Energy Wars

Cleantech Forum XX, the Cleantech Group's 20th assembly of clean technology investors, entrepreneurs, service providers and other influencers since 2002, is underway in Shanghai, China. And while the main session only begins a few hours from now, some themes have been emerging in pre-sessions, closed door meetings, VIP events and the welcome reception. Flies on the various walls of the luxury Grand Hyatt Shanghai-the highest hotel in the world, occupying the 53rd to 87th floors of a downtown tower-would be hearing well connected capital and other insiders opining that:

We are going to have a huge economic stimulus package soon after Obama becomes President. And a big piece of it is going to be aimed at energy efficiency and renewable energy, as the NYT reported today in"Proposal Ties Economic Stimulus to Energy Plan." I have asked a bunch of my wonk ee friends for some energy efficiency ideas, which I'll be posting in the coming days. I'd love to hear some ideas from you - please try to keep them practical. Focus on spending that creates jobs in the next two years AND that either saves energy (like weatherizing low-income homes) or helps jumpstart the transition to a clean energy economy (like 'green' transmission).

New technologies will permit rapid decarbonization of the world energy economy in the next two decades, according to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute. These new energy sources will make it possible to retire hundreds of coal-fired power plants that now provide 40 percent of the world's power by 2030, eliminating up to one-third of global carbon dioxide emissions while creating millions of new jobs.

Vote to pass a bill that expands offshore drilling leases and extends renewable energy tax credits. Official Title of Legislation: HR 6899: To advance the national security interests of the United States by reducing its dependency on oil through renewable and clean, alternative fuel technologies while building a bridge to the future through expanded access to Federal oil and natural gas resources, revising the relationship between the oil and gas industry and the consumers who own those resources and deserve a fair return from the development of publicly owned oil and gas, ending tax subsidies for large oil and gas companies, and facilitating energy efficiencies in the building, housing, and transportation sectors, and for other purposes. Highlights:

Vote to pass a bill that extends energy efficiency tax credits, as well as various individual and business tax credits. Official Title of Legislation: HR 7060: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide incentives for energy production and conservation, to extend certain expiring provisions, to provide individual income tax relief, and for other purposes. Highlights: - Extends tax credits for wind facilities until January 1, 2010, and credits for qualified biomass, geothermal or solar, small irrigation power, landfill gas, trash combustion, hydropower, and marine and hydrokinetic renewable energy facilities until October 1, 2011 (Sec. 101, 102). - Extends residential energy efficient property credits for solar electric, solar water heating, and fuel cell property expenditures until December 31, 2016 (Sec. 104). - Extends the residential energy efficient property credit allowable against the alternative minimum tax to the taxable year starting in 2007 (Sec. 104). - Reduces the maximum income tax deduction allowed for domestic production of oil and gas (Sec. 401). - Extends the business research credit through December 31, 2009 (Sec. 221). - Extends tax deductions for college tuition payments through the taxable year ending December 31, 2009 (Sec. 202). - Allows a base credit of $3,000 for plug-in electric motor vehicles, with up to an additional $2,000 for vehicles drawing propulsion energy from a battery of 5 or more kilowatt hours of capacity (Sec. 124). - Encourages bicycle commuting by allowing tax-free reimbursements to cover expenses such as the purchase of a bicycle and maintenance if the bicycle is regularly used to travel between the employee's residence and place of employment (Sec. 126). - Extends the Federal Unemployment Tax Act surtax that employers pay with respect to individuals they employ through 2010 (Sec. 404). - Extends tax credits for solar energy property until January 1, 2017 and credits for fuel cell and microturbine pr

The new bailout plan passed by Congress may have put the nail in the coffin on Pickens' dangerous energy proposal. The financial bailout bill passed by Congress may have once and for all put an end to T. Boone Pickens' energy plan. Let me explain. Until the financial meltdown obliterated all other news coverage, T. Boone and his energy plan were everywhere. His book, The First Billion Is the Hardest, is number two on the bestseller list. During the Republican and Democrat Conventions his press conferences were attended by a fawning media, virtually all of who filed stories with the theme "oil man turns wind energy advocate." Indeed, even the more than casual reader might come away believing the Pickens Energy Plan was all about wind energy. T. Boone's web site does little to contradict that impression. It displays nothing but wind turbines.

The New York Times has a review of a book on the history of horse power (Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America), including a segment describing an energy crisis caused by an outbreak of horse flu in the 1870's - A World of a Different Color. Once upon a time, America derived most of its power from a natural, renewable resource that was roughly as efficient as an automobile engine but did not pollute the air with nitrogen dioxide or suspended particulate matter or carcinogenic hydrocarbons. This power source was versatile. Hooked up to the right devices, it could thresh wheat or saw wood. It was also highly portable - in fact, it propelled itself - and could move either along railroad tracks or independently of them. Each unit came with a useful, nonthreatening amount of programmable memory preinstalled, including software that prompted forgetful users once it had learned a routine, and each possessed a character so distinctive that most users gave theirs a name. As a bonus feature, the power source neighed.

Some bicycle enthusiasts view the economic downturn as a good way to turn people on to the benefits of bike riding. Wallet Pop has a good example with this piece on low cost bike transport - Bike like it's 1929 with end-of-the-economy bicycle gear tips. Now that it's official, and all, that we're in a recession, it's even smarter to sell all your earthly gas-guzzling possessions and buy bikes. Many proponents of Peak Oil, and even generally conservative folks who are becoming decidedly alarmist, are predicting enormous increases in gas prices sometime in the next decade. Bike folk hope it will happen sooner.

