Which way is the wind blowing?

The most controversial wind project in the US, the 400+ megawatt Cape Wind planned off Cape Cod, was approved by the Federal government Wednesday. Many considered this a surprising development, because of the adamant opposition of the Kennedy family — and other affluent members of the Massachusetts economic and political elite — who objected to the impact on their views of the Nantucket Sound.

As with solar energy in the Mojave Desert, this controversy found unlikely adversaries between pro-RE environmentalists and anti-development environmentalists. The Obama Administration, represented by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, came down (mostly) on the side of renewable energy.

The NY Times captured the tension of this conflict in its own backyard:

Friends and foes have squared off over the impact it would have on nature, local traditions, property values and electricity bills; on the profits to be pocketed by a private developer; and even the urgency of easing the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels, a priority of the Obama administration.

Opponents argued that Cape Wind would create an industrial eyesore in a pristine area; supporters countered that it was worth sacrificing aesthetics for the longer-term goal of producing clean, renewable energy.

Developers say that Cape Wind will provide 75 percent of the power for Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard — the equivalent of that produced by a medium-size coal-fired plant. It would also reduce carbon dioxide emissions by the equivalent of taking 175,000 cars off the road, officials said, and provide 1,000 construction jobs.

The project has also made for some strange bedfellows. Cape Wind is backed by both Greenpeace and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

It has been opposed perhaps most prominently by members of the Kennedy family. Senator Kennedy was a longtime sailor on Nantucket Sound and fought the project up until he died.

President Obama himself on Tuesday toured the Siemens factory in Iowa where the turbines would be made. (No mention whether Iowa’s pivotal role as a swing state played any role in the factory location or the presidential visit.) The administration expects a string of future offshore wind farms up and down the East Coast, as part of a plan to raise wind to 4% of electricity generated in 2030.

In my memory, renewable energy was last in ascendancy in the 1970s and early 1980s around the time of the two Arab oil embargoes. Of the influential politicians of the day, Jimmy Carter probably would have sided with green energy (and energy independence) over Kennedy views — particularly when Sen. Kennedy began his very public nomination challenge leading up to the 1980 election.

I suspect that another Carter primary rival in 1976 and 1980 — Edmund G. Brown Jr. — would have come down another way. Then at the peak of his “Small is Beautiful” (ala EF Schumacher) infatuation, Jerry Brown was then about building less things, using less, spending less and consuming less.

What about today? In his adamant support for AB32 — the California precursor to national cap-and-trade legislation — Brown today is clearly about consuming less energy. While his campaign website brags about tax credits in the 1970s that brought windmills to California (mainly in the Altamont Pass,Tehachapis, and near Palm Springs), it doesn’t say how he’d come down on an RE vs. environmental preservation issue.

Our current Governator has strongly favored RE over environmental protection, implying that favoring the latter is something only a “girly man” who do. Given their moderate records on green energy, I suspect both of Brown’s GOP rivals — Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner — would also come down in favor of renewable energy (ala the Chamber of Commerce), particularly if there’s little government money involved.

But what would Jerry Brown do? I guess it depends on which way the wind is blowing. For the Obama administration, it appears that making progress on long-term renewable energy goals is more important than satisfying a small number of avid supporters in its base. This is good news for the wind turbine industry, and renewable energy advocates more broadly.

Three cheeers: Facebook favors EE over RE

The Merc Sunday carried an AP story (also in Business Week) about how Greenpeace is upset at Internet companies for not using clean power on their datacenters. The BBC had a version of the story last month.

The Green peace criticism is particularly harsh for Facebook for building a datacenter in Prineville, Oregon, because the local utility uses coal instead of the hydro power commonly found elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

Datacenters are certainly important: the AP reports an EPA estimate that in 2006 they accounted for 61 billion kilowatt hours, or 1.5% of the nation’s grid power.

The charge is somewhat spurious: in the short term, having company X buy more RE means that there is less RE available to sell to company Y (or consumer Z). In the long term, it’s possible that greater demand for RE will push up the supply of RE, but in the near term the supply of RE — particularly hydro, solar and wind — seems to be growing as fast as is possible.

(Of course, firms like Google etc. that add their own onsite generating capacity are certainly increasing the supply of RE and reducing the demand for grid power overall).

Instead, Facebook is choosing approach both reduced costs and power purchased from the grid. By building its datacenter in a location with good natural cooling, it hopes to dramatically reduce its AC bill.

