State starts a green era

Law encourages renewable sources; Utilities expected to help cut costs - By Beth Daley Globe Staff / July 3, 2008

Governor Deval Patrick signed a landmark energy bill yesterday that does away with long-standing obstacles to building renewable power projects in Massachusetts and making homes and businesses more energy efficient.

The Green Communities Act was hailed by environmentalists as among the most innovative efforts in the nation to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and to encourage use of clean technologies that don't contribute to global warming.

The law will probably result in utilities' designing customized plans for homeowners and businesses to cut energy costs and providing rebates to pay for measures such as installing insulating windows and more efficient boilers. Homeowners and businesses will be able to rent solar panels from utilities to avoid expensive up-front costs, and the law makes it easier for homeowners who have installed wind turbines or solar panels to sell surplus energy.

Supporters said the new law could save hundreds of millions of dollars through energy efficiency, helping to hold down consumers' electric bills as energy prices are skyrocketing.

"I am here today to sign into law the best clean energy bill in America," a jubilant Patrick said during a signing ceremony at the Museum of Science. "Climate change is the challenge of our times, and we in Massachusetts are rising to that challenge."

Massachusetts has long been a leader in energy legislation, and it is taking part in a regional effort to reduce greenhouse gases from power plants. Patrick has set an aggressive goal to increase solar power in the state by 600 percent in four years.

The law "maintains Massachusetts' status as a state leader," said Patrick Hogan of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a Virginia-based environmental policy think tank.

Business leaders praised the legislation, saying it could stabilize electric rates in New England, already among the highest in the nation. Utilities, including NStar and National Grid, said they have long focused on energy efficiency but are eager to ramp up the effort, as well as to provide solar power to customers.

"It pushes us to a new level," said Tom May, NStar's chief executive. "We get to cross the street to our customer side and help them with energy choices . . . such as windmills in a neighborhood or solar panels. It's helping them reduce their carbon footprint."

Among the law's major provisions:

A requirement for utilities to invest in energy efficiency when it is cheaper to do so than it is to buy power. Historically, companies would simply buy more power when demand went up, which over time would lead to construction of very costly and polluting power plants. Now, utilities will have to invest in energy efficiency if to do so is equal to or cheaper than buying power. The law will also use at least 80 percent of the revenue from the regional effort to cap power plant emissions for efficiency programs, such as home energy audits to identify how to save on energy bills.

"The cleanest power plant is the one that never gets built," said Sam Krasnow, attorney for Environment Northeast, a research and advocacy group. "Energy efficiency is the cheapest and cleanest energy resource available."

Several efforts to promote renewable power. Utilities would have to enter into 10- or 15-year contracts with renewable energy developers, an effort to help those developers get financing from banks. The Patrick administration is particularly proud of a provision that lifts a prohibition on utilities owning solar electric panels and allows them to rent the panels to customers. The law is designed to allow utilities to recoup the cost of panels over time from rental fees while the customers reap energy savings.

Utilities will have to purchase a greater amount of their electricity from renewable power sources than under current law. By 2030, utilities would buy 25 percent of their power from renewables.

It is unclear whether that goal, one of the most ambitious in the nation, can be met, however. The current requirement of 3.5 percent has not been met, partly because of the difficulty in siting renewable projects. The utilities instead pay a fee to the state.

The creation of "Green Communities." The state will commit $10 million annually to help communities figure out ways to become more energy efficient or invest in renewables, including giving them no-interest loans. New buildings in the state will have to meet updated building codes with energy-savings provisions.

The energy bill encountered some controversy during the two years it took to become law. Early versions guaranteed a market for coal gasification, a technology that is cleaner than conventional coal-burning power plants but still emits large amounts of carbon dioxide.

The final language would give financial incentives to gasification technologies only in limited cirumstances and only to those that capture and store the carbon dioxide underground.

Environmentalists had nothing but praise for the law yesterday, saying it was a paradigm shift in the way energy will be created, bought and sold.

"This is a tremendous advancement that comes not a moment too soon, given rising energy prices and the climate crisis," said Sue Reid, a lawyer with the Conservation Law Foundation.

Article source:

Beth Daley can be reached at bdaley@globe.com.

Utilities Companies Downsize Lists of Coal-Fired Plants

Since the beginning of 2006, at least two dozen coal-fired plants have been canceled and another three put on hold.

For the past several years, growing numbers of coal-fired power plants proposed nationwide have been seen as a sign of strengthening demand for coal.

But those numbers are not as high as they seem. In fact, they're dropping.

Misleading Numbers

The number cited by every newspaper from the Wall Street Journal on down comes from an informal database maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh.

