GE's Oil & Gas unit will provide liquefied natural gas (LNG) technology for the development of Gorgon, one of the world’s largest untapped natural gas fields.

Claudi Santiago, President and CEO of GE Oil & Gas said: “I am delighted that GE Oil & Gas has been selected by Chevron (NYSE: CVX) to deliver this technologically complex project which will deliver cleaner energy on an unprecedented scale. The contract consolidates our global LNG technology leadership position and our competitive edge in pioneering CO2 sequestration applications.”

According to the Energy Information Administration, between now and 2030 global energy consumption is projected to increase by 44% with oil and gas, along with coal, continuing to meet the largest part of that demand. The demand for natural gas--the cleanest burning fossil fuel--is expected to grow by more than 67% by 2030.

CCS is considered a dangerous distraction by many environmentalists who fear the untested technology will provide little more than an excuse to continue business as usual in regards to fossil fuel consumption.

The Gorgon project is estimated to cost approximately A$43 billion for the first phase of development, with first gas planned for 2014.

The Gorgon Project’s estimated economic life is at least 40 years from the time of start-up, GE said. To date the Gorgon partners have signed sale and purchase agreements for LNG export into Japan and South Korea, the world’s two largest LNG import markets, as well as India and China.

The Gorgon natural gas fields are located at Barrow Island, around 130km off Western Australia. Gas will be extracted and delivered via subsea and underground pipelines to gas treatment and liquefaction facilities on Barrow Island's southeast coast.

Three 5-MTPA GE Main Refrigerant Compression Trains, each comprising two GE Frame-7 Gas Turbines plus advanced technology liquefaction compressors, will be utilized for the production of liquefied natural gas by chilling to –160°C, ready for shipping, before re-gasification and pipeline transportation for use by domestic and industrial customers.

Prior to liquefaction, carbon dioxide (CO2) will be stripped out and injected into the depleted natural gas wells 1,300-meters deep for storage.

The GE Main Refrigerant Compression Trains and the GE Compression Trains for CO2 sequestration will be manufactured and tested in Florence and Massa, Italy, then shipped in 2011 and 2012.

In May 2008 GE Oil & Gas’ Drilling and Production business was awarded a five (5) year frame agreement to supply subsea equipment and support services for Gorgon.

Chevron Australia Pty Limited (with 50% interest) operates the Gorgon Project in joint venture with the Australian subsidiaries of ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) and Shell (NYSE: RDS-B)(each with 25% interest).

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

Called the Smart Green Grid Initiative (SGGI), the effort will include educational events at the upcoming climate change meetings in Copenhagen. SGGI has been approved by the United Nations to be an official smart grid delegation to the Copenhagen meetings. SGGI will also be sponsoring educational events in the U.S. in the weeks preceding the meetings in Copenhagen.

Supporters of the Smart Green Grid Initiative include National Grid (NYSE: NGG), Southern Company (NYSE: SO), AEP (NYSE: AEP), Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), LG Electronics (LGERF.PK), Landis + Gyr, Echelon (Nasdaq: ELON), Tendril, Ice Energy, Enspiria, eMeter and Itron (Nasdaq: ITRI).

“We need to help the world understand the real potential for Smart Grid technologies to help slow climate change,” said Bob Gilligan, vice president of GE Energy’s Transmission and Distribution business. “Smart Grid solutions are often viewed primarily for their efficiency and cost savings, but every kilowatt saved is also a carbon savings. Add the potential carbon benefits we get through easier integration of more renewable energy, like wind and solar, and the Smart Grid can have a major effect on the carbon impact of our energy infrastructure.”

For example, with a key component of climate change policies being increased use of renewable energy, SGGI said it will try to help parties understand and manage its variable and intermittent nature. It will try to demonstrate that demand response and energy storage solutions can dynamically complement renewable resources--and avoid the building of new fossil-fuel power plants to fill the availability gaps and peak needs.

“Another important area is energy efficiency,” said Dan Delurey, Chairman of the Smart Green Grid Initiative. “Today, it is important to view energy efficiency in a more holistic and dynamic way than in the past. New technologies and applications mean that energy efficiency can mean more than just replacing one device with a newer, more efficient one. It can include providing new information to the consumer that they have simply never had before. Research has shown that electricity customers with energy usage information become more energy efficient overall--by upwards of 15%. The Smart Grid may help make energy efficiency sustainable and institutionalized in business and society.”

The Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition and the Demand Response Coordinating Committee, the leading groups in the U.S. focused on promoting the development of the Smart Grid and smart grid practices like Demand Response, also will be supporting SGGI.

Website: www.smartgreengrid.org

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

U.S. consumers pay much less for their energy, per kilowatt, than consumers in most industrialized nations. Yet electricity and fuel prices typically fail to reflect the full cost of energy production and consumption, especially in terms of health effects.

The U.S. Congress requested a clarification of "hidden" energy costs as part of its 2005 energy bill. The result, released on Monday, concluded that the external effects of burning fossil fuels cost the United States more than $120 billion in 2005.

The National Research Council (NRC) study analyzed the damages from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter caused by powering every building, factory, car, and truck in the continental 48 states. It is the most comprehensive review of the effects of U.S. energy policy on human health, grain crops, timber yields, construction materials, and recreation, the study authors said.

Still, the costs from water pollution, climate change, and mercury exposure were not factored into the estimate. "Our results are rather conservative," said Maureen Cropper, vice chair of the study committee.

Coal-fired power plants are responsible for more than half of the estimated damages. Air pollution effects from burning coal for electricity costs U.S. residents, on average, an additional 3.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour of energy produced, although a plant's size, age, and technology, as well as the sulfur content of its coal, determine its regional health impact.

Pennsylvania residents pay average electricity prices for the United States and rely on coal for nearly half of their electricity. As a result, the state ranks second in sulfur dioxide emissions and fifth in nitrogen oxide emissions. Based on the NRC study, electricity prices in the state are an estimated 35 percent greater when health costs are included.

Motor vehicles contribute about 47 percent of the study's estimated damages nationwide. Depending on the fuel source and technology, the added cost ranges from 1.2 to 1.7 cents per vehicle mile. After measuring the damages associated with fuel extraction, production, and distribution, as well as vehicle manufacturing, the study team was surprised to find that vehicle operation accounts for less than one-third of total health costs associated with motor vehicles.

"There are a lot of damages associated with vehicle manufacturing," said Cropper, an environmental economist at the University of Maryland in College Park. "People don't think about these lifecycle emissions. They focus on what's coming out of the tailpipe."

Natural gas-powered heat and electricity cause the remaining damages. Gas-fueled plants produce, on average, 0.11 cents of additional damages per kilowatt-hour. Heating buildings and industrial processes with natural gas costs an additional 11 cents per thousand cubic feet, the study said.

The study did not quantify damages associated with nuclear energy, which supplies 20 percent of U.S. electricity, noting that expensive risk assessment and spent-fuel transportation models would have been necessary. The study committee noted, however, that although direct health damages of nuclear are "quite low," uranium mining activities have threatened nearby communities with radon exposure. Potential risks are borne mostly by uranium-exporting countries such as Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, Namibia, and Niger.

Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy do not use fuels to generate electricity, and therefore do not produce adverse health effects, the study said.

To derive the health costs of these various energy options, the committee based its modeling estimates on a $6 million price for the value of a statistical life, in 2000 dollars.

While the committee refrained from making specific estimates related to greenhouse gas emissions, public health experts fear that heat waves, tropical disease, water scarcity, malnutrition, and extreme weather will become more prevalent as climate change intensifies in the decades ahead.

"Attempting to estimate a single value for climate change damages would have been inconsistent with the dynamic and unfolding insights into climate change itself and with the extremely large uncertainties associated with effects and range of damages," the study said.

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

Photo courtesy of Eric Hart.

Reprinted with permission from Worldwatch Institute

Although the program was officially launched on Wednesday, city officials say that residents have been recycling food for weeks and are already setting aside about half of the city’s 500 tons of daily food waste.

The city requires residents and businesses to place food scraps in sealed buckets, and then collects the buckets and trucks them to San Francisco’s Organics Annex, where the food waste is composted. The compost is then sold as fertilizer to area farms and vineyards.

Seattle was the first U.S. city to require all households to recycle food waste, but San Francisco’s law covers businesses and apartments.

Jared Blumenthal, the city’s environmental officer, said residents have strongly backed the food recycling plan because — overwhelmed by bad environmental news — this gives them something concrete to do.

“This is not rocket science,” he said. “This is putting some food scraps into a different pile and turning them into compost.”

[photo credit: Norcal Waste Systems]

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360

Giffords’ legislation would require the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to appoint a group of experts to create a long-term plan to guide solar energy research and its transition into commercial uses. The group would identify research and development that needs to occur to help improve the performance and reliability of solar technologies, decrease cost, reduce water use and mitigate any negative environmental impacts.

It would be subject to a comprehensive revision every three years to keep it current and at least one-third but not more than half of the members of the Committee must come from the solar industry.

The bill also authorizes US $2.25 billion for solar research over the next five years. The money will fund at least 10 photovoltaic demonstration projects ranging from 1-3 megawatts (MW) in size and at least three but not more than five solar projects greater than 30 MW in size.

The Secretary of Energy is also directed to award this money on a merit-reviewed basis, and specifically to provide awards to industry-led groups for research in solar manufacturing. In addition, DOE must establish a program to research, develop and deploy the reuse, recycling and safe disposal of photovoltaic devices.

The bill authorizes $350 million for DOE to carry out these activities in FY 2011, rising to $550 million in FY 2015.

The roadmap provision is modeled on the National Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, which that industry credits with being instrumental in helping semiconductor technology advance rapidly over the past two decades.

Giffords said that the bill would require DOE to engage diverse stakeholders in the solar community and work across programs to create a comprehensive plan to guide funding for the research needed to make the U.S. the global center for solar innovation.

Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) said the bill goes a long way to helping move the solar industry in the U.S. forward and called on the Senate to pass the bill in the coming weeks.

“While solar technology is available and being deployed now in all 50 states, the Solar Technology Roadmap will help continue technological innovations and breakthroughs in the solar industry, driving down costs even further," Resch said. “We especially want to applaud Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). Congresswoman Giffords has been one of the solar industry’s strongest advocates in Congress since her arrival in 2007 and her leadership on the Solar Technology Roadmap is the latest of many efforts to help create a sound policy environment for the solar industry.

Reprinted with permission from Renewable Energy World

Based on comments made at the Tokyo Motor Show by Ikuo Mori, president of Fuji Heavy Industries (the company that makes Subarus), Subaru is well on their way to releasing their first gasoline-electric hybrid in 2012.

Mori was less than specific with details, saying only that the vehicle will be a version of one of Subaru’s existing cars and will display typical Subaru driving characteristics—whether this includes all-wheel drive or not remains to be seen.

Although it’s not clear which car the hybrid will be based on, Subaru is showing an AWD hybrid touring concept car with two motors on each axle. If that car is any indication of what segment Subaru is targeting for hybrid sales, we will likely see an Outback Hybrid in the future.

I’m imagining that with the new fuel economy rules just announced by the US government, adding a hybrid to Subaru’s fleet was probably the easiest way to meet them.

Source: Automotive News (subs. req’d)

Image Credit: Subaru

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

Oceanlinx; another Australian wave power company that uses the floating oil rig as the model for its wave power began installation this month of its last test before grid-connecting a 2.5 MW unit off the coast of Port Kembla, near Sydney.

It should be sending power to the Australian grid early next year. Unusually, for wave power concepts, this converts the energy of ocean swells under the platform into air pressure which turns a wind turbine. The company’s previous demo in 2007 proved it works.

It seems like an odd way to harness the oscillating power of waves; powering a wind turbine on the “oil rig” above. It works by trapping a hollow airspace above the ocean; pushing up into a 100 square metre tunnel in the 500 tonne unit.

As the ocean swells it pushes the air up, forces air through the turbine; generating electricity, and as the wave drops it pulls the air down through the turbine again, once more generating electricity - so it powers the turbine both with the rise and the fall of each wave.

But because of its unique “wind power” approach the moving turbine parts of the Oceanlinx system are mostly above the water, and it uses no hydraulic fluids, so there is nothing to deteriorate in the harsh environment for moving machinery under the sea.

Like most other wave power schemes, this one is scalable and modular, so it could be scaled up to rival the 240 MW La Rance tidal power plant, in France.

Oceanlinx is funded by Sennet Capital in Honolulu, an investment bank that focuses on funding renewable energy developments.

One investor banker at Sennet who likes the Oceanlinx; Karl Stahlkopf, a former VP at the Electric Power Research Institute points out that ”The genius of their approach is that there are no submerged moving parts.”

Image: Oceanlinx
Source: Spectrum

Reprinted with permission from CleanTechnica

One plant is brand new, the other just celebrated its 20th anniversary. One's located in Florida while the other's in Minnesota. The Lee County (Fla.) Waste-to-Energy Expansion Project is fueled by municipal solid waste, while Great River Energy's Elk River Station burns refuse-derived fuel (RDF), but both waste-to-energy (WTE) plants do well what they were designed to do: efficiently dispose of garbage.

“The thing about WTE is that it is primarily a method of waste disposal,” said Don Castro, P.E., HDR Engineering, and project manager on the Lee County project. Its main purpose in life is to make provisions for safe and sustainable waste disposal practices. “The energy that comes along with it is secondary,” he said.

