Tag Archives: jobs

The U.S. solar market: mixed views

Posted: October 30th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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GreenTech Media held its Solar Market Insight Conference Monday and Tuesday in San Francisco, bringing together major players in residential, commercial and utility-scale solar to track the trends in the U.S. solar market at present and going forward.

Many of the panels and presentations are still available online for techno-geeks like me who couldn’t make to SF.

The GreenTech outlook is decidedly mixed – the residential solar market will continue booming through the end of the year, but could slow in 2013 and beyond.

– U.S. solar installations are expected to hit 3.2 gigawatts this year, a 71 percent spike over the 1.9 gigawatts installed in 2011. Next year growth could slow, with installations projected to grow to 3.9 megawatts, or about 22 percent.

– Solar leasing companies continue to claim an increasing slice of the residential market.  In California, leased residential systems accounted for 10 percent of residential installation; as of the second quarter of the year, they now make up more than 70 percent. In Arizona, the figure is more than 80 percent.

– On the utility-scale side — projects 50 megawatts and up — the picture is more complicated. Shayle Kann, GreenTech’s vice president of research, reported that the U.S. has about 2.2 gigawatts of utility-scale projects in operation, with another 4 gigs in construction and close to 6 more gigawatts in the pipeline for 2016-17.

The question is how many of the projects not in construction or in earlier stages of development will make it.

“If you don’t have a PPA, it’s harder and harder to find one,” Kann said, referring to power purchase agreements developers negotiate to sell power to utilities, which are critical to getting a project financed.

The trend is toward smaller-scale projects and much lower prices being offered on PPAs, he said. 9.7 gigawatts in the pipeline. Only utilties in states with renewable energy portfolios, such as the 33 percent mandate in California, are showing any appetite for large projects, Kann said.

– One issue hanging over both residential and utility scale is the sunsetting of the 30 percent federal investment tax credit at the end of 2016. The credit has been key to the growth of solar leasing and utility-scale financing — it draws in investors that need a healthy income tax credit.

As it stands now, at the end of 2016, it will go down to 10 percent and especially for utility scale solar, that prospective drop is already having an impact as developers look at the timelines for big projects.

These trends could have significant effects for solar development in eastern Riverside County, for projects on public and private land.

Can NextEra Energy get the 1,000-megawatt Blythe project – which it bought from the bankrupt Solar Trust of America — repermitted, financed and in construction by the end of 2016? Ditto BrightSource Energy and the 500-megawatt Palen project it bought from Solar Trust, along with its Sonoran West project, one of the two contracts the California Public Utilities Commission approved last week.

BrightSource officials have said they don’t expect Sonoran to come online till 2017, and they have no definite timeline for Palen.

The Coachella Valley, and surrounding areas, have looked to large solar projects as a source of good jobs for the region’s still struggling construction workers. The federal guidelines for solar development in the 148,000-acre Riverside East solar zone, between Joshua Tree National Park and Blythe, envisions 80 percent of the area covered with projects.

Whether any of that will pencil out now appears uncertain.

Environmental advocates have always argued that for solar, smaller rooftop and community projects are the better play, and the market may just prove them right.

 

New polls: Latino voters swing green

Posted: October 9th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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With four weeks till Election Day, two polls have been released almost simultaneously, heralding Latino Americans as the next big voting block to go green.

The Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund released a new poll today, surveying Latino voters in four key swing states — Florida, Nevada, New Mexico and Virginia.

A quick look at the findings:

In Florida, 52 percent of Latino voters favor increased incentives for wind and solar, meanwhile in Nevada, 73 percent faavor the Environmental Protection Agency putting standards in place to cut carbon emissions.

Meanwhile,  Latino voters in New Mexico say they would support a presidential candidate who backs “standards to reduce toxic mercury pollution from power plants” over one who opposes them, by a margin of 61 percent to 28 percent.

