Archive for 'Politics'
Politics Puts Solar Feed-in Tariff in the Shade
Posted on 09. Apr, 2010 by Ben Upham.
The Los Angeles Business Council (LABC) could not have chosen a worse time to introduce a feasibility study (PDF) of a solar feed-in tariff for Los Angeles. The study, a joint project with the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, shows how LA could add 500 megawatts of solar power over the next ten years by paying utility customers who install solar panels for any unused electricity the panels generate.
The problem is where to get the money to pay for it; typically it comes from rate payers in the form of higher energy bills. But Angelenos are already up in arms over rate hikes proposed last month by the Department of Water & Power. The city council sharply reduced the hikes, prompting DWP to withhold $80 million or so the city was counting on to help shore up a $200 budget deficit.
(Ironically, those hikes were meant in part to pay for the Mayor’s ambitious renewable energy goals, including 150 MW of solar power.)
As a result, the political loggerheads surrounding the hikes overshadowed LABC’s release of the FiT study, and, along with similar battles at the state level, helped cast doubt over the future of renewable energy initiatives across California.
“Pushing forward and falling back.”
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and City Comptroller Wendy Gruel, who are in the thick of things at city hall, both spoke at the summit today.
Gruel emphasized how badly the city needs the DWP cash, or any cash at all. But she also called talk of reneging on renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction commitments “disturbing.”
On the state level, both Republican candidates for governor, Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner, have called for postponing state law AB 32, which requires California to lower its emissions of greenhouses to 1990 levels by 2020. Poizner has also backed an astroturf campaign to get the law postponed until unemployment stays at or below 5.5 percent for a year.
Attorney General and Democratic candidate for governor Jerry Brown, who was at the Sustainability Summit today, danced around the issue of postponing AB 32, but called for the state to work within the limits of what it can do financially.
Brown, a veteran of California politics, made one of several memorable statements, calling governance a process of “pushing forward and falling back.” Given the state of things in California, I would say we are definitely in “fall back” mode, and any plan to bring a FiT to Los Angeles in the near-term is just that: a plan.
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Understanding Trends in Solar Development: An Interview with Beautiful Earth Group
Posted on 05. Feb, 2010 by opportunity.
I asked Lex Heslin, CEO and Founder of Beautiful Earth Group, a company in the process of developing Photovoltaic Installations in the Mojave Desert: “What are the most interesting trends in the adoption of renewable energy, specifically solar?” He identified three interesting trends affecting solar energy:
- RPS (Renewable [energy] Portfolio standard)
- Feed-in Tariffs
- Government Support
- 1) Let’s talk about RPS First.
Recently, half of the states in the Union have adopted Renewable Portfolio Standards which require utilities to generate or purchase 20% of their energy produced through renewable energy; from solar, wind, geo-thermal, biomass, biogas, and hydro power. A lot of states haven’t jumped on board yet. But, there are many calls from environmental groups and clean energy developers to make sure the RPS’s have the teeth to get it done. It may take a couple of years, but states might be penalized if they don’t follow through with a renewable portfolio standards.
2) Feed-in Tariffs
If you look at other countries around the world, they are working on putting legislative systems in place to make sure renewable energy is a focus. Feed-in tariffs have been an effective method by governments and a reason why Spain and Germany* have the largest solar markets in terms of installed capacity in the world. Government sets industrial policy by agreeing to pay a high price to encourage solar development. These tariffs guarantee payment over a certain period of time. In some cases the government agrees to purchase energy at rates as high as 60 cents per KiloWatt Hour. It’s a high price in large part because pollutive energy doesn’t have to pay for the pollution generated, and most costs for solar are up front and then amortized. However, a big benefit of this growth in renewable energy development is the creation of whole new industries with their necessary service providers, e.g. companies to move the solar panels, provide financing, etc., which tend to ramp up over night once these large incentives are put in place and developers go into production.