WTE has relatively low CO2 emissions–comparable to those of natural gas used for electricity generation–and offsets the fossil fuels that would be used to generate an equivalent amount of electricity. Less municipal waste is sent to landfills so less methane is produced–a gas with a global warming potential 21 times that of CO2.

“Elk River has converted almost 6 million tons of garbage into renewable electric generation over the last 20 years,” said Tim Steinbeck, plant manager at the Minnesota facility. “We recycled an older facility through many years of change and coupled with the RDF processing plant, we keep 100 people in green jobs.”

The New and the Old

When the Lee County WTE Facility Expansion Project went into commercial operation in November 2007, it was among the first new municipal waste combustion (MWC) facilities built in the U. S. in more than 10 years. The project, which is owned by the Lee County Solid Waste Division, was completed for less than its original budget of $123 million.

Two MWCs with a 39 MW turbine generator were already in operation at the site when the new unit was built. The new unit has a stand-alone 19 MW turbine generator and can convert 636 tons of waste per day into renewable power–recovering approximately 600 kWh from each ton of municipal waste.

Lee County refuse trucks take the garbage collected curbside to the plant complex for combustion. The facility uses reclaimed water for all process water needs, including boiler makeup water, and captures ferrous and non-ferrous metals from the post-combustion process for sale into the metals marketplace.

By contrast, Elk River Station has been through several iterations since it began commercial operations in 1950, including a short stint as a nuclear power plant.

At first, Elk River burned coal and oil. Construction of the nuclear reactor began in 1958 and it started producing electricity in 1963. By 1968, the reactor was decommissioned and Elk River once again burned coal and oil. In 1989, Great River undertook a $33 million conversion project to create the RDF plant. Now, Elk River Station’s three generators produce 35 to 42 MW, using approximately 300,000 tons of RDF annually.

Waste is collected from five Minnesota counties and shipped to the RDF processing facility, where recyclable and non-combustible materials are removed. What’s left is shredded. Out of 1,500 tons of municipal waste sent to the processing facility each day, about 1,250 tons of fuel stock is produced.

Great River Energy says the plant reduces the amount of waste entering the state’s landfills by more than 400,000 tons a year. Great River Energy is the second largest electric utility in Minnesota in terms of generating capacity and the fifth largest generation and transmission (G&T) cooperative in the U.S. in terms of assets.

Plenty of Fuel

Since the economic downturn there has been a slight decrease in the amount of RDF from the processing facility, said Elk River’s Steinbeck. Elk River Station burned 281,727 tons of RDF in 2008.

Seasonal blips also occur in the fuel pipeline at which times the plant cannot operate at full capacity, but Steinbeck said that is usually a small percentage of its total annual hours.

Elk River is in the process of negotiating long-term contracts with local counties and is also investigating burning some tire-derived fuel, for which the plant is already permitted.

In Florida, meanwhile, the amount of garbage Lee County’s residents were producing exceeded the combustion capacity of the existing MWCs as recently as nine years ago.

“Although they had 1,200 tons per day of combustion capacity, they were hauling garbage to their landfill, which was filling up,” said HDR Engineering’s Castro. “Since we’ve completed the project, virtually the only thing going to the landfill is ash.”

O&M Challenges

RDF at 5,500 Btu per pound is similar to low-grade coal or the lignite that Great River burns in some of its other large generating facilities, but there are challenging differences.

“RDF is a very difficult fuel to handle and meter,” said Steinbeck. “It’s been a long evolution over our 20-year history to modify our fuel handling system to improve our operations.”

A bin modification project is currently underway to improve the material handling system to get the fuel to meter into the boilers better.

“The better we can meter, the better we can control emissions and adjust our air,” said Steinbeck.

A second big difference between burning coal and RDF is the problems RDF causes in the boiler. When everything in the garbage is combusted, plant operators have to deal with corrosion, said Castro. In particular, chlorides — which come from the chlorine in the waste stream — form an acidic gas compound that will attack the boiler tubes.

“Garbage is a much tougher fuel to burn than nearly anything I can think of because it’s changing from minute to minute,” said Castro. “Over time, we have learned to deal with those high temperatures combined with acidic gases but it’s a pervasive problem and it increases your maintenance costs.”

The solutions are better metallurgy, good boiler design and carefully monitored maintenance. The economics of replacing certain boiler tubes every couple of years or paying extra to improve the metallurgy dramatically to extend that time frame have to be calculated for each project.

Boiler pressure parts at Elk River have been upgraded with appropriate alloys to withstand the chloride corrosion.

There is an economy of scale to O&M for WTE plants. “These units do enjoy economy of scale but that’s a dual-edged sword,” said Castro. “It means you have to do big plants to be cost-effective and you need a pretty good population center to do big plants.”

When smaller plants are built, key functions are still needed, like crane operators who must be on duty no matter how many tons they are loading.

At Elk River, the equipment’s age is an ongoing challenge. Steinbeck said the company is committed to making continuous safety and operations improvements.

“One of our major challenges with operating a near-60-year-old power plant is modernization and obsolescence so we continue to look at making sure we have a safe operating facility and replace equipment that can no longer be economically serviced,” he said.

Emissions

Lee County was one of the first projects of its type to be permitted and built under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new source performance standards for municipal waste combustion facilities since they were promulgated in the mid-1990s. It also was among the first since the state of Florida tightened requirements for nitrogen oxide (NOX) emissions. Environmental compliance was achieved with a combination of flue gas recirculation and advanced selective noncatalytic reduction (SNCR) controls, using urea as the reagent.

“The NOX limits were a concern during the permitting and design phase but they have turned out to not be an issue in the operating phase,” said Castro. “Our initial NOX was 140 parts per million (PPM), but each month it drops and at 110 ppm that’s where we’ll stay.”

There are two categories of WTE plant emissions: those that are monitored on a continuous basis, like NOX, carbon monoxide (CO), opacity and sulfur dioxide (SO2), and those that are checked annually, including particulates, hydrogen chlorides, dioxins, mercury and a few more exotic parameters, which are measured from the stack.

In 2008, Elk River reported a total of six CO exceedances, the lowest number in several years, and one opacity spike while isolating a baghouse compartment to replace a leaking bag. (For caption and credit information, click on this image in the gallery below.)

“Emissions are different and less than from coal,” said Steinbeck. “At Elk River, we scrub and have a bag house. We filter 100 percent of the flue gas and control the SO2 through our dry scrubber system.”

Elk River also must control for chlorides and hydrogen chloride gas. Its scrubber system takes out almost 100 percent of the hydrogen chloride and almost 90 percent of the sulfur dioxide.

The operating costs of running the Lee County facility on a day-to-day basis are roughly offset by the energy and recovered material sales, said Castro. Electricity is sold to Seminole Electric, a generation co-op that resells it wholesale to its members.

“What that leaves you with is the debt service, which is typically paid off on a 20- or 25-year basis,” he said. The debt retirement cost remains with the generator, but it’s a stable cost, like a mortgage.

Even so, it remains cheaper to dig a hole in the ground and fill it with garbage. “The challenge is still the cost; it’s more expensive than the landfill option,” said Steinbeck.

The Renewables Premium

Elk River Station is considered a renewable energy producer so it is part of Great River Energy’s renewables portfolio.

“Great River Energy sees value in that aspect of it,” said Steinbeck. “With its older technology, it’s not as efficient as a state-of-the-art pulverized coal facility, but it’s equal to or better than comparable biomass renewable or certainly wind generation in our area.”

If a federally mandated renewable portfolio standard (RPS) becomes law, electricity from the WTE plants will become more valuable and demand a premium. Steinbeck said an RPS could push local communities to do further research into WTE plants as they work to put renewable energy into their portfolios.

The Lee County WTE is already cashing in.

“Lee is one of the first waste-to-energy units in Florida to sell renewable energy credits along with their energy and capacity,” said Castro. “They are making about $1 million a year selling RECs to Seminole Electric.”

RECs could help offset the differential between the costs of a WTE plant and the landfill option. There are other economics that could tip the scales in WTE’s favor, too. Today, in some areas of the Northeast where new landfills cannot be sited, garbage is shipped out of state and fuel costs are rising. At some point, digging a hole in the ground and filling it with garbage may no longer be the favored option.

Sidebar: Operations at the Elk River Station WTE Plant

One of the major challenges with operating a 60-year-old power plant is obsolescence. At Elk River Station, plant manager Tim Steinbeck said equipment that can no longer be serviced economically is replaced.

“With the RDF conversion 20 years ago, we installed a dry scrubber but there’s been some obsolescence in the controls and technology so we’ve recently upgraded some of the scrubber control system and mechanical slakers,” he said.

The control system on one of the units has been upgraded, too. The turbine generators are original equipment and have undergone minor modifications.

Making sure the plant is a safely operating facility is a top priority. When the utility was concerned about arc flash regulations, for instance, switch gear was upgraded and relocated.

Sidebar: Other recent projects include:

* Unit 1’s air heater was reconditioned with new tube sections. The air heater was rebuilt after air side-pressure tests found numerous tubes leaking.
* The Unit 3 turbine generator was overhauled early last year after a nine-year run. At the same time, significant work was done on the boiler and auxiliary equipment. A new overfire air system was installed on the sidewalls, which allowed for better emissions control. Major sections of the furnace walls were replaced and Inconel weld repairs were made as needed.
* New bags were installed in the baghouse. The 2,592 new bags are a membrane-style bag, similar to the previous bags, which lasted more than 10 years. A vibration monitoring system was installed.
* After Unit 3 came back online, it went on a record run of 79 continuous days, the longest run any of the Elk River Stations have had since conversion to RDF in 1989.
* For year ending Dec. 31, 2008, net generation was 159,526 MWh, or $58.02 net $/MWh.

Reprinted with permission from Renewable Energy World

Today’s business climate is more competitive than ever. Sevaral highly qualified MBA grads are vying for fewer and fewer corporate jobs. According to a 2008-2009 survey by the MBA Career Services Council, business schools have experienced a drop in corporate recruiting of more than 10 percent affecting more than half of the 94 top-ranked business schools in the United States, Canada and Europe. Scary, isn’t it…especially if you’re one of the many contemplating a return to graduate school. So what would set you apart or give you the competitive edge to land that corporate gig?

The Aspen Institute just released the 2009-2010 edition of Beyond Grey Pinstripes, a biennial survey and alternative ranking of full-time MBA programs that integrate issues of social and environmental stewardship into curricula and research. Did your school make the list?

The need for candidates with experience in the CSR field is growing at a fast pace as communications improve and a demand for increased transparency and accountability in the corporate sector increases. Consumers are demanding more information on everything from where and how their goods are produced to the environmental record of the companies they invest in. Both Dow Jones and FTSE produce indexes to provide investors with information on which companies score highly on CSR-related concerns. Companies, such as Timberland, Ben and Jerry’s, Stonyfield Farms, and Seventh Generation have put CSR performance at the center of their brand image. Job opportunities in CSR have expanded as a result, and companies are searching for qualified MBA’s. According the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education, here are the top ten business schools in the United States that integrate CSR into curricula and research.

Top 10 Business Schools Focused on CSR in the United States

1. University of Michigan (Ross)
2. Yale School of Management
3. Stanford Graduate School of Business
4. Notre Dame (Mendoza)
5. University of California Berkeley (Haas)
6. New York University (Stern)
7. Columbia Business School
8. University of Virginia (Darden)
9. Cornell (Johnson)
10. George Washington University School of Business

The schools were measured in four specific areas:

Availability of Relevant Courses counts the number of courses offered that contain social, environmental or ethical content. How much opportunity do students have to take courses with this content?

Student Exposure measures teaching hours and student enrollment in these courses. To what extent are students actually exposed to such content?

Relevant Courses on For-Profit Impact is a simple count of the number of courses that not only demonstrate their relevance to the survey, but specifically address the intersection of social and environmental issues in mainstream, for-profit business. Do any of the courses being taught on campus explicitly discuss how business can be an engine for improving social and environmental conditions?

Faculty Research counts the number of scholarly articles containing some degree of social, environmental or ethical content being published in peer-reviewed, business journals. To what extent do professors on campus explore these issues in their own research?

Above, I listed the top ten business schools in the U.S, but you can find the Aspen 100 List, which lists the top 100 schools from around the world. It may surprise you to find that the number one business school in CSR is the York University Schulich School of Business located in Toronto. School highlights from this Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey are featured in a new guidebook for prospective MBA students, titled The Sustainable MBA, which is available at the Aspen Institute’s publication website.

If you believe your school’s MBA program should have been included on the list, you may want to contact your business school and recommend they participate next year.

Photo by JSmith Photo on Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Reprinted with permission from The Inspired Economist

Many scientists have shied away from the subject because they feel it is a wrongheaded and dangerous path to pursue. But Caldeira — who heads a research lab at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University — has not been so dismissive, in part because his climate modeling has demonstrated that some geoengineering schemes may indeed help reduce the risk of climate change. In fact, few scientists have thought harder about the moral, political, and environmental implications of geoengineering.

