Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

When, more than two years ago, Oakland-based BrightSource Energy first submitted plans for some huge solar power projects that would help California maintain its leadership in green energy, little did it know that environmental regulations would become a much bigger challenge than proving its technology or raising capital.

The company has its solar thermal “power tower” technology in hand, with a demonstration project up and running in Israel’s Negev desert.

The company has plenty of demand, with more than 2.6 gigawatts of solar capacity under contract, including a record 1,310 MW with PG&E.

It has generous financing from investors like Chevron, and Google.org., as well as nearly $1.4 billion on loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy.

And it has commitments from one of the world’s leading engineering and construction companies, Bechtel, to build its first major facility, the Ivanpah Solar Electricity Generating System in the Mohave Desert.

But for the last two and a half years, BrightSource has been unable to get regulators to approve its Ivanpah plant, despite downsizing the plans from an initial 440 MW to 392 MW to minimize its local impact on desert tortoises and various plant species.

That may finally change, with a recommendation this week by the staff of the California Energy Commission to move ahead with the project.

The staff wisely balanced the inevitable local impact any project would have against the clear gains for the global environment from cleaner energy.

“[I]t will provide critical environmental benefits by helping the state reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and these positive attributes must be weighed against the project’s adverse impacts,” Terry O’Brien, deputy director at the CEC, wrote in a memorandum on March 16. “It is because of these benefits and the concerns regarding the adverse impacts that global warming will have upon the state and our environment, including desert ecosystems, that staff believes it would be appropriate for the commission to approve the project . . .”  

Many environmental groups still oppose the project in its current location, despite its proximity to a golf course, Interstate 15, casinos and existing power transmission lines.  BrightSource reportedly plans to pay $25 million to buy land to relocate 25 desert tortoises that could be displaced by its project. It's project still faces further reviews by the Bureau of Land Management.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

In the 1974 TV show “The FBI versus Alvin Karpis, Public Enemy Number One,” the bank robber and kidnapper, known as “Creepy Karpis,” tells his sidekick, “I’m sick and tired of everybody goin’ green . . .”

Karpis, who held the record for longest attendance as a non-paying guest at Alcatraz (1936-1962), would be really sick and tired to learn just how green his former B&B-on-the-Bay is going these days.

The National Park Service recently announced plan to use federal stimulus funds to install some 1,360 solar panels on the main prison and laundry buildings to replace much of the power now provided by two noisy and dirty diesel generators.

"There are about 1 million visitors to Alcatraz a year and we want to make it a showplace for green energy," said Michael Feinstein, a spokesman for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Actually, it will be a showcase in concept only—and a good thing, too. In order to preserve the historic nature of the site, most of the panels will be carefully hidden from view by walls around the prison roof.

Thanks to smart contracting, the park service managed to stretch its original budget from last year, freeing up $129 million for new projects, of which the Alcatraz solar program is one.

Another of those new projects will be seven new solar installations at Point Reyes National Seashore to complement six existing photovoltaic systems at the park. Together they will “reduce its total annual electrical consumption from fossil fuels by more than 45 percent,” the facility estimates, “moving the park closer to Pacific West Region’s vision of carbon neutrality by 2016, the year the National Park Service celebrates its centennial.”

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

With all the attention paid to carbon pollution and global warming these days, it’s easy to forget the importance of traditional air pollutants like ozone smog, lead and fine particulates. They don’t threaten to disrupt ecosystems worldwide, but they still cause sickness and even death, as well as billions of dollars in damage to crops and structures.

While carbon pollution continues its inexorable rise, regulation of other air pollutants is a major, and sometimes unheralded, success story.

A new EPA report, “Our Nation’s Air: Status and Trends Through 2008,” shows marked and sometimes dramatic improvements in nationwide air quality, thanks to laws that require cleaner cars, industries and consumer products. 

Compared to 1990, air pollution in 2008 was lower in six major categories:

• Ozone (ground level): down 14 percent
• Particulates (<10 microns): down 31 percent
• Lead: down 78 percent.
• Nitrogen oxide: down 35 percent
• Carbon monoxide: down 68 percent.
• Sulfur dioxide: down 59 percent.

The decline in sulfur dioxide emissions, driven in part by the acid rain program and controls on coal-burning utilities, has improved water quality in lakes and streams and improved visibility in many scenic areas by reducing haze.

In addition, total emissions of toxic air pollutants such as benzene, xylenes and tuluene, some of which are suspected carcinogens, have fallen some 40 percent since 1990, thanks to controls on chemical plants, dry cleaners, incinerators and other sources.

There’s still plenty of room for improvement. In 2008, more than 119 million people lived in counties where ozone levels exceeded national standards, exposing their lungs and throats to irritation and inflammation. Nearly 37 million lived in areas that exceeded national standards for fine particulates, which can lodge in the lungs or bloodstream and kill people prematurely.

The EPA report also notes that annual U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases increased 17 percent from 1990 to 2007—with serious implications for local air quality as well as climate change.

In 2007, the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that “future climate change may cause significant air quality degradation by changing the dispersion rate of pollutants; the chemical environment for ozone and particle pollution generation; and the strength of emissions from the biosphere, fires, and dust.”

Bottom line: Our nation’s success in reducing local air pollutants shows that intelligent and determined regulation can work. Now’s the time to adopt equally intelligent and determined regulations to control greenhouse gas pollutants.

Posted by: Kory Raftery

Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:

Global warming may be having an adverse effect of hundreds of species of migratory birds in the United States. In the latest version of the annual State of the Birds report, the Interior Department claims that climate change is one of many environmental factors threatening bird populations by destructing natural avian habitats and lessening the availability of wetlands. The report asserts that coastal birds are the most directly threatened due to rising sea levels and rapidly changing marine environments.

Debate over the economic effects of California's first-in-the-nation global warming law flared this week, as a report was released claiming the law potentially will contribute to short-term job losses. Meantime, Lisa Jackson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency claims there is a “misconception” in regards to the relationship between economic recovery and protecting the environment – with some people feeling the need to choose one or the other. “This is about rising to meet our most urgent environmental and economic challenges - not shrinking from them with the excuse that it’s just too hard,” Jackson said.

Lower levels of oxygen are being reported in the oceans and scientists are linking the findings to global warming. They warn that the oceans' complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food chains could be disrupted. In some areas in the Pacific Northwest, the almost complete absence of oxygen has left piles of Dungeness crab carcasses littering the ocean floor and killed off 25-year-old sea stars. In other spots, such as off the Southern California coast, oxygen levels have dropped roughly 20 percent over the past 25 years. Researchers recognize that areas of low oxygen have long existed in the deep ocean but say the depletion of oxygen recently reported is “striking.”

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week: 

A program to reduce lighting costs in Silicon Valley and nearby areas is paying off for small and medium-size businesses, the San Jose Business Journal reports. PG&E and nonprofit environmental  consultant Ecology Action of Santa Cruz cooperate on the RightLights program, offering free audits of  lighting consumption, plus rebates to reduce up-front costs for new lighting and installation. Fox Head Inc., a motor sports apparel designer and manufacturer, switched out high-energy metal halide lights  to  fluorescent induction lighting, slashing lighting costs by 60 percent, or $32,000 a year. Since the PG&E-Ecology Action program began in 2001, more than 5,000 PG&E commercial customers have  joined the program, with total rebates of $17 million and a $25 million savings on utility bills. Total carbon impact was the equivalent of 15,000 cars taken off the road and saving 150 million kilowatt hours.  

Internet giant Google this week added biking directions in beta to Google Maps for the U.S. and plugged in information about bicycle trails, lanes and recommended roads. Through Google's  partnership with Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, more than 12,000 miles of trails are included in directions and will add new trail information and encourage riders to provide feedback. Google says when  Maker is available in the U.S., all riders will be able to directly contribute information about  trails, bike lanes and routes. 

Aurica Motors, a Silicon Valley electric car startup, says it's trying to keep the NUMMI car plant in Fremont in business when Toyota departs at the end of March. Aurica's plan calls for converting the plant to manufacture an all-electric car and a battery swap system. The company is seeking federal  economic stimulus money and private financing to convert the plant.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Livermore, once a sleepy cow town, is today celebrated for the world-class science at its national laboratory, its thriving wine industry and . . . its record-breaking liquefied natural gas plant.

LNG in Livermore?

Yes. You won’t see any drilling rigs out in the pastures, but at Altamont Landfill, whopping amounts of methane gas are belched out by bacteria that break down organic waste. Instead of venting into the atmosphere, however, the gas is now captured by dozens of black suction tubes spread across the facility. 

Last November, Houston-based Waste Management Inc., which runs the 240-acre landfill, and Linde North America, a major engineering company, announced they had started production at the world’s largest facility to convert landfill gas to LNG.

In full production, the plant can produce up to 13,000 gallons of the super-cold methane each day. The liquid fuels 300 clean-air vehicles in Waste Management’s hauling and recyling fleet and will reduce CO2 emissions by nearly 30,000 tons a year.

The use of LNG cuts carbon emissions 85 percent compared to gasoline or diesel fuel, according to Waste Management. The company has nearly 500 vehicles powered by LNG or compressed natural gas in about 20 California communities. 

(PG&E also runs some of its heavy trucks on LNG, which fuel up at the Fremont Service Center.  Of late, however, the utility is focusing on expanding its fleet of electric-powered trucks.)

In January, EPA awarded the Altamont Landfill one of its 2009 Project of Year awards and the facility has been hailed by leaders of the California Energy Commission and other state agencies, several of which contributed financially to the project.

“It’s taking material that would otherwise go into the atmosphere and be a contributor to global warming and turning it into a useful product that is cutting emissions,” said Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board. “This is exactly the kind of win-win situation we are looking for in trying to transform our whole energy economy away from having to extract, process, and import fuels from other parts of the world.”

Waste Management is aggressively mining its landfills for more green energy. The company runs 115 gas-to-energy facilities at its landfills and 16 solid waste-to-energy combustion generators. In all, they produce enough power for 700,000 homes.

The company’s newest investment horizon is waste-to-biofuels production, including investments in Enerkem to make ethanol and a partnership with Terrabon and Valero Energy to make “green gasoline.”

EPA recently reported that 519 landfill gas-to-energy projects were operating across the country last year, up more than 25 percent since 2005. NEXT100 profiled one such project in Half Moon Bay in December.

Converting waste methane gas to biofuel isn’t just good business. It’s especially good for the environment since methane that escapes into the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If Congress ever gets around to putting a price on carbon emissions, we’ll surely see many more companies drilling for landfill gas.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Menlo Park city officials were impressed last month when they learned from PG&E that switching nearly 500 street lights to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) could save $28,000 a year in energy bills and maintenance costs.

And across the Bay in Walnut Creek, the city slashed its energy use for 126 streetlights by more than half when it recently converted to bright LED lights. To sweeten the deal, PG&E provided the city a rebate of $17,950 to install the energy-efficient lights. Danville earned rebates as well for converting 262 of its streetlights to LEDs.

All three cities will be glad to know that experts agree they made a smart choice. Engineers at the University of Pittsburgh recently assessed four different streetlight technologies and concluded that LEDs "strike the best balance between brightness, affordability, and energy and environmental conservation when their life span--from production to disposal--is considered."

The study was commissioned by the City of Pittsburgh, which is considering replacing 40,000 of its streetlights with LEDs. The city estimates that such an investment could save $1 million annually in energy costs, $700,000 in maintenance and 6,800 tons of carbon emissions.

In addition to thrifty energy consumption, LEDs last three to five times longer than standard high-pressure sodium and metal halide lamps. And unlike its competitors, LEDs contain no mercury and fewer other toxins.

Check out PG&E's web pages for more on the utility's streetlight program and incentives.

 

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Americans spent more than $1.2 trillion dollars on insurance premiums in 2008, or about $4,000 for every man, woman and child. Evidently, they understood that it pays to hedge your bets against small but real chances of catastrophic losses.

But when it comes to climate change, deniers cite scientific uncertainty as an excuse to do nothing. They say we can’t be certain that global warming will cause rising oceans to drown coastal communities, droughts to wither crops, new diseases to cause epidemics and fires to consume our forests—so why bother to act?

They have it exactly backwards.

Although climate scientists concede they can't say for sure how bad things will get if humanity keeps emitting greenhouses gases into the atmosphere, that's not cause for comfort. On the contrary, their uncertainty means life could easily become a lot worse for homo sapiens and other species than we’ve been led to believe.

As Harvard's Martin Weitzman noted in a recent paper, "We seem headed for a unique planetary experiment of subjecting the Earth's system to an unprecedented shock by geologically instantaneously jolting atmospheric stocks of (greenhouse gases) far above their highest level over the last several million years. We simply do not know what will happen under such extreme circumstances."

No less an authority than Dr. Robert Watson, chair of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 1997 to 2002, recently conceded that the IPCC’s last major report in 2007, which sounded a strong alarm over global warming, was in many cases too conservative, leading him to warn that the world could face "unthinkable impacts."

For example, the IPCC's projections of sea level rise did not take into account the melting of Greeland’s ice sheet, which is taking place much faster than previously believed. This December, scientists writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences forecast an increase in global sea levels of five feet by 2100 if greenhouse emissions are not strongly curbed, a finding supported by many other recent studies.

"The ramifications of a major sea level rise are massive," write ocean scientists Rob Young at Western Carolina University and Orrin Pilkey at Duke University:

Agriculture will be disrupted, water supplies will be salinized, storms and flood waters will reach ever further inland, and millions of environmental refugees will be created. . . . Miami tops the list of most endangered cities in the world, as measured by the value of property that would be threatened by a three-foot rise. This would flood all of Miami Beach and leave downtown Miami sitting as an island of water, disconnected from the rest of Florida. Other threatened U.S. cities include New York/Newark, New Orleans, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, Tampa-St Petersburg, and San Francisco. Osaka/Kobe, Tokyo, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Nagoya are among the most threatened major cities outside of North America.

What terrifies these and other scientists is the possibility that ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica will melt much faster even than current models predict. Indeed, the last time CO2 levels were as high in the Earth's atmosphere, about 15 million years ago, seas were 75 to 120 feet higher.

Ice cap melting is just one of nine potential "tipping elements" that scientists say could lead to abrupt and disastrous shifts in climate. Others include massive die-off of the Amazon rainforest, disruption of the monsoon system, and wholesale changes in Atlantic and Pacific ocean currents.

One of the biggest longterm "tipping" risks is that global warming will unlock vast amounts of carbon and methane currently frozen in Arctic permafrost. Methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide, could accelerate the warming process with dire consequences. British and German researchers reported last August evidence that warming Arctic waters were melting methane hydrates stored in seabed sediments. High rates of Arctic methane seepage were reported this January by a researcher at the University of Alaska, and confirmed in a new paper published in the journal Science.

(If you want to get really masochistic, check out the 2003 paper in Geology, "Methane-Driven Oceanic Eruptions and Mass Extinctions," which makes the case that the worst mass extinction of all time, some 251 million years ago, was caused by an explosive upwelling of methane from the ocean, which may have unleashed 10,000 times as much energy as the world's entire stockpile of nuclear weapons.)

If the worst of these climate feedback loops prove real, average temperatures over the United States could jump an unimaginable 15°F to 18°F in 50 years, according to recent projections by the prestigious Met Office Hadley Centre in the UK. And a study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last year suggests that the catastrophic consequences would be "largely irreversible for 1,000 years."

So the question isn't whether we should buy insurance against climate change, or even whether we can afford to pay a little more for energy in order to phase out fossil fuels. The real question is, what are we waiting for?

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

If my math is correct, today marks the 100th celebration of International Women’s Day, a tradition first proposed by Clara Zetkin, leader of the “women’s office” in the German Social Democrat Party.