(*It should be noted that two weeks ago on January 21st, Germany announced it was lowering the feed-in tariff, following suit with Spain, because people contended the price was too high.)
Here in America we are looking for an effective model for how to price renewable energy. The first place to adopt a feed-in system was in Gainesville, Florida. They issued a Request For Proposal that was instantly oversubscribed due to limited MW capacity. In Sacramento, California the municipal utilities department introduced 100 MW of capacity and it was oversubscribed immediately. This a big movement that happens through feed-in tariffs and its happening in a big way.
OG: So why are utilities purchasing these renewable energy contracts if they are currently more expensive than “fossil-fuel energy”?
Utilities are engaging in renewable energy contracts to meet RPS requirements, and also to lock in prices that are maybe just a little above traditional prices. However, it is more stable and potentially cheaper in the long run.
Here’s some background on costs of energy: When coal, gas, hydro, and nuclear is blended, its on average around 12-15cents per kW/hr in California. Contracts can be made for so-called peak delivery, during the hours of 2pm to 8pm when the sun is at its highest and hottest. Solar is a good resource in hot places where people use a lot of A/C. In some contracts, you can get 28-29cents per KW/hour. Ultimately, you gotta remember that solar is an intermittent resource.
3) The final leg of what’s big for solar is government support (in large part a recent result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act)
Previously for renewable energy development we had an investment tax credit (for 30% of investment cost). You would build your project and the equity investors would receive a 30% tax write-off. But, this only works if the investors have a large profit margin in a given year (enough to use the tax write-off to offset taxes on those profits). As corporate profits dried up over the last 2 years, the government had to create something different. So the government created the cash grant in lieu of the Investor Tax Credit.
Now, after project is completed, instead of going after credits, you just get a check for 30% of the cost of the project (typically in 30-60 days). This is a huge improvement over previous credit programs in which it could take much longer to collect the credit. All this said, that program requires that you have shovels in the ground by Dec 31st 2010. Developers are racing to do so in order to receive the credit.
There’s one other pertinent program: the DOE Loan Guarantee Program. This “1705″ loan guarantee allocated 7 billion dollars in loan guarantees and up to 80% of the total project cost. The banks fund the project and only risk 20% of their funds, making it far easier to get the loan.
In 2009, the DOE budget was approx $30 billion for energy projects. Of that $30 billion, $23 billion went to nuclear and clean coal, which kills me, and only $7 billion was left for all of renewables (including. wind, hydro. etc.). This program opened at the end of summer ’09 and about half has been non-committed. The program ends in July, 2011.
OG: As we closed out the interview we asked “what some other cool trends that are emerging?”
Within solar there is cool stuff in new technology and new materials. The radical technology breakthroughs won’t be in Photo Voltaic but rather in the Solar Thermal plants. In California, there are some plants called SEGS (Solar Energy Generating Systems).
The first one is up in Barstow, using parabolic troughs, the C shaped mirrors you may have seen. These Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) plants have been running for 25-30 years. They focus heat on a synthetic material such as a sodium based liquid, which is then pumped through to heat up water, producing steam and generating energy through a traditional steam turbine.What’s exciting about the CSTs is the ability to store heat–up to 6 hrs after the sun goes down!
The other big movement in technology is towards new applications of solar thermal (power towers). These new materials have a base PV that is organic PV, which grows material during the photovoltaic process and it can eventually replace silicon.
Finally, another emerging trend is smart grid technology. Imagine if all your appliances ran from 2am-6am in the morning to get all the cooling it needed. Now think about that with electric cars–you can shift the supply and demand balance. At the highest level, all of these appliances can start talking to the grid and say when it needs electricity. This allows us to use energy more efficiently as it creates a better awareness of how to use it.
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Is Wind Power a Future Pathway for World Superpowers?
Posted on 18. Dec, 2009 by Brady Gibson.