Caldeira has become a focal point recently in the controversy surrounding the publication of Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s SuperFreakonomics, the follow-up to their previous best-seller, Freakonomics. A chapter of the book that deals with geoengineering and quoted Caldeira was circulated on the Internet prior to the book’s publication and was widely criticized for its poor understanding of climate science and its cynical, contrarian perspective.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360, conducted by author Jeff Goodell, who is working on a book about geoengineering, Caldeira spoke about how his work was misrepresented in SuperFreakonomics, as well as the prospects — and pitfalls — of plans to engineer the planet’s climate system. He views geoengineering as a last resort, one fraught with risks and unintended consequences. What if, for example, industrialized nations decide to inject heat-reflecting dust into the stratosphere and set off a climate reaction that causes drought and famine in India and China? For this and many other reasons, Caldeira argues that sharply reducing greenhouse gas emissions is by far the most prudent course.

Still, given the huge volume of carbon dioxide that humanity continues to pour into the atmosphere, Caldeira says it would be folly not to undertake research into geoengineering. With the prospect that the world could reach a level of dangerous warming this century, Caldeira maintains it’s necessary to determine which projects — such as putting particles in the stratosphere to reflect sunlight into space — might work and which will not. He likens geoengineering schemes to seatbelts — a technology that might reduce the chance of injury in case of a climate crash.

But, warned Caldeira, “Thinking of geoengineering as a substitute for emissions reduction is analogous to saying, ‘Now that I’ve got the seatbelts on, I can just take my hands off the wheel and turn around and talk to people in the back seat.’ It’s crazy.”

Yale Environment 360: I want to start with this little dust-up over SuperFreakonomics. In the book, you are quoted as saying, when it comes to global warming, “Carbon dioxide is not the right villain.” Is that accurate?

Ken Caldeira: That is not accurate. I don’t believe I said anything remotely like that because I believe that we should be outlawing the production of devices that emit carbon dioxide, and I don’t think we can solve this carbon climate problem unless we drastically reduce our carbon dioxide emissions very soon.

e360: They also write that you are convinced that human activity is responsible for “some” global warming. What does that mean?

Caldeira: I don’t think we can say with certainty whether we’re responsible for 90 percent of it or we might be responsible for 110 percent of it. But the vast majority of global warming, I believe, is due to human release of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

e360: Another thing that plays in to the same kind of sensibility is the idea that the doubling of CO2 traps less than 2 percent of the outgoing radiation emitted by the Earth. When that’s phrased like that, it makes it sound like it’s not really much of a problem.

Caldeira: You should think of the whole global warming problem as a 1 percent problem, at least for doubling of CO2. In absolute temperature Kelvin — scientists like to use the Kelvin scale — the current Earth temperature is around 288 degrees Kelvin, and a 3-degree warming on top of that is basically a one-percent additional warming. And so this whole issue of climate change, when viewed from an Earth-system perspective, is a story about 1 percents and 2 percents. Two percent might sound like a small number, but that’s the difference between a much hotter world, and the kind of world we’re accustomed to.

e360: The authors also cite you as saying that a doubling of CO2 yields a 70-percent increase in plant growth, suggesting it would be a boon to agricultural activity. It sounds like one of those old CO2-is-good-for-you ads. Can you explain that?

Caldeira: Yes, first of all, there are two parts of that. One is the 70-percent increase in plant growth. And that came out of a paper that we produced, I believe, in 2005.

We took a model and emitted all of the carbon dioxide available in fossil fuel resources, and that model — which has a very low climate sensitivity, and what I would consider a hyperactive land biosphere — produced 9-degree Centigrade warming globally and 20 degrees around East Antarctica.

Now that’s 16 degrees Fahrenheit globally, and something like 36 degrees around Antarctica, which could be enough to threaten the ice sheet. For that study we knew that the land biosphere model was overactive and taking up too much CO2, but we felt that was conservative to the hypothesis we were addressing, because if you had a biosphere that took up less CO2, it would only make the planet even warmer.

So we were showing, look, even if CO2 fertilization is at the high end of anybody’s imagination, we still produce rather frightening temperatures. But I do believe the basic sign is correct, that with more CO2, plants can use water more efficiently, and even the IPCC [International Panel on Climate Change] says that agricultural productivity is expected to go up with global warming.

But that will not be distributed uniformly. It’s thought that agricultural productivity will increase in the mid and high latitudes, where warmer weather will help the plants grow, but will decrease productivity in the poor equatorial nations where heat is already stressing crop yield.

e360: Overall, do you feel like your work has been accurately and fairly represented in this book?

Caldeira: The main misrepresentation is the quote that says that CO2 is not “the right villain.” Now, again, I don’t use “villain” talk myself, but if you say what’s the primary gas responsible for the planetary warming, I would say it’s carbon dioxide.

Now, there’s a tougher question when it comes to the other statements that are attributed to me. All of those other statements are based in fact and based on studies that either I have published or other scientists have published. And if we pull back to the case of the biosphere taking up 70 percent of CO2 — well, yes, we have a published study that said that. It also presented results saying that we might warm up the planet enough to risk melting Antarctica ultimately. And so there is a selective use of quotes.

If you spend several hours talking to somebody and they take a half-dozen things and put it in a book, then it’s going to be in the context and framing of arguments that the authors are trying to make. And so the actual statements attributed to me are based on fact, but the contexts and the framing of those issues are very different from the context and framing that I would put those same facts in...

So I think that the casual reader can... come up with a misimpression of what I believe and what I feel about things.

e360: Let’s talk a little bit more broadly about geoengineering. I was struck by something one of the authors said on NPR the other day — that he got interested in geoengineering when he realized that the problem with global warming is not that there is too much carbon in the air; it’s that it is too hot. Do you agree with that?

Caldeira: The reason it is too hot is that there is too much carbon dioxide in the air. Now the carbon dioxide itself, of course, has big negative implications for ocean acidification and ecosystems, including coral reefs. So there are direct CO2 effects.

But I think if we had some magic thing that would reverse all effects of CO2 perfectly, then you could say, “Well the problem is not CO2.” But nobody really expects that we are going to have some magic, perfect CO2 nullifier. And it’s clear to me that if we continue allowing greenhouse gas concentration to grow in the atmosphere, and try to engineer our climate to counteract those effects, that as the greenhouse gases accumulate, and our counteracting system grows ever larger and larger, that the risk of some kind of catastrophic failure of this offsetting — or the imperfections in this offsetting — would grow in time and the net result would be pretty negative, I would imagine.

So, I do see CO2 as the problem. I think to present it as if, “Well, it not’s really CO2, but the effects of CO2,” it’s like if you got shot by a bullet and you said, “Well, it wasn’t really the bullet that was the problem, it was just that I happened to have this hole through my body...”

e360: Right. Well, a lot of people think of geoengineering as a quick and cheap fix for global warming. Is it?

Caldeira: Let’s pretend for a moment that putting dust in the stratosphere is easy to do and works reasonably well. And let’s say the United States and England and the “Coalition of the Willing” decided to go ahead and deploy this system, and that China or India then went into a decade or two of deep drought. Whether the system caused that drought or not, I think the Chinese or the Indians would rightly suspect that the reason they have this drought and ensuing famines might be due to this system that was put up by these other countries. And you could easily imagine that there would be a great amount of political tension, and possibly even leading to warfare. So I think just the political dimensions and the governance dimensions of these geoengineering options suggest that we would be very reluctant to deploy these things, even if we thought they worked more or less perfectly.

Another example is that, in many climate model simulations, the area around Egypt tends to get wetter with global warming. And so what if you do this geoengineering scheme and it takes away water from countries that didn’t have water a few centuries ago? Are they are going to be happy you’re doing this? So I think just the political problems associated with perceived winners and losers are so great that a politician is not going to want to deal with these problems.

Then, of course, the system is not going to work perfectly. First of all, it’s not going to address the issues of ocean acidification. It’s not going to perfectly offset global warming, so you’ll have some residual effects. So, I look at these geoengineering options as something we would only want to consider if our backs were really up against the wall, and where all these environmental and political risks seem worth taking because the alternatives look so frightening.

e360: I know that some scientists have suggested that there should be some kind of taboo on geoengineering research. But I know that you’ve been outspoken in the need for a federally-funded geoengineering research program. Can you explain that?

Caldeira: Yes, I think we don’t know right now whether these kinds of approaches have the potential to reduce risk or not. In our climate models, the amount of climate change can be reduced by these kinds of approaches, but the climate models are an imperfect reflection of reality, and they don’t consider the kinds of political risks that I was mentioning before. And so I think we just have to say we don’t know whether these options can really reduce overall risk…

Let’s say geoengineering doesn’t work, and that it would add to risk. It seems to me it would be worth having a research program to demonstrate that beyond a reasonable doubt so we can all forget about this and move on.

On the other hand, if these options do have the potential to reduce risk, then it seems to me that we would like to have the option to reduce that risk should a time come where that would seem necessary. I kind of think of these geoengineering options as seeing, “Well, can we invent some kind of seatbelts for our climate system?” We need to drive the climate system carefully, we need to greatly reduce emissions. But even if we’re driving carefully we still run the risk of getting into an accident. And seatbelts can potentially reduce the damage when we’re in an accident.

But the reason I’m concerned about geoengineering is because I am so concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, and so, again, I’m in favor of essentially making greenhouse gas-emitting devices illegal. But I don’t think we’re going to reduce emissions fast enough to make me feel that we’re not running some really grave risks. And so I think we need to develop options to diminish those risks.

And it’s not just geoengineering. I’m much in favor of a very broad-spectrum approach. I think one of the things we saw with the subprime mortgage crisis is that a few million people in the United States defaulted on their mortgages and we have a worldwide economic crisis. I think we have to assume that climate change damage will be a much bigger amplitude than a few million mortgage defaults.

If there’s some kind of climate crisis in Southeast Asia, is that going to amplify and shake the whole global economic system? This is the kind of thing that Jim Lovelock is afraid of, that you’ll have “economic migrants” resulting from climate change that will ultimately destabilize modern civilization.

And so I think we also need to be doing research in how do we make our society more robust, so that these local climate damages won’t turn into global problems. We need to be doing basic adaptation planning; we need to look at geoengineering options. But the main thing we need to do is work to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions.

But thinking of geoengineering as a substitute for emissions reduction is analogous to saying, “Now that I’ve got the seatbelts on, I can’t just take my hands off the wheel and turn around and talk to people in the back seat.” It’s crazy.

e360: Can you sketch briefly what a geoengineering research program might look like?

Caldeira: The first thing I would do is use the plural, and say “programs.” Because many different things are lumped into the same category of geoengineering, which I think there’s no real good reason to link together.

For example, people like David Keith and Klaus Lackner have been looking at capture of carbon dioxide from the air, which could then be isolated underground in underground storage reservoirs. And this is a kind of slow process that will likely be expensive and take many decades to make a real difference in atmosphere CO2 concentrations. But it’s an important line of research that needs to be undertaken. But it won’t do any good in the event of an emergency. Maybe after an emergency when we realize we need to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations it would be useful.

But that’s very different from, say, putting sulfur dust in the stratosphere, which would reflect sunlight back to space, and cool the Earth, much as Mount Pinatubo did in 1991 and 1992. Again, I think there needs to be a research program on that, but I don’t see any reason to couple that with these carbon dioxide removal approaches.

So I think there at least needs to be two new programs — one looking at what are the scalable, fast-acting things we could do in the event of an emergency. What could we do fast that would start the earth cooling within a couple of years if we really wanted to? And then I think we need another research program in saying how can we backpedal out of our high greenhouse gas concentrations. Are there any things we can do to get the greenhouse gases that we’ve already emitted into the atmosphere out of the atmosphere?

e360: Do you think it’s inevitable that we’re going to try to engineer the Earth’s climate?

Caldeira: First of all, nobody can really see the future, and I’m not foolish enough to try to predict the future. But I think that there’s a very decent likelihood that we might go down a slippery slope in this direction. For example, we’ve done some simulations recently looking at this idea of whitening clouds over the ocean. John Latham has proposed this... Now we did a very idealized simulation, but in our simulations, by cooling the ocean relative to the land, this brought in a cool sea breeze from the ocean to the land, and then the sea breeze brought with it water and increased rainfall over land. Now, in principle, this could be deployed regionally. You could imagine whitening the clouds off the Sahel or off the coast of Los Angeles, and bring cooler, wetter air either to West Africa or the southwestern United States. And if we have global warming, and there’s some regional manipulation that would start making the regional climate more comfortable and more agriculturally productive, I think it’s going to be pretty hard to tell people, “No, no, you shouldn’t do that. You should swelter in the sun.”

And so I think that there are pathways that we might start regionally and slowly ramp up to something more global. I think that’s a possibility.

The other possibility is a real emergency situation where there’s a phase change in public opinion, [where] it becomes conventional wisdom that we can’t tolerate this climate change any more, that we have to do something.

Whether that will ever happen or not, I don’t know. If I had to wager, I would wager that we would never deploy any geoengineering system, and that we’re more likely just to try our best to adapt to it.

But I think there’s enough of a risk that it’s worth investigating whether there are options to reduce risk and damage.

And the way I look at it is that we’re talking here about people’s lives, and I don’t think we’re going to deploy these systems to save polar bears. I think if they’re going to be deployed, it’s going to be to help people from dying of famines, or something dramatic like that. And I think that these techniques have a potential to save lives and reduce suffering, and we should explore whether that’s true or not.

The idea that it would somehow be better to let people starve than to intervene in the climate system, we’re presented with that option... It sounds like the moral high ground to say, “Oh, well, we should never interfere with the climate system.” But we’re obviously interfering with the climate system wholesale now, and it’s possible that more intelligent interference could reduce the damage from the first interference. But it could make it worse. I don’t think we know, which is why we need the research program.