WorldChnaging has a post on a site for managing local currencies (or locabucks, as I call them) - Create Your Own Currency. "Money," wrote Jamais Cascio, "is the tangible manifestation of an agreement between you and other people that the oddly-colored piece of paper in your hands has value." But what's truly valuable is not those units of currency, so much as the units of time they represent to those who earn and spend them. Two women from Ashland, Ore., who follow this philosophy have created a way to turn units of time into currency that can be directly traded and tracked through their online system OurNexChange. This "community currency" allows local residents to buy goods and services without exchanging any money. Sharon Miranda and Libby VanWyhe recently told the Ashland Daily Tidings about the system:

SET Energy reports that China's power consumption has slumped dramatically as economic woes cut demand - China power generation falls record amount, keeping climate hope alive. Globalcoal.com reported today that Chinese power generation fell 7% in November from last year! Huge cuts in energy-intensive manufacturing (of aluminum, steel, etc.) and warmer than usual weather resulted in this record contraction in electricity production. The reduction in thermal plant output (mostly coal) fell an even more dramatic 14% from 2007. Thus greenhouse gas emissions in the 4th quarter of 2008 will probably be significantly below the year-ago level. This development brings hope that China, the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, may be able to slow its greenhouse gas emission growth from the torrid pace of the past several years.

The Tennessee Valley Authority wants proposals from companies to supply up to 2,000 megawatts of power from renewable and clean energy sources - almost as much as could be produced by 1½ nuclear power plants. Anyone that could provide at least one megawatt -enough to power about 350 homes - is asked to respond. Advertisement TVA, which supplies virtually all of Tennessee's electricity, gets less than 1 percent of its power from solar, wind or methane, while its hydroelectric dams are responsible for 6 percent to 10 percent, depending on rainfall.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the nation's most powerful environmental groups, has managed to persuade Bank of America, one of the nation's leading financial institutions, to take a measured stand against certain surface mining practices. At the N.R.D.C.'s Switchboard blog, Rob Perks, director of the organization's Center for Advocacy Campaigns in Washington, said the group managed to persuade Bank of America executives to visit several mountaintop mine sites in Appalachia - including Kayford Mountain, which has been laid low by mountaintop mining methods.

President-elect Barack Obama has removed any reference of his promise to implement a windfall profits tax on the oil and gas industry from the Obama-Biden Transition Team website, www.change.gov. During the course of the 2008 presidential election, the Obama campaign called for a windfall profits tax on the oil industry as a means of subsidizing a $1,000 "emergency" rebate for consumers struggling with surging gas prices. However www.change.gov, which houses the Obama-Biden transition agenda, was recently cleansed of any mention of such a tax.

The UK will be forced to rely on imported natural gas to meet its emerging shortfall in power generation, with a lack of capacity in the nuclear construction industry meaning there is not enough time to roll out a new generation of nuclear stations, EDF said Friday. The UK is set to lose around 22.5 GW of power generation by 2020 due to closures of ageing nuclear stations and coal-fired plant that do not conform to European emissions regulations.

George W. Bush may be the undisputed champion when it comes to presidential vacations, but his staff is working overtime. As the clock ticks down to Inauguration Day, the Bush administration is working feverishly to dismantle at least 10 major safeguards of the nation's air, water, endangered species and national parks. Most of the damage took place before Nov. 15, 60 days before Inauguration Day. That's because most new federal rules take effect 60 days after being published in the Federal Register. Once in effect, they are more difficult and time-consuming to undo. In recent weeks, the Bush administration has:

The Wall Street Journal's Rebecca Smith is becoming required reading. Today she has a great piece on the effect declining electric consumption is having on utilities. A trend is developing in pockets of the country where household and business consumption of electricity is falling. Experts concede that this shift is not necessarily a knee-jerk reaction to the worsening economy, but is perhaps a new reality that presents a serious problem for utilities.

As I read through the 2008 International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook, I had the distinct impression that I was reading contributions from people with completely opposite points of view. The pessimist warned that we are facing a supply crunch and much higher prices. The optimist in the report said that oil production won't peak before 2030. This trend held in the section on renewable energy. The optimist noted that renewable energy is expected to ramp "expand rapidly." The pessimist noted that biofuels are predicted to only supply 5% of our road transport fuel in 2030. And so the report goes, part rampant optimism and part rampant pessimism.

Utilities are top-down. Whenever I talk to utilities about Smart Grids and Smart Meters they always trot out the same speech. They want to use Demand Response for peak shaving and they want to implement it by having a mechanism whereby they can come in to their customer's houses at times of maximum demand and turn down the settings on the aircon, immersion heater, etc. Unfortunately this kind of traditional top-down, command and control attitude is more likely to turn people off Demand Response programs than to sell it to them.

Earth2Tech reports that England may be left out of Scottish plans to join a European supergrid crossing the north sea - Scotland Snubbing England in Supergrid Plans?. The Scottish government believes the North Sea could become host to an underwater renewable energy grid, supplying power from wind, wave and tidal power across Europe, but England could be left out in the cold. A new study from Scotland looks at the possibility of a supergrid between Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, but doesn't mention Scotland's big neighbor to the south. Yes, Scotland is still part of the UK, and most of England's east coast is also on the North Sea, but the word "England" doesn't even show up once in the 21-page study and "UK" is only used in a couple of footnotes. It might just be an oversight, but the possible snub comes during the same week in which the UK government made a filing with the Commission on Scottish Devolution questioning the Scottish government's powers covering energy.

The UK's renewable energy targets could prove both costly and risky, and nuclear energy is the most reliable viable low-carbon alternative, according to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee. The committee's report - entitled The Economics of Renewable Energy - acknowledges government commitments to increase renewable energy use, but is sceptical as to whether the target of 15% renewables for the UK by 2020, proposed by the European Union (EU), can be met. It also warns that an over-reliance on intermittment power generation options, such as wind energy, could prove both costly and risky in terms of security of supply.