The United States and China have another area of competition: wind power. What may have seemed as a trivial issue decades ago, wind power has become a pathway to economic power as the globe continues to strive towards green practices and sustainable systems. While Europe leads continents in cumulative wind energy, the United States has led individual nations in this category until 2008. However, as China has taken the lead in this category in 2009 and may continue to hold onto its lead as it’s economy continues to grow and develop clean technology. Once again, the United States and China are in a possible race over an economic resource that will undoubtedly contain economic, social, and political implications around the globe.
What must the United States do to regain its spot as the leader in wind power? Here a few areas of improvement:
1) Currently, wind power in the United States is driven by a federal contract initiated by the Federal Production Tax Credit (PTC), ending in 2012. If the United States can extend this contract to 2020, this will give lenders, developers, and manufacturers room to grow and develop more efficient wind technology and have more time to implement wind power systems across the union.
2) Currently, the Obama administration is striving towards a greener society and a sustainable culture. Policies are currently being drawn up and will most likely be influenced by discussion in Copenhagen. However, a stronger portfolio of renewable resources needs to be developed and implemented by law. A national standard and state standards need to be established for rapid growth in sustainable technology and operations. If wind power can be strongly addressed over the next few years and implemented into a long-term plan, the United States can regain their position ahead of China in cumulative wind power output.
3) Fulfilling the potential of the nations power grid. Nearly 300,000 megawatts of wind power are awaiting access. A thorough upgrade of the nations electric grid is needed to employ the total potential of the nation’s wind power. Approximately 16 transmission development projects, with power lines able to accommodate 36,000 megawatts of new wind capacity, are in the pipeline and scheduled for completion by 2014. Is there nothing more sad than wasted potential?
4) Finally, the United States needs to put its money where its carbon is! Incorporating climate costs into a more comprehensive system of energy output would shift the interests of average citizens and businesses to strive for a wind energy as an alternative energy solution.
As discussion continues to unfold in Copenhagen, global policies for renewable energy and sustainable policies will shape national policies around the globe. The hold of fossil fuels as a token of power may soon run its course, leaving wind power as a viable option for generating economic prosperity. Wind energy is not only a chance to reduce our nations carbon footprint, but it also represents a viable way to improve the unemployment rate, stimulate the economy, regain a leadership role in global energy, and set a better example of the United States government for the world to follow. The ball is in our court and it now comes down to smart decisions.
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Restaurant Compost: A Green Opportunity for Local Development and Sustainable Business
Posted on 01. Dec, 2009 by Brady Gibson.
One of the biggest challenges facing the sustainability movement is developing a sustainable culture of sustainability, backed by green institutions, systems, and models that can be tapped into by citizens, business leaders, and government officials. Successful models at the local level can translate to city-wide, state-wide, nation-wide, and eventually the global level. This process is a bottom-up emergence of trial-and-error, community awareness, and a participatory culture. While this can fall onto any institution in the United States, this article will focus on composting food waste in the restaurant industry, backed by examples of city-wide programs.
Before we begin, let’s go over a couple snippets of information about the restaurant industry and food waste management:
- The restaurant industry is the second largest employer in the United States, second only to the government. In 2005, the restaurant industry did $476 billion dollars in sales. With over 900,000 restaurants throughout the United States, green business models are emerging as a critical concept in the restaurant industry.
- Restaurants throw away approximately 30% of their food, about $48.2 billion worth a year, according to the Green Restaurant Association. Restaurants also produce far more garbage on a daily basis than most other retail businesses. The development of successful models of restaurant composting programs and policies could redirect billions of dollars of food waste into compostable resources. A typical restaurant generates 100,000 pounds of garbage per location per year, the Green Restaurant Association estimates. However, 70% of wasted food is estimated to be organic and compostable.
If you read through this carefully, you should have felt not only worry but also OPPORTUNITY. Like most industries in the United States, wasteful systems and behaviors are both correctable and adaptable. Not only can restaurants redirect waste from the landfill to local farms and agriculture, a PROFIT can also be made here. A combination of social responsibility, business ingenuity, and government organization can eventually incorporate a comprehensible composting program in the city of Los Angeles (or any city for that matter) with long term impact on the Triple Bottom line.