And in Virgina, Latino voters favor higher fuel efficiency standards, and candidates who support them, by a similar margin, 61 percent to 29 percent.

The NRDC figures on Latino voters come from a larger study of environmental views of undecided voters in eight swing states, showing Latino voters follow the larger trends among undecided voters.

Closer to home, the California League of Conservation Voters also commissioned a poll on where Latino voters stand on a range of environmental and clmite change-related issues.

A few of the results:

Latino voters “overwhelmingly” agree– 90 percent — that we can protect the environment and create jobs at the same time.

Two-thirds of Latino voters consider themselves conservationists, large majorities are concerned about pollution in their neighborhoods and communities, and one quarter have at least one family member in their households with asthma.

The California and swing state polls join an increasing number that have been released this season showing Americans of all backgrounds support clean energy, want more of it and see a role for government incentives in building clean, green power options for the country.

What all this leaves out is that energy is not a top concern for voters in this election, it’s still jobs and the economy.

That was perhaps the most important finding of a poll specifically done for last week’s Southern California Energy Summit by Probolsky Research.

Company CEO Adam D. Probolsky presented the findings, showing that in a wide-ranging question about the issues that are most important to those surveyed, energy didn’t even make this list, although environmental issues were in the top 10

When Probolsky asked people about prioritizing alternatives for generating clean energy for the state, close to 70 percent said we should be stablizing gas prices — and that was even before last week’s huge spikes sent everyone into gas price hysteria.

When you put all this together, what emerges is a more realistic picture. When it comes to energy, people’s views are often pragmatic and tied into other, larger issues,  such as jobs, the economy and health, and Latinos are no different.

Whether it will determine how they vote remains to be seen, but they support clean, renewable energy because in the bigger picture, it makes sense.

 

 

Another solar manufacturer defaults on DOE loan guarantee

Posted: June 29th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Abound Solar, a Colorado-based solar panel manufacturer,  announced Thursday it is ceasing operations and will be filing for bankruptcy, and yes, it had a loan guarantee from Department of Energy, raising the specter of another Solyndra.

But, as reports across the Internet are being quick to note — the company had only drawn down $70 million of its $400 million loan guarantee, and it had about $300 million in venture capital and private investments.

Concerns about undue influence by high-rolling Democratic party donors  will likely also not be an issue, as the firm drew both red and blue investors.

According to a report on Bloomberg Businessweek website, Abound’s investors included –

– Pat Stryker, the billionaire heiress of a medical devices company, who has been a big fundraiser for President Barack Obama.

– Raymond Debbane, who has donated to Republican candidates including Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who led an investigation of the U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee program.

In addition, Abound’s energy loan application earned a bipartisan letter of support from Indiana lawmakers due to the the company’s plans to build a plant in the state.

Republicans Sen. Richard Lugar and Rep. Dan Burton and then-Sen. Evan Bayh and Rep.  Pete Visclosky, both Democrats, signed an Oct. 30, 2009 letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, voicing “strong support and encouragement” for the company’s loan application.

GreenTech Media has a good behind-the-scenes report on the events and market forces leading to the company’ s decision to close its doors, laying off 125 employees.  While the company cited competition from low-cost Chinese panels as a central cause for its failure, GreenTech reports it hit a cash-flow crunch as it was trying to ramp up a new,  more efficient version of its thin-film panel.

The firm awaited $10 million from the DOE and $10 million from its investors, but had a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. The DOE was waiting for the investors, and the investors were waiting for the DOE. Abound’s venture investors include DCM, Technology Partners, GLG Partners, Bohemian Companies, and Invus. DOE money is milestone-based and comes with very specific spending covenants.

Abound’s management found itself in a very sticky spot, locked in a survival race between burn rate and ramping up the factory to run at high enough utilization to lower costs and generate revenue and eventually profit. Add impatient investors, a flinchy DOE, and a media faction hungry for Obama DOE scandals — and it was a queasy mix, almost from the start.

