Green Power

Lacey Urges Customers to Buy Green Power

The city of Lacey and Puget Sound Energy are challenging residents, businesses and public agencies to buy "green power." The Lacey Green Power Challenge is a six-month campaign to increase to 1,000 the number of residents and business customers buying green power from the utility. More than 250 residential and business customers purchased green power as of December.

If successful, the utility, with support from the Bonneville Power Administration, will fund a $20,000 solar energy demonstration project on public property that is yet to be determined. Homeowners associations can compete, and the one with the highest level of participation will receive a $1,000 grant from PSE for an approved neighborhood project. All participants will receive green power window decals and coupons from supporting businesses while supplies last. But the competition is about more than the prizes.

"If each household and business in Lacey purchased just four dollars worth of green power each month, our community would effectively remove 36,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year," Mayor Virgil Clarkson said in a news release. "According to the experts, that's equivalent to our residents not driving 79 million miles."

PSE's Green Power Program allows subscribers to select the amount of green power they want to pay for, starting at $4 each month and increasing in increments of $2 a month.  A typical energy-efficient household using about 800 kilowatt-hours of electricity each month would pay an additional $10 a month to go 100 percent green. The purchase of green power does not mean electricity produced by wind or the sun is headed directly to the participating home or business, but rather the additional revenue is spurring development of those renewable energy resources in the Northwest.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency named Lacey in 2007 to its Green Power Leadership Club as the 11th city to use green power for its electrical energy needs. Lacey now uses renewable energy sources such as wind and solar for needs that include lighting City Hall, Lacey Timberland Regional Library, all its water and wastewater facilities, and more than 3,000 street and traffic lights. EPA's official "Welcome to a Green Power Community" signs will be placed at major city entrances shortly. Olympia uses green power for its wastewater, stormwater and water systems. Tumwater will begin purchasing green power this year for its water and wastewater systems. Source: By Christian Hill, The Olympian, 12/01/08.

Renewable Resources for Federal Agencies

Western Area Power Administration and the Department of Energy's Federal Energy Management Program work together to help Federal agencies meet renewable energy goals. Agencies can purchase renewable energy and its benefits, which will improve your agency's Annual Energy Scorecard, reduce emissions and foster markets for emerging technologies.

Obtaining renewable resources through Western is easy and cost effective. Western can procure renewable energy certificates and renewable energy from suppliers through a request for proposals and pass the energy and/or benefits on to your agency. FEMP covers the administrative cost of acquiring renewable resources from suppliers -- a savings to participants. Join Western's 2008 REC solicitation. Fill out the Statement of Intent e-mail the completed document to Paula Fronk, or fax it to 801-524-5017. See Solicitations and news for more information, and for a list of current RFPs and past purchases.

Federal agencies that purchase renewable power may also be eligible to join the Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Partnership, a voluntary program to reduce the environmental impact of electricity generation by promoting renewable energy.
 For more information about the Renewable Resources for Federal Agencies program, contact Randy Manion, Western Area Power Administration, 720-962-7423; Chandra Shah, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 303-384-7557; or Matthew Gray, FEMP, 202-586-0067. Source: Western Area Power Administration, 01/25/09.

Green-E Certifies AmerenUE's Pure Power Program in Missouri. Missouri Customers Now Have Access to Certified Renewable Energy

The Center for Resource Solutions recently announced that AmerenUE's Pure Power, a voluntary renewable energy program available to the company's 1.2 million electric customers in Missouri, is now Green-e Energy certified. AmerenUE joins a network of renewable energy providers that offer products certified by Green-e, the nation's leading certification and verification program for renewable energy.
           
"Pure Power is the only Green-e certified renewable electricity program offered in Missouri," said Lars Kvale, Green-e analyst. "Green-e is pleased to welcome AmerenUE to Green-e Energy. Now AmerenUE's customers in Missouri have easy access to certified renewable energy through their local utility."