The theme this year is “equal rights, equal opportunities: progress for all.”   While that’s entirely worthy, the United Nations, which began officially recognizing the day in 1975, ought to consider putting the focus on “women and energy” sometime before the next 100 years are up.

The United Nations Development Programme notes that two billion people around the world still live “off the grid,” depending on fuels such as wood and dung for heating, cooking and other basic household needs. In most societies, it falls mainly to women to collect and then use these fuels—dangerous, unhealthy and time-consuming activities that sap the ability of women to improve their education or earn a living. Providing new energy resources is thus a precondition to upgrading their economic and social condition:

Access to more efficient, cleaner, environmentally sustainable and reliable energy services is mandatory and needs to be addressed as part of the energy sector development plans in order to improve women’s status, provide them with more opportunities for income-generating work, and also improve their general health and living conditions as more effective members of their communities.

Energy, therefore, can be a key input and entry point toward achieving the third Millennium Development Goal: promote gender equality and empower women.

As previously discussed in NEXT100, a project in West Africa to introduce solar-powered irrigation allowed households to dramatically increase food yields, improving diets and netting $7 to $8 from surplus crop sales each week. The investment was a huge boon to women, who traditionally tend the gardens, by cutting the time they spend watering by 50 percent and freeing them up to earn additional money.

But just as clean energy can open doors for women, so women are essential to opening doors for new energy technology in many societies, noted Elizabeth Cecelski in a key report for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2000.  If women’s needs are ignored or misunderstood, they may resist new technology that reduces drudgery in one target sector only to increase their required labor in another. As Cecelski noted,

women are not a special interest group in renewable energy, they are the mainstream users and often producers of energy. Without their involvement, renewable energy projects risk being inappropriate, and failing. Women are the main users of household energy in developing and industrial countries; they influence or make many family purchases related to energy; they are experienced entrepreneurs in energy-related enterprises; and women's organizations are effective promoters of new technologies and active lobbyists for environmentally benign energy sources.

Renewable energy manufacturers that do not pay attention to women's needs will be missing a huge potential market. Energy policymakers who ignore women’s needs will be failing to make use of a powerful force for renewable energy development. Energy researchers who leave women out of energy research and analysis will be failing to understand a large part of energy consumption and production.

And let's not forget the role of women in developed societies, where the problem isn't so often access to energy as using too much of it. A national survey of women and energy last year, commissioned by Women Impacting Public Policy and the Women's Council on Energy and the Environment found that 77 percent of women say they have equal or primary responsibility for paying electricity bills, and 91 percent say they have equal or primary responsibility for using less electricity at home. By a two-to-one margin, the women surveyed cited moving toward cleaner energy sources as a more important energy goal than reliability or keeping costs low.

Sounds to me like women could become a key force in helping our own country transition to a clean energy future. That would be something to celebrate soon on International Women's Day.

Posted by: Kory Raftery

Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:

Climate scientists have long declared that global warming could potentially release methane previously frozen in to the Arctic permafrost, setting off significant increases in warming trends. Now researchers at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and elsewhere say this change is underway in a little-studied area under the sea, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, west of the Bering Strait. Scientists contend that while carbon dioxide is far more abundant and persistent in the atmosphere, ton for ton, atmospheric methane traps at least 25 times as much heat.

Nearly 570 concerned scientists have signed a letter urging Congress to “oppose an imminent attack on the Clean Air Act.” The scientists' plea comes as several coalitions of lawmakers attempt to overturn the endangerment finding using the Congressional Review Act, which establishes special procedures for disapproving regulations from federal agencies. The lawmakers claim the “Clean Air Act was never intended to regulate something like carbon dioxide.”

Is your cup of Joe on the outs? Coffee producers are creating a buzz with claims that global warming is adding risk to the long term sustainability of the industry. Many growers at the World Coffee Conference held in Guatemala this week predicted that if temperatures continue to rise, supplies of the world famous bean will decline. They contend higher temperatures are forcing their industry peers to seek higher, more costly land, driving costs up from the farm to your cup.