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by Matthew L. Wald, New York Times, 10/19/09

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/science/earth/20fossil.html

WASHINGTON — Burning fossil fuels costs the United States about $120 billion a year in health costs, mostly because of thousands of premature deaths from air pollution, the National Academy of Sciences reported in a study issued Monday.

The damages are caused almost equally by coal and oil, according to the study, which was ordered by Congress. The study set out to measure the costs not incorporated into the price of a kilowatt-hour or a gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel.

The estimates by the academy do not include damages from global warming, which has been linked to the gases produced by burning fossil fuels. The authors said the extent of such damage, and the timing, were too uncertain to estimate.

Nor did the study measure damage from burning oil for trains, ships and planes. And it did not include the environmental damage from coal mining or the pollution of rivers with chemicals that were filtered from coal plant smokestacks to keep the air clean.

“The largest portion of this is excess mortality — increased human deaths as a result of criteria air pollutants emitted by power plants and vehicles,” said Jared L. Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who led the study committee.

Nearly 20,000 people die prematurely each year from such causes, according to the study’s authors, who valued each life at $6 million based on the dollar in 2000. Those pollutants include small soot particles, which cause lung damage; nitrogen oxides, which contribute to smog; and sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain.

The study lends support to arguments that society should pay extra for energy from sources like the wind and the sun, because their indirect costs are extremely small. But it also found that renewable motor fuel, in the form of ethanol from corn, was slightly worse than gasoline in its environmental impact.

Coal burning was the biggest single source of such external costs . The damages averaged 3.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with 0.16 cents for gas. But the variation among coal plants was enormous.

The worst plants, generally the oldest and burning coal with the highest sulfur content, were 3.6 times worse than the average, with a cost of nearly 12 cents per kilowatt-hour (which is more than the average retail price of that amount of electricity).

The best plants carried a cost of less than a quarter of a penny. Natural gas plants also showed a large variation, but both the best and the worst costs were far smaller than for coal.

Such variation suggests that existing technology could be applied to make the electric system a lot cleaner, experts said. One of the study’s authors, Maureen L. Cropper, an economist at the University of Maryland, said the findings should be used not to raise the price of electricity based on an average of indirect costs but to measure the cost of cleanup on a plant-by-plant basis.

The study did not measure damage from pollution-control devices. “If you’re taking the output of a scrubber and dumping it in the Monongahela River, that’s not in our study, Professor Cropper said.

The study found that operating nuclear plants did not impose significant environmental costs, although uranium mining and processing did. But 95 percent of uranium mining takes place in other countries, the study said. Canada and Australia together account for 44 percent of world production.

The committee did not put a dollar value on the risk of a nuclear accident that would produce environmental damage. It also noted the uncertainty of the cost of long-term disposal of high-level wastes.

The committee said environmental damage from gasoline and diesel fuel cost 1.2 cents to 1.7 cents per mile. A co-author of the study, Daniel S. Greenbaum, president of the Health Effects Institute, said that would come to 23 cents to 38 cents per gallon. Still, Mr. Greenbaum said, “we were hesitant to make that a central part of our findings,” because pollution also results from manufacturing cars.

The study did not calculate the military cost of protecting fuel imports.

As for wind energy, the study said it killed birds but not enough to seriously affect populations. A possible exception was raptors, birds of prey that ordinarily eat species whose numbers are being reduced by spinning turbine blades.

The study was not kind to ethanol. A mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent unleaded gasoline, or E85, showed slightly higher damages to environment and health than ordinary gasoline, because of the energy required to raise the corn and make ethanol from it.

Electric vehicles and vehicles using synthetic diesel fuel, also ranked poorly. The electric vehicles might do better if emissions of heat-trapping gases had been factored in, because they have lower carbon dioxide emissions per mile than gasoline-powered cars. But the cars running on artificial diesel would look slightly worse in that analysis, the study said.

...from Paul Gipe

October 20, 2009

The Solar Alliance, the US industry trade association for solar PV manufacturers and project developers, has recently posted a position paper supportive of feed-in tariffs (FITs) to their web site.

While the industry is portraying the move as a natural evolution of its position, outside observers see it as a major policy development in the US. Previously, board members were split on whether to take a position on feed-in tariffs. Some key industry players openly opposed supportive statements on the policy used so successfully in Europe to install thousands of megawatts of solar PV as well as other renewable energy technologies.

The Solar Alliance is one of several organizations promoting solar PV in the US. The Solar Energy Industries Association, which represents the broader solar industry, has yet to take a formal position on feed-in tariffs. The American Solar Energy Society, representing the professional and academic community, also has not taken a position.

The Canadian Solar Industries Association has previously endorsed the use of feed-in tariffs. (See CanSIA Calls for Dramatic Growth of Solar PV in Ontario Through Higher Tariffs.) CanSIA specifically has called for a system of feed-in tariffs to be used in Ontario to supply 10 percent of the province's electricity (~16 TWh per year) by 2025.

The Solar Alliance's position paper begins with a simple statement: "FITs are often misunderstood but can be useful policy tools".

The document goes on to reiterate the Alliance's continued support for net metering and traditional tax subsidies to reassure readers that their position on feed-in tariffs should, in no way, detract from existing programs. The policy paper says the generator should be given a choice of which program to use where feed-in tariffs and other policies are available simultaneously.

The Alliance then lays out the characteristics necessary for successful feed-in tariff policies. This is as succinct a statement of feed-in tariff best practice as found anywhere. For example, the Alliance states that contracts should be for 20 years, though they acknowledge that some states may offer shorter terms, and that tariffs should be differentiated by technology and project size. The recommendations also include provisions for developing green field sites and not just those by "site owners" or existing utility customers.

However, the position paper limits the Alliance's support for feed-in tariffs to projects only up to 20 MW. There are a number of solar PV projects larger than 20 MW currently operating in Europe and there are many wind and concentrating solar power projects greater than 20 MW as well that have been installed with feed-in tariffs.

The position paper also doesn't specifically mention that feed-in tariff best practice requires tariff setting based on the cost of generation plus a reasonable profit. The Alliance only says that the tariffs should recognize the value of Renewable Energy Credits separately from energy.

The Alliance's paper represents the first clear statement by the association that feed-in tariffs would be an acceptable policy in the US.

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Solar Alliance Policy Recommendation: Feed-In-Tariffs

Posted 3:25 PM on 19 Oct 2009
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-10-19-a-little-heresy-on-transmission/

by John Farrell

The last thing renewable energy needs right now are new transmission lines.

This statement is heresy in the green community, but there’s a danger that the increasing focus of green energy advocates on a new nationwide transmission superhighway may undermine the pursuit of near-term renewable energy goals.

People are excited by renewable energy. It’s clean. It’s limitless. It’s local. It’s the one kind of energy source that anyone can harness. Public polls show substantial majorities of Americans in every state favoring more renewable energy.

And states have an abundance of renewable energy assets. A new report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance—Energy Self-Reliant States—shows that every state has the potential to meet its renewable energy goal or mandate and that 3 in 5 states could get all of their electricity from in-state renewable resources. Almost every state could get at least 20 percent of its electricity from rooftop solar photovoltaics (PV) alone.

These renewable assets can be tapped for significant local benefits. A single wind turbine, for example, creates $1 million in economic activity, according to the American Wind Energy Association. And that’s just a generic, utility size turbine. Locally owned wind projects can create twice the jobs and 3 to 4 times the economic impact of absentee owned projects.

The benefits from locally harnessed renewable energy create a feedback loop, building even greater public support for clean energy.

People are not so excited about new high-voltage transmission lines.

Transmission legislation moving through Congress would preempt longstanding state regulatory authority over transmission line approval and siting. The goal is to speed the construction of a $100 to 200 billion interstate transmission superhighway, bringing solar power from the Southwest and wind from the Great Plains to the coasts.

Why is this problematic? Let’s ignore for a moment that most people wouldn’t care to live by a 150 foot tower running through a 200 foot swath of denuded landscape. Or to have their land seized for this purpose by eminent domain.

Many states oppose the new transmission superhighway for two reasons. One, it’s expensive. Two, it undermines efforts to reap the economic rewards of renewable energy self-reliance.

In a New York Times Op Ed, the Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Ian Bowles, wrote:

Lawmakers should resist calls to add an extensive and costly new transmission
system that would carry electricity from remote areas like Texas, the Great
Plains, and Eastern Canada to places with high energy demands like Boston,
Chicago, and New York ... Renewable energy resources are found all across the
country; they don’t need to be harnessed from just one place.

In May 2009, the governors of 10 East Coast states wrote to senior members of Congress to protest. Requiring their residents and businesses to pay billions of dollars for new transmission lines that would import electricity from the upper Midwest and Southwest into their region “could jeopardize our states’ efforts to develop wind resources ... “ They added, “it is well accepted that local generation is more responsive and effective in solving reliability issues than long distance energy inputs.”

Nine of the 10 Eastern states whose governors signed the May 2009 letter could get over 80 percent of their electricity from in-state renewable resources, according to Energy Self-Reliant States. And local energy also means fewer legal battles over the siting of unsightly transmission towers, a fact that politicians in that region are unlikely to have overlooked.

It’s not just state energy self-reliance and economic benefits hanging in the balance. A recent study released by Duke University’s Climate Change Policy Partnership throws cold water on the renewable energy transmission passion. It found that the proposed interstate transmission links from regions with low-cost electricity (e.g. the Great Plains) to regions with high-cost electricity (e.g. the East Coast) could enable coal power as easily as renewables, with poor results for carbon emission reductions and other environmental goals.

The evidence undermines the conventional wisdom about high-voltage, long-distance transmission and should raise red flags among advocates. To the people in affected states, a new transmission superhighway is costly, anathema to local energy generation, and a potential enabler of coal-fired power. It creates winners (in the sunny Southwest) and losers (in the “import states” on the East Coast).

A victory for interstate transmission may be at the expense of broader public support for renewable energy.

Renewable energy does not have to be harnessed in a few, select areas and shipped across country. And public support for clean energy may hinge on the opposite.

The ubiquity of renewable energy means that the transition to a clean energy economy can also be a transition to a new, local energy future, where the economic and environmental benefits of powering the economy are everywhere the sun shines.

John Farrell is an Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ISLR) senior researcher specializing in energy policy developments that best expand the benefits of local ownership and dispersed generation of renewable energy. He has written extensively on the economies of scale of renewable energy, the benefits of decentralized energy generation, and the policies and rules that support locally owned and distributed generation of renewable energy.

He authored one of the leading summaries of feed-in tariffs for the U.S. electricity policy market titled, Feed-in Tariffs in America: Driving the Economy with Renewable Energy Policy that Works.

By Lana Kunz

Sunday, October 18, 2009

http://www.courierpress.com/news/2009/oct/18/speakerscriticizeindiana-energy-laws/

If net metering — an idea that allows buildings that use alternative energy sources to sell their extra power back to utilities — were a test, Indiana barely would pass, according to one report.

Indiana earned a D grade on net metering, according to the "Freeing the Grid 2008" report by the Network for New Energy Sources.

A crowd of about 30 people was educated about alternative energy Saturday at the first South West Indiana Solar Tour at the Ohio Township Public Library in Newburgh.

Several of the speakers promoted various alternative sources of energy, but the main focus was educating the public on net metering and Indiana's limited participation requirements for power companies.

"Net metering is this idea that you can spin your meter backward when you're not using energy," said Eric Cotton , a partner at East Central Indiana Wind and Solar.

Net metering allows buildings with alternative energy sources to sell the excess power to the power company.

"We're trying to make people aware that Indiana is behind the times," said Brad Morton, president of Morton Solar and Wind LLC, which sponsored the event.

"Freeing the Grid 2008" also reports that Indiana is the only state to exclude commercial and industrial customers from net metering.

Currently Indiana's regulations only require power companies to buy energy from residential and K-12 schools, even though some facilities "sometimes go above and beyond" what is required, Cotton said.

Vectren Energy also net meters municipal buildings, such as the Ohio Township Public Library, which has solar panels on its roof.

"The law has not caught up with the technology," Morton said.

Some that attended the event do not rely on the power grid at all.