AmerenUE's Missouri Pure Power program is sourced from wind facilities located in Missouri, with plans to support a more eligible renewable resources sourced from the region in the future. Sourcing renewable energy certificates (RECs) from local and regional resources for Pure Power results in better local air quality and creates demand for development of regional renewable resources. 3Degrees Group, Inc. will develop and manage the Pure Power program over the next five years. Green-e Energy certification of Pure Power shows that AmerenUE is committed to delivering a quality renewable energy option to its customers.

Green-e Energy is the leading renewable energy certification and verification program in the U.S., with sales Green-e certified renewable energy totaling nearly ten million MWhs in 2006. This includes purchases by 208,000 residential customers and almost 7,000 commercial customers across the U.S. and Canada. The program provides independent, third-party certification to ensure certified renewable energy meets strict environmental and consumer-protection standards.

Through the display and recognition of the Green-e logo, the national symbol for renewable energy excellence, a growing number of consumers are able to easily identify high-quality, certified renewable energy options, as well as everyday consumer products that are produced by companies that use renewable energy in their operations.

Providers of Green-e certified renewable energy agree to abide by the Green-e Code of Conduct and meet strict Green-e disclosure and truth-in-advertising requirements. All Green-e marketers undergo an annual verification audit to document that the company purchased and/or generated enough quantity and type of renewable energy or RECs to meet customer demand and marketing claims. Source: Center for Resource Solutions, 11/13/07.

Visit U.S. DOE EERE Green Power Network for more information.

Renewable Energy Technologies

Solar Just Got Cheaper

A Silicon-Valley start-up company has produced its first commercial quantities of a new solar power technology that promises to revolutionise the industry -- particularly if its claims of being cheaper than coal are proven to be true.

Nanosolar, a company backed by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, along with other prominent venture capitalists, and therefore very well funded, announced just before Christmas that it had produced its first solar modules, which are to be shipped to Germany where it is constructing a 1MW solar plant with the industrial giant Beck.

The technology developed by Nanosolar is radically different from other solar panels because instead of using large, heavy panels lined with silicon, it prints a thin solar film directly on a metal foil -- making it light, flexible, easy to install, and, says founder Martin Roscheisen -- very cheap to produce.

The San Jose-based Nanosolar developed a proprietary ink that is based on "nanoparticles"  of a material called copper indium gallium selenide (CIGR), which can be printed on metal foil, which is cheaper and 20 times more conductive than stainless steel.

Other companies that also specialise in 'thin-film solar' technology also use CIGRs, but require a vacuum chamber to disperse the particles. Nanosolar says its method of printing is cheaper and more effective. It can literally produce huge rolls of the product that are metres wide and up to kilometers long.

Nanosolar has constructed a manufacturing plant in California that it says has filled its order book until mid-2009, and is about to open a second factory in Germany, where government policies on solar energy targets and feed-in tariffs have made it one of the best places in the world to develop solar technologies.

Nanotechnology is part of the so called 'third wave' of solar power devices. The first used thick silicon wafer cells, but they were cumbersome and expensive. The second used very thin silicon layers, and managed to reduce the cost by half. The third wave being led by Nanosolar uses materials than can be printed directly on to conducting surfaces, and claims to be able to cut costs to one third of previous technologies.

If the company can prove that its technology is scaleable and can deliver on its cost promises, its potential impact on renewable and other energy providers will be enormous.

Production of solar photovoltaics jumped by half in 2007 to an estimated 3,800MW worldwide, taking its total capacity to around 12,400MW.

But even though it has been the fastest growing energy source in the world, the growth of the solar power industry has been hamstrung because it has cost around three times as much as coal to produce energy.

That gap would have been reduced once carbon had been priced in to the equation, but Nanosolar threatens to turns all previous assumptions about the future for solar power on their head.

Although the solar receptors can be printed onto rolls, and can presumably be easily installed on garages, household roofs, even the sides of trucks, the company sees its best application being in open or "free field"  installations that might each generate 10MW of power, enough to satisfy the needs of 5,000 to 7,000 homes.