The Department of Energy, possibly learning from Solyndra, has been trying to stay ahead of the story with a post on its website, putting this latest failure in context.

Damien LaVera, deputy director of the DOE’s Department of Public Affairs, acknowledges that loan guarantees to solar manufacturing firms do carry higher risk, but that they account for only 4 percent of department’s loan guarantee portfolio.

In the case of Abound, he said:

Because of the strong protections we put in place for taxpayers, the Department has already protected more than 80% of the original loan amount. Once the bankruptcy liquidation is complete, the Department expects the total loss to the taxpayer to be between 10 and 15 percent of the original loan amount.

The bigger question, he says, is whether the U.S., which invented solar technology, is going to cede the field in manufacturing to China, which in 2010 alone provided $30 billion in subsidies to its solar manufacturers.

Some in Washington believe that the United States cannot, or should not, compete with China when it comes to solar manufacturing – and aren’t willing to make any investments or take on any risks to win the global clean energy manufacturing race. Meanwhile, China . . . is surging to capture roughly half the market. That’s because China realizes this is a huge global market and a competition worth winning.

We respectfully disagree with those who are willing to cede thousands of high paying jobs and the innovations to come over the next decade and beyond to our competitors in China and around the world. Americans invented solar technology, and with the right support our companies can out-innovate and out-build any competitor, anywhere in the world. 

The recent ruling from the Department of Commerce, slapping high tariffs on Chinese-made solar cells will have little impact on Chinese dominance in the market, most experts agree, because the major Chinese manufacturers are setting up to circumvent the tariff by moving their operations to other countries.

People who climb on roofs: The GRID Alternatives Solarthon

Posted: May 19th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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It was one of those only-in-California moments. A residential cul-de-sac in San Jacinto – which is about 45 or so minutes out of Palm Springs, down Interstate 10 West and then a wildride on CA-79S, a swooping mountain highway — and the street is filled with people in jeans, T-shirts and hard hats, swarming up on roofs of the houses to install solar panels. 

It was the GRID Alternatives 2012 Solarthon on May 19, when dozens of volunteers gathered on Karlie Ann Court to install solar panels on eight homes, all in one day.  Based in Oakland, GRID is a nonprofit founded by two engineering professionals, Erica Mackie and Tim Sears, who believe you shouldn’t have to be rich to be able to afford solar panels on your roof.

GRID is the main contractor for California’s Single-family Affordable Solar Homes program, known as SASH, which is part of the California Solar Intiative. SASH is targeted at helping low-income families go solar, by paying 60 percent to 100 percent of the cost of an installation. To qualify for the program,  people must fit the federal definitions for low-income families.

This was a sore point for Shirl Papaian, a San Jacinto resident bicycling down the street, who questioned whether the homeowners there are truly low-income people.

“Anybody who can afford to buy homes like these aren’t in need,” she said. “It’s an outrage.”

But Mackie defended the project, saying the neighborhood had been built by the city for first-time, low-income homebuyers.

“A lot of people think homeowners can’t be low income,” she said, noting that statewide about 1.5 million homeowners qualify as low income.

The homeowners who qualify for GRID installations also have to have a home energy audit and enroll in state or federal programs promoting energy efficiency home upgrades, she said.

To date Mackie and Sears have helped put solar panels on more than 1,750 homes, cutting low-income families electric bills by an average of 75 percent. GRID Alternative estimates its installations will keep about 151,000 tons of carbon dioxide out of the air over the next 30 years.

The group has a lot of supporters in the Coachella Valley, many of whom made the trip to San Jacinto for the Solarthon. Desert volunteers ranged from a crew of solar trainees from College of the Desert’s solar training program to George Puddephatt, a solar job specialist with Riverside County Workforce Development in Indio, who usually is on the one helping COD program graduates find jobs, not climbing up on roofs to install panels. Hot Purple Energy, the ubiquitous Palm Springs solar installer, had an information table as did SunUp Energy.