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360

The sedan, called the Sai, is a redesigned version of the company's Lexus HS250h hybrid. It will be priced above the Prius hybrid at a base price of 3.38 million yen ($37,290).

The company also intends to begin selling the Prius model in South Korea, where it will compete with offerings from Hyundai.

Honda (NYSE: HMC) reportedly is considering developing plug-in electric vehicles for United States, Europe and Japan, because the company's bid to skip ahead to hydrogen-fueled cars is being slowed by lack of fueling infrastructure.

Read the full report at the link below.

Website: planetark.org/wen/55125

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

AWEA also reported that wind turbine manufacturing still lags below 2008 levels, in both production and new announcements.

"Wind power installations are up, and that is good news for America's economy, environment, and energy security," said AWEA CEO Denise Bode. "But manufacturing, which has the potential to employ many more Americans in good, clean energy jobs, remains uncertain. A firm, long-term national commitment to renewable energy is still needed for the U.S. to become a wind turbine manufacturing powerhouse and create hundreds of thousands of jobs."

Since the early July announcement of rules to implement the stimulus bill, the wind industry has seen over 1,600 MW (enough to serve the equivalent of 480,000 average households) of completed projects, and over 1,700 MW of construction starts. These projects equate to about $6.5 billion in new investment. AWEA does not expect 4Q09 to be as strong as 4Q08 since the 5,000 MW now under construction is nearly 38% lower than the over 8,000 MW under construction at this time last year.

The total wind power capacity now operating in the U.S. is over 31,000 MW, generating enough electricity to power the equivalent of nearly 9 million homes, avoiding the emissions of 57 million tons of carbon annually and reducing expected carbon emissions from the electricity sector by 2.5%.

The state posting the fastest growth rate in the third quarter was Arizona, which installed its first utility-scale project. Pennsylvania ranked 2nd in growth with 29%, followed by Illinois with 22%, Wyoming with 21%, and New Mexico with 20%.

Additional report highlights:

The top five states in additions for new capacity added in the third quarter are:

* Texas - 436 MW

* Oregon - 251 MW

* Illinois - 201 MW

* Colorado - 174 MW

* Wyoming - 170 MW

The top five states in total operating wind capacity are:

* Texas - 8,797 MW

* Iowa - 3,053 MW

* California - 2,787 MW

* Minnesota - 1,805 MW

* Oregon - 1,659 MW

The full 3Q09 market report is available at the link below.

Website: www.awea.org/publications/reports/3Q09.pdf

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

MN: Good afternoon Derry, and thank you for sitting down with us. What is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doing here at a conference like BSR?

An awful lot of the discussion here is about what businesses are doing to become more sustainable, and part of that discussion is what is the role of government; we have many possible roles as a classic regulator, to offer partnerships with government, as a convener of parties, and a source of information. It is important to hear about what people in business are doing and how they see the issues and have us understand how to sort out the roles of government in an environment that is changing very quickly

MN:How do you see a conference like this driving towards Cop15?

DA:I think that it is not at all clear what is going to happen in Copenhagen, but whatever it is will be a very important and it will not be the last word, and it will initiate probably more discussions until it’s completed.

MN:There is a lot of talk at this conference about how NGOs and corporations can work together. Where do government organizations such as the EPA fit in?

DA:I see all these groups bringing something important to the table and we’re no exception. We have as important a role as business and NGOs, as do other groups such as the research and international communities, which are equally important. I think what one of the folks said this morning is true - none of these groups are going to get this done alone.

MN:How do you shift the role of the EPA from being the “stick” to being the “carrot?” Tell us how the EPA is growing out of being just a punitive organization?

DA:We have a lot of partnerships programs happening already that try to help businesses and many others as well state and local governments and citizen groups. As such, we do important tasks that lead to environmental protection and that has been an important feature of the EPA for the last decade. Initiatives as diverse as Energy Star, which encourage manufacturers to make products that are more energy efficient, and let customers examine energy efficiency when they make a purchase. We have some business initiatives that are more directed to small local-oriented programs and partnerships. For instance, for a single watershed, how do you get the parties together to lead to cleaner watersheds? You can’t just do this with regulations; you have to work with parties as diverse as local farms, the community, local government in a variety of ways, and working with other types of experts. It can be local outreach as basic as don’t pour motor oil down a storm sewer. There are a whole lot of ways that we work with groups in ways that are more than just a traditional regulatory function. But that regulatory function is still important, and is a major part of our mission still. And it is important that we keep our regulatory programs strong because it sends a message that there is a minimum you have to do, and that we are serious about it.

MN:As sustainability becomes an international effort, how is the EPA adapting to a more global outlook?

DA:It really depends on what kind of problem you are looking at and the general approach you are taking. So if you are talking about a water pollution issue that is within the United States then we work alone. But you have to work with Canada with water issues around the Great Lakes. If it is climate on the other hand, then that is something that you have to work with countries around the world, since CO2 does not respect national boundaries, and you are seeing more of that happening as we move to COP15. If you are thinking about chemicals in products that get traded internationally, then that is an area where we have to work with different international organizations to address those issue…it is issue dependent but there are a variety of ways to do it.

MN:How are you moving into issues that maybe have not fallen under the traditional mission of the EPA? Have you though about expanding into other platforms like LEED?

DA:With Energy Star, we make sure that the participants have to keep up a level of achievement, but every couple of years we do another survey and frequently raise that bar as the current standards become the norm, and we then move the bar to get certified and make it more challenging. For LEED, it is a little different as it is not our program…it is the U.S. Green Building Council, so I would hope that they would be undergoing a similar function and from time to time they would also raise the bar on what it takes to be LEED certified. For instance, they have recently moved the standard to the LEED 3.0 certification. There are people that EPA talks to, and offers advice to, but at the end of the day it is their program and their responsibility.

MN:If you were talking at BSR this year, what would the topic be?

DA:This gets back to the issue that we were talking about at the beginning, and the importance of the goal of sustainability and the changing roles of the different stakeholders including government. The government role does not occur in a vacuum, and it is only relevant in relation to others in the process. I think as we come to understand these challenges a lot better, and how different stakeholders are stepping up to do things that they would not have done a decade ago, that it means everyone has to think about this: if we are going to do this together, how do we all change together? That is what excites me.

The Norfolk Southern Railway recently debuted a green transportation option that’s among the first of its kind. It’s currently only a prototype, but is just the beginning of things to come; with plans by 2011 to unveil a long-range locomotive that will produce zero-emissions.

The battery powered plug-in locomotive has been in the works for the past couple of years, and has finally come to fruition in the Pennsylvania Rail Yard. While it’s not taking passengers on board today, it is hard at work transporting trains around the yard between the charging requirements of its 1080 rechargeable 12-volt lead acid batteries which are capable of storing about a day’s worth of power between charges.

The development of this prototype hybrid locomotive cost $4 Million to develop and was funded in part by US Rep. Bull Shuster in a hopes of reducing pollution output from diesel which is responsible for 40 tonnes of pollution in the United States every year. Initially, new trains that will be designed to carry passengers will be hybrid models which will combine diesel and rechargeable battery power, but now that this prototype has finally come to fruition in Pennsylvania, there’s no doubting that this is just the beginning of things to come.

Via: Altoona Mirror

Reprinted with permission from CleanTechnica

The joint venture represents Ormat's commercial entry into the solar energy market and its first major devotement in the solar photovoltaic market in Israel.

Under the agreement, Sunday will contribute the rights to all of its property and roofs required to develop solar energy systems above 1 MW to special purpose entities (SPEs). Ormat will own 70% of each SPE and will also have control of it. Under the terms of the agreement, Ormat and Sunday will act, jointly, as the EPC contractor and the operator of each project in accordance with each company share in the SPEs .

The estimated capital expenditure for 36 MW of solar power systems is approximately $195 million. The electricity generated from the projects will be sold to Israel Electric Corporation Ltd. under long-term power purchase agreements (20 years) and is expectedt to generate approximately $30 million in annual revenues. The SPEs expect to finance their capital expenditure with 80% Non-Recourse project finance debt.

Ormat has more than four decades of experience in the development, construction, financing and operation of hundreds of megawatts of renewable energy projects (primarily geothermal) world-wide, while Sunday is one of the leading developers in the Israeli solar PV market has the know-how in the design of solar systems using photovoltaic modules from various suppliers and the capabilities to obtain the necessary regulatory permits for construction and interconnection to the local grid.

Prior to entering into this JVA, Ormat has entered into an agreement with Sunday for the construction of a solar system for up to 1 MW on the roofs of its manufacturing facilities located in Israel. The first system with a capacity of 50 kW has been installed and connected to the grid since August 2009.

Lucien Y. Bronicki, Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer of Ormat Technologies, said, "Ormat's commercial activity in the solar energy market is part of a strategic plan to be a leading player in renewable energy. We have a long, rich history in renewable energy that includes activity in solar energy that we believe we can leverage to bring unique benefits to this project."

"We are looking at this joint venture as an attractive business opportunity derived by the reduction in solar PV modules prices and the increase in their supply on one hand and the expected Israeli feed-in tariff for large solar PV systems on the other hand," Bronicki added.

Website: www.ormat.com/

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

The report examines and, when possible, estimates unaccounted costs of energy production and use--such as the damage air pollution imposes on human health--that are not reflected in market prices of coal, oil, other energy sources, or the electricity and gasoline produced from them.

The report estimates dollar values for several major components of these costs. The damages the committee was able to quantify were an estimated $120 billion in the U.S. in 2005, a number that reflects primarily health damages from air pollution associated with electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation. The figure does not include damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security, which the report examines but does not monetize.

Requested by Congress, the report assesses what economists call external effects caused by various energy sources over their entire life cycle--for example, not only the pollution generated when gasoline is used to run a car but also the pollution created by extracting and refining oil and transporting fuel to gas stations. Because these effects are not reflected in energy prices, government, businesses and consumers may not realize the full impact of their choices. When such market failures occur, a case can be made for government interventions--such as regulations, taxes or tradable permits--to address these external costs, the report says.

The committee that wrote the report focused on monetizing the damage of major air pollutants--sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone, and particulate matter–on human health, grain crops and timber yields, buildings, and recreation. When possible, it estimated both what the damages were in 2005 (the latest year for which data were available) and what they are likely to be in 2030, assuming current policies continue and new policies already slated for implementation are put in place.

The committee also separately derived a range of values for damages from climate change; the wide range of possibilities for these damages made it impossible to develop precise estimates of cost. However, all model results available to the committee indicate that climate-related damages caused by each ton of CO2 emissions will be far worse in 2030 than now; even if the total amount of annual emissions remains steady, the damages caused by each ton would increase 50% to 80%.

DAMAGES FROM ELECTRICITY GENERATION

Coal accounts for about half the electricity produced in the U.S. In 2005 the total annual external damages from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter created by burning coal at 406 coal-fired power plants, which produce 95% of the nation's coal-generated electricity, were about $62 billion; these nonclimate damages average about 3.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour (kwh) of energy produced. A relatively small number of plants--10% of the total number--accounted for 43% of the damages. By 2030, nonclimate damages are estimated to fall to 1.7 cents per kwh.

Coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S., emitting on average about a ton of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced, the report says. Climate-related monetary damages range from 0.1 cents to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, based on previous modeling studies.

Burning natural gas generated far less damage than coal, both overall and per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated. A sample of 498 natural gas fueled plants, which accounted for 71% of gas-generated electricity, produced $740 million in total nonclimate damages in 2005, an average of 0.16 cents per kwh. As with coal, there was a vast difference among plants; half the plants account for only 4% of the total nonclimate damages from air pollution, while 10% produce 65% of the damages. By 2030, nonclimate damages are estimated to fall to 0.11 cents per kwh. Estimated climate damages from natural gas were half that of coal, ranging from 0.05 cents to 5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

The life-cycle damages of wind power, which produces just over 1% of U.S. electricity but has large growth potential, are small compared with those from coal and natural gas. So are the damages associated with normal operation of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors, which provide almost 20% of the country’s electricity. But the life cycle of nuclear power does pose some risks; if uranium mining activities contaminate ground or surface water, for example, people could potentially be exposed to radon or other radionuclides; this risk is borne mostly by other nations, the report says, because the U.S. mines only 5% of the world’s uranium. The potential risks from a proposed long-term facility for storing high-level radioactive waste need further evaluation before they can be quantified. Life-cycle CO2 emissions from nuclear, wind, biomass, and solar power appear to be negligible when compared with fossil fuels.

OTHER DAMAGES

The production of heat for buildings or industrial processes accounts for about 30% of American energy demand. Most of this heat energy comes from natural gas or, to a lesser extent, the use of electricity; the total damages from burning natural gas for heat were about $1.4 billion in 2005.

Transportation, which today relies almost exclusively on oil, accounts for nearly 30% of U.S. energy demand. In 2005 motor vehicles produced $56 billion in health and other nonclimate-related damages, says the report.

Damages per vehicle mile traveled were remarkably similar among various combinations of fuels and technologies--the range was 1.2 cents to about 1.7 cents per mile traveled--and it is important to be cautious in interpreting small differences, the report says.