As the AP reported:

In most data centers, cooling the servers takes nearly as much electricity as running the servers themselves. Facebook hopes its new cooling system will take only 15 percent as much power as the computers. Facebook is also shooting for a gold rating from the green building standard known as LEED.

The climate is important. Even in summer, nights are cool. The center can take in outside air for free. When temperatures rise, a high-tech swamp cooler blows dry air over water, and the evaporation lowers temperatures. In winter, hot air from the servers is blown into office space.

In other words, by emphasizing energy efficiency, Facebook will pull less power from the grid (from any source), leaving that power (both RE and non-RE) available for other sources. In the long term, that will do more to provide a net reduction in CO2 emissions than any effort to shift some uses to RE.

As Matthew Humphries of geek.com concluded:

I don’t think any of the tech companies are dismissing renewable energy and trying to save power. The fact is, energy is expensive so any way it can be saved is thought about and implemented. Datacenters are starting to ditch air conditioning in favor of natural airflow through buildings, for example.

Hydropower, solar, and wind are all being used if they are accessible to a datacenter, and Google has also started experimenting with wave power and creating floating datacenters. Some datacenters route their waste heat to act as heating or a power source for other buildings. There’s also the introduction of Bloom Energy, which relies on natural gas, but uses significantly less fuel to generate energy. It’s a power source of the future, but is already in use at a number of technology campuses.

Greenpeace are right to highlight the need to focus on renewable energy, but I believe this is one area where the companies running these centers will jump to renewable and clean energy wherever possible because it is cheaper and more reliable going forward.

EE is decidedly unsexy, but every kilowatt-hour saved is one less kWH that has to be generated. Efforts by datacenters to reduce energy consumption — whether from servers, networking equipment, A/C or anything else — are a win-win proposition for the operators, the grid and the environment.

Rooftop wind turbines

The San Diego newspaper had an interesting story about a developer of small wind turbine.

The company, Helix Wind, appears to be struggling, but the product description was fascinating:

Helix Wind makes turbines small enough to be mounted on homes or commercial buildings. Its core products spin on a vertical axis and look like soft-serve ice-cream cones.

It reminds me a little of the story about Adobe installing wind turbines on roof of its skyrise HQ in downtown San Jose. The latest round of turbines generate about 50 kWh per year. The installation was finished last month.

We put solar panels on roofs due to scarce real estate, so at some level wind turbines on commercial or residential roofs make sense. The Merc story implies they get more energy per square foot than the equivalent solar panels.

To me, this seems to renew the (often unseemly) rivalry between the two main renewable energy growth areas. (Hydro is certainly renewable, but the recent growth has been in the wrong direction from a RE standpoint).

Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy

From Andrew Hargadon’s blog:

Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy
June 28 - July 2, 2010 @ the Tahoe Center for Environmental Science
Lake Tahoe, Nevada

Moving Sustainable Technologies Out of the Lab and into the World

The one-week intensive academy is open to science and engineering faculty, graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and senior undergraduates working on research in green technologies. The academy combines seminars and networking sessions in an innovative format to help you learn how to commercialize your technology.

The workshop is presented by UC Davis. The application deadline is May 14, 2010.

For more information, see the complete posting in Prof. Hargadon’s article.

Green before our time

Last year, some of my students in my business plan class proposed creating a business to build “green” houses. They made it to the semifinals of the SVBPC, although ultimately the plan fell apart because it’s hard to start up a business building spec homes (particularly nowadays) if you don’t already have the capital to carry the houses while they are under construction. (Talking to a builder friend, the construction finance lenders have either withdrawn from the business or gone out of business).

One of the things I pushed them to do, however, is get their message straight. “Green” is so broad and vague that it doesn’t mean anything to buyers — particularly given all the drek out there in the name of green-ness. I encouraged them to focus on energy efficiency — very cost-effective and a clear message. Add a few other wrinkles, perhaps as optional features — water reclamation here, solar power there — but keep the message focused.

On Sunday, our local TV station ran a feature encouraging homeowners to buy or remodel their homes as “green,” largely focusing on energy efficiency. On the one hand, it validated my former students’ plan and the advice they came them, including the suggestion that such features could only command a 3% (or was it 2%?) premium. On the other hand, some of the ideas seemed pretty old hat. (Even ignoring that the EE story of the day was clearly the Merc’s coverage of Serious Materials’ multi-million dollar EE retrofit for the Empire State Building.)