A crew of solar trainees from College of the Desert working at the GRID Alternatives Solarthon in San Jacinto on May 19

 

Team work at the GRID Alternatives Solarthon in San Jacinto.

Per usual, the folks from COD were a cross-section of the valley’s unemployed. Leo Adamski, 58, from Calimesa has been a carpenter for 38 years, but as he said, “There’s not a lot of framing going on.”

Adamski was there for the hands-on training opportunity, after the first three weeks of his nine-week course at COD.

“Now that we’ve gotten through some of the school, it’s a plus to see the panels bolted to the racks.”

Pamela Becker, 54, of Palm Springs was in coporate information technology and also did some real estate investment — before the recession. Now she’s on the brink of losing her house and is hoping the solar training at COD will get her off unemployment and back on her feet financially.  She said the hands-on training at COD is “exceptional.”

Joe Dolan, who previously worked with the solar program at COD, but now is at PetersenDean, a roofing and solar firm, was there to help and do some recruiting for the Riverside office he’s setting up, he said, over the barbecue lunch — burgers and salads and all kinds of yummy desserts — put on for the volunteers.

During lunch I also caught up with Dianne Randle, one of the homeowenrs on Karlie Ann Court who now has solar panels on her roof. Randle, a hospice nurse, said she’s looking forward to cutting down her monthly electric bills, which run around $150 (yes, relatively low by desert standards, but high for Randle who has a 15-year-old who, like many teens, doesn’t remember to turn off lights or computers).

Randle’s installation was also special because it was done by a team of women volunteers, Women’s Build, led by Anna Bautista, a diminutive woman from Los Angeles.  

The banner for the women's group installing solar panels at GRID Alternatives Solarthon in San Jacinto.

Solar and renewable energy in general is still heavily male, so I asked her if it was hard for women to break into the field.

“It might be intimidating,” Bautista said. “They’re just as capable.”

Mary Eike, another LA volunteer, was just bubbling. Getting up on a roof to install panels, wires and all is a kick, she said.

“I’ve always been interested in solar,” she said. “I love doing this.”  

Another valley contingent came from the green academy at Desert Mirage High School in Thermal. The students didn’t get up on the roofs, but they were all impressed with GRID Alternatives.

Students from the green academy at Desert Mirage High School in Thermal at the GRID Alternatives Solarthon in San Jacinto

Their teacher, Arthur Kimball, seems to be on a one-man mission to expose the kids to all the job opportunities in green tech.

“The green academy is new; it’s cool to see all this,” said Marina Barragan, 17, of Oasis.  

Joe Rodriguez, 16 another student, said, “It’s inspirational for our community.”

The climate isn’t the only thing that’s changing

Posted: April 27th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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After being on the political backburner for much of the election season, climate change and what the U.S., its politicians and businesses should do in response, could become a major focus of the campaign, according to a new poll released Thursday.

Based on a survey of 1,008 adults, 18 and over, conducted March 12-30 by Yale and George Mason University (margin of error +/- 3 percent at 95 percent confidence level), here are a taste of the findings:

– 72 percent of Americans think climate change should be a priority for both the president and Congress, with 12 percent saying it should be a very high priority, 28 percent, high and 32 percent medium.

 – 92 percent think developing clean energy sources should be priority for the president and Congress, with 31 percent rating it a very high priority, 38 percent high and 32 percent medium.

 – 58 percent say that Congress should be doing more to address climate change, while 54 percent say President Obama should be doing more to address climate change.

 – 83 percent think that protecting the environment either improves economic growth and provides new jobs or has no effect on jobs and growth.

 – 79 percent support funding more research into renewable energy such as wind and solar.

 – 55 percent said climate change will be a key issue in determining their vote for president this year, with 3 percent saying it would be the single most important issue and 52 percent saying it would be one of several important issues for them.

 Pundits and political analysts are already pronouncing climate change and energy as this election’s wedge issues, and President Barack Obama looks to be getting ahead of the curve in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, which came out earlier this week.  Responding to a question about the Keystone XL pipeline, the president staked out his position on climate change.

“Part of the challenge over these past three years has been that people’s number-one priority is finding a job and paying the mortgage and dealing with high gas prices. In that environment, it’s been easy for the other side to pour millions of dollars into a campaign to debunk climate-change science. I suspect that over the next six months, this is going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign, and I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we’re going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way. That there’s a way to do it that is entirely compatible with strong economic growth and job creation – that taking steps, for example, to retrofit buildings all across America with existing technologies will reduce our power usage by 15 or 20 percent. That’s an achievable goal, and we should be getting started now.”

Romney’s position on energy, which barely mentions wind and solar or climate change, can be found in his platform. A recent article on the GreenTech Media website gives a quick rundown.

What I find most interesting is his blind spot on green jobs and energy. Here’s what he says about the connection between jobs and energy production.

“Producing more domestic energy would create good jobs and bolster local economies in a wide variety of energy-producing regions that effectively ‘export’ their product to the rest of the country. While countless jobs are engaged in the actual energy-production process, they are a small fraction of the full workforce that benefits. For instance, before the first barrel of oil is pumped out of the ground, entire industries are hard at work creating the equipment and providing the services used in drilling, production, and the long chain of supporting industries that brings energy from inside the earth to the consumer.”

It doesn’t seem to occur to him that solar, wind and other renewables have similar material value chains stretching across the country and renewable projects create secondary jobs and economic activity in local economies.

 Obama’s focus on sustainable energy and jobs is an “unhealthy obsession,” while his focus on fossil fuels and unraveling environmental regulations is not?

In the meantime — if you are at the intersection of Palm Canyon and Alejo tomorrow (Saturday) at about 11:45 a.m., you may run into a flash mob of dancing polar bears — or people dressed up as polar bears dancing.

The event, which will run a scant 15 minutes, is part of a national chain of dancing bear events organized by the Sierra Club to protest Shell Oil’s plans to start drilling for oil this summer in the Arctic’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas—home to the entire population of U.S. polar bears.

Find out more on the Sierra Club’s Chill the Drills web page.

 

 

Solar thermal fights back; FedEx expands its electric fleet

Posted: March 6th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Every day, 5,000 times more energy shines down on the Earth from the sun than it takes to power the entire world.

That enlightening factoid comes to us today from the solar industry’s newest trade group, the Concentrating Solar Power Alliance. CSP, as it is called in the industry, is what most of us call solar thermal — where panels or troughs collect or concentrate heat from the sun, which is then used to heat a liquid, create steam and run a generator.

Large-scale solar thermal projects have had a tough time in the past year, what with the pressure from falling photovoltaic panel prices and permitting challenges related to how much water they use.

In the Riverside East solar zone, the public land east of the Coachella Valley, three of the first four fast-track projects were originally solar thermal — Solar Millennium’s Blythe and Palen projects and NextEra Energy’s Genesis project.  As most local readers are aware, both Blythe and Palen are now on hold, presumably being retooled as PV plants by their new owner, solarhybrid.

Only the 250-megawatt Genesis project, now under construction, has remained solar thermal, and NextEra’s next project planned for the region, the 750-megawatt McCoy plant, is PV.

BrightSource, one of the three solar thermal companies behind the new organization, also has a local solar thermal project in the works, the 750-megawatt Rio Mesa plant on private land near Blythe.

Making the world a little more welcoming to solar thermal is where the new group comes in, building on the efforts of a new international organization, the World Solar Thermal Electricity Association. Both groups are clearly aimed at promoting the benefits of solar thermal technology to energy markets. 

While more expensive upfront, the alliance says that solar thermal plants are much more reliable than PV projects and produce power that can be stored to match peak energy demands.  Another plus, they can keep operating even when the sun is not shining. 

