Smart Grid Environmental Benefits  

Smart Grid News has an excellent article from a Stanford student on Smart Grid Environmental Benefits.

What are the environmental benefits of the Smart Grid?

Energy efficiency – Increased asset utilization made possible by smarter energy management means more efficient power plant operation and fewer peaking units. Utilities stand to benefit from a higher rate of return on capital investment and lower costs.

Delaying new power plants and transmission lines – The ability to effectively manage load with existing T&D infrastructure means that utilities no longer have to build infrastructure for the peak hours of the year. This could allow utilities to delay additional investments into new transmission lines and generation facilities.

Distributed generation – The ability to dynamically manage all sources of power on the grid means that more distributed generation can be integrated with the grid. While not all distributed generation is clean or efficient, the possibility for distributed solar and wind power is important. This would benefit utilities in managing distributed generation as well as firms that would benefit from improved reliability.

Mass-scale renewables – According to the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) Integrating wind or solar power into the grid at levels higher than 20% will require advanced energy management techniques. These include load curtailment, demand response, and energy storage. The EWEA recently published a report recommending the use of demand response as a natural tool for managing variability in wind resources. This is a key message for wind and solar producers, as it increases the size of their potential market.

Clean power market – The ability to stabilize the power consumption over time for an area using demand response will make it easier to establish a power market. Clean power sources will be able to participate in the market even though they may have a stochastic energy output. This is a benefit to clean power producers.

Consumer incentive for conservation – With the rollout of advanced metering and real-time pricing customers will finally see the economic incentives for reducing power consumption.

Support for PHEVs and V2G – The Smart Grid is a necessity for enabling the next generation of automotive vehicles. The lack of an integrated communications infrastructure with corresponding price signals will make it difficult to handle the increased load of plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles. Smart chargers, time-of-use rates, and advanced meters will be key players, helping to manage a very complex control problem on already constrained grids, especially in places such as California. Car manufacturers will benefit from having an integrated, simple charging solution for customers with electric cars.

Support for more intelligent appliances at the demand-side – A Smart Grid means intelligent appliances. The Grid-friendly appliances program from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory gives appliances the ability to sense grid stress and reduce their power use to prevent grid emergencies. Appliance manufacturers will be able to market grid-friendly appliances for a premium to consumers.

Demand Response for Managing Air Pollution – Part of the problem of urban air pollution is that it follows “peak hour” patterns, in many areas exceeding EPA’s allowable levels only for a few days or hours during the year. Levels of ozone and particulate matter sometimes reach levels that are harmful to human health. These peaks often correspond with high electricity use, which is a prominent cause of urban air pollution in many places. In the North East, ISO NE estimates projects that their peak electricity demand will increase by 13-20% between 2009 and 2015. In addition to the use of demand response for the control of peak load, some organizations in New England have looked at the possibility of using demand response to reduce emissions for the purpose of improving public health. This will become increasingly important as more states adopt stricter air emissions standards, mimicking California’s model. Utilities could use this as an opportunity to build partnerships with environmental protection agencies and air quality management districts, which represent the interests of clean air.

Advanced metering as a method of calculating environmental footprints – Utilities have the opportunity to dynamically present electricity use alongside with carbon emissions that result from them. Utilities that want to promote their “green electricity” programs can use this to reach environmentally conscious consumers. Recently, E.on utilitity subsidiaries in Louisville became the first utiliites in North America to add a customer's carbon cost to their utility bill. Organizations and individuals can use this to help assess their progress towards their greenhouse gas emissions goals.
Why are environmental benefits not included in Smart Grid dicussions?

Environmental benefits are usually only mentioned in passing in Smart Grid documents. The dimensions of a Smart Grid’s environmental benefits tend to make them difficult to quantify. Perhaps because:

* The benefits occur outside the organizational scope of the firm that implemented the program
* The benefits are overshadowed by the economic case
* The benefits do not accrue to a single organization
* Environmental benefits occur over long periods of time
* Environmental benefits tend to occur due to avoided emissions or offset impacts, which are not often quantified

The last point—that environmental benefits are often dispersed and therefore not immediately tangible—seems especially relevant. Unfortunately, this trend also extends to some of the other kinds of benefits of smart grid technologies. In other words, the modern grid as a concept suffers from high “transaction costs.” Transaction costs in this sense can be placed in the context of the economist Ronald Coase’s theory: that a highly dispersed set of downstream beneficiaries will have trouble overcoming the transaction costs to build the case for what would otherwise be an economically efficient solution.

Collecting these stakeholders is a difficult task. Smart grid stakeholders, therefore, need to make a clear case for the environmental benefits of their technologies, and appropriately identify and approach the beneficiaries. A recent paper by Resources for the Future notes the potential financial importance of cataloguing the carbon emissions offset by the implementation of renewable technologies. The paper estimates net losses to the power sector from carbon emissions legislation could be as high as $9 billion. Given the high value of carbon credits, keeping track of emissions reductions and investments that enable emissions reductions will hold an important financial incentive. The environmental benefits for smart grid technologies do not often come out of the direct use of the technologies, but out of programs that creatively utilize technologies, or through programs and resources enabled by the availability of a modern grid.