Global production of solar cells went up by 50 percent in 2007

Scientists have said that the production of solar cells known as photovoltaics (PVs) jumped up to 3,800 megawatts worldwide, a total jump of 50 percent, in 2007.

According to a report in ENN, photovoltaics, which directly convert sunlight into electricity, include both traditional, polysilicon-based solar cell technologies and new thin-film technologies.

Thin-film manufacturing involves depositing extremely thin layers of photosensitive materials on glass, metal, or plastics. It is the advancement of these thin-film technologies in 2006 that scientists attribute as to causing this phenomenonal rise in the production of solar cells.

While thin films are not as efficient at converting sunlight to electricity, they currently cost less, and their physical flexibility makes them more versatile than traditional solar cells.

The top five PV-producing countries are Japan, China, Germany, Taiwan, and the United States.

Though the increase in production of PVs in these countries is remarkable, the recent growth in China is the most astonishing. Thats because after almost tripling its PV production in 2006, it is believed to have more than doubled the output in 2007. Having eclipsed Germany in 2007 to take the number two spot, China is now on track to become the number one PV producer in 2008. Japan, the United States, and Spain round out the top four markets with 350, 141, and 70 megawatts installed in 2006, respectively.

In fact, thanks to a residential PV incentive program, Japan now has over 250,000 homes with PV systems.

The report also states that the growth in installations in the United States increased from 20 percent in 2005 to 31 percent in 2006, primarily driven by California and New Jersey. Initial estimates for the United States as a whole indicate that PV incentives helped to achieve an incredible 83-percent growth in installations in 2007.

Also, the average price for a PV module, excluding installation and other system costs, has dropped from almost $100 per watt in 1975 to less than $4 per watt at the end of 2006. With expanding polysilicon supplies, average PV prices are projected to drop to $2 per watt in 2010.

For thin-film PV, production costs are expected to reach $1 per watt in 2010, at which point solar PV will become competitive with coal-fired electricity. Source: ANI News Service 01/01/08.

New Solar House Web Site Now Available

Visit the new web site created by John Kosmer to discover:

• How to build a passive solar home for the same costs as a traditional home, but with results that require 70 percent less energy to operate the home as compared to a traditional home.

• How ENERGY STAR qualified Simonton windows help to reduce heating bills to just $2.50 a day in upstate New York.

• The benefits of a three-story atrium design that provides express air return throughout the 4,000 square-foot home.

• Information on green living, green design and passive solar heat. 

Source: John Kosmer, 1/2/2007.

Scientists See Potential Geothermal Energy Source under Cascades

Deep beneath the Cascade Mountains, where molten magma heats the Earth's crust and occasionally bursts up in volcanic eruptions, lurks an energy source that scientists believe could be tamed to help power the region. There has been little exploration and no deep test holes drilled to date. But the geothermal potential of the Cascades is starting to attract a buzz. In the next 10 or 15 years, some predict, commercial-sized power plants could start generating electricity. "As this area is predicted to contain vast geothermal resources, development plans for the Cascades are becoming an increasingly frequent topic of conversation," said a report done late last year for the Department of Energy.

The report said the Cascades contain "potentially significant" geothermal resources. But it cautioned that the effort to tap these resources, including drilling miles down into volcanoes to tap "supercritical fluids," will not be easy. Even so, the hunt is under way, and some energy companies have zeroed in on areas they believe could be developed.

Near Baker Lake, southeast of Mount Baker, an Oregon company is waiting for leases from the Forest Service and considering a 100-megawatt geothermal plant that could provide enough electricity for 100,000 people. Steven Munson, the chief executive of Vulcan Power Co., said there is more than an 80-percent chance the plant will be built.

The facility would be designed to blend into the landscape and not be an eyesore. The power it would produce would be cheaper than the electricity from a new natural-gas fired generating plant, he said. "We are very serious about this," Munson said, adding that several of the state's utilities - he declined to name them - have expressed interest in purchasing the power.

On the east slopes of the Cascades in Yakima and Kittitas counties, a Utah firm, Raser Technologies Inc., is focusing on 5,000 acres of International Paper land for possible development. "There is a lot of geothermal in Washington state," said Richard Putnam, aRaser executive. "It's already happening. It's a matter of how much and when."