NETL releases its database in occasional reports it calls "Tracking New Coal-Fired Power Plants."

The May 1, 2007, publication of the database cited 151 coal-fired plants on its up-front summary page.

Following that report, a Wall Street Journal reporter wrote that U.S. power companies had announced intentions to build "as many as 150" new generating plants fueled by coal. That story was picked up by news outlets from New York to Idaho to Louisiana.

In reality, though, the single number published at the front of the NETL report includes not only plants on track to be built but also those that are on hold and those that already are in operation.

"It's everything that's on the database that isn't cancelled," explained Erik Shuster, a NETL contractor and the laboratory's contact for the database, in an interview after the July 2006 report came out.

Two years ago, in the 2005 database, the real number of plants on track to be built, not counting those already in service and on hold, came to 112.

In 2006, it went up significantly to 137.

But with the May 2007 list, it dropped for the first time since the database was created to 132.

At least three more plants have been canceled since that time.

High-Profile Cancellations

Coal-fired power projects have undergone some high-profile cancellations this year, often due to environmental concerns.

In January, the Oregon Public Utilities Commission denied a PacifiCorp request to seek bids for two coal-fired plants totaling 1,100 megawatts. The commission wanted the utility to delay until clean-coal technologies are further developed.

February was especially tough for coal.

In a lawsuit settlement with environmental groups, eight of 11 plants proposed by Texas's TXU Corp. were canceled.

The company's Internet home page now reads, "Increased commitment to exploring renewable energy sources and investing in alternative energy technologies."

And Duke Energy was denied permitting in February for one of two coal-fired units it proposed to build in North Carolina. To build the other, the utility was required by the state commission to shut down four aging units and to commit one percent of electricity revenues to efficiency programs.

Several more plants have been canceled since the NETL report was released in May.

Later in May, the Delaware Public Service Commission ordered Delmarva Electric to pursue a contract for wind generation rather than for a proposed coal-fired power plant.

"With our vote here today, we bring the potential for clean, renewable and carbon-free wind power to Delaware," the commission wrote in its order.

In June, during an outspoken crusade against greenhouse gas emissions conducted by Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the state's Public Service Commission rejected a 1,960-MW plant. Developers of another Florida coal-fired plant suspended permitting activities in July.

The Current Tally

Since the beginning of 2006, at least two dozen coal-fired plants have been canceled and another three put on hold.

Of about 200 plants proposed since 2000 and listed in the NETL database, about 50 have been canceled.

Ten are in operation.

The current count of plants on the drawing boards comes to 129, and that total excluded those in service, canceled or on hold, as well as the three cancellations since NETL's report was released in May.

Story by Pam Kasey
The State Journal

Texas startup says it has batteries beat

AUSTIN, Texas - Millions of inventions pass quietly through the U.S. patent office each year. Patent No. 7,033,406 did, too, until energy insiders spotted six words in the filing that sounded like a death knell for the internal combustion engine.

An Austin-based startup called EEStor promised "technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries," meaning a motorist could plug in a car for five minutes and drive 500 miles roundtrip between Dallas and Houston without gasoline.

By contrast, some plug-in hybrids on the horizon would require motorists to charge their cars in a wall outlet overnight and promise only 50 miles of gasoline-free commute. And the popular hybrids on the road today still depend heavily on fossil fuels.

"It's a paradigm shift," said Ian Clifford, chief executive of Toronto-based ZENN Motor Co., which has licensed EEStor's invention. "The Achilles' heel to the electric car industry has been energy storage. By all rights, this would make internal combustion engines unnecessary."

Clifford's company bought rights to EEStor's technology in August 2005 and expects EEStor to start shipping the battery replacement later this year for use in ZENN Motor's short-range, low-speed vehicles.

The technology also could help invigorate the renewable-energy sector by providing efficient, lightning-fast storage for solar power, or, on a small scale, a flash-charge for cell phones and laptops.

Skeptics, though, fear the claims stretch the bounds of existing technology to the point of alchemy.

"We've been trying to make this type of thing for 20 years and no one has been able to do it," said Robert Hebner, director of the University of Texas Center for Electromechanics.

"Depending on who you believe, they're at or beyond the limit of what is possible."

EEStor's secret ingredient is a material sandwiched between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets, like a series of foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other. Charged particles stick to the metal sheets and move quickly across EEStor's proprietary material.

The result is an ultracapacitor, a battery-like device that stores and releases energy quickly.

Batteries rely on chemical reactions to store energy but can take hours to charge and release energy. The simplest capacitors found in computers and radios hold less energy but can charge or discharge instantly. Ultracapacitors take the best of both, stacking capacitors to increase capacity while maintaining the speed of simple capacitors.