A few other links from the latest Smart Grid Newsletter for any smart grid geeks reading - IBM on The Key to Economic Expansion in Utilities (pdf) and Information Is Power: The Intelligent Utility Network (pdf), plus Getting a Start on the Smart Grid: Why Smart Meters are Critical.

The Toronto Star's look at Ausra's Canadian connection is called "Turning sun's rays into gold".

He's determined to get countries such as the United States and China off their nasty habit of burning coal. He's got the financial backing of two of the world's highest-profile venture capitalists, and the attention of former U.S. president Bill Clinton.

If David Mills gets his way, America's sun-bathed states and the deserts of Asia and Africa will become hubs of clean-power generation for their respective continents. It's an ambitious mission for a mild-mannered Canadian – a former CBC camera technician from south Etobicoke and physics graduate from McMaster University.

But Mills, who left Canada in the early 1970s and spent the next 30 years of his career in Australia, moved back to North America in March to turn his lifelong dream – generating gigawatts of affordable, emission-free electricity from the heat of the sun – into a commercial reality. "This is the most exciting time in my career," Mills, who turns 61 in November, told the Star during a telephone interview from his new office in Silicon Valley. "Better late than never."

Mills is founder, chairman and chief scientific officer of Ausra Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif.-based developer of solar-thermal power plants that, in his view, are poised in certain geographies to challenge the supremacy of fossil-fuel electricity generation.

Solar thermal power systems capture heat from the sun and create steam for generating electricity. The approach has existed for decades and, while cheaper than using solar panels to produce electricity directly, widespread deployment has been held back by high costs compared to conventional electricity sources and a number of technical hurdles.

Mills, inspired in the late 1970s by a scientific study out of the University of Chicago, has spent 30 years trying to refine the technology to the point where it can be scaled up to the size of a major power plant and compete on price with coal-fired generation. This meant inventing a novel alternative to expensive parabolic mirrors and designing a simple system that uses commodity materials and has a way to store heat and supply electricity 24 hours a day. It's been a long haul, but Ausra says it has overcome the technical and economic problems and is ready to make history. "We're considering many projects in many states at the moment, and all of them are feasible," explains Mills, estimating that California and Texas alone have the potential to supply 96 per cent of all electricity in the United States. "The amount of area we require to generate all of the United States' electricity is 145 kilometres by 145 kilometres."

It sounds large, but put into perspective, it's less area than the amount of U.S. land that's mined for coal. "It's also very small compared to the area of desert that's available," he says. On a worldwide basis, the potential is huge. Greenpeace and the European Solar Thermal Industry Association concluded in a 2005 report that "there are no technical, economic or resource barriers to supplying 5 per cent of the world's electricity needs from solar thermal power by 2040" – equivalent to about 600 nuclear reactors or 1,200 medium-sized coal plants.

The numbers are probably higher today, given the advancements made over the past two years. At the moment it's big talk, but some major players in the U.S. electricity sector are taking serious notice. Florida Power & Light, a subsidiary of FPL Group Inc., plans to use Ausra's technology to construct a 300-megawatt solar thermal power plant – starting with a smaller 10-megawatt project and expanding from there.

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton announced FPL's commitment last Wednesday at the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative in New York City. Ausra has other projects in the works, including a 175-megawatt plant in California that could end up feeding power to utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

A job notice on Ausra's website says the company wants to scale up its solar thermal deployment to 2,000 megawatts over the next three years, a fraction of the time it would take to get a similarly sized nuclear plant built. "The whole picture is changing very, very rapidly," says Mills, adding that his technology is fast-approaching the cost thresholds for coal and natural gas, which in the United States are a cent or two below 10 cents per kilowatt-hour – and that excludes the strong possibility of future carbon taxes or caps. "You'll be seeing 10 cents per kilowatt-hour bandied around Ausra, but that will drop very rapidly over the next few years."

The company is confident it can eventually push costs below 7 cents per kilowatt-hour at a time when fossil-fuel generation is getting more expensive, politically risky, and is encountering resistance in Kyoto-friendly communities. "In the last six months interest has started to explode, and this coincides exactly with the cancellation of coal plants in the United States," adds Mills.

The competition will be intense, and there are many regulatory battles to win. Utilities are also a notoriously conservative, risk-averse bunch, and the strong lobby of the coal and nuclear industry is a force that can't be ignored. There's also the question of whether the transmission exists, or can be affordably built, to carry electricity from remote desert-like locations to major power-consuming centres.

Still, a supportive political climate, public anxiety over climate change, and the expectation that carbon emissions will eventually face some kind of cap or tax all work in Ausra's favour.

It was at the University of New South Wales in Sydney that he conceived of the "compact linear fresnel reflector," or CLFR. It's a design for a solar thermal plant that uses nearly flat rotating mirrors that focus the sun's light on a fixed overhead pipe filled with water. The sun boils the water, producing steam that spins a turbine to generate power.

Mills formed a company called Solar Heat and Power Pty. Ltd. to commercialize the technology, and while he did manage to build a small demonstration facility in a parking lot in Sydney, the business never gained traction Down Under and last summer the transplanted Canadian – at this point more Aussie than Canuck – began losing steam. "I was very serious about retiring," recalls Mills.

Then came that call, that opportunity, which usually signals a turning point in Hollywood movies. Venture capitalists Vinod Khosla and Ray Lane, both partners with venture capital titan Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (the firm that made early and successful bets on Google, Amazon.com and AