Al Gore's Renewable Energy Proposal

Investment banker Jerome a Paris has written an excellent analysis of Al Gore's proposal that the U.S. obtain all of its electricity from renewable or zero-carbon sources within 10 years. Check it out.

Regards,
Tom

Utilities Talk More Wind


Airtricity Chairman Pat Wood, moderator of the "Utility Leadership in Wind Energy Development" session at the WINDPOWER 2007 Conference & Exhibition


Utilities are turning to wind—even as the “centerpiece of their portfolio” in some cases—because customers want it and policy calls for it, said utility and industry officials at the WINDPOWER 2007 Conference & Exhibition on Tuesday.

The opening session at WINDPOWER 2007, “Utility Leadership in Wind Energy Development,” brought together officials from both investor-owned and municipal utilities, in addition to the Bonneville Power Administration. Rounding out the panel was California Independent System Operator President and CEO Yakout Mansour.

“Across the country, the utility embrace of wind power is now a national phenomenon,” said Airtricity Chairman Pat Wood, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the panel’s moderator. Wood set the stage for the discussion by pointing out that utilities, the entities that ultimately deliver the power to the end user, are a crucial piece of the wind equation. “If the utility industry . . . is not engaged in this effort, we can’t go anywhere,” he said.

Thankfully, many utilities are engaged—for one, Xcel Energy, the No. 1 provider of wind energy to customers in the U.S. The utility will have 2,800 MW in wind capacity for its customers by the end of 2007, said Paul Bonavia, president of Xcel Energy’s utilities group. That number will rise to 6,000 MW by 2020, he said. “We listen to our customers, and they’re telling us this is something that they want and value,” he said. “We would rather take our bet on technologies of the future than on technologies of the past.”

That commitment to the customers is what drives utilities, who are primarily concerned with such issues as reliability and the rates they must charge customers. Bonneville Power Administration Administrator Stephen Wright, who referenced a recent study in which the organization was involved concluding that 6,000 MW of wind is “technically feasible,” expressed concern over the large amount of load growth taking place in several regions of the country at a time when resource constraints are increasing. “We need the wind industry to work with us to make sure we don’t have a reliability crisis and we don’t have a rate crisis,” he said.

The need for new generation resources was echoed by Yakout Mansour, who as the president and CEO of the California Independent System Operator is involved in the state’s quest to achieve its recently enacted ambitious renewable portfolio standard goals. In a mere five years, he said, the state will need to add over 7,000 MW of renewable energy capacity. “I need your help, I need it badly, and I need it now,” he told the audience.

Utility officials were eager to use the forum as an opportunity to communicate such perspectives and needs. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which owns its own wind, is looking for ways to add more wind onto its system through diversifying geographically (its turbines are primarily in one area) and other means. A “wish list” from Sacramento Municipal Utility District General Manager Jan Schori included improved forecasting, a sentiment echoed by Wright. Day-ahead forecasting, Schori said, is “not that good right now.” She also said she would like to see longer warranty and service agreements on turbines and equipment, which she said are more common in Europe. “We need you to think more like a utility,” she said.

Schori also expressed a common theme at WINDPOWER 2007: “We all need to cooperate on the transmission problem.”

As participants acknowledged the needs and challenges ahead, one theme that emerged was how several utilities—namely, those represented on the panel—now consider wind a key piece of their generation mix. Bonavia called wind “the centerpiece of our portfolio.” Asked how more utilities might become more comfortable with adding wind onto their systems, Bonavia said, “We need to have success stories.”

--from the American Wind Energy Association's Wind Energy Weekly, special WINDPOWER 2007 Conference & Exhibition Daily Edition.

Religious Activist's Agenda Includes Wind

See Grist magazine for an interview with green religious leader Rabbi Warren G. Stone of Temple Emanuel in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. Rabbi Stone notes in part:

I am tremendously proud of the work that my congregation has done. To describe only some of what has been accomplished: Temple Emanuel has had many years of energy audits, we developed environmental policies passed by our board, added solar panels for our "Eternal Light," use wind power, and recycle. We have built with sustainable building materials, created energy-efficient zones, added a biblical garden, and built a symbolic and beautiful sanctuary based on the banyan tree. We have developed interfaith programs in the D.C. community, taken our students on trips to the Chesapeake, and involved them in numerous cleanups and other environmental projects. We have become a "zero carbon footprint" community as well.

Not a bad checklist for any religious community that wants to focus on stewardship of God's creation.

Regards,
Tom

Coal Is the Answer?

U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) writes thoughtfully about U.S. dependence on foreign oil at Ocala.com, coming to the conclusion that coal-to-liquids technologies are the answer:

There are many other steps that must be taken: hydrogen cells, solar and wind power, geothermal energy, conservation and clean fuel technologies.

However, given our massive reserves of coal, we need to put this abundance toward reducing our dependency on imported oil. This will greatly enhance our national and economic security.

Stearns bases this view on the assessment that U.S. coal reserves total some 275 billion tons, calling for a Manhattan or Apollo project to take advantage of this huge resource.

Interestingly, a reasonable guesstimate for U.S. wind resources is that they are sufficient to generate 15-20 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. How much coal would be needed to generate that much electricity for one year? Roughly 10 billion tons. Clearly, our wind resources are also massive and deserve equal attention, rather than to be dismissed as a relatively trivial footnote to coal.

Also, missing from Stearns' analysis: any mention of global warming. Probably good thinking on his part--my guess is that the carbon dioxide emissions from the production and then combustion of coal-based liquids would be quite high.

If it were not for global warming concerns, certainly, the idea of any domestic substitute for imported oil would be attractive. For a totally different big-picture approach, see V2G, or Vehicle-to-Grid, Power. I think of it as plug-in hybrids on steroids.

Regards,
Tom

Wind Turbines and Air Pollution

(Sorry for backing up here: this is something that deserves lengthy treatment, and the long holiday weekend in the U.S. finally provides the time I needed.)

Christopher Mitchell at the blog Energista does a good job of commenting on a Matt Wald story in the May 4 New York Times entitled "Wind Farms May Not Lower Air Pollution, Study Suggests." You can view the entire Wald story here.

Some additional comments:

Wind Farms May Not Lower Air Pollution, Study Suggests
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, May 3 - Building thousands of wind turbines would probably not reduce the pollutants that cause smog and acid rain, but it would slow the growth in emissions of heat-trapping gases, according to a study released Thursday by the National Academy of Sciences.

This headline and lead are very strange, because neither of these findings appears to be news. The reason wind power, in theory, won't reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides is that nationwide emissions of these pollutants is limited by law--no matter how many wind turbines are installed, the limit doesn't change. As Christopher Mitchell points out, though, since wind generators emit no pollutants, more wind should mean that the cost of complying with the limits is reduced. The limits on sulfur dioxide were part of the Clean Air Act of 1990, so this is a 17-year-old story.

With respect to carbon dioxide, the primary "heat-trapping gas," there are no limits, and so more wind generation does indeed reduce CO2 emissions.

So why the peculiar lead and headline?

Even the scale of local damage from wind farms is unclear. Bats and raptors are thought to be the animals most threatened by wind turbines because they reproduce more slowly. But scientists base estimates on fairly primitive methods, like counting animal carcasses nearby and hoping that few have been carried off by animals, said Paul G. Risser, chairman of the academy's study.

I'm not sure I'd call this "primitive." It's the standard method that is used by wildlife biologists to study and report on bird (or bat) mortality caused by collisions with structures of all types, such as communications towers, buildings, and even automobiles. Typically, estimates of "predation" (carcasses being carried off by animals) are developed at each site by leaving carcasses on the ground and seeing how swiftly they are removed. These estimates (for example, 25% removed within a week) are then included when the scientists conducting the study extrapolate a range of total mortality from the dead bodies that are found.

"If 100 bats are killed, we don't know whether that's 100 out of 10 million or 100 out of 100 million," Dr. Risser said.

Excellent point. More federal research dollars invested in getting a handle on bird and bat (especially bat) populations would be a very good thing. At present, almost nothing is known about bat populations. Also, though, it is quite interesting that neither the New York Times nor the National Academy of Sciences study mentions a currently ongoing bat research program that is jointly funded by Bat Conservation International, several wind power companies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. More info about this here.

At the moment, the research is focused on testing a sonic deterrent that would warn bats away from wind farms. Much more testing and engineering work needed before it can be declared a solution.

And researchers do not know whether newer windmills, which have huge blades that rotate slowly, are any safer for birds and bats than older models, which spin more like airplane propellers.

True:

1) Some studies of raptor vision suggest that slower-rotating blades should be easier to see. But it's almost impossible to test this in the field. The only way to do it would be to install one type of machine, then remove it and install the other, measuring mortality at each for the same period of time. You'd also have to hope that nothing else changed in the meantime.

2) The numbers of birds that are killed at most wind sites are so low that studies of this question are unlikely to be fruitful.

Wind power could also reduce coal-plant carbon dioxide, which is thought to cause climate change, but the impact may be small, the report said. By 2025, wind turbines could cut carbon dioxide output by 4.5 percent compared with what it would otherwise have been, but this "would only slow the increase," said Dr. Risser. "It wouldn't result in a decrease in the amount of CO2."

The study relied on an Energy Department projection that in the next 15 years, onshore wind capacity would range from 19 to 72 gigawatts, or 2 percent to 7 percent of the nation's generating capacity. The actual impact would be smaller, however, because wind machines run fewer hours than coal or nuclear plants.

As a matter of fact, they run about the same number of hours (65% to 80% of the time), but unlike coal or nuclear plants, wind turbines usually generate at well below their peak capacity. As I've indicated elsewhere in this blog, this is one way of looking through the telescope. Looking through the other end, we find that using essentially the same data and statistics, wind turbines would cut new CO2 emissions between now and 2020 by 30%.

Wind output quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, but wind turbines still produce less than 1 percent of the electricity used in the United States. And the amount of wind energy that can be integrated into the electricity grid is limited, the researchers said. The maximum that could be accommodated, Dr. Policansky said, is probably 20 percent of the nation's electricity use.

These last two sentences that I have bolded are probably the clearest example of minimizing wind's contribution, otherwise known as damning with faint praise. First, we know little about what the upper limit on wind is, and it will be many years before we have solid knowledge. But second and more important, 20% is huge. It's as much as nuclear power generates today, and more than any other source except coal. The fact that we could get that much electricity from a new clean alternative energy source is the real news contained in this story. It would be great to see a story in the Times someday with the headline, "Wind Farms Could Provide 20% of U.S. Electricity, Study Says."

Regards,
Tom

What Can Wind Do About Global Warming?

The following information is from a fact sheet we will be releasing soon.

The United States has one of the most abundant wind energy resources in the world. If the U.S. takes advantage of this clean, renewable, domestic, available, and vastly deployable energy source, it can take one large step closer to addressing global warming and achieving emission reductions...today.

Adding clean generation from wind energy means we need less generation from other types of energy, including natural gas, coal and sometimes oil.

On average, every additional megawatt-hour produced by wind energy means 1,220 pounds of CO2 are not emitted into our environment.

How much can wind really do to fight global warming?

A recent study from the National Academies of Science (NAS) reports that adding another 60 gigawatts (GW) of wind energy by 2020, in addition to the 11 GW that we have today, could avoid approximately 130 million tons of CO2 in 2020. This is nearly 30% of expected emission increases by 2020 in the electric sector.

A National Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) of 20% renewable generation by 2020 could avoid almost 100% of expected emission increases in the electric sector with 180 GW of renewable energy, including 130 GW of wind.

Wind Can Reduce CO2, Says Who?

Three transmission and system integration studies estimate how much CO2 wind energy can avoid.

Where and How Much?

New York:
1,256 lbs of CO2/MWh
(New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, NYSERDA)

Midwest:
1,277 lbs of CO2/MWh
(Midwest Independent System Operator, MISO)

Texas:
962 lbs of CO2/MWh
(Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT)

Copyright 2007 - American Wind Energy Association. May be freely re-transmitted electronically, for non-commercial purposes only, provided this notice is included. All other rights reserved.