June 29th, 2017 · Comments Off on DC United setting the PACE for MLS
PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) financing is a far under leveraged path to enable property (primarily building) owners to cost-effectively financed energy and resource efficiency along with clean energy. In short, PACE financing makes the payback of loans part of the property assessment with extremely low interest rates available because this is generally bundled money through the locality and payments are secured associated with the property. While it had a troubled start, many places in the United States now have robust PACE programs to facilitate home owners and businesses to leverage PACE programs for more aggressive climate-friendly investments. Washington, DC, is one of those (with the program run by Urban Ingenuity).
for installation of state-of-the-art energy and water efficiency measures, an 884 KW solar array, and stormwater retention systems on Audi Field, United’s new soccer-specific stadium with capacity for 20,000 people opening next year.
The PACE funded investments will help reduce water runoff, cut the stadium’s energy demand by about one-quarter, and the solar panels are projected to produce about 1 gigawatt hours of electricity per year or 1/3rd of the stadium’s electricity usage.
With a LEED Gold facility & public transport access, will DC soccer fans be the greenest in the nation?
While the Trump regime issues bad news for the climate and energy smart policy from DC, the DC government is showing itself to truly be on the path toward energy/climate smart policies and practices. As Mayor Muriel Bowser put it,
We know that cities throughout the U.S. will be leading the fight against climate change, and this deal is an example of how Washington, D.C. can think globally while acting locally. This deal will not only allow us to green Audi Field, it will also create new opportunities for local businesses and high-quality green jobs for D.C. residents.”
Large projects like this help boost an area’s capacity to execute clean-energy projects: economies of scale at play, doing the DC United Stadium eases and lowers costs for tomorrow’s energy efficiency and solar projects.
“This deal”, as indicated by this post, has another potential real value: public relations and knowledge building. Will others in DC learn of the opportunity for low-cost clean-energy financing in DC due to DC United’s stadium and move to leverage it for their own projects? Will others around the country similarly learn and act to either leverage their community’s PACE program or lobby their local/state politicians to create something similar.
Comments Off on DC United setting the PACE for MLSTags:Energy · solar
June 28th, 2017 · Comments Off on Size does matter
A simple truth is that, when it comes to wind power, size matters. The taller the tower, the better the wind conditions. The larger the blade length, the more energy captured. When it comes to wind, economies of scale are both in the number of turbines getting deployed and in terms of the energy production potential from each individual turbine. And, this reality is showing up in the real world.
As per that graphic, a doubling in high-end turbine size/height over the past 15 years with another 50% growth to come in the next few years. As Reuters’ headline put it, windpower’s big bet: turbines taller than skyscrapers.
Further increases in height and size are serious engineering challengers — can the towers be built and turbines deployed — but we shouldn’t expect the turbines to stop at 10 megawatts. At the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects-Agency (ARPAE) innovation summit, earlier this year, I spoke with a University of Virginia team who envision their technology enabling 50 megawatt offshore wind turbines. Having passed muster to secure $3.7 million in ARPAE funding through 2019,
The team led by the University of Virginia will design the world’s largest wind turbine by employing a new downwind turbine concept called Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotor (SUMR). Increasing the size of wind turbine blades will enable a large increase in power from today’s largest turbines. The SUMR concept allows blades to deflect in the wind, much like a palm tree, to accommodate a wide range of wind speeds (up to hurricane-wind speeds) with reduced blade load, thus reducing rotor mass and fatigue. The novel blades also use segmentation to reduce production, transportation, and installation costs. This innovative design overcomes key challenges for extreme-scale turbines resulting in a cost-effective approach to advance the domestic wind energy market.
The team envisions these gigantic [500 meter tall] gigantic structures standing at least 80 kilometers offshore, where winds tend to be stronger and where people on land cannot see or hear them,
If, in 2020, deployed offshore wind turbines are in the 10 mw range, this UVA team envisions multiplying that figure at significantly reduced prices perhaps as early as the mid-2020s. If this occurs, just this one project will pay off the entire taxpayer investment in ARPAE many times over.