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Electric vehicles and grid-dependent (plug-in) hybrid vehicles showed somewhat higher nonclimate damages than many other technologies for both 2005 and 2030. Operating these vehicles produces few or no emissions, but producing the electricity to power them currently relies heavily on fossil fuels; also, energy used in creating the battery and electric motor adds up to 20% to the manufacturing part of life-cycle damages.

Most vehicle and fuel combinations had similar levels of greenhouse gas emissions in 2005. There are not substantial changes estimated for those emissions in 2030; while population and income growth are expected to drive up the damages caused by each ton of emissions, implementation of new fuel efficiency standards of 35.5 miles per gallon will lower emissions and damages for every vehicle mile traveled. Achieving significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 will likely also require breakthrough technologies, such as cost-effective carbon capture and storage or conversion of advanced biofuels, the report says.

Both for 2005 and 2030, vehicles using gasoline made from oil extracted from tar sands and those using diesel derived from the Fischer-Tropsch process--which converts coal, methane, or biomass to liquid fuel--had the highest life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions. Vehicles using ethanol made from corn stover or herbaceous feedstock such as switchgrass had some of the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, as did those powered by compressed natural gas.

Fully implementing federal rules on diesel fuel emissions, which require vehicles beginning in the model year 2007 to use low-sulfur diesel, is expected to substantially decrease nonclimate damages from diesel by 2030--an indication of how regulatory actions can significantly affect energy-related damages, the committee said. Major initiatives to further lower other emissions, improve energy efficiency, or shift to a cleaner mix of energy sources could reduce other damages as well, such as substantially lowering the damages attributable to electric vehicles.

The report was sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make up the National Academies. They are independent, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology, and health policy advice under an 1863 congressional charter. Committee members, who serve pro bono as volunteers, are chosen by the Academies for each study based on their expertise and experience and must satisfy the Academies's conflict-of-interest standards. The resulting consensus reports undergo external peer review before completion. For more information, visit http://national-academies.org/studycommitteeprocess.pdf. A committee roster follows.

Additional information is available at the link below.

Website: sites.nationalacademies.org/NRC/index.htm

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

According to New Energy Finance wind analyst Tyler Tringas, new build asset financing for wind projects was down 52 percent globally in the first quarter of the year. Total activity was slightly down quarter-over-quarter in the second quarter, at $11.6 billion.

“In the U.S., we expect loan activity to increase over the next 12 months,” said Tringas. “The credit crisis effectively broke down the so-called ‘tax equity’ financing structures that financed the majority of new wind projects in the past.”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provided a possible solution for the problem by allowing the Treasury Department to issue grants for 30 percent of the cost of new renewable energy projects. That, along with a loan guarantee program by the Department of Energy, should spur lending activity after what has been a basically frozen 2009.

“Now that the first sets of rules have been issued, the reaction has been generally positive, with several new wind financings closing just days after the announcement,” said Tringas. “Banks, which avoided new lending this year, seem generally eager to deploy new capital into the renewables sector.”

Tringas said low natural gas prices have brought down average wholesale electricity prices and put some projects in doubt. T. Boone Pickens’ massive Texas wind farm may be the biggest and most public casualty.

“Much of the development in the windy interior of the U.S. is in more regulated electricity markets that are insulated to a large extent from the rise and fall of natural gas, while mandated renewable portfolio standards will continue to create an incentive to build new projects,” said Tringas.

Transmission — or rather the lack thereof — ranks as a significant issue for some wind projects.

“The transmission issue will not get sorted out without additional legislation at the federal level,” said Ed Feo, partner, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP. “Our current regulatory and legal scheme is not sufficient to be able to overcome the impediments created at the local levels with respect to transmission.”

To carry out the Obama administration’s policy goals of expanding renewable energy, adequate transmission is needed to wheel resources from areas that are a long way from load centers, but transmission bills being considered in Congress have yet to become law.

“It’s really clear that there is a much more organized opposition to wind farms today than there was a few years ago and it’s not going to surprise me that that opposition will grow, not lessen,” said Feo.

To find out what’s ahead this year for the wind industry, Renewable Energy World North America magazine asked leading firms in the wind farm financing sector to describe their companies’ investment and lending strategies. Roundtable participants include:m

Ed Feo, partner in the law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP. Feo co-chairs the firm’s project finance and energy practice. He represents sponsors and investors in the energy and infrastructure industries and specializes in renewable energy projects.

John M. Eber, managing director, energy investments, at J.P. Morgan Capital Corp. Eber manages the firm’s activities for tax-motivated equity investments in energy assets. He directs a team that originates, structures and executes investments and advises other equity co-investors.

Jon Fouts, managing director, global power and utilities group, the Investment Banking Division, Morgan Stanley. Fouts has extensive experience in advising a wide variety of clients in landmark mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and capital markets issues.

REWNA: Please list some notable highlights of the last 12 months of wind power investment activity for your company.

Feo: Until September last year we were closing transactions at the rate of one every 10 days. September brought the Lehman bankruptcy and the financial crisis, and the new money stopped. We then represented parties on workouts for some of the major wind developers that were big into debt. That kept us busy until the first part of 2009. Since March, the finance market has picked up and while we are perhaps not at the same pace as pre-crash, we are closing deals now about every two to three weeks–evidence I think that there is financing available for the right projects.

Eber: J.P. Morgan closed tax equity investments in nine U.S. wind farms for five sponsors with a total capacity of 1,380 MW. These transactions raised $915 million of tax equity, with J.P. Morgan itself funding $475 million.

Fouts: Morgan Stanley provided construction financing, tax equity financing and a commodities off-take and power hedge for NaturEner Glacier 1 and 2. We advised Duke Energy in its acquisition of Catamount Energy Corp., an independent wind energy company.

The deals we are focused on are not straight up-the-middle project finance deals. In today’s environment, the deals that are getting done are those that are structured transactions where someone is structuring the off-take advantage, someone is providing the financing and someone is providing the equity, as we did in Glacier 1 and 2. Deals can get done in this market but they require a little more work and more structuring.

REWNA: Please describe your company’s investment and lending strategy for wind.

Feo: We focus on financing primarily and development secondarily. Many of the major sponsors and banks have designated us as lenders counsel, which is where we are best known in the wind sector. Our strategy for 2009 is to continue the focus on banks and institutions and to boost our Washington, D.C., practice focused on loan guarantees.

Eber: J.P. Morgan invests tax equity in U.S. renewable power projects including wind, solar and geothermal power projects. We are a principal investor and arrange and advise other institutional tax equity investors who co-invest with us. Our clients are the owners and operators of U.S. renewable power projects, in particular those that do not have the ability to currently utilize the tax benefits that flow to project owners. Our passive investment allows our clients to utilize these benefits as repayment for our investment while providing a significant portion of the project’s capitalization.

Fouts: We are focused on permitted, scalable projects with 150 MW or more. We will do highly complex, nonstandard structured projects. The financing that people are interested in doing now has the off-take and the purchase power agreement (PPA) in place. To the extent that they don’t, a bank has to come in and provide that synthetically. That’s what we’ve done. Instead of having a long-term PPA with one of the big utilities, Morgan Stanley will take the electricity on a long-term basis and we’ll structure the financing based on our off-take of that electricity. We actually buy the electricity from the producer and sell it.

REWNA: How do you currently mitigate investment risk?

Feo: The finance market is focused on projects with (1) long-term power contracts; (2) big name turbines; (3) major sponsors; and (4) great resources including great data supporting that resource. We follow our clients’ lead in that regard.

Eber: We are building a highly diversified portfolio of investments, primarily utilizing the traditional partnership flip investment structure. Our energy portfolio currently includes one thermal solar project and 55 wind farms in which we’ve invested $2.3 billion. These projects are located in 17 states with 13 operators, utilizing all the major turbines, selling power to a highly diversified group of utilities and power marketers. Additionally, we seek experienced sponsors with capital to invest alongside us, adhere to individual project investment limits, structure each investment conservatively and perform extensive due diligence on each project to mitigate investment risk.

Fouts: We create our own internal hedges. By buying the electricity and selling it, we’re hedged on the electricity side and we can provide the financing. It’s all done internally at Morgan Stanley, but from the wind company’s perspective, it’s similar to signing an agreement with the utility to take the electricity and then coming to Morgan Stanley for help financing the project.

REWNA: What is your company’s “sweet spot” in terms of project size (in megawatts), investment level (dollars) and lending target (utility vs. independent power producer and so on)?

Feo: We handle a wide range of deals. The smallest is at $1million and the largest is nearly $1billion. In today’s market the financing sweet spot is 50 MW to 200 MW projects or a cost of between $100 million and $400 million.

Eber: We try to limit our net investment in any single high-quality project to $75 million, with a higher limit for portfolio deals. We have been very successful in the past few years bringing in other institutional investors to join us to cover larger projects or portfolios of projects. In fact, we closed two financings in 2007 totaling $700 million or more of tax equity where we were the lead investor. Under the new cash grant program, a $135 million individual investment amount (inclusive of the cash grant) is likely to support a project size around 100 MW. Most of our clients are either IPPs or non-U.S.-based utilities.

Fouts: Anything over 150 MW. $100 million of financing is what we focus on, with either IPPs or utilities.

REWNA: How have changes to federal tax incentives affected your company’s lending portfolio and prospects for additional lending?

Feo: The biggest problem to date is waiting for Treasury to come out with some rules. In the absence of that there has been an unbelievable amount of rumor and innuendo, usually under the guise of being information presented at conferences, conference calls and webinars. Most of this is junk and unnecessarily pollutes the discussion. In my view, the federal government has done an incredible disservice to the renewable energy space in taking so long to come up with guidelines on how some of the “benefits” of the ARRA are to work. That said, we have worked out structures for transactions in the meantime and have closed deals. More will happen, though, when the federal programs are more active than they are now.

Eber: Over the next two years we expect most U.S. wind power projects to claim the 30 percent cash grant from the U.S. Department of Treasury in lieu of the production tax credit (PTC). Many wind project owners still won’t be able to efficiently utilize the accelerated depreciation deductions earned by wind farm owners, so we expect many of them will look to us and other investors for tax equity. We will utilize very similar structures to the ones that were used for projects that qualified for PTCs. We expect to fund a significant portion of the total project cost. Utilizing the grant will limit our use of our tax capacity and reduce our exposure to project performance. These characteristics will help us draw in new tax equity investors and ultimately minimize the cost of capital to sponsors

Fouts: The tax appetite for most traditional tax equity providers has decreased significantly. Morgan Stanley is still in the tax equity business on a selective basis and we have creative financing structures that use the ITC grant and DOE guarantee that provide developers with alternatives to tax equity.

REWNA: Please describe a wind finance project your company has been involved with since the start of 2009.

Feo: We have closed debt deals for senior bank lenders for Acciona, Invenergy and Eurus, among others. The deals are middle of the fairway for this market–under $400 million, major turbine vendors, major sponsors.

Eber: We are finalizing our first cash grant-based investment for a wind project where we will provide all of the required tax equity. This investment is for a client that would like to utilize our traditional partnership flip structure tax equity financing for its other 2009 wind power projects.

Fouts: For NaturEner Glacier 2, we are the power off-taker and provided a power hedge. We gave 100 percent of construction loan and tax equity take-out. The tax equity deal was the first closing for a wind farm financing incorporating a Department of Treasury cash grant-based structure.

REWNA: What is your outlook for wind power loan activity and lending volume over the next 12 months?

Feo: We expect the market to recover significantly this year. We don’t think the issue for wind is capital, because most wind farms can fit within the size range that the finance market can and will handle. We don’t think the federal loan guaranty program is necessarily of any great benefit to wind projects–unless those projects have unproven technology in which event the DOE loan guarantee program is the only place financing will be available. The biggest restrictions on the market will be (1) availability of power contracts–no PPA, no finance in today’s market; (2) PPA pricing, which in many places is driven by natural gas prices, which have declined; and (3) transmission. Despite all of the noise around ARRA’s benefits accorded to transmission projects, the fact is that no transmission bill has passed through Congress, all of the problems of multi-state jurisdiction still exist and the timeframes for completion of transmission projects remain long.

Eber: The breakdown of wind power financing activity is clearly more difficult to predict in the dynamic environment that we’re presently in. We do believe that all forms of financing will be needed, including tax equity, project debt (whether or not guaranteed/funded by the government), corporate debt and possibly lease financing. J.P. Morgan, along with our institutional partners, would like to continue to fund a significant amount of megawatts of U.S. wind projects over the next 12 months in addition to a significant amount of utility-scale solar PV and geothermal projects.

Fouts: We are starting to see interest again in the sector from infrastructure funds, European strategics and private equity. For high quality developers that have permits, PPAs, transmission strategy or spinning assets in attractive geographies, there are financing opportunities.

Nancy Spring is senior editor at Power Engineering.

Reprinted with permission from Renewable Energy World

“Ah-ha moments”, those times when something is triggered in one’s mind that opens up a new understanding or way of seeing things. Day three of West Coast Green 2009 brought together some of the brightest minds in the “green building” movement and provided the platform for the cross-pollination of innovation and ingenuity that led many to “ah-ha moments”.

One attendee, Jason Lear of Batt + Lear Designers and Builders who traveled from Seattle, Washington to attend the show shared some of the information that led to a complete rethinking for the way he conducts projects at his family-run business. During a previous show, Mr. Lear sat through a presentation given by Rick Chitwood, President of Chitwood Energy Management. The presentation by Mr. Chitwood was so simple yet so powerful, it changed Mr. Lear’s business overnight. The subject of the inspiration; properly sealed attics.