Currently, the City of Los Angeles has a restaurant composting program up and running, with 650 restaurants participating. The city provides both trash bins and trash removal and restaurants are only responsible for separating waste. The waste is hauled up to Sun Valley (south of Bakersfield) where it sits, rots, and goes through various stages of composting. Three months later, fresh compost is available to local farmers and businesses. Not only does the compost enrich the soil, acting more like a fertilizer, the composter has the capability to cater the compost to different crops! Sun Valley reportedly runs out of this soil all the time because it is in such high demand. With only 650 restaurants out of the total 8,000 in Los Angeles, am I the only one that sees a chance to improve People, Planet, and Profit?
Perhaps we should tip our hats to San Francisco which has composted 620,000 tons of scraps and food waste since 1996. Recycling and composting became mandatory October 21st, part of an effort to divert 75% of waste by 2010 and eventually becoming a zero-waste community by 2020.
In April 2009, Seattle instituted a composting and recycling program to its local citizens. The local government, via King County and the Department of Ecology, initiated a $100,000 campaign in July and it will go to March of 2010. Through active participation and education of its local citizens, Seattle is striving for a positive impact on the environment and setting an example for other cities to follow. Take a look at their compost guide.
One of the biggest challenges in a comprehensive composting program is there is not a long term successful model of composting for restaurants and citizens to follow. Somebody has to take the first step and its starts at the local level. Business leaders at the local level can influence both private citizens and government officials to initiate a global composting system if they can demonstrate an improvement in their triple bottom line.
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GHG Institute’s Tim Stumhofer: Professionalizing Emissions Experts
Posted on 10. Nov, 2009 by Ben Upham.
Tim Stumhofer is a Program Associate at the Green House Gas Management Institute, which provides professional training in greenhouse gas emissions accounting and verification – the first organization in the world to do so comprehensively. Tim talked with Opportunity Green about why a lack of trained GHG management experts is a serious problem, how the US lags the rest of the world in this area, and why GHG accounting “is not rocket science.”
Opportunity Green: Tell us a little bit about the Green House Gas Institute.
Tim Stumhofer: The institute was launched in 2007 to support the evolution and professionalization of the industry. Our bread and butter are courses in GHG accounting, but we’ve moved into verification as well. We draw on a pool of world-wide experts for our instruction. Instruction is mainly online, but we also provide workshops.
We’re also actively involved in developing a certification standard [for GHG professionals], something we’re trying to build some interest and excitement in. While there is certification for institutions, we believe certifying at the individual level has a lot of benefits, and also serves to professionalize the industry. It’s the same process that other fields have gone through – accounting, law, and more recently the CFA [certified financial analyst]. We’re trying to move ourselves into the space of a professional society.
OG: In a recent article (PDF), you warned that a lack of qualified GHG professionals is a major problem internationally. Why?
TS: Climate policy, the design elements, the glad handing and working between industries, the hammering out of climate regulation – that is all an incredibly overwhelming task; the largest global collective action we’ll ever see. At the same time, however, it makes a lot of assumptions that ignores the human capital element of this. Policies and programs are great, but there’s no obvious way to implement them [because] there are only a handful of people on the global scale that have robust GHG expertise.
There’s also a massive opportunity for fraud, for things to slip between the cracks. When incentives to cheat appear, people are offered a moral quandary; they may take the wrong road out of greed, or just negligence. The result is people could lose faith in these programs – and if people lose their faith in the programs they may disappear. Professionalization adds a layer of accountability, but also provides some step-based program to build human capital.
OG: For the layman, how does GHG accounting work, in a nutshell?
TS: GHG accounting is on the one hand, pulling together lots of different information sources, mainly from the consumption side (as opposed to the emissions side, like measuring output from a smokestack). It’s about establishing what you have consumed, and establishing ownership. For instance, understanding who owns particular emissions. And it’s about learning how to go about gathering that information.
OG: The GHG institute was only founded in 2007. Where do you see the institute five years from now?
TS: Outside our curriculum, which is progressing quickly, our real vision right now is in our membership program. I really do think that in five years we will see ourselves as something of a professional society, similar to the AICPA [for accountants] or an engineering guild, an organization that will provide professional certification. Along side this is fostering a community for what, right now, is pretty globally stretched group of people.
Let me put it this way: It’s about ushering in a professional class.
OG: If there currently is no “professional class” of GHG experts, how did you come to the field?
TS: Everyone has their own story. While I was studying at the London School of Economics, the UK government was starting to think there might be some room for regulatory oversight of voluntary carbon offsetting, and I got involved with that process. When I returned to the US, I thought I would get involved in those issues here, only to realize the US has a real limited knowledge of GHG accounting. Even now, there’s quite a gap.
What brought me to the institute was realizing there’s this real, intense need for capacity building if we’re going to make this [carbon] market work as designed.
OG: Talking about your curriculum, who are your students? Is there a certain degree of technical knowledge necessary to do the course work?
TS: One way to look at who our students are is who organizations actually send to take the program: it seems to vary quite a bit, maybe because it’s such a new field. Sometimes organizations send us people from the compliance department, sometimes legal, marketing, or operations.
In terms of career background, they breakdown roughly into thirds: a third is working in consulting in some capacity. Some are carbon consultants, some engineering, oil and gas, waste, or marketing. Opportunity Green deals with sustainability consultants – many are getting into GHG accounting. Another third is people working for large companies. The other third is from governments and NGOs. The NGOs are anything under the sun. Governments include national, state, regional – super-national agencies down to townships.
As for the work itself, it’s not rocket science. There are certainly elements of science, engineering, accounting, but really it’s a matter of coordinating sources of information. Our classes are open to anyone…it’s not terribly complicated.
We’ve had about 500 students so far.
OG: How did you find out about Opportunity Green?
TS: I found out about Opportunity Green through your website. We’re trying to get out of our bubble, and Opportunity Green was one place that popped up – a general sustainability conference with a bit more emphasis on marketing, rather than the painfully wonky stuff of monitoring.
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AlterEcho wants YOU to go green
Posted on 08. Nov, 2009 by Gaia Dempsey.
Mark Heaney of Alter Echo on stage at Opportunity Green 2009
In my recent conversation with Mark Heaney of AlterEcho, we discussed his passion for improving human health and the environment through environmental consulting services, and his belief that the marketplace is now ready for the same kind of environmental services that the government has been utilizing for decades. Mark’s firm, TechLaw, has been working with the EPA for years, working on some of the worst environmental messes in cities and waterways created by negligent industrial pollution. AlterEcho launched at the Opportunity Green conference this past weekend.
Listen to our conversation here:
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Live Update from OG09: Become a Citizen of Hopenhagen!
Posted on 07. Nov, 2009 by Gaia Dempsey.
Even the Danish soccer team is doing it. It’s been incredibly inspirational to hear the story behind Hopenhagen here at Opportunity Green today. Hopenhagen is: “The hope that in Copenhagen this December – during the United Nations Climate Change Conference – we can build a better future for our planet and a more sustainable way of life.” It’s a global movement, a collection of people all running full speed ahead toward sustainability, and we want you to be part of it. We all want a more ethical, whole, responsible planet, and Hopenhagen is the place where people from all over the world can join together. In a very loving fashion, it has been embraced by soccer teams, moms, children, designers, corporations, and even the Danish government, and many other people all around the world. Their ad campaigns, as you can see below, are infused with a great deal of humanity, one of our most precious resources. You can become a citizen here. Thanks!
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Interview with David Martinon, French Consul General, Part 2
Posted on 05. Nov, 2009 by Susanna Schick.
David Martinon is the Consul General at the Los Angeles French Consulate. In this role, he is responsible for promoting French culture and arts, science, and business, as well as caring for French citizens in the US. Prior to joining the Los Angeles Consulate in 2008, Mr. Martinon was a spokesperson for the French President, before which he was chief of staff for President Sarkozy’s presidential campaign. And before that, he worked as a diplomatic advisor for four years. In this two-part interview we continue by discussing David’s experience as President Sarkozy’s campaign manager, and France’s position on the Copenhagen Agreement.
OG: As chief of staff of President Sarkozy’s Presidential campaign, what did you think of President Obama’s campaign strategies? They were considered quite innovative.
David: Every new campaign brings new tools, new methods. I’m actually quite proud of Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign. In that campaign, we created a few of those tools. We took ideas from previous American campaigns, two ideas specifically. From the 2004 Dean campaign, we adopted his use of social networks, and from the 2004 Bush campaign, we took the idea of the volunteer program. In the last 72 hours before election day, Bush sent volunteers door to door to get people out to vote.
From that we made a few programs- recruiting volunteers by internet, and we also enabled them to see other volunteers in their area on our website, thus combining the two tools. Another good idea the Obama campaign picked up from us was the use of web TV. We created it, and a few observers from the Clinton, Obama and McCain campaigns came to observe us in 2007. Obama also used web TV, but much bigger and more sophisticated. This was even more crucial in the US than in France. In France we can’t broadcast political ads on TV, here it’s OK, but so very costly. What’s interesting here in the US is that web TV placement costs nothing, and people online pay attention longer and show better retention than TV viewers. I think it will be used even more in the future.
Obama was extremely efficient with fundraising. The main difference with our campaign is that we recruited a lot of volunteers online, but didn’t get as many boots on the ground as Obama did. During the primaries, I visited Obama’s headquarters and McCain’s headquarters as well. There were not many differences, but what they really succeeded in doing was to convert internet volunteers into active volunteers, and Obama’s volunteers were very disciplined.
The McCain campaign was not bad either, he’d only just obtained the nomination, and was still broadening his foundation. Putting aside characters, the machinery of the Republican party was very efficient. One thing I’m very proud of- When we visited the US in 2006, I told Sarkozy he had to meet two Congressmen- McCain and Obama, when most people in the US didn’t even realize who Obama was.
OG: Tell me where the French government stands on Copenhagen.
David: We’re preparing for Copenhagen, we know perfectly well the few principles that must guide Copenhagen, and what will make it successful or not. Recent EU decisions were extremely ambitious, like a 20% reduction in GHG by 2020. The EU also decided that if a global agreement were reached, we would reduce GHG to 30% by 2020. Global emissions need to be 50% lower by 2050, which means developed countries will need to reduce GHG by by 80%! We’re ready, but we need to engage with emerging countries, and we need to help them both financially and technically. We also need to assist the small Pacific Islands, as they are so vulnerable to being completely submerged.
Sarkozy said we have to ensure that the possible success, the agreements, in Copenhagen are actually implemented. A number of organizations are in charge of dealing with this, but I think there should be a global organization devoted to regulating this. We are the first generation (by this he means everyone living today, not just those in our age group) that is clearly and beyond a reasonable doubt aware of the gravity of the situation, and also the last generation that can actually do something about it. The cost of acting is 1% of global GDP, vs. the cost of not acting being as high as 20% of global GDP.* The other interesting aspect of the problem today is that we don’t only have to make decisions for our own countries, but for the whole planet. This introduces a few very interesting global challenges.
*According to The Stern Review, if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.
OG: It’s great the Sarkozy and Obama are on the same page about Copenhagen.
David: Yes it is, but it’s true that President Obama will be in a better position to negotiate if the ACES bill passes Senate before Copenhagen.
OG: Well, thank you so much for your time, David. I’m looking forward to seeing you again at the conference.