The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that raising the height of wind turbines from 80 to 140 meters would almost double the land area across the country where wind power is cost-effective. Loth wants to go higher yet. He envisions 500-meter towers capable of generating 50 megawatts (MW) — roughly six times more electrical power than today’s largest turbines can pump out. – Super-Colossal Wind Turbines May Be on the Horizon – Aug.07.2017 https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/super-colossal-wind-turbines-may-be-horizon-ncna789001?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_mc_170825 via NBC News
Amid Team Trump’s “Energy Week” (with nary a mention of wind or solar power, the fastest growing energy sources around the globe … and in the United States), a question to consider: how many coal-fired power plants would a solar wall displace?
First, to be clear, only the roughest of estimates can occur. The ‘solar wall’ is only notional at this time — while there is some analysis, there are no actual plans in place to evaluate fully. Rough estimates and initial calculations range from, if solar were across the entire length, are pretty far across the spectrum: from 3.6 terrawatt hours (tWh) per year to a(n unrealistically optimistic) high-end of over 80 tWh.
How does this compare to a coal power plant? A reasonable notional modern US coal plant is 600 megawatts of capacity. Running 24/7, that would mean 14,400 megawatt hours per day (14.4 gigawatt hours) or 5,256,000 per year (5,256 gigawatt hours or 5.256 twh). Now, power plants are — by definition — intermittent (despite all the ‘baseload’ noise) and do not run 24/7/365. In 2016, the average US coal power plant had a 52.7% utilization rate. Thus, this notional coal plant would generate 2,769,912 megawatt hours per year (2,770 gWh) or 2.7 tWh.
If an average coal plant produces 2.7 tWh, making the wall solar would displace the electricity production of somewhere between 1.3 to 22 coal power plants (with the actual figure likely somewhere in the 5-10 figure).
The reality is that, to date, solar has played a very small role in the decline of US coal (though the story is somewhat different elsewhere in the world: for example, in India, solar price competitiveness is leading to dramatic reductions in plans to exploit coal). In the US, the move away from coal has primarily occurred due to the drastic reduction in natural gas prices. Cheap gas has killed not-so-cheap coal. Now, with every passing day, solar is becoming more cost competitive with it achieving ‘cheapest’ in new markets virtually every month. Thus, if cheap natural gas killed off coal-fired power plants, what should be expected of even-cheaper solar?
Would making the ‘wall’ solar accelerate that ‘ever-cheaper’ and accelerate the (US and global) transition away from coal?
Thus, the impact of the solar wall on coal would not be constrained to those direct electrons but how the product, through driving economies of scale, would make solar even more price competitive even faster.
The Grenfell Tower fire is a tragedy that should not be something we have to address. It is not something Carbon Brief should have to fact check. But here we are.
A number of raving lunatics (is that too harsh a term …? probably not) are asserting that ‘climate alarmism’ (and other such delusional attack terms of those who understand climate science) is at fault for the horrific Grenfell Towers catastrophe.
Twisting arguments beyond pretzel logic, here is an example
the coroner may as well scribble “cause of death: climate-change alarmism” on his report.
Before delving into these fossil-foolish muckrakers’ broadsides, some truthful analogies between Grenfell & (catastrophic) climate change. Both are
Preventable: expert opinion, knowledge, and advice provide(d) the tools to avoid the catastrophe.
Known: many voices warned/warning of risks.
Mired with financial and ideological self-interest driving myopia drowning out voices warning of the danger and undermining ability to execute solutions/actions to prevent the disaster.
Yes, there is an appropriate analogy between Grenfell Tower and climate change — alarmism, in both situation, highlighted/s real risks and offers paths to mitigating risks.
In civilization, civil society, people — in some form or another — subsidize each other, give each other assistance. In modern capitalist societies, those subsidies are almost always measured in direct cash transfers with little attention, understanding, or incorporation of indirect (whether financial or otherwise) resource transfers and subsidies. For the energy/climate world, for example, the key to this are ‘externalities’ related to fossil fuel exploitation: that impacts health, economy, and security directly (like mercury impacts on brain development, particulates that cause cancers/asthma) and indirectly (CO2 driving climate change as most direct). While gasoline might only cost a few dollars per gallon at the pump, in the United States, a true accounting of all the costs (from providing security to oil movements to land impacts to health to …) typically puts the true per cost to society anywhere from $8 to >$15 gallon.
