Wind Energy Hits its Stride, Manufacturing and Jobs Lag
The wind energy industry in the U.S. had a record-breaking year in 2009, installing 10,000 megawatts of new generating power, enough to serve 2.4 million homes, according to the American Wind Energy Association in its fourth quarter report released today. Yet the industry is still plagued by a lack of manufacturing investment, and job creation still lags. Here is a PDF of the report.
The AWEA credits the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act as the impetus for the growth. During the last quarter the wind added 4000 megawatts of new capacity, together with new construction, operations and management jobs. Texas, the top wind-producing state, added 2292 megawatts in new wind capacity, more than twice that of Indiana, which ranked No. 2, with 905 megawatts added. Arizona opened its first utility scale wind project in 2009.
Yet wind power’s prospects for long-term growth are far from a sure bet. Total investment in manufacturing actually dropped compared to 2008; there were one-third fewer wind power manufacturing facilities in 2009 compared to the year before. This resulted in a net loss of manufacturing jobs, which was compounded by low orders and high inventory.
The weak manufacturing outlook caused AWEA CEO Denise Bode to sound a warning: “U.S. wind turbine manufacturing – the canary in the mine — is down compared to last year’s levels, and needs long-term policy certainty and market pull in order to grow. We need to set hard targets, in the form of a national Renewable Electricity Standard, in order to provide the necessary stability for manufacturers to expand their U.S. operations and to seize the historic opportunity we have today to build up a thriving renewable energy industry.”
In another development, Detroit Edison and Michigan-based Heritage Sustainable Energy have started commercial operation of a wind farm that will supply the utility’s customers with enough electricity to power about 2,000 homes. The wind farm is the first constructed and operated in Michigan under the state’s energy reform law that will have 10 percent of the utility’s power generation come from renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2015. The wind farm was built after the utility signed a 20-year agreement to purchase wind power and renewable energy credits from Heritage.
Consumer Reports Raps Energy Guide Ratings on Refrigerators
Shopping for a refrigerator? The Energy Guide labels affixed to the floor models may not be a reliable guide to how much electricity a particular model uses, according to Consumer Reports.
In a report on ABC’s Eyewitness News tonight, a Consumer Reports spokeswoman questioned of the reliability of the ratings. “In our tests, refrigerators typically use about 20 percent more energy than it says on their yellow Energy Guide label,” said Celia Kuperszmid-Lehrman. “That’s because our tests are tougher, and we believe they better reflect how you’d actually use a refrigerator.”
For example, a GE model made by Samsung used almost 40% more electricity than the number on its Guide would suggest; an LG and Sears Kenmore made by LG used about 50% more, according to the broadcast. Consumer Reports says that the government’s test procedures need to be better defined, so that manufacturers can’t claim energy savings you are unlikely to see at home.
Consumer Reports said that the Energy Guide ratings often do not reflect real-world conditions in the home. The two refrigerators made by LG use significantly less energy only at the warmest settings required by the government tests. “But you’re not likely to use those settings, because your food’s going to spoil faster. So you’re not going to get the energy savings,” said Kuperszmid-Lehrman.
This isn’t the first time Consumer Reports has criticized the Department of Energy’s Energy Star program. In an October 2008 article it said the Consumers Union said the federal tests were out of date and its qualifying standards were too lax.
Tesla Secures Financing for Electric Vehicle Manufacturing Plant
Tesla Motors, Inc. took another step closer to obtaining the manufacturing capacity to build electric vehicles, closing on a $465 loan from the Department of Energy last week. Plans are to use the Southern California plant, which will be located in Palo Alto, to build the model S electric sedan. The plant will also manufacture battery packs, electric motors and vehicle control equipment for Tesla’s vehicles and for sale to other auto manufacturers. Tesla plans to begin volume production of the model S in 2012, and says it will be capable of producing 20,000 vehicles per day by the end of 2013.
The model S is expected to get between 160 miles and 300 miles on a single charge. Of course, the vehicle’s success will hinge on the number of charging stations on the highways. The Web site evchargernews lists 15 Tesla charger stations in California.
Thursday’s loan arrangement is the second from the DOE to a vehicle manufacturer. In September 2009, the DOE signed its first loan agreement for $5.9 billion to the Ford Motor Co. It has also signed conditional commitments with Nissan North America, Inc. and Fisker Automotive. Nissan plans to build electric cars and battery packs at the company’s Smyrna, Tenn. manufacturing complex, while Fisker has announced plans to build plug-in hybrid electric vehicles by reopening a shuttered GM plant in Wilmington, Del.
Energy Reform Faces a Much Tougher Battle
Proponents of energy reform got a one-two punch this week and woke up to a harsh new reality: getting an agenda passed that supports clean energy sources just got a lot tougher. On Tuesday the Republican underdog candidate Scott Brown scored a major upset to become the next senator-elect from Massachusetts, filling the seat long held by the late Edward M. Kennedy. Two days later the Supreme Court removed the ban on corporations to spend directly on political campaigns.
Brown’s victory puts an end to the Democrats’ filibuster-proof hold on the Senate. He opposes cap-and-trade to reduce carbon emissions and has shown only qualified support for renewable energy. But it’s the Supreme Court ruling that really damages the prospects for a robust clean energy industry in the United States. Corporations can now spend as freely as they see fit to influence political campaigns. That means deep-pocketed oil and coal interests can throw as much money as they want to support their candidates and defeat their opponents.
President Obama called the decision “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”
Writing in the Huffington Post, Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, gave a hint of what may be in store now that corporations no longer have to work through restrictive federal political action committees. “Exxon Mobil’s federal PAC spent just over $800,000 in the 2007-2008 election cycle. During the same time period, the oil giant spent more than $45 million on lobbying at the federal level, an advocacy area where there are no limits on how much can be spent. Even a small diversion of these funds from lobbying to elections would drastically increase the spending imbalance between Big Oil and those of us fighting for a cleaner, healthier planet.”
The Supreme Court majority supported its decision in the name of the First Amendment right to free speech. Well, money talks, and with this decision we’ll be hearing a lot of it from special interests.
Regardless of the setbacks, the reasons to pass a climate bill remain, according to an editorial in today’s New York Times. Greenhouse gas emissions are trending upward. In Copenhagen Obama pledged that the U.S. would meet emission reduction targets. And China is already moving aggressively to create clean energy jobs, and has a strong and growing presence in wind and solar power.
Can the U.S. do the same?
Sugarcane-Based Ethanol Produces Electricity in Brazil
Brazilian electric plant runs on ethanol. Source: Petrobras
On Tuesday Brazil’s federal energy company Petrobras started up what it claims is the world’s first utility to use sugarcane-based ethanol in a gas-turbine engine to produce electricity on a full commercial scale.
Located about 110 miles north of Rio de Janeiro, the Juiz de Fora Power Plant has two GE LM6000 gas turbines, one of whose combustors has been modified by GE to enable the use of ethanol, making it dual-fuel, ethanol and natural gas, providing an alternative fuel source for the power plant that previously had only one available fuel. Brazil has 35-year, large-scale experience in sugarcane-based ethanol use, producing about 7.3 billion gallons in 2008. Petrobras says ethanol’s combustion reduces emissions, particularly nitrogen oxides.
There will be five months of demonstration runs to validate the use of ethanol as an alternative fuel, as well as to ensure that emissions are within the expected limits. GE is providing the conversion technology, engineering and field support during conversion and commissioning.
Managing Hydro Power in a Warmer Climate
Spillway structure releasing water from the Bonneville Dam. Source: Bonneville Power Administration
Climate warming may well affect snowpack in mountainous regions, leading to changes in the river flows in surrounding areas. Case in point: the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River Basin, where the nation’s largest hydropower system is located. Predicted hydrologic changes for the Pacific Northwest include less springtime snowpack, earlier snow melt, earlier peaks in river flow and lower summer flows.
This will be a problem for water managers, who rely on historical stream-flow records to gauge when to open and close the floodgates as part of a legally binding system that seeks to balance hydropower generation, flood risks, irrigation and other needs between regions.
“There are anticipated dramatic changes in the snowpack which ultimately will affect when the water comes into the Columbia’s reservoirs,” says Alan Hamlet, a UW research assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering who works in the UW’s Climate Impacts Group. “We were trying to develop new tools and procedures for changing flood control operating rules in response to these changes in hydrology, and to test how well they work in practice.”
The group has developed a technique to determine when to empty reservoirs in the winter for flood control and when to refill them in the spring to provide storage for the coming year.Computer simulations showed that switching to the new management system under a warmer future climate would lessen summer losses in hydropower due to climate change by about a quarter. It would also bolster flows for fish by filling reservoirs more reliably. At the same time the approach reduced the risk of flooding.
The group has created a computer program that uses long-term forecasts rather than historical records to recalculate when to begin filling and emptying the major storage reservoirs in the Columbia River basin in a warmer climate. They compared historical conditions with a scenario where temperatures are 2 degrees Celsius higher on average than today, a change expected in the Pacific Northwest by the second half of this century.
“We need to develop the tools to be able to handle a changing climate now, so we’re not rushing when it becomes a problem,” says Stephen Burges, a civil engineering professor who also worked on the project.
PG&E and SolarCity Sign Deal to Finance Solar Panel Installations
Solar panel installation on a San Francisco rooftop. Source: SolarCity
If you own a home or run a business in California,you could be eligible for financial help to tap into solar power. Pacific Venture Capital, a capital investment unit of the utility PG&E, and solar panel supplier SolarCity Corp., have announced $60 million in tax equity financing for solar installations for U.S. homes and businesses. SolarCity will offer financing options that will allow homeowners and businesses to purchase or lease solar panel installations with no upfront investment. SolarCity expects to install more than 1,000 solar systems under the investment, which is funded by PG&E.
In return for providing the upfront investment needed for the new systems, Pacific Venture Capital will receive lease revenues from SolarCity customers, along with the federal investment tax credits and local rebates for the solar energy projects. The companies say that the deal is the first such tax equity financing investment by a utility holding company and the first such collaboration between a utility holding company and a solar power provider. The solar systems funded under the agreement will be installed in 2010, predominantly in California, with some in Arizona and Colorado. More details are here.
Record-Breaking Global Warmth in Last Decade, NASA Says
Global annual mean surface air temperature change. Source: NASA
It turns out that the Copenhagen climate talks occurred during a year of near-record global temperatures. An analysis of global surface temperatures by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York finds that 2009 was the second warmest since 1880; in the Southern Hemisphere, it was the warmest on record. The past year was a small fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest on record. This ties 2009 with a cluster of other years–1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007–for the second warmest on record.
Annual temperature numbers and a given year’s ranking miss the real story in global warming, says James Hansen, GISS director. “There’s substantial year-to-year variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Nino-La Nina cycle. When we average temperature over five or ten years to minimize that variability, we find global warming is continuing unabated.”
January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record. A clear warming trend is present since 1880, when scientific instrumentation first became available to monitor temperatures precisely, although there was a leveling off between the 1940s and 1970s. In the past three decades, the GISS surface temperature record shows an upward trend of about 0.36 degrees Farenheit per decade. In total, average global temperatures have increased by about 1.5 degrees F since 1880.
More information about the GISS climate analysis is here.
Increased Wind Power Will Require Infrastructure Upgrades: Report
Wind power has grwoth potential with infrastructure investments. Source: NREL
The contribution of wind power to the overall energy mix potentially could grow 10-fold over the next 15 years…but significant infrastructure improvements would be required to make that happen. That’s one of the assumptions underlying a report released by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Research Laboratory yesterday. The Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study (EWITS) is the result of two-and-a-half years of technical research.
EWITS is one of the largest wind integration studies to date. Its purpose is to analyze the economic, operational and technical implications of shifting 20% or more of the Eastern Interconnection’s electrical load to wind energy by the year 2024. The Eastern Interconnection is the nation’s eastern power grid, which accounts for 70% of the electricity consumed in the U.S. A summary of the report is here. A PDF of the full report can be downloaded here (it’s a big file).
The report’s authors acknowledge that the goal of integrating 20% wind seems optimistic. But they maintain that it is possible. Just a few years ago, 5% wind energy penetration was a lofty goal, they note. And some countries in Europe already have achieved wind penetration rates of 10% or higher in short periods of time. So change is possible, but not without planning for that change ahead of time. One reason: building transmission capacity takes much longer than installing wind plants. The report also conveys a sense of urgency to studying transmission, which is already starting to limit wind growth in certain areas.
“Whether we’re talking about using land-based wind in the Midwest, offshore wind in the East or any combination of wind power resources, any plausible scenario requires transmission infrastructure upgrades and we need to start planning for that immediately,” says David Corbus, NREL project manager for the study.
The EWITS project consists of three major tasks: wind plant output data development, transmission requirements analysis, and wind integration analysis. The research team constructed four high-penetration scenarios to represent different wind generation development possibilities in the Eastern Interconnection. Three delivered wind energy equivalent to 20% of the projected annual electrical energy requirements in 2024; the fourth scenario increased the amount of wind energy to 30%. The scenarios comprise a mix of land-based and offshore wind generation.
Among the key findings are:
- The integration of 20% wind energy is technically feasible, but will require significant expansion of the transmission infrastructure and system operational changes in order for it to be realized;
- Without transmission enhancements, substantial curtailment of wind generation would be required for all 20% wind scenarios studied;
- The relative cost of aggressively expanding the existing transmission grid represents only a small portion of the total annualized costs in any of the scenarios studied;
- Drawing wind energy from a larger geographic area makes it both less expensive and a more reliable energy source;
- Wind energy development is a cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions – as more wind energy comes online, less energy from fossil-fuel burning plants is required, reducing greenhouse gas emissions;
- Carbon emissions are reduced by similar amounts in all scenarios, indicating that transmission helps to optimize the electrical system and does not result in coal power being shipped from the Midwest to New England States;
- Reduced fossil fuel expenditures more than pay for the increased costs of additional transmission in all high wind scenarios.
“Incorporating high amounts of wind power in the Eastern grid goes a long way towards clean power for the whole country,” says Corbus. “We can bring more wind power online, but if we don’t have the proper infrastructure to move that power around, it’s like buying a hybrid car and leaving it in the garage.”
ACEEE’s List: Greenest Vehicles for 2010
Struggling carmakers have put some marketing muscle behind fuel-efficient vehicles this year. One visible sign: the parade of electric vehicles showcased on “Electric Avenue” at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. And, as noted by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, the first full-function all-electric vehicles are coming our way in more than a decade. Today the ACEEE released its environmental ratings for model year 2010 vehicles. The annual ranking assigns a “green score” to vehicles, which incorporates tailpipe emissions, fuel consumption and emissions of gases that contribute to global warming.
According to ACEEE vehicle analyst Shruti Vaidyanathan, advanced technologies exemplified by the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf, both of which are scheduled for make an appearance in the latter half of 2010, has intensified interest in electric vehicles among car manufacturers. Nonetheless, the eco-winners were hybrids and smaller conventional vehicles. Just missing the cleanest list are the diesel-powered Volkswagen Jetta and Jetta Sportswagen, two “clean diesels” introduced in the United States last year. While the diesels performed well in the group’s annual evaluations, high prices of the vehicles and diesel fuel have held back sales.
Topping the list of greenest cars this year is the Honda natural-gas powered Civic GX, followed by the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid, in that order. new arrivals to the greenest list are the Honda Insight, Ford Fusion/Mercury Milan Hybrid and the Hyundai Accent Blue. The list is rounded out by three fuel-efficient conventional vehicles: Smart Fortwo, Chevrolet Cobalt XFE and Pontiac XFE.
And just for fun, here is a list of the “meanest” vehicles (led by the Lamborghini Murcielago) and a list of “greener” vehicles, a selection of widely available models in each vehicle class.