Hebner said vehicles require bursts of energy to accelerate, a task better suited for capacitors than batteries.

"The idea of getting rid of the batteries and putting in capacitors is to get more power back and get it back faster," Hebner said.

But he said nothing close to EEStor's claim exists today.

For years, EEStor has tried to fly beneath the radar in the competitive industry for alternative energy, content with a phone-book listing and a handful of cryptic press releases.

Yet the speculation and skepticism have continued, fueled by the company's original assertion of making batteries obsolete — a claim that still resonates loudly for a company that rarely speaks, including declining an interview with The Associated Press.

The deal with ZENN Motor and a $3 million investment by the venture capital group Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which made big-payoff early bets on companies like Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., hint that EEStor may be on the edge of a breakthrough technology, a "game changer" as Clifford put it.

ZENN Motor's public reports show that it so far has invested $3.8 million in and has promised another $1.2 million if the ultracapacitor company meets a third-party testing standard and then delivers a product.

Clifford said his company consulted experts and did a "tremendous amount of due diligence" on EEStor's innovation.

EEStor's founders have a track record. Richard D. Weir and Carl Nelson worked on disk-storage technology at IBM Corp. in the 1990s before forming EEStor in 2001. The two have acquired dozens of patents over two decades.

Neil Dikeman of Jane Capital Partners, an investor in clean technologies, said the nearly $7 million investment in EEStor pales compared with other energy storage endeavors, where investment has averaged $50 million to $100 million.

Yet curiosity is unusually high, Dikeman said, thanks to the investment by a prominent venture capital group and EEStor's secretive nature.

"The EEStor claims are around a process that would be quite revolutionary if they can make it work," Dikeman said.

Previous attempts to improve ultracapacitors have focused on improving the metal sheets by increasing the surface area where charges can attach.

EEStor is instead creating better nonconductive material for use between the metal sheets, using a chemical compound called barium titanate. The question is whether the company can mass-produce it.

ZENN Motor pays EEStor for passing milestones in the production process, and chemical researchers say the strength and functionality of this material is the only thing standing between EEStor and the holy grail of energy-storage technology.

Joseph Perry and the other researchers he oversees at Georgia Tech have used the same material to double the amount of energy a capacitor can hold. Perry says EEstor seems to be claiming an improvement of more than 400-fold, yet increasing a capacitor's retention ability often results in decreased strength of the materials.

"They're not saying a lot about how they're making these things," Perry said. "With these materials (described in the patent), that is a challenging process to carry out in a defect-free fashion."

Perry is not alone in his doubts. An ultracapacitor industry leader, Maxwell Technologies Inc., has kept a wary eye on EEStor's claims and offers a laundry list of things that could go wrong.

Among other things, the ultracapacitors described in EEStor's patent operate at extremely high voltage, 10 times greater than those Maxwell manufactures, and won't work with regular wall outlets, said Maxwell spokesman Mike Sund. He said capacitors could crack while bouncing down the road, or slowly discharge after a dayslong stint in the airport parking lot, leaving the driver stranded.

Until EEStor produces a final product, Perry said he joins energy professionals and enthusiasts alike in waiting to see if the company can own up to its six-word promise and banish the battery to recycling bins around the world.

"I am skeptical but I'd be very happy to be proved wrong," Perry said.

By GRANT SLATER,

Associated Press Writer

Bio-fuel Expert and Ethanol ‘God-Father’ to Speak at Renewable Energy Conferences and Seminars

The International Institute for Sustainable Agriculture announced today that its founder and current Executive Director, David Blume has been asked to appear on radio, TV, and as a lead speaker for a number of renewable energy symposiums in the coming two months. Blume is globally acknowledged as the “god-father” of ethanol and is a leading advocate and expert on renewable solutions to the global need for inexpensive, non- polluting, and sustainable energy and food sources.

Blume’s coming talks provide unrivaled insight into the practicality of transforming US energy production and use to a totally sustainable model. Blume presents myth-busting facts, scientific data, and proven methodologies that give audiences a revolutionary first-person look at truly sustainable solutions to global warming, GreenHouse Gas emissions, food resource issues as well as provide them with a road-map to a new post-oil economy.

As part of his coming in-person appearances, Blume will be a featured guest on the Thom Hartmann Radio Program. Now in its fifth year of national syndication and heard globally on XM and Sirius satellite radio, Hartmann’s program is carried in 7 of the nation’s top 10 media markets and 14 of the top 25 markets. Hartmann is also a featured commentator in the new Leonardo DiCaprio environmental documentary The 11th Hour.