"We built a house where electricity isn't available, hopefully as urban sprawl continues we can eventually connect to the grid," said Doug Gresham, who lives north of Boonville, Ind., off the power grid.

State limits

Current state law limits not only the type of consumer that can sell back energy, but how much they can sell, the size of the system generating the alternative energy, the types of energy utilities are required to buy, pays only a wholesale rate back to the consumer and does not require all power companies to net meter.

"We're trying to focus on getting these laws changed," Morton said. "Most of this stuff is not new, it's just new to Indiana."

The event included a self-guided tour of buildings that use alter-native energy applications.

East Side resident Mark Ambrose said he attended the event, "Just to get an education, I'm very interested in the solar side of this equation."

After purchasing a hybrid vehicle, Ambrose is "slowly embracing the need to lower the need for petroleum" and considering making the next step in adjustments to his home.

Geothermal, solar and wind power were the main alternative energy sources discussed.

"Geothermal is a way to extract energy from the earth and use it as usable energy in your home," President of HF Refrigeration Andy Harbison said in his speech on the geothermal heating and cooling units his company installs.

Harbison said his customers have seen 40 percent to 60 percent off utilities each month with their initial investment paid back in five to seven years.

Morton showed a map compiled by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that showed Southwestern Indiana receives more solar intensity than the rest of the state. "Southwest Indiana should take the lead due to its solar resources," Morton said.

Brad Morton with Morton Solar & Wind LLC and Eric Cotton with East Central Indiana Wind & Solar are both Founding Members of the Indiana Renewable Energy Association and both serve on the Board of Directors.

Sponsors of the meeting included Evansville-based Sustainable Communities Coalition, the Izaak Walton League of America--Evansville Chapter and the Indiana Renewable Energy Association.

Energy Self-Reliant States: Second and Expanded Edition Published October 2009
Author: John Farrell
Available Now

How self-sufficient in energy generation could states be if they relied only on their own renewable resources? In November 2008, ILSR began to address this question in Energy Self-Reliant States. That report included a limited set of resources – on-shore wind and rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) – and also examined the potential for biomass-derived transportation fuels.

This updated edition of Energy Self-Reliant States narrows the focus to electricity, but includes virtually all renewable resources (on shore and off shore wind, micro hydro, combined heat and power, geothermal, rooftop PV). We also discuss the potential gains from improving energy efficiency and estimate the per kWh costs for each state to become energy independent.

The data in this report suggest that every state could generate a significant percentage of its electricity with homegrown renewable energy. At least three-fifths of the fifty states could meet all their internal electricity needs from renewable energy generated inside their borders. Every state with a renewable energy mandate can meet it with in-state renewable fuels. And, as the report discusses, even these estimates may be conservative.

Renewable energy is found everywhere and in most cases can be economically harnessed everywhere. Federal policy should encourage all states, communities, individual households and businesses to maximize their internal use of this ubiquitous resource. Such a policy would reinforce the clear desire for states and cities to combine a low carbon energy strategy with an aggressive energy-based economic development strategy.

Regrettably, current federal energy policy largely focuses on harnessing the renewable energy in a handful of states, constructing a $100-200 billion extra high voltage national transmission network and transporting that energy a thousand or more miles to customers in other regions.

The rationale for this focus on new extra high voltage transmission lines is that while renewable energy is widely distributed, the availability of these resources and the cost of harnessing them vary widely.

That is true. Nevada has significantly more annual solar energy than Oregon. North Dakota has higher speed and more reliable wind than Indiana. This means that Nevada can generate solar electricity cheaper than Oregon and North Dakota can generate wind electricity cheaper than Indiana.

However, when transmission costs are taken into account, the net cost variations among states are quite modest. And when we factor in the overall social, environmental and economic benefits to the 50 states from homegrown energy generation, self-reliance is almost always cheaper than import-dependence.

New: See co-author John Farrell interview about this report on Etopia News.

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Energy Self-Reliant States 2ed

John Farrell spoke in Indianapolis to the Regulatory Flexibility Committee on September 29, 2009, at the State House on Advanced Renewable Energy Contracts or Feed-in Tariffs.