Solar thermal also produces more construction and permanent jobs than PV plants.  A 2006 study commissioned by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab for the Department of Energy found that a 100 megawatt solar thermal plant creates more than $600 million in impact to gross state output, ten times that of a fossil fuel plant due to the local content and job creation.

With PV clearly the technology of choice right now, and panel prices continuing to move toward grid parity — it will be interesting to see  how CSPA will market itself and its projects.

In other breaking green tech news today, Smith Electric Vehicles of Kansas City, Mo.,  unveiled a new all-electric truck that FedEx will be adding to its fleet throughout the rest of the year.

FedEx put its first all-electric vehicles on the road in Los Angeles in March 2010.

The new FedEx electric vehicles will have a range of 100 miles on a single charge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The new trucks will have a range of about 100 miles on a single charge, which makes them ideal for urban delivery routes.  Don’t know if we’ll see any in the valley, but hats off to FedEx for its ongoing efforts.

State of the Union — the green preview

Posted: January 24th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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The emails from green and clean energy groups are flying in fast and furious this morning in advance of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. And the message from them all is that clean-green tech is good for the economy and creates jobs.

A sampling –

The Natural Resources Defense Council’s president Frances Beinecke has issued her own Environmental State of the Union.

The questions she think policy makers should be asking are:

“Is America’s air getting safer to breathe than it was a year ago? Are we building the wind farms and solar plants that put Americans to work and curb pollution at the same time? Do we have a plan to encourage fuel efficient technologies that allow cars to go farther on a tank of gas?

“Looking ahead, the question becomes: will our leaders seize opportunities to protect our families from polluters and build a cleaner energy system for America?”

The key point of her piece is –

“The coming year will be filled with campaign-fueled debates about jobs and the recession. Clean energy can deliver what both parties are looking for: greater prosperity and market growth.

“Let’s abandon once and for all the false choice of pitting economic progress and environmental protection. The two actually go hand-in-hand.”

In the meantime, the Pew Environment Group has banded together with about 200 businesses and clean energy groups to promote energy efficiency through co-generation — capturing the heat from power generation and using it for heating or to produce more energy. The group has paid for full-page ads in three of the top inside-the-Beltway publications — The Hill, Politico and Roll Call — timed for SOTU.

The ad reads:

“Each year, America’s utilities and factories send enough heat up their chimneys to power all of Japan. But with existing, proven technologies, we can harness that wasted energy, dramatically cut electricity costs, and make our manufacturers more competitive.

 “According to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, significantly increasing our industrial energy efficiency would spur more than $200 billion in new private investment in the U.S. and create up to 1,000,000 jobs. Harness the heat to create new jobs and make our country more competitive.”

Then, from the American Wind Energy Association,  an industry trade group, a press release announcing –

“Several media outlets are reporting that President Obama will mention wind power and manufacturing jobs in his State of the Union address this evening, including reports that Bryan Ritterby of American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) member company Energetx Composites of Holland, MI will be First Lady Michelle Obama’s guest for the speech.”

 The AWEA is lobbying hard to get the wind industry’s major federal incentive, the production tax credit, extended beyond its planned expiration date at the end of 2012.  The PTC, as it is referred to, gives renewable energy companies a 2.2 cent credit per kilowatt hour for the first 10 years of an installation’s generation.

“A recent report by Navigant Consulting finds that if Congress allows the PTC for wind to expire, jobs in the wind industry will be cut in half, meaning a loss of 37,000 American jobs and a one third cut to American wind manufacturing jobs, while private investment in the industry would drop by nearly two thirds. And Navigant found that these job losses will begin now and accelerate with each month the PTC nears the expiration deadline. Meanwhile, extending the PTC will allow the wind industry to grow to almost 100,000 American jobs in just four years and stay on track toward supporting 500,000 American jobs by 2030.”