The one that made me smirk was the suggestion that homeowners should buy a whole house fan rather than air conditioning to drastically reduce the electricity cost. Been there, done that.

The Bay Area home we bought in 2002 didn’t come with air conditioning, and summer heat was certainly a problem. The average high in July-August is usually around 85°, but many days are over 90° and 10-15 days a year it’s above 100°. As with most of California (except the Central Valley), hot days are rarely humid.

So before our first full summer, we installed two whole house fans, and nearly seven years later, we couldn’t be happier. It’s perhaps difficult to go to sleep 3 or 4 days a year — when the temperature remains above 80° after 9pm — but otherwise the fan (and good insulation) solves most of our cooling needs. Perhaps a few more days, I decide to work downstairs after 2pm rather than in my office, but with a laptop that’s no great loss (particularly since my least productive part of the day is between 1-5pm.)

What I’m particularly proud is that we were the first on our block to get a high-efficiency, (relatively) low noise whole-house fan, the 1000 CFM Tamarack Technologies HV1000. The fan had three winning features:

• It was much quieter than a standard whole house fan.
• It was almost trivial to install, because it fits between the ceiling joists.
• Unlike most fans, with a self-closing R38 cap it doesn’t leak out warm air in the winter.

The PBS tv show “This Old House” featured the faster, noisier HV1600, but we decided to go with two smaller HV1000 fans in our 2F hallway. It gives us better control over the air flow, and it’s possible to sleep at night with only one fan running.

The fans were about $500 apiece, and they don’t seem to be much more expensive today. If I recall, it was about a day’s worth of labor to cut the ceiling, run the wires, and install the switch.

When we retire back to Oceanside in 10 or 20 years, we probably won’t need a whole house fan given that the temperature rarely reaches 90°. However, if we were to relocate to another part of California, I would certainly order more of the fans as a cost-effective, energy-efficient solution. (The one exception would be Palm Springs, where I’d check out the efficiency of the swamp coolers we used in my childhood rather than conventional AC.)

Clean vs. semi-clean

Exploding out of stealth mode after 10 years and $400m of VC, Bloom Energy got great press Wednesday (at least here in Silicon Valley) on both TV and written form on the front page of the Merc.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that CEO K.R. Sridhar got to unveil his new technology earlier in the week on 60 Minutes. The company has done a great job of PR. Apparently Kleiner Perkins partner Al Gore has been whispering its praises for years.

For its rollout, the TV cameras came because it was able to attract A-list celebrities like Colin Powell (a Bloom Energy advisor) and the Governator (who will come for anything at the intersection of two of his passions — green and jobs).

The company has also lined up an A-list bevy of customers for its industrial fuel cells like Google, Coca-Cola, eBay, Wal-Mart and Bank of America. I assume this is because natural gas is becoming ever cheaper, and because in the Banana Republic of California you never know when the state is going to screw up electricity generation. (Conveniently, taking these industrial users off the grid would reduce PG&E’s overall electricity load would make it easier to meet its RPS quotas.)

However, what is puzzling to me is why this is trumpeted as “green” or “cleantech.” Like all fuel cells, the Bloom cells would produce pure water if fed hydrogen, but when fed hydrocarbons, will produce CO2 with the water. Before global warming became a concern, this would have been a big plus over burning the gas (which produces other pollutants like nitrous oxides), but now of course CO2 is the driving concern when it comes to environmental impact.

Sure enough, Fast Company has run the numbers to compare the CO2 output of the fuel cells with other alternatives:

Bloom's device generates electricity at 50% to 55% conversion efficiency. In comparison, solar generally produces power at between 10% to 15% efficiency. But unlike solar panels, the Bloom Energy Server produces CO2 as a byproduct. According to the Energy Collective, "CO2 emissions when running on natural gas would be just under 0.8 pounds/kWh, which compares favorably to electricity from central station coal-fired plants (2 lbs/kWh) or natural gas plants (roughly 1.3 lbs/kWh) and the national average for on-grid electricity (around 1.3-1.5 lbs/kWh)." If the box runs on landfill gas or biogas, it produces net zero carbon emissions.

So from a “green” standpoint, using a fuel cell to convert the natural gas produces about 40% less CO2 than burning, which of course is a good thing.

So that’s half the equation: what about the other half? The Achilles heel of renewable energy generation is high upfront capital costs. Wired notes that each “Bloom Energy Server” generates 100kW and costs about $700-800k. Various estimates say that the capital costs range 9-10¢ a kW-hr.