In the rough triangle from Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams to Mount Hood in Oregon, there is enough geothermal potential to develop 1,000 megawatts of electricity, or the equivalent of three or four gas-fired generating plants or a large nuclear plant, said geologist Susan Petty, president of AltaRock Energy in Seattle.

Petty said each of the volcanoes in the Cascades could produce 500 megawatts, or enough to supply the needs of 500,000 people. "It's like where the region was with wind 15 years ago," she said. "But the technology has matured in the last five years, and the Cascades are an obvious place to explore."

The Cascades are among the volcanoes and earthquake faults surrounding the Pacific Ocean, collectively known as the Ring of Fire. Geothermal development is already under way in Japan and Indonesia.

The United States is the world leader in geothermal development, with plants producing more than 3,000 megawatts of electricity. California is No. 1, but resources in Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Oregon are being developed. Nevada has been dubbed the "Saudi Arabia of geothermal."

A recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study found that the amount of geothermal power that could be recovered from deep drilling would represent nearly 3,000 times the amount of energy being consumed in the United States. Petty, who worked on the MIT study, said the intermountain West has emerged as ground zero in the hunt for and development of geothermal resources.

Known as the Basin and Range, southeastern Washington, eastern Oregon, southern Idaho, eastern California, Utah and Nevada are in a zone where the North American continent tried to pull apart 30 million years ago. The area is marked by deep fractures in the Earth's crust that tend to be pathways to the deep circulation of hot water. Though that water is hot enough to run steam turbines, Petty and others said the temperatures of the geothermal water and hot rocks underlying the Cascades may be even better for power production. And because magma is closer to the surface in the Cascades, the holes might not have to be drilled as deep.

Hot springs and other surface indications of geothermal activity are easier to spot in arid areas. In the Cascades, the "rain curtain" and runoff from melting snow make it harder to pinpoint potential geothermal areas. "The Cascades have always been an area of interest, but it is so wet the heat flow is masked," said John Lund, director of the Oregon Institute of Technology's Geo-Heat Center in Klamath Falls. Some potential hot zones underneath the Cascades might contain hot water that could be pumped to the surface and used to produce electricity. In others, water might have to be injected into dry hot rocks and pumped back to the surface.

One reason for the growing interest in geothermal in the Cascades is a requirement that, by 2020, 15 percent of the energy used by Washington state's major utilities come from renewable sources. California and Oregon have similar requirements. Democrats failed in their effort to include a federal renewable requirement in the energy bill Congress approved last year. But Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., has introduced legislation that would set a national goal that 20 percent of total electrical production in the United States come from geothermal resources by 2030. The bill also would authorize spending nearly $500 million over the next five years on geothermal development.

In Washington state, most of the attention on renewable energy has focused on wind, with large wind farms springing up east of the Cascades in the Columbia Basin and along the Columbia River Gorge. But there are only so many good wind sites, and wind turbines may produce electricity only a third of the time, while geothermal plants are 24/7. Source: Tacoma News, Inc., 01/21/08.

Outreach, Education, Reports & Studies

NWCC 4th Western Transmission Newsletter Available

The National Wind Coordinating Collaborative (NWCC) fourth quarterly issue of Implementing Wind Energy & Transmission in the Western Grid is now available. Check it out to learn more about federal activities by Congress, FERC, and DOE; renewables and transmission planning by various Western states; transmission line development activities and more. Source: NWCC, 1/2/2007.

Carbon Lock-In: Barriers To Deploying Climate Change Mitigation Technologies

Why does it take so long for energy innovations and best practices to penetrate the marketplace? Some of the answers can be found in a new ORNL report called Carbon Lock-In: Barriers To Deploying Climate Change Mitigation Technologies.
 
