s Intelligent Microgrid Control System.

It’s not the first DOD project to combine on-site power resources like solar, batteries and backup generators into a self-sustaining, islanded grid unit -- in other words, a microgrid. In fact, the military is leading the charge in microgrids, given its need for fail-safe, always-on electricity supply, particularly when the bigger grid blacks out, no matter what the cost.

But Fort Bliss is the first Army microgrid project to hook itself up to the utility grid, which opens a new realm of possibilities, as well as challenges, for the system. That’s because, while the Fort Bliss microgrid is helping the Army meet its carbon footprint reduction and efficiency goals, its core purpose -- or “tactical utility,” as Fort Bliss spokesman Major Joe Buccino said in Thursday’s release, “is its ability to allow us to operate off the grid.”

“We are entering an age of emerging threats and cyberwarfare,” Buccino said. “We are assuming an unacceptable measure of risk at fixed installations of extended power loss in the event of an attack on the fragile electric grid." In other words, energy security comes first when it comes to the Army and the utility working together.

Microgrids: Islanded Today, Dynamic Tomorrow?

While the Army hasn’t disclosed how much power Fort Bliss uses, it’s no doubt much greater than the relatively small amounts coming from its 120-kilowatt solar system. While the Army is investing billions into solar and other renewable energy projects and recently announced a plan to build a 20-megawatt, $120 million solar PV plant at Fort Bliss in partnership with local utility El Paso Electric, its microgrid is still mostly powered by backup generators.

Likewise, the 300-kilowatt energy storage system is likely too small to back up the Army’s Brigade Combat Team complex where it’s installed, though the partners do say it’s “critical in lowering cost and maintaining a steady stream of energy,” as well as being able to respond to periods of high energy demand and cost to shave the base’s needs. 

So-called “islanded” microgrids, or those built just to power themselves independently of the grid, are still a vital asset for their owners. The Food and Drug Administration’s White Oak research facility in Maryland kept itself running during Hurricane Sandy with its always-on microgrid system built by Honeywell, for example.

Data centers, hospitals, airports and other critical sites often have backup generators and uninterruptible power systems that can do the trick of a microgrid during emergencies. Likewise, in developing countries like India, Brazil and South Africa, where grid power is unreliable and blackouts are a daily occurrence, many businesses have their own power supplies.

But most of these systems aren’t set up to interact with the grid when it’s still running. That’s too bad -- because the real benefits of microgrids to the grid aren’t simply tied to how much power they can supply themselves. More important is how they could interact with the grid as a dynamic resource, to do things like ease congestion, reduce peak demand or respond to grid emergencies.

That’s the potential that has many industry watchers predicting a surge in microgrid investment, though those predictions have a lot of variation in them, with forecasts ranging from $19 billion to $40 billion by 2020. Pike Research estimates there are 400 projects globally, but that includes plans that are still only on paper at this point. 

GTM Research sees more short-term opportunity for islanded microgrids, or those that aren’t built to interact with the grid. But in the longer term, “dynamic islanding will provide the biggest opportunity” for these systems to justify themselves on economic terms.

Building economically feasible, grid-interactive microgrids is harder than it sounds, however, with both technical and regulatory hurdles to overcome. Still, we’ve seen a few projects aimed at making it happen. The Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) has built a $14 million microgrid, including renewables and flow batteries, with S&C Electric Co., for example. The University of California at San Diego has built a cutting-edge microgrid that supplies 90 percent of the campus’s power needs, and is being integrated into a larger microgrid project with utility San Diego Gas & Electric.

The Military Leading the Microgrid Charge

Breaking down the barriers between microgrids and utilities could open up a new world of opportunities for backup power systems to earn money when they’re not being used for emergencies -- in other words, almost all the time. The technical challenges of tying all these local grid assets together is the realm of big players like General Electric, ABB, Siemens, SAIC, Schneider Electric, Boeing, Honeywell and Lockheed, as well as smaller specialty technology firms such as Spirae, Integral Analytics and Power Analytics (formerly EDSA).

In the meantime, there’s a push into technology that helps connect microgrid capabilities to the demands of grid operations and energy markets, with players including the aforementioned giants, as well as startups like Blue Pillar, Viridity Energy, Powerit Solutions, Enbala and many others.

But the biggest driver of microgrids into the real world may well be the U.S. military. GTM Research has collected some data from DOD’s microgrid programs, which include interest and “prioritization” of research and development into inverters and switching, control and protection technologies, as well as the system design, integration and economic analysis tools that make them useful to their owners.

DOD and the Department of Energy are also working on standardizing the technologies that go into microgrids, via the Smart Power Infrastructure Demonstration for Energy Reliability and Security (SPIDERS) projects underway at Fort Carson, Colo. and at Pearl Harbor-Hickam Air Force Base and Camp Smith in Hawaii. Military microgrid developers include SAIC, Lockheed Martin, Power Analytics (formerly EDSA) and General Electric, which is already in a big microgrid project with the U.S. Marine Corps.

Jim Gribschaw, director of energy programs at Lockheed Martin, noted in Thursday’s release that DOD’s work could lay the technical and regulatory ground work for moving microgrid technologies for hospitals, universities, commercial businesses and industrial sites, to name a few potential customers of the “energy-efficient and secure future” it’s promising out of the technology.

GTM Research predicts that North America will be the earliest adopter of microgrid technologies, with resiliency, reliability and regulatory factors seen as key drivers. One key development is the new IEEE 1547.4 standard released in 2011, which covers the design and integration of microgrids into electrical power systems in a way that wasn’t permitted by previous standards.

At the same time, microgrids are popping up around the globe. The EU MORE MICROGRIDS Project has eight pilots underway led by a consortium of vendors, power distribution utilities and research teams from 12 European nations, and Japanese firms and organizations have nine microgrid projects ranging from 300 kilowatts in Albuquerque, New Mexico to 50 megawatts for the Miyako Island Microgrid, to name two noteworthy examples.

greentech mediaGreentech Media (GTM) produces industry-leading news, research, and conferences in the business-to-business greentech market. Our coverage areas include solar, smart grid, energy efficiency, wind, and other non-incumbent energy markets. For more information, visit: greentechmedia.com , follow us on twitter: @greentechmedia, or like us on Facebook: facebook.com/greentechmedia.

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