The good news here is, with the spread of wind power to more conservative states  such as Texas and Iowa, AWEA is seeing growing bipartisan support for an extension, which makes it more likely that a PTC law could make it through Congress even with election year politics raging.

Finally, while not directly SOTU-related, but certainly relevant, Greentech Media has done a quick rundown on the energy policies of GOP frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

Both basically are all about supporting domestic oil and natural gas development, cutting environmental regulations and redirecting federal support for renewable energy development — loan guarantees — into basic research.

Romney comes out slightly ahead in so far as he actually acknowledges the human role in climate change, though he says he’s not sure of the extent, while Gingrich’s most recent pronouncement on the issue is that he believes we don’t know if human carbon emissions are part of the picture.

And Gingrich offers the intriguing ideas of funding renewable energy research from gas and oil royalties and changing the Environmental Protection Agency into the Environmental Solutions Agency “that would use incentives and work cooperatively with local government and industry to achieve better environmental outcomes while considering the impact of federal environmental policies on job creation and the cost of energy.”

 

Happy National Recycling Day!

Posted: November 14th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , ,
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Tuesday is National Recycling Day, and a consortium of environmental and labor groups will release a report called “More Jobs, Less Pollution.”

The report shows that recycling more — changing the paradigm from “waste disposal” to “materials management” — not only makes a cleaner environment, it creates jobs and new industries.

This is basic common sense. Waste disposal — throwing things in landfills — does not create a whole lot of jobs because it is highly automated at this point. Impacts on the environment are also well documented. More greenhouse gases, toxic runoff, potential leaks to water supplies and all the related negative impacts on the environment and public health. 

Based on 2008 figures in the report, the average American produces 1,697 pounds of solid waste — paper, food scraps, etc. — per year, and that figure is not expected to change over the next two decades if we continue with business as usual. Right now the national average for recycling is about 33 percent, and in a business as usual scenario, that is expected to increase about 1 percent a year.

Meanwhile, our population is projected to grow from 304 million in 2008 to 374 million in 2030, which multiplies out to an increase in solid waste from 250 million tons to 314 million tons. Yikes!

California is one of the states that has enacted higher recycling requirements. The state has a 50 percent recycling requirement, which could soon go up to 75 percent.

That’s the level the report says we should aim at nationally by 2030. Besides cutting greenhouse gas emissions by about 515 million metric tons,  it could also create an estimated 2,347,000 jobs — in both cases figures that are twice those if we stick with business as usual.

Case in point, California’s carpet recycling law that went into effect earlier this year put a small fee on all carpets sold in the state — 5 cents per square foot –that will be used to provide incentives for more carpet recycling. So instead of going to landfills, carpets are collected, processed and turned into new products, ranging from recycled carpets to molded plastic parts that go into new cars — all of which means jobs.

So, think material management, not disposal. Take your recyclable bag to the supermarket today; buy a reusable water bottle; put that soda can in a recycling bin. 

Use less, recycle more. 

 

Are we ready for solar-powered oil wells?

Posted: October 4th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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So I am trying to rearrange my brain cells about this — and it’s being a stretch.

BrightSource, the solar developer behind the Ivanpah solar project in Needles, sent out a press release Monday heralding its latest project – a solar-powered oil well.

The company has set up a 29-megawatt solar thermal plant at Chevron’s Coalinga oil field in Fresno County, which first started pumping in 1890, but had seen output decline. The problem – heavy oil that is difficult to get out of the ground. 

Enter BrightSource – installing 3,822 heliostats, each consisting of two 10-foot by 7-foot mirrors mounted to a six-foot steel pole.  The mirrors are focused on a boiler atop a 327-foot-tall solar tower, which produces steam that is then pumped into the ground to heat up the oil so it can be more easily pumped out.

Apparently, according to an article on GreenTech Media, standard oil drilling only extracts 10 percent to 30 percent of the oil in a reservoir; enhanced oil recovery, or EOR as it is called, has become big business, with a global market estimated at nearly $62.5 billion — for barrels of crude oil — for 2009.