Few people, when they hop in the car to go to the Mall, consider their own fully-burdened costs of driving (insurance, repairs, amortization of the purchase price, the value of their home’s parking spot, …) let alone incorporating in the externalities associated with burning fossil fuel. In fact, driving to the Mall costs us — and society — far more than we realize.
Although these costs are easy to overlook, that doesn’t make them any less real. Sometimes we pay them up front, other times indirectly. But, at the end of the day, we still pay them, so we should consider them in our calculus when making big decisions.
That is a point made by George Poulos, a transportation engineer and planner, discussing a calculator developed in Vancouver, BC, that seeks to assess the full cost of a commute amid a debate over how to finance public transportation. When it comes to public transportation, there is a pretty good old adage: a passenger train running a profit is charging too much. Why? Because so many of the quite real costs AND benefits are not accounted for in the accounting process that determines a profit. People riding trains into a city mean fewer people on the road which means faster driving — shouldn’t the rail passenger be ‘credited’ with drivers’ time savings? That sort of calculation and valuation is just what the Cost of Commute Calculator seeks to account for in helping inform public discussion of and decision-making about transportation system options.
— 21st Century City (@urbanthoughts11) June 16, 2017
As per the graph in this tweet, try to consider the subsidy inherent in commuting options. If you walk, society has built the side-walk, there are police officers, etc … There is a ‘subsidy’ to burning shoe-leather which, according to the calculator, is somewhere in the range of 1% of your own cost. When you drive, that subsidy balance is really thrown a loop. If driving costs you $1 (under two miles driving according to the $0.535 per mile 2017 IRS rate), the societal subsidy — building roads, emergency services, pollution (noise, air, etc) — is $9.20.
To provide a context, the average US commute is about 15 miles each way — or 30 miles/day. While an ‘average’ driver might think that their daily comm
What does a commute cost you? What does it cost society?
ute ‘costs’ perhaps $3 in gas, the IRS calculation comes to $16.05, the Cost of Commuting calculation (in the Vancouver Metro area) would put the total societal cost at $276.
Honestly, I am somewhat of a ‘total ownership cost (TOC)’, ‘life-cycle cost’ (LCC), full-cost accounting geek — truly seeing how achieving a broader understanding of costs and benefits can enable more informed and better decision-making. Within that context, this floored me … $9.20 in subsidy per mile …
Think about that … $276 in societal costs day in, day out for the average single-passenger commuter. Now do you understand why the post is titled
June 9th, 2017 · Comments Off on For well over a century: #climate in #PopularMechanics
Popular Mechanics is an American institution, a window on “how your world works” for 115 years. Amid its myriad pieces fascinating to tech geeks of all colors and strains (including Energy COOL-loving geeks), it has published quite a few pieces directly on or related to climate change over the years. Little did I know, but that ‘climate change-related’ publishing history goes back at least 105 years.
The furnaces of the world are now burning 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.
Here is Popular Mechanics, in 1912, talking about CO2 as a blanket around the earth, sounding somewhat like Al Gore a century later.
As to “effect may be considerable in a few centuries”, note that 1912 coal use was about 2 billion/tons/year. We are a century later and, in addition to massive use of other fossil fuels (oil and natural gas), global coal use is about 8 billion tons/year. When you consider the increased fossil fuel use (and thus increased emissions), not surprising that a century after Popular Mechanics‘ ‘in a few centuries’ we’re already experiencing ‘considerable effect’ on the climate from increased emissions with even more significant ‘considerable effect’ in the decades to come (especially without serious mitigation efforts).
Put aside any other issue, just how much electricity might this create?
Some very simple calculations (after the fold).
If the solar panels cover the top of the wall, this would produce in the range of 23 million kilowatt hours (kWh) per day, on average, through the year (or 23,100 megawatt hours (mWh) or 23.1 gigawatt hours (gWh). Per year, 8,431 gWh or 8.4 terrawatt hours (tWh).