You may wonder: “Properly sealed attics??? Who gives a crap and how is this relevant to me?” Think about it, you are sitting in a room right now and most likely somewhere in the structure you inhabit, there is an attic. If your structure is anything like the millions of structures built without proper air sealing (filling all the cracks and holes that allow air to escape from your home into your attic) and insulation, chances are your heat is rising up through your rooms, finding small holes and leaking into your attic and out of your roof. Mr. Chitwood explained that when this happens, the air you pay to heat or cool is replaced with unwanted air which increases electric bills, reduces air quality and make a home less comfortable. The average home leaks the equivalent of having a two foot by two foot window open every hour every day of the year.

According to Mr. Lear, “I walked away from his presentation and said, if he can do it, we can too.” From that day forward Batt + Lear began to pay much more attention to all the little spaces that normal builders don’t think twice about. He found that sealing all the holes, gaps and spaces made his clients’ homes more comfortable, healthier and required much less energy.

During this year’s West Coast Green, Mr. Chitwood provided another shocking presentation. This time around he described the results of his company’s work in the build of a luxury show home. During this project, his team focused on making the home as airtight as possible throughout the building process. This is important because it means that the air someone has paid to heat or cool will stay inside the house. Proper air sealing also means that all seams, spaces, and holes which typically exist during the building of a home are filled with insulation, foam or caulk. Additionally, duct sealing means that the air ducts running from the HVAC to the vents throughout the home must be sealed completely rather than to code (code in California allows for 6% leakage in newly built homes). The average house is California has 30% duct leakage. The result of Mr. Chitwood’s attention to detail? Without all that air leaking through the walls, the home was able to downsize its HVAC from a 4-ton unit to a 2-ton unit. That meant two less horsepower chugging away to provide cooling or heating and two less horsepower to pay for unnecessarily.

A less expensive HVAC unit? Less wasted energy? Lower utility bills? A more comfortable home? All from air sealing properly? Ah-ha.

Reprinted with permission from CleanTechies

The climate change news from Washington is cautiously encouraging. No one in power is listening to the climate skeptics any more; the economic stimulus package included real money for clean energy; a bill capping U.S. carbon emissions emerged, battered but still standing, from the House of Representatives, and might even survive the Senate. This, along with stricter emission standards in Europe and a big push for clean energy and efficiency standards in China, provides grounds for hope for genuine progress on emissions reduction.

But while climate policy is finally moving forward, climate science is moving faster. One discovery after another suggests the world is warming faster, and climate damages are appearing sooner, than anyone had expected. Much of the policy discussion so far has been aimed at keeping the atmospheric concentration of CO2 below 450 parts per million (ppm) — which was until recently thought to be low enough to prevent dangerous levels of warming. But last year, James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist, argued that paleoclimatic evidence shows 450 ppm is the threshold for transition to an ice-free earth. This would imply a catastrophic rise in sea levels, eventually flooding all coastal cities and regions.

To avoid reaching such a crisis stage, Hansen and a growing number of others now call for stabilizing CO2 concentrations at 350 ppm. The world is now around 390 ppm and rising; since CO2 persists in the atmosphere for a long time, it is difficult to reduce concentrations quickly. In Hansen’s scenario, a phaseout of coal use, massive reforestation, and widespread use of carbon capture and storage could allow the world to achieve negative net carbon emissions by mid-century and reach 350 ppm by 2100.

Can we afford to reduce atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to 350 ppm by the end of this century? To address this question, Economists for Equity and Environment (www.E3Network.org) — a group dedicated to applying and developing economic principles to protect human health and the environment — conducted a study of “The Economics of 350.”

Why the wide range of cost estimates?

At first glance, there is a bewildering range of estimates of the costs of climate protection. Look more closely, however, and there are just a few projections of economic disaster, out in right field by themselves. Other estimates range from modest costs to small net economic gains.

The outliers are the handful of private consultant studies funded by partisan lobbying groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. Using proprietary models (or their own adaptations of standard models), and pessimistic economic assumptions, these studies forecast that even mild U.S. proposals, such as last year’s Lieberman-Warner bill, would cost many thousands of dollars per household and would cause widespread unemployment and economic dislocation. An analysis by journalist Eric Pooley documents the excessive, often uncritical attention given to these studies by the media.

These projections of economic ruin have not been reproduced by any major academic or non-profit research group. Many economic models find that the modest steps called for in recent U.S. proposals would have very small costs and virtually undetectable effects on total employment — as documented in a report by Nathaniel Keohane and Peter Goldmark for the Environmental Defense Fund.

But to reach 350 ppm, we will have to go far beyond the emission reductions considered in recent U.S. proposals. How much will it cost to reach this more ambitious target? Until recently, most economic research focused on higher targets such as 450 ppm or more. There are, however, four major climate economics modeling groups — all at European universities — that have analyzed the costs of reaching 350 ppm.

One group starts from the (realistic) assumption of high unemployment, and finds that long-run employment and economic growth would be increased by a program of public investment in green technology and emissions reduction that leads to 350 ppm. The other three groups adopt the common assumption that short-run unemployment can be ignored in long-run models. They generally find that the needed emissions reductions will cost an average of 1 to 3 percent of world economic output, for some years to come.

Other studies have reached more optimistic conclusions about costs. McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm, has carried out detailed studies of the costs of hundreds of emission-reducing technologies. They find that some emissions can be eliminated for no cost or even an economic savings; more than half of worldwide business-as-usual emissions in 2030 could be eliminated at very small total cost. The net costs of reducing carbon emissions (i.e. investment costs, minus the value of energy saved) go down when the price of oil goes up, and vice versa. McKinsey’s entire package of reductions, eliminating more than half of world emissions, would have zero total cost if the price of oil were $90 per barrel.

Studies from major environmental groups, including Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), have reached even more optimistic conclusions than McKinsey. Both Greenpeace and UCS project substantial economic savings from emission reduction, with fuel savings much larger than the costs of investment. Both assume high oil prices — up to $140 per barrel for Greenpeace — along with rapid change in emissions-reduction technologies.

Deciding whether it’s worth the price

The range of cost estimates for reaching 350 ppm, combined with uncertainties about oil prices and future technologies, make it difficult to choose a single estimate of the total economic cost. Suppose that, for the sake of argument, 2.5 percent of world output must be spent on climate stabilization for years to come. Is that an unacceptably large number?

Imagine an economy growing at 2.5 percent every year (a little slower than the recent U.S. average). Suppose it skips one year’s growth — all too easy to imagine in 2009 — and then resumes growing. That makes GDP 2.5 percent smaller than it would have been, forever. So the “skip year” has the same effect as spending 2.5 percent of output on climate protection every year. Household incomes would take 29 years to double, instead of 28.

Alternatively, we know we can afford to devote 2.5 percent of income to protection against a remote but disastrous threat — because we already do, year after year. In 68 countries, military spending exceeds 2.5 percent of GDP. In the United States and China, the top greenhouse gas emitters, military spending absorbs more than 4 percent of GDP. Both countries would be safer, not more vulnerable, if they diverted half of their defense spending to defense against climate crisis.

The most important conclusion of our research involves what we did not find. There are no reasonable studies saying that a 350 ppm stabilization target will destroy the economy. This is not surprising. The ominous recent research on potential climate damages does not examine the cost of doing something; instead, it looks at the cost of doing nothing about emissions.

If the worst happens, our grandchildren will inherit a degraded Earth that does not support anything like the life that we have enjoyed. On the other hand, if we prepare for the worst but it does not quite happen, we will have invested more than was absolutely necessary — in perfect hindsight — in clean energy, conservation, and carbon-free technologies. Which extreme presents the greater danger?

Climate risk and insurance

Think about climate risk as an insurance problem. You don’t buy fire insurance because you’re sure your house will burn down; rather, you are not, and cannot be, sure enough that it will not burn down. Likewise, projections by Hansen and others of dangerous climate risk from staying above 350ppm CO2 are not certainties; they are necessarily uncertain (although becoming more likely as temperatures rise).

The analogy to insurance is important but inexact; there is no climate insurance company to which the world can hand 2.5 percent of output, if that is what it costs. There is, however, a need for large-scale investment, both in proven emissions-reducing technologies and in research and development.

The role of government in climate policy is not only to set appropriate price signals through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system; the public sector must also guide research on clean energy technologies. Despite free-market mythology to the contrary, this has worked well in the past. Wind power is profitable today as a result of decades of government investment in the United States and Europe. In another arena, the U.S. government essentially invented microelectronics in the 1950s and 1960s: At first, almost all transistors, integrated circuits, and the like were bought by agencies such as the Pentagon and NASA, because no one else could afford them. Just a few decades of massive government purchases of these items turned microelectronics into the premier private-sector success story of the late-20th century, transforming everyone’s life in countless unexpected ways.

The climate crisis challenges us to do it again, to invent the new technologies and industries that will transform life in the mid-21st century and beyond. We know it’s possible: We can afford to protect the climate, and leave a livable world to future generations.

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360

As is often the case, the U.S. lags Europe in adoption of this technology, partly because it has primarily been used with diesel engines. Turbochargers are now used in about half of all European cars. By comparison, U.S. penetration is at just five percent.

The rising CAFE requirements has convinced automakers to announce a slew of electric vehicle and hybrid models, but in coming years turbochargers are likely to get more attention as a less-costly way to increase their fleet average performance.

A few new U.S.-market cars are featuring turbochargers, which enable smaller engines (such as four cylinder engines instead of six) to approximate the power of larger engines. Ford is now running television spots to promote its EcoBoost technology, which includes a Honeywell turbocharger. EcoBoost will be showing up in the 2010 Lincoln MKS, Ford Flex, and the Taurus SHO.

We are likely to see a gradual shift to more 4-cylinder sedans that emphasize performance, as well as 6-cylinder cars replacing 8s. This “transparent downsizing” is good from a fossil fuel and emissions standpoint because even small improvements in fuel efficiency will have a much greater net impact than similar reductions in higher MPG vehicles.

Honeywell Turbo Technologies’ Vice President of Marketing David Paja projects that turbocharging will grow to 25 percent of all new vehicles in the U.S. within 5 years. Paja says the European market could grow from 50 to 70 percent during the same time. Honeywell looks to benefit from any growth as the company supplies turbochargers to most of the world’s largest automakers, including but not limited to Audi, BMW, Chery, Citroen, Dodge, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes, Renault, Tata and Toyota.

Paja said that Japan hasn’t been as receptive to turbochargers because of government incentives that make hybrids attractive for increasing fuel efficiency. Turbocharger company Borg-Warner is also like to get a share of an expanding market. The company recently signed a deal to supply vehicles to First Automotive Works of China.

However, turbocharging won’t do much for improving the fuel economy in the today’s compacts, which already feature smaller 4-cylinder engines. Adding turbocharging brings more power, but usually at the cost of greater fuel consumption. For example, Subaru recently announced that it is offering a turbocharged version of its Legacy sedan, which gets slightly worse gas miles (18/25) than its standard model (19/27).

For that reason, a 25 percent U.S. market share in the U.S. might be on the optimistic side. With new hybrids, EVs, and compacts coming to market, there simply won’t be enough people interested in paying the premium for diesel and performance-oriented vehicles. If there were a turbocharged 3-cylinder car on the market (like BMW’s plug-in concept), then we might see higher penetration.

Turbochargers and electric motors can work hand in hand with electric motors to satisfy power-hungry drivers. BMW’s new X-6 and Series 7 Active Hybrids will feature turbochargers and generate an impressive 480 hp. The combined cost premium of hybrid motors and turbocharging will probably exceed $5,000, but performance-minded consumers are less price sensitive.

John Gartner is Editor in Chief of Matter Network and a Senior Analyst with Pike Research

Sounds innocent enough, but those five words signal a big shift for Toyota as it finally moves forward with plans for a plug-in hybrid. Unlike Bob Dylan’s fans who sobbed and booed when he went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Toyota’s hybrid followers are cheering the company’s intention to plug in, which could boost mileage on a Prius from 50 miles per gallon to the equivalent of 75 or so.

Starting in January, the company will put the first 500 official Plug-in Priuses on American, European and Japanese roads. The US will get 150 of the test vehicles, which use lithium ion batteries, not the nickel metal hydride packs that Toyota says are the current and long-term solution for conventional hybrids.

The pilot effort will kick off a three-year effort to get data on how plug-in cars fare in the real world: how they're charged, how their batteries perform, and what sort of mileage they get. "The target is 2012 to be coming to market with them," Irv Miller, group vice president for Toyota US Sales, said at a Los Angeles conference on climate change. Before that, "we're going to study the challenges of consumer demand," he said.

When Toyota unveiled the Prius Plug-in at the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show, it released these basic stats:

* Extended EV (electric) driving mode of up to 12.5 miles at speeds up to 62 mph

* CO2 emissions cut to less than 60g/km

* Full recharging in around an hour and a half from a 230-volt supply

Leading Edge or Bleeding Edge?

It makes sense for the hybrid pioneer and leader, already on the third generation of its gas-electric technology, to lead the way with the next generation of cost-effective trustworthy plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. But Toyota officials have been fearful of the bleeding edge, repeatedly warning that lithium-battery-powered plug-in hybrids are too costly, the technology is unproven, and too little is understood about how customers will use the vehicles. Doug Coleman, US-based Prius product manager at Toyota, explained: “We’re pacing ourselves in a way that we think that we can be competitive in a few years time for a market that makes sense for both us and the customer.”