Normally EOR technology is powered with natural gas so going solar will provide some carbon savings, but what no one is saying, or asking, it seems, is what this oil will be used for once it’s out of ground and how many tons of carbon emissions it will contribute to climate change.

Based on a quick – and by no means exhaustive – look at online sources, heavy crude has a higher carbon content to start with, as well as containing other air pollutants, such as sulfur. That means it takes more processing to refine, creating still more emissions. One recent study estimated that with heavy crude, life-cycle petroleum emissions could increase 14 percent to 33 percent.

The researcher, Greg Karras, admitted more exact figures cannot be calculated because no oil refineries are willing to supply the necessary data.

Another significant point — there’s a lot more heavy crude around, in the U.S., South America and the Mideast,  than lighter, less carbon-intensive crude.

But can a 29-megawatt solar thermal plant – and we haven’t even gotten into water use – offset a 14-33 percent increase in carbon emissions from the oil it’s being used to pump? How will, or won’t, this be counted in figuring California’s renewable portfolio?

The longer one thinks about all this, the faster and thicker the questions and contradictions pile up.

The usual arguments will be hauled out here – energy security and jobs. Are they enough?

 

 

NextEra’s next solar plant will be PV

Posted: September 2nd, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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As it begins construction on its 250-megawatt Genesis solar thermal project east of the Coachella Valley, NextEra Energy has its second desert solar plant in the works.

The company has filed an application with the Bureau of Land Management for a 750-megawatt photovoltaic plant, called the McCoy Solar Energy Project, to be located 13 miles northwest of Blythe. The BLM filed a notice of the application in the Federal Register earlier this week, which means the official scoping period has begun, during which the agency collects public input on what issues it needs to look at for its official environmental impact report.  The deadline to submit comments to the agency for this round will be Sept. 28.

The available information on McCoy thus far is sketchy.  The project site includes 7,700 acres of public land and 470 acres of private land, which means the BLM will have to partner with Riverside County for the environmental impact report.  To connect to the grid, the project will need a 16-mile tie-line to connect with Southern California Edison’s Colorado River substation, and the right of way for that line will include both public and private land.

According to the company’s initial application, the McCoy project would generate enough electricity to power 225,000 homes. On the jobs front, NextEra estimates it about 600 jobs during peak construction and 13-20  for ongoing operation.

The fact that NextEra has chosen photovoltaic panels over solar thermal for this second project reflects the ongoing shift to PV for utility-scale solar plants — a trend driven by the plunging costs of panels and, hopefully, an easier permitting process.

NextEra had a difficult time permitting Genesis as solar thermal, primarily over water issues. Solar thermal requires a lot of water, and NextEra originally planned Genesis using the most water-intensive “wet cooling” technology, which led to long wrangles over whether the project would tap into the Colorado River aquifer. The BLM pushed back and the company had to change to more water-efficient “dry cooling” technology to get the project approved.

The tradeoff here is that while PV uses almost no water, it isn’t as reliable a power source as solar thermal, which uses heat from solar troughs to run steam turbines. The turbines create a smoother power flow compared to the spikier electricity coming from PV panels that convert sunlight directly to electricity.

While it is impossible to know at this point,  in the past, the BLM has held at least two public scoping meetings per project on the solar plants it has already approved in the Riverside East solar zone — one in the Coachella Valley, usually at UCR Palm Desert, and one in Blythe.  Given the Sept. 28 deadline, whatever’s going to happen will likely be happening soon.

I will be following up on this next week along with First Solar’s Desert Sunlight project to see how many valley residents have gotten call backs from the job fairs the company held almost three weeks ago.

Here’s hoping the Labor Day weekend will be followed by green jobs for some of the 1,200 valley job seekers who turned out at the Spotlight 29 Casino to apply for work on Desert Sunlight last month.