A couple of savvy GreenTech Media readers do the math and suggest that the servers will never be cost effective against a simple natural gas boiler. (As readers note, relevant unresolved questions also include the useful lifespan of the fuel cells, and how quickly the firm can improve its manufacturing efficiency.)

So is it worth paying more (or paying government subsidies) for a more expensive way of converting natural gas to electricity for slightly less CO2 output? From an economic standpoint, clearly not. How about from an environmental standpoint? I suppose it depends on the environmental impact of the extra cost — materials costs, transportation costs, commuting by engineers etc.

Be Green! Aloha!

Earlier this month, the LA Times ran an interesting article about EE/RE in the Hawai‘ian islands. The Merc ran it prominently Tuesday in its Business section, but many people probably missed it since that section is now buried inside local news.

The short version of the story is that Hawai‘i is doing more than most states to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy, it’s bragging about it, and the reporter bought their story hook, line and sinker.

The facts are interesting, but unfortunately the story is so badly written with cliches and misleading statistics that you have to look at it sideways to figure out what’s really going on. Here’s an example:

Although Hawaii's efforts to green itself won't make much of a dent in the world's total carbon emissions, environmentalists hope the state can prove what's possible. The goal is to transform the nation's most energy-dependent state into its cleanest and most sustainable.

"We're adopting policies and technologies here that can serve as a model for the rest of the globe," said Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the Blue Planet Foundation, a Hawaii clean energy advocacy group.
…
The policies stem from an agreement Hawaii signed with the Department of Energy in 2008. The state pledged to obtain 70% of its total energy needs by 2030 -- 40% from renewable electricity generation and the remaining 30% from energy efficiency. Known as the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, that agreement has since been strengthened with binding legislation that exceeds California's mandate to get 33% of its electricity from renewables by 2020 (though Hawaii has an extra decade to get there).

In other word, 40% by 2030 is better than 33% by 2020. It seems like a silly distinction, since California has been ratcheting up the goal every decade and it seems unlikely that it will decide to do nothing from 2020-2030. (There’s also the minor matter that either state’s “goal” might fail in its implementation.)

The Times continues:

About 6.5% of Hawaii's electricity came from renewable sources other than hydroelectric power in 2007, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That's about half what California -- the nation's solar champion and a major player in wind and geothermal energy -- has achieved.

But experts said Hawaii's small size and unique geography could prove advantageous in the race for energy independence. With just 1.3 million inhabitants, its energy consumption is small. The islands have abundant solar, wind, geothermal and wave resources. And Hawaiians are less likely to object to the cost of renewables since they already pay high energy prices.

"It's easier for Hawaii to pull this off than anyone else," said Alison Silverstein, an independent consultant and onetime energy regulator. "They know how bad things can get, and they are highly motivated . . . to take action."

Uh, yeah. There’s nowhere in the US with more favorable conditions for solar power. Plus the cost of substitutes for RE are much higher there than anywhere else, resolving the chronic problem of cheap fossil fuels faced on the mainland. Sounds like a dog-bites-man story to me.

But “race”? What “race”? Is there an X-Prize for most successful state EE/RE policy? Or is this just press hype?

Where is the mention of the failed South Point wind farm, where the tax subsidies rewarded building the turbines but not maintaining them and keeping them running? (By comparison, the contemporaneous Kramer Junction solar plants in California’s Mojave Desert were the largest solar field in the world for almost 2 decades and still remain in active use.)

And the article reflects a profound ignorance about California EE mandates that have led the country for decades, whether it be Title 24 (which dates back to 1978) standards for new construction or the Governator’s latest retrofit plan. It doesn’t sound as sexy as adding 30% to 40% to get a misleading number, but in reality California’s existing conservation has already saved more carbon emissions and fossil fuels than anything Hawai‘i will ever do.

I’m sure there’s something that can be learned from the Hawai‘i experiment: that’s one of the major advantages of the US (and German and Canadian) model of federalism. Heck, I have some money left in my research budget, so perhaps I need to do a field visit to investigate for myself.

However, as with many such stories, there is a tendency to put too much stock in the boasting of the local sources, rather than put the local efforts into a broader context — in this case of US EE/RE policy.

Note to international readers: One of my favorite childhood TV shows was Hawaii Five-O, which offered most Americans their first glimpse of life in the 50th state. The preview of next week’s episode always closed with Jack Lord saying “Be there! Aloha.”