This report concludes that barriers to the deployment of climate mitigation technologies are wide-ranging. First and foremost is the economy-wide market failure caused by the absence of a price on GHG emissions. In combination with other cost-effectiveness issues, these are critical and pervasive deployment barriers. However, additional obstacles play important roles as well, including financial, technical and market risks, infrastructure and supply chain gaps, misplaced incentives and imperfect information.
 
These barriers impede progress across the complete spectrum of GHG-reducing technologies and operate at every stage of the commercialization and deployment process. Some obstacles are broad in scope, others are more targeted; some appear amenable to policy solutions, while others may not be. Indeed, some barriers are the result of existing regulations, statutes, and fiscal policies that unfavorably treat climate change mitigation technologies. Source: Dr. Marilyn A. Brown, Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Public Policy, 12/30/2007.

LexisNexis Climate Change Center Offers News and Analysis

LexisNexis has created a new online portal for news and commentary on climate change legal issues.
The Environmental Law & Climate Change Center, launched in December, was set up to provide a comprehensive look at state and federal decisions related to climate change.

In addition to news related to climate change litigation and regulations, the site includes analysis from attorneys with Jenner & Block LLP and Marten Law Group.

"Corporate attorneys and their outside counsel currently face a patchwork of state regulations and federal court rulings on this issue and see federal regulations on the horizon that could broadly impact their operations," said Gabrielle Sigel, co-chair of Jenner & Block's Climate and Clean Technology Law Practice.

The Environmental Law & Climate Change Center also includes podcasts and blogs, with all aspects of the site covering information such as recent case law, legislative activity, regulatory changes and EPA decisions.

"The business opportunities and challenges presented by climate change are developing rapidly and the law in this area is evolving," said Brad Marten, founder and managing partner of Marten Law Group. "Our relationship with LexisNexis enables attorneys and key decision makers to stay abreast of developments as they happen." Source: GreenBiz.com, 01/03/08.

UWIG, NREL to Sponsor Workshop on Wind Forecasting Applications to Utility Planning and Operations

The Utility Wind Integration Group and the National Rrenewable Energy Laboratory are hosting a workshop on Wind Forecasting Applications to Utility Planning and Operations. This one and a half day workshop will be held at The St. Paul Hotel in St. Paul, Minn., beginning on Thursday morning and ending at noon Friday, February 21-22. The primary audience for the workshop is the UWIG Operating Impacts and Integration Study User Group, as well as other UWIG members. The workshop is open to UWIG members and invited guests and the attendance will be limited to 50 persons.

The purpose of the workshop is to enable a better understanding of using mesoscale weather models for wind forecasting applications for power system planning and operations, and to provide a better understanding of power system planning and operations requirements. The workshop is intended to be a two-way dialog between the mesoscale modelers and power system planning and operations personnel and their consultants.

The workshop will be a series of panels, with focused presentations and opportunity for extensive dialog among the panelists and the participants. Participants will be encouraged to review the agenda (forthcoming) beforehand and send any questions or discussion topics you would like to see explored to Charlie Smith and Brian Parsons beforehand so that the panelists can be better prepared. Participants are also welcome to ask questions during the workshop.

Workshop topics include:

• Wind Integration Forecasting Requirements
• The Basic Physics of Mesoscale Models
• Converting Mesoscale Model Output to Wind Plant Output Forecasts
• Using Weather Model Data in Planning Applications
• Integration of Forecast Data into Utility Operations Planning Tools
• Forecasting for Operations Planning
• ISO/TSO Experiences with Forecasting
• Integrating Weather Forecasts with EMS/SCADA Software

Details on the agenda, registration and accommodations are available online. We have not received the group reservation code yet for the Saint Paul Hotel. When I get it, I will post it on the web page. Because we are limiting registration to UWIG members and invited guests only, the page cannot be accessed from the UWIG web site. Also, I am sending out the link to online registration upon request. Note that there are a limited number of seats available for this event--we do expect it to sell out. For any questions, or more information, contact Sandy Smith, Conference and Communications Coordinator, Utility Wind Integration Group, 865- 691-5540, ext. 141 or fax 865-691-5046. Source: Utility Wind Integration Group.

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