If solar panels were to cover the surface facing south (putting aside issues of angling or tracking), this could be increased roughly by an order of magnitude — e.g., in the range of 84 tWh/year.
Total US electricity demand is about 4000 terrawatt hours/year, thus Trump’s having solar on the top of Trump’s wall would would provide roughly 0.2 percent of total US electricity supply and about 2 percent if the entire wall were covered with solar panels when (okay, IF) constructed.
June 1st, 2017 · Comments Off on Nine Holes in Trump’s Paris Withdrawal
Donald Trump has made the reckless announcement to turn the tide backwards, toward higher pollution options and away from great economic opportunities.
As is well known, when he goes out to golf, Trump brazenly gets away with cheating his way through a course. In seeking to communicate in language and images that Trump might understand, here is how nine swings and misses in Trump’s Paris decision.
Debates are often presented as either/or, black/white, all/nothing when the complexity of reality is that most situations are not zero-sum, one-or-the-other. And, that is especially true in complex environments and situations like energy systems and climate change (science, mitigation, adaptation). In this overlapping space, some of the either/or, all/nothing type assertions:
Consumption reduction vs clean energy growth
Government regulation or market driven
Nuclear power vs renewables
Top-down vs bottom-up
Human behavior vs technology
Research vs deployment
Etc … etc … etc …
Simple reality of energy is that it is ‘all-of-the-above’ (not the Obama (or a worse GOP version of) ‘All of the Above’ with full throttle pursuit of fossil fuels along with renewables) —
Expanding renewable energy to displace fossil fuel polluting energy efficiency
Changing consumption patterns — whether via boosting energy efficiency or shifting ‘how’ we understand/measure our success in life
Changing business models
Government regulations along with individual actions …
Etc … etc …
The path toward a prosperous, secure, climate-friendly society involves a multitude of silver BBs (there is no single-point Silver Bullet), many rounds of silver buckshot. Anyone reading this space more or less ‘knows’ this, even if there will be lots of disagreement on details. Some silver BBs (sometimes mistakenly seem by people as Silver Bullets, even as they are significant), like solar on the rooftop, are highly visible. Others — like how much insulation there is in a home — are remote from daily thinking, seemingly out-of-sight/out-of-mind and even obscure from most people’s conception of ‘energy solutions’.
One of those arenas of ‘either/or’ relates to ‘techno-optimism’, both to those who seem to look to technology for ‘the’ solution and, conversely, those who decry technological ‘solutions’ in a perverse Luddite obsession. Technology, obviously, has enabled humanity to dig (literally, when one considers mining machines that are some of the largest pieces of equipment in the world) the ‘climate hole’ while technology also offers multiples of paths toward both ‘stop digging the hole’ and starting to fill it up.
And, many of these ‘technology silver BBs’ re climate change aren’t really perceived nor were they developed with ‘climate’ as a central focus. Take additive manufacturing (think 3D printing) and digitization of the economy. Both of these have a myriad of business-model reasons for development, have been significantly changing the world economy, and have the (very real) potential of massively shifting the global economy — perhaps quite rapidly.
Brian Motherway, who heads the International Energy Agency (IEA) Energy Efficiency Division, has a piece on ‘brightness as a service‘ that points to how 3D + digitization could drive major efficiency through the global economy. The title of the post (liking those words sparked writing this post) comes from what might be the extreme example of that payoff:
Floating Barry Wilmore
When astronaut Barry Wilmore needed to carry out repairs on the International Space Station in December 2014, he lacked a socket wrench needed for the job. Previously, this would have meant waiting months for the next supply rocket, or sending a specific flight at great cost. Not anymore. Back on Earth, engineers designed the specific tool on their computer, emailed the file back to the space station where it was manufactured on a 3-D printer and used successfully.
This story probably holds a world record for the single-most impressive energy efficiency action: firing an email instead of a rocket to deliver a tool.
What is the value stream here for ‘firing an email instead of a rocket’?
here is an example