Hartmann calls Blume’s work “brilliant!” and his soon to be released book “Alcohol Can Be A Gas,” “a must read for every American.” Blume has spent years battling with big oil interests and has dedicated his life to providing a practical and truly renewable solution to the world’s quest for inexpensive, non-polluting and sustainable energy and food sources.

Larry Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer of the American Corn Growers Association recently said, “I have personally worked in the renewable energy sector in one form or another for close to four decades and I recommend David Blume’s “Alcohol Can Be a Gas” as the most comprehensive and understandable book on renewable fuels I have ever read on the subject.”

Blume’s renewable energy talks address the current oligarchy misinformation campaign and misstated concepts including:

Myth: Food vs. Fuel – Does ethanol demand compete with food production?

Fact: Only 5 % of all US farmland is used for growing corn and only 28% of the crop’s starch is used for fuel production leaving all the protein and fat as a higher quality animal feed than the original corn. Ethanol demand required an additional 11.3 million acres of corn this year to avoid affecting the food supply but farmers grew 14.6 million acres.

Contrary to widely reported stories in the press ethanol demand has had NO EFFECT on the price of corn or availability for human or animal food. In fact there will be a massive surplus of corn this year. Increased corn and food prices are due to higher petroleum costs for transportation, fossil fuel based fertilizer and processing energy.

Myth: Alcohol Can’t Run Our Cars — It would be too expensive to retool all the cars on the road to run on an alcohol fuel mix

Fact: Any and all fuel injected cars (the predominant engine produced since 1980) can run on a 50% blend of alcohol and gas with no modification (and most newer cars will run on an 85-100% alcohol with inexpensive modifications)

Myth: It would be too expensive to ramp up industry to produce ethanol/alcohol

Fact: The US has spent $500 billion (USD) on the Iraq war as of this year, 500 billion gallons per year is the total global fuel consumption, and $500 billion (USD) would build a global, renewable, greenhouse effect reversing, ethanol fuel industry that would replace all gasoline and diesel fuel planet-wide permanently.

Blume was recently a featured speaker at the Mid-West Renewable Energy Fair in Wisconsin, and SolFest in Hopland, CA. His coming appearances include a featured guest appearance on Thom Hartmann’s Air America Program in October, Santa Cruz Community TV’s EcoReview September 25, speaking at Portland State University October 6, at the Peak Oil sponsored forum in Salem, OR, October 7, at the Retzer Nature Center near Milwaukee, WI, on Oct. 20, at the University of Illinois Chicago campus on Oct. 27 and at the Green Careers Conference at U.C. Berkeley on Nov 17.

About David Blume:

For more information about the International Institute for Sustainable Agriculture or author, lecturer David Blume, his coming “Alcohol Can Be A Gas” book release and current speaking engagement schedule please visit: http://www.permaculture.com/

Source of this excerpt post: www.earthtalk.org

NOAA Blames Hot Year on Greenhouse Gases

by RANDOLPH E. SCHMID -AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- "We have met the enemy, and he is us," the comic-strip character Pogo said decades ago. A new analysis of last year's near-record temperatures in the United States suggests he was right.

Warming caused by human activity was the biggest factor in the high temperatures recorded in 2006, according to a report by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The analysis, released Tuesday, is being published in the September issue of Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union.

In January, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reported that 2006 was the warmest year on record over the 48 contiguous states with an average temperature 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal and 0.07 degree warmer than 1998, the previous warmest year on record.

In May, however, NOAA revised the 2006 ranking to the second warmest year after updated statistics showed the year was actually .08 F cooler than 1998.

At the time the agency said it was not clear how much of the warming was a result of greenhouse-gas induced climate change and how much resulted from the El Nino warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that was under way.

"We wanted to find out whether it was pure coincidence that the two warmest years on record both coincided with El Nino events," Martin Hoerling of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., said in a statement.

His study looked at the effects of El Nino in the past as well as the effects of the release of gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by human industrial activities.

The analysis of past El Nino events in the 20th century found that the result was a slightly colder than normal annual average temperature over the 48 contiguous states.

To double check that, the researchers conducted two sets of 50-year computer simulations of U.S. climate, with and without the influence of El Nino. They again found a slight cooling across the nation when El Nino was present.

Then they looked at the effect of the increased greenhouse gases - which are given that name because they can help trap heat from the sun somewhat like a greenhouse traps heat.

They ran 42 different tests using complex computer models to simulate changes in the atmosphere under various conditions and concluded that the "2006 warmth was primarily due to human influences."

While Hoerling's study focused on the United States, NOAA also tracks world climate.

Worldwide, 2005 was the warmest year on record, topping 1998, according to the agency.

The research was supported by NOAA's office of Global Programs.