Fair enough, but the most vocal of those early customers have been stirred up into pitchfork levels of excitement about Tesla’s electric Roadster, the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid, and Nissan’s all-electric Leaf. So with those five words—“like cars charged at home”—Toyota is capitulating.

Cost Matters

Reuters reported that Toyota plans to sell the Plug-in Prius at a price close to that of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, which is going for about $48,000 in Japan. Ouch. How many Prius shoppers are going to want the plug-in version if it’s anywhere close to double the price of the conventional version?

Obviously, Toyota wants to bring down the price. That’s already reflected in the Plug-in Prius’s likely all-electric range of 10 or so miles—instead of the 40 miles or more that rival plug-ins are expected to achieve. It’s a strategy to find the middle ground between adequate all-electric range and reducing the need for a big battery pack—the most expensive component in a plug-in car.

Is that the right strategy? That depends. How much driving you do on a given day? After 10 miles of all-electric driving, would you would be satisfied with the car reverting back to a plain old 50-mpg Prius until your next recharge? Or do you have to have a 40-mile plug-in hybrid or 100-mile all-electric car at any cost?

Take your time to answer those questions. Pricing and range are still a guessing game. The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf will have fairly limited availability in 2010 and 2011—not ramping up to widespread distribution until about 2012. That’s just about the time that Toyota plugs in its Prius, giving consumers an unprecedented selection of cars that can charge at home.

Reprinted with permission from Hybrid Cars

Last month Thomas L. Friedman wrote in the New York Times an interesting op ed on why America should tax more gasoline. This occurs as the United States is the least forceful OECD country regarding gas tax. US drivers pay on average less than ten euro cents of tax per litre when their German, British, Italian, Turkish or French counterparts pay as much as 60 to 70 cents per litre. Even Australia does better with more than 20 cents per litre.

The situation varies from State to State with Alaska only taxing 26.4 cents per gallon of gasoline while California taxing up to 63.9 cents per gallon. Federal authorities already tax 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents for diesel.

Since the United States’ addiction to oil is widely documented and recognized as a threat by both sides of the political spectrum, why shouldn’t it tax oil more to curb the consumption?

This could effectively stimulate efficiency, decrease the amount of oil the country consumes each day and also help to curb greenhouse gas emissions. One dollar per gallon would bring $140 billion to the Federal government each year. One dollar per gallon would amount to 39 euro cents per litre. Even with such a tax, the United States would keep on taxing less heavily gas than most OECD countries.

As Friedman notes in his article :

Such a tax would make our economy healthier by reducing the deficit, by stimulating the renewable energy industry, by strengthening the dollar through shrinking oil imports and by helping to shift the burden of health care away from business to government so our companies can compete better globally.

Such a tax would make our population healthier by expanding health care and reducing emissions. Such a tax would make our national-security healthier by shrinking our dependence on oil from countries that have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs and by increasing our leverage over petro-dictators, like those in Iran, Russia and Venezuela, through shrinking their oil incomes.

Instead of spending the money on national debt or healthcare, my belief is that the US should spend it on advancing and advocating cleantech, cutting its fossil fuels consumption and stopping to rely so massively on oil imports. It would also prepare itself for higher oil prices and peak oil.

Here are some projects that could benefit from such a tax and decrease oil consumption and exports:

*electric cars research, promotion and incentivesenergy efficiency and smart grid

*road infrastructure

*renewables (research, promotion and incentives)

*nuclear

*high speed rail and mass transit

*any project unrelated to energy

With 15 cents per gallon each project would bring around $9 billion per year. No doubt that with all this money many things could be achieved.

To exemplify, here are some calculations using the figures given in Sustainable energy – without the hot air:

With $90 billion collected during a decade America could build approximately 45 GW of nuclear capacity or 70 GW of offshore wind.

As for high speed rail, this sum would multiply by ten the amount already allocated by President Obama. With all this money the country could get its ten high speed rail corridors and could even go way beyond.

Of course, if one dollar per gallon was too much, America could enact a fifty cents tax. The duration of the projects would however double.

China recently unveiled massive projects for high speed rail, nuclear power and hydroelectricity. Even if the Chinese government is not all too ready to cut its emissions, it is fully aware how relying on dirty coal and foreign oil could slow down the country’s rapid economic growth. Could the US just do the same ?

[photo credit: Flickr]

Reprinted with permission from CleanTechies

SunPower Corp. is set to start work on a 250 MW solar photovoltaic power plant in California which will, when complete in 2012, provide electric power to Pacific Gas and Electric Co. The plant will dwarf the largest PV project currently in existence, a 17 MW facility at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, Nev.

Solar energy, such as the 250 MW SunPower PV facility, increasingly is being developed at utility scale. Bolstered by lower costs (due in part to market imbalances that currently favor buyers), state renewable portfolio standards, federal incentives and even a bit of creative thinking, solar energy is gaining a foothold in many utility companies’ generation portfolios.

Ron Kenedi, vice president-Americas for Sharp Solar, calls this the “beginning of the utility era” in the U.S. solar market. Utility demand for PV could be “huge” and may grow to be the company’s largest segment. “It’s happening all over at once,” he says.

Others agree. “Our opinion is it appears to be a booming market segment,” says Matt Cheney, CEO of Renewable Ventures, a financial firm which has been in the market since 2006. The company is part of Gemini Solar Development, which is building a 30 MW PV facility for Austin Energy east of the Texas state capital. “Utilities are waking up to the importance of solar,” Cheney says.

Solar adoption may be advancing, but the counter is that “capital markets are in disarray,” says Tom Fair, vice president of renewable energy for Las Vegas, Nev.-based NV Energy. Last year’s financial market shock, the lingering recession and lower demand for electricity all are complicating factors. Project finance has changed markedly with tax equity investors now in short supply. That’s bad news for most forms of renewable energy, which rely on tax-benefit-driven investors for capital. Purchased power agreements with utilities are now coin of the realm. But opportunities for utilities to take advantage of enhanced federal tax credits–available only since late 2008–may at last be having an effect.

A Year To Remember

Last year was a good one for utility-scale solar. According to the Solar Electric Power Association’s (SEPA’s) latest ranking of top solar utilities, many utilities doubled the solar megawatts in their generation portfolio during 2008. Overall, California continued to lead the country in solar megawatts. And top utilities included Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, Public Service Co. of Colorado, Public Service Electric, Arizona Public Service, Hawaiian Electric Co., Portland General Electric, Sacramento Municipal Utility District and the Long Island Power Authority.

Uncertainties over future carbon costs have led many utilities to view solar as a risk mitigation option, says Julia Hamm, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based SEPA. Hamm acknowledges that solar technology may not be the lowest-cost form of generation. But it offers utility capacity planners certainty when it comes to calculating lifetime operating costs.

Utility-Scale Technologies

Utilities have two primary solar technologies from which to choose: photovoltaic (PV) and concentrating solar thermal. PV technologies use a photosensitive material to generate electricity directly from sunlight. PV can produce at least some electricity under less than ideal conditions, such as low sun angles and overcast skies. That characteristic is why utilities in places like Massachusetts, Michigan and New Jersey can become solar energy players alongside their brethren in the desert Southwest.

PV also offers the advantage of modularity and scalability. Utilities and large energy users can start relatively small and scale up as demand grows and as they become more comfortable with the technology. But scalability can have its drawbacks, too. For one thing, the larger the deployment the greater the likelihood that cloud cover will affect output.

“During cloudy periods, the output from PV can get noisy with spikes,” which can have an effect on the grid, says Kelly Beninga, global director of renewable energy for WorleyParsons. PV installations around 20 MW in size can be managed without too much trouble. Larger than that and portions of the grid can be affected by passing clouds.

For a system the size that SunPower is developing for PG&E in California a solution might be to install lead acid batteries to cope with spikes caused by clouds. What’s more, the extent to which clouds pose a problem depends in part on where the nearest substation is located. “If you’re at the end of the transmission system it’s not good to have transients,” Beninga says.

To better understand the issue, NV Energy is studying power output variations that may result from deploying PV in and around Las Vegas. The study won’t be complete for another year, but Tom Fair says early data suggest that geographic dispersion helps dampen variability. A second finding is that solar facilities need to be placed on strong parts of the grid. “That leads us away from having huge amounts of PV at any one site,” Fair says. Ten to 20 MW at any one site might be the limit.

Southern California Edison already plans to scatter 1 MW and 2 MW rooftop PV installations across its service territory, part of its goal to deploy 250 MW of PV over the next five years. Minimizing transient spikes is one reason. A second is that transmission remains the No. 1 barrier to renewable energy growth in California, says Mike Marelli, the utility’s director of renewable and alternative power contracts. “We can implement smaller systems with little or no transmission” additions, he says.

In contrast to PV, concentrating solar thermal (CST) technologies use mirrors or lenses to focus solar radiation on a central receiver or pipe to heat, typically, a fluid. In turn, this fluid drives a more conventional steam cycle to generate electricity. To be effective, however, these systems require a consistent supply of high quality solar radiation. They also are less scalable than PV technology, largely because of the fixed size of the turbine.

A recent report from the World Resources Institute, “Juice from Concentrate: Reducing Emissions with Concentrating Solar Thermal Power,” says that direct insolation of around 5.5 kWh/m2/day is a minimum requirement for CST development. “Significantly higher DNI (available sunlight) is much preferred if costs are to be kept to an acceptable level,” the report said. Conditions in North America favorable enough to support CST are in the U.S. Southwest. Elsewhere, South Africa, Australia, Northern Africa, Spain, Brazil and parts of India and China have suitable conditions for CST development.

“The main thing making concentrating solar thermal bankable is the quality of the sunlight,” says Britt Childs Staley, one of the report’s authors. “You can’t site CST in Maine; you need a much higher quality of sun with higher radiation.”

Even Florida offers somewhat limited quality insolation, the Institute report says. That’s because higher levels of atmospheric water vapor disperse the radiation, reducing a Florida-based solar plant’s potential output. For example, a CST in Phoenix with six hours of storage would have a capacity factor of around 40 percent. An identical facility in Tampa would have a 25 percent capacity factor. The difference affects both facilities’ bottom-line economics. The Phoenix plant’s long-term real cost of electricity would be around 14.4 cents/kWh. The report said it would be around 23 cents/kWh for the Tampa plant.

“Given the reduced output and lower profitability of CST plants located outside the Southwest, it is unlikely that significant capacity will be installed in other parts of the country,” the report said.

Perhaps, but that hasn’t stopped Florida Power and Light from developing the 75 MW Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center, which will be one of largest solar plants of any kind outside of California. The facility, near Indiantown, Fla., will also be among the first hybrid facilities to connect a solar facility to an existing combined-cycle power plant, providing solar thermal capacity that directly displaces fossil fuel usage. The project will consist of around 180,000 mirrors over 500 acres at the existing FPL Martin Plant site. Construction began late in 2008 with an in-service date expected in mid-2010.

(The World Resources Institute report pegged the long-term cost of electricity for a 500 MW pulverized coal power plant with an 85 percent capacity factor and a $2,290/kW capital cost at about 6.26 cents/kWh. A 200 MW trough CST with six hours of storage, a 40 percent capacity factor and capital cost of $6,044/kW would have a long-term cost of electricity of 15.36 cents/kWh. Using the federal investment tax credit, the same plant would have a long-term cost of electricity of 11.37 cents/kWh.)

Not surprisingly, CST developers focus their attention on sun-rich locations where utilities and large-scale developers can choose between both PV and CST technologies. “We don’t see it as an either-or,” says NV Energy’s Tom Fair when asked if his utility favors either technology. “Both are equally proficient at finding sites” around the state.

NV Energy has a purchased power agreement to take 20 MW of PV generated at a site in southwest Nevada. The utility is also looking at installing 250 MW of CST capacity with molten salt storage northwest of Las Vegas. It also is considering adding 80 to 100 MW of solar capacity at its gas-fired Harry Allen and Chuck Lenzie stations. If built, the integrated solar combined cycle power plant would essentially swap solar Btu’s for natural gas Btu’s, similar to FPL’s Martin Next Generation scheme.

The idea of incorporating a solar field with a natural gas-fired combined cycle power plant is gaining momentum, Fair says. “When you have direct normal insolation (shadow-producing sunlight) it’s a pretty interesting resource.” One benefit is that peak demand typically occurs on hot, sunny days, which is a good fit with the solar resource. Utilities also gain by making use of existing power blocks and transmission infrastructure. That helps minimize permitting scuffles, gets renewable capacity into the utility’s generating portfolio in a hurry and helps control capital costs.

And that’s no small thing, since until recently utility scale solar has been expensive; in some cases prohibitively so.

Falling Costs

“Costs have been coming down faster,” says WorleyParsons’ Kenny Beninga. Eighteen months ago, a utility-scale PV facility cost around $6,000/kW. Today that cost is closer to $3,500/kW. Some of the decline is due to technology improvements. But a lot more is the result of market dynamics.

A global shortage of polysilicon led many companies to start manufacturing PV. Then the recession hit. The economic downturn led to product oversupply and price declines of around 30 percent, says Renewable Ventures’ Matt Cheney. The market slump has been tough for many companies in the PV supply chain but offers opportunities for utilities.

“There has been a dramatic decrease in cost and prices over the past 12 months, which puts utilities in a strong position to bargain,” says Chris O’Brien, head of market development for Oerlikon Solar. The Swiss company launched its solar group in 2007, offering end to end manufacturing lines for thin film PV. O’Brien says first-generation thin film customers in Europe have a manufacturing cost of approximately $1.50/W for a thin film PV module. His company’s goal is to drive costs to around $0.70/W by the end of next year. With the current cost structure, including federal incentives, a 10 MW PV plant in California can have a delivered cost of electricity of around $0.15/kW. O’Brien says he expects that to fall below $0.10/kW by 2012.

The company, meanwhile, currently guarantees a 9 percent efficiency level for its PV system. By next year, it hopes to guarantee efficiencies in excess of 10 percent. That level is a threshold necessary to achieve economies of scale, says Sharp’s Ron Kenedi. Current industry efficiencies range from 5 percent up to 10 percent, with some companies aiming for 15 percent efficiencies. Kenedi says Sharp’s PV products are in the range of 9 to 10 percent efficient.

O’Brien says the current market oversupply is temporary as suppliers in some cases sell below cost to clear inventories. “It’s a tactical opportunity” for utilities right now, he says, adding that current conditions are not an indicator of where prices will end up once the market rights itself. A delivered cost of electricity in the range of $0.12/kW for utility-scale PV projects in California could be more realistic in the long term, he says.

The Finance Question

Utilities may also have a short-term advantage over independent power producers and developers due to the dearth of financing available for many types of electric power projects, including solar. What had been a $5 to $7 billion market in 2008 among banks and investors looking for tax credits generated by renewable energy projects has largely disappeared. Utilities are one of the few big sources of project capital, representing an investment pool that O’Brien says could be anywhere from $8 to $10 billion.

Current market conditions offer a “real win-win opportunity” for utilities to take advantage of federal tax credits aimed at boosting renewable energy deployment, he says. Matt Cheney isn’t so sanguine. He says credit is tight even for utilities and suggests it may take as long as four years for financial sector volume and pricing to recover from last year’s banking shock.

“Financing using traditional project financing is nearly impossible due to technology risk,” says Robert Rogan, senior vice president of North American markets for eSolar. Traditional tax equity financing no longer exists as it did 18 months ago as banks and insurance companies have either disappeared altogether or exited the market due to the broader financial market turmoil. “The key now is that for any plant the debt/equity markets have been upended in the past year,” he says.

eSolar successfully raised $170 million from Google.org, Oak Investment Partners, Idealab, NRG Energy and ACME Group of India. In early August it began delivering power to the grid from a 5 MW CST demonstration project in Lancaster, Calif. known as Sierra SunTower (pictured on our cover). And earlier this year it announced a string of project contracts to build scaled-up version of the SunTower for Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and El Paso Electric.

“These are project we have been working on for some time,” Rogan says. He declined to discuss specific pricing, but said all of the deals are based on purchased power agreements.

eSolar’s commercial-scale CST is 46 MW and includes 16 power towers, which feed heat to drive a single steam turbine. The projects can be scaled up in chunks of 46 MW, which could appeal to the utility power generation market. Projects are also designed so they don’t require a 230 kV transmission connection; instead they can use 115 kV or 135 kV lines, which may make project siting somewhat easier. The projects also can accommodate storage, but Rogan says current U.S. market signals show little demand for that feature. He says utilities and grid operators feel confident they can manage resources and not pay for storage.

That may change as renewable energy penetrates farther into generating portfolios. “Storage is a huge piece of solar thermal in the future,” Rogan says.

Storage may present its greatest value to solar and wind power developments due to the intermittent nature of their power production. The wind doesn’t blow all the time and darkness is an effective deterrent to solar power generation. As larger amounts of these intermittent resources are added, the likelihood grows that a drop in wind velocity, passing clouds or darkness will have an effect on grid stability. Storage is one way that intemittency can be bridged and–for solar, at least–generation extended into the evening hours.

Kelly Beninga of WorleyParsons estimates that adding four hours of storage at a CST could raise construction costs by 10 to 15 percent. Of course, storage also adds to the amount of time the power facility is producing electricity so the costs can be recovered at least in part through extended operating hours.

The World Resources Institute report says the 64 MW Nevada Solar One CST was built without storage for around $4,200/kW. A comparable plant with six hours of storage could cost $6,400/kW, the report says. With storage, the levelized cost of generation can actually decline, the report said, since storage increases the annual generation output over which to spread the initial capital outlay. The report also confirms Rogan’s view that most planned projects in the U.S. do not include storage.

“Although storage might allow a plant to generate later in the day, if CST cannot compete with the cheaper plants that bid power at that time, it has no market and thus no revenues for such generation.”

Power towers are not the only form of utility-scale CST. Parabolic trough and linear Fresnel trough are also being deployed, for example, at Nevada Solar One. The technology may offer the most similarities to a conventional steam electric power plant, since the mirrors concentrate solar radiation to heat a fluid that ends up driving a fairly conventional steam cycle.

“That’s why we went with it,” says Christopher Huntington, vice president of business development for SkyFuel Inc., which designs and sells solar trough collector equipment. What’s more, with around 20 years of operating experience at utility scale, bankers see that the technology has an established track record. “They know it will work and that they can get their money back,” Huntington says.

Current parabolic trough technology uses oil as a circulating heat transfer fluid. Research is underway to substitute molten salt, which holds the possibility of pushing temperatures even higher. That’s good news, Huntington says, since “the bigger the temperature drop the more power you get.”

One operational issue with CST is the daily cycling the steam plant must endure. CSP plants face a daily startup cycle and some energy is lost to warm the turbine. This can result in perhaps as much as a 30-minute delay in terms of availability, says WorleyParsons’ Beninga. On the other hand, thermal inertia means the solar power system can continue to generate power into the evening hours, following sunset.

“The main issue is the lifetime reliability stress on the turbine” and in particular low-cycle fatigue in the turbine blades, Beninga says. One strategy is to keep the turbine hot overnight with an auxiliary boiler or a steam blanket, possibly increasing parasitic load.

Whether or not utility-scale solar can ever really be a part of baseload power generation remains to be seen. Beninga says its niche will be daytime and evening peak and mid-peak load. As such it could play a role as a natural gas displacer.

For a utility like Southern California Edison, the goal is not to favor one renewable energy technology over another. The state’s renewable portfolio standard is agnostic, says power procurement director Mike Marelli, although the utility finds more value in summer or peak load resources.

“We’ve done contracts for all five renewable technologies and we feel comfortable we’re getting good resource diversity.”

David Wagman is Chief Editor of Renewable Energy World North America Magazine.

Photo Credit: Southern California Edison

Reprinted with permission from Renewable Energy World

When Joe Romm over at the Indispensable Climate Progress (I capitalize indispensable because the blog should just always be called that) gets going, he really gets going. We’re now up to Part 5 of his take-down of a single chapter of the new book SuperFreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and a number of other scientists, bloggers (or blogger-scientists, in RealClimate’s case) have chimed in as well. Frankly, as interested as I am in this sort of thing, I’m getting bored.

The argument swirls around whether or not Levitt and Dubner committed various climate communications-related crimes, most notably the repetition of the long-debunked 1970s global cooling myth and the apparent support for a geo-engineering fix (injecting monumental amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, like a new 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption every year) that scientists generally pan as completely ridiculous.

Fine, this is stupid. I get it. Levitt and Dubner have started to strike back a bit by denying the deniers labels that have been thrown their way, and on some level I’m sure they’re just happy to get the publicity (the book is currently #15 on Amazon’s best sellers list). The reason I’m bored by the whole thing, though, is that this book doesn’t make a difference. I know that Romm’s goal (or at least one of them) is to improve the flow of climate change-related information to the public, but whether or not a random guy browsing the shelves at Barnes & Noble suddenly thinks that geo-engineering would work is completely irrelevant. Scientists and governments, for the most part, understand the issue, and no one is seriously threatening to drop a volcano’s worth of SO2 into the stratosphere every year from now until eternity. I am confident that President Obama will not read this book and suddenly change the negotiating agenda for Copenhagen.

So let it go, Joe. You’re doing yeoman’s work over there, but I prefer to read your explanations of potential sea level rise and ppm goals, or your commentary on the Chamber of Commerce’s Luddite ways and the subsequent exodus (even by oil and gas companies!). And you know what? Whenever George Will sounds off again, feel free. I don’t get bored by those.

Reprinted with permission from Red Green and Blue

In an unexpected U-turn, the U.S. Senate has agreed to continue to back research for the next generation of hydrogen cars - funding that the Obama administration had earlier proposed to cut.

The move came last Thursday as Senate members voted to commit $187 million to hydrogen research, almost as much as was promised before the indecision.

Don’t hold your breath for the transition to a bold hydrogen future just yet though; industry insiders claim that before hydrogen cars can become widespread the government may need to pump in up to an astonishing $55 billion more in additional funding to pay for research and subsidies to build fueling stations.

They’ve certainly got a long way to go - it is estimated that fewer than 200 hydrogen vehicles are currently operating in the U.S. Still, who was it that said that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step…

Image Credit - ideowl on flickr

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

According to the poll of 1,000 American adults carried out by ABI Research, just 7% would be willing to pay a premium to go green, a figure that may cause cell phone companies to think deeply before investing heavily in environmentally friendlier models.

Speaking about the findings, industry analyst Michael Morgan said, “These survey results mean that almost half of those surveyed were at least committed in principle to use of a green handset. However the public is largely uninformed about their availability: only 4% said they were ‘very familiar’ with green handsets.”

Supporters of green handsets shouldn’t throw their hands up in despair just yet though - even though some recyclable components can be slightly more expensive, in most cases retailers have offered handsets with comparable functionality while keeping cost differences to the bare minimum.

Crucially though, the cost to handset manufacturers can be prohibitive since the creation of a truly green handset can force changes throughout the whole supply chain and call for complete retooling in the production process

Insiders say that the law can play an important role in the transformation. The European Union (EU) currently has the most stringent regulations in place, containing targets which the most forward-looking manufacturers such as Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson strive to meet globally.

However, according to Morgan, “There’s a difference between being merely compliant and being truly green. The three key factors are: using recyclable or renewable materials; ensuring that handsets are in fact recycled after use; and introducing low-power chargers. Even more crucial for the long-term: leveraging the lessons learned in this process and applying them right through entire handset portfolios.”

Image Credit - Milica Sekulic on flickr

Reprinted with permission from CleanTechnica

Attending the recently concluded CAR Expo in San Jose CA we could see that things weren’t exactly hopping, especially in the Green seminars and Green expo booths. Who could blame everyone, with the still lingering effect of the economy, unemployment and overall uncertainty? The Expo offered a bevy of economic forecasts, short sale sessions and new DRE laws going into effect but of course we went to check the green goings on. How’s the Green movement within the ranks of the real estate world? If my Green colleague and I would guess from the sparse attendance at the few green sessions and Green display booths then the state of Green Real Estate isn’t exactly on everyone’s radar.

The Going Green Member Forum offered informative green facts from a CHEERS rater as well as some finer points from Build It Green’s Elise Hunter about the Green Point Rated system. We discovered that the HERS Phase II rating will include: whole house energy homes, uniform rating system based on a statewide rating scale, as well as labeling procedures for homebuyers, renters, real estate industry, mortgage lenders who have an interest in home energy ratings. We say Hoorah to that! The speaker also snuck in some tidbits of info that even surprised us such as the “”Energy Efficient Mortgage” that ties into the 203B FHA loan that allows five percent of property value in most cases, while VA loans allows up to $6,000 in green upgrades.

Hunter offered a straightforward overview of the benefits of the Green Point Rated system, the economic pulse (such as occupancy rates are 5.6 percent higher in Green multi-unit apartment buildings in Seattle) and the state of green buildings. We already knew a lot of the info but not everyone does and with the sparse attendance in the room it appears that interest in Green real estate and its many be benefits may have to wait until the real estate industry weathers this storm.

Reprinted with permission from Green Building Elements

The northeast is getting snow already, and low temperatures. Does this mean global warming is a myth? Not necessarily. A new analysis of global temperatures show that the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the second warmest September on record, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Based on records going back to 1880, the monthly National Climatic Data Center analysis is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides.

he combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 1.12 degrees F above the 20th century average of 59.0 degrees F. Separately the global land surface temperature was 1.75 degrees F above the 20th century average of 53.6 degrees F.

-- Warmer-than-average temperatures engulfed most of the world’s land areas during the month. The greatest warmth occurred across Canada and the northern and western contiguous United States. Warmer-than-normal conditions also prevailed across Europe, most of Asia and Australia.

-- The worldwide ocean temperature tied with 2004 as the fifth warmest September on record, 0.90 degree F above the 20th century average of 61.1 degrees F. The near-Antarctic southern ocean and the Gulf of Alaska featured notable cooler-than-average temperatures.

-- Arctic sea ice covered an average 2.1 million square miles in September - the third lowest for any September since records began in 1979. The coverage was 23.8 percent below the 1979-2000 average, and the 13th consecutive September with below-average Arctic sea ice extent. -- Antarctic sea ice extent in September was 2.2 percent above the 1979-2000 average. This was the third largest September extent on record, behind 2006 and 2007. Image shows Global surface temperature anomalies (degrees F) for the month of September.

For more information: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20091015_sepglobalstats.html

Reprinted with permission from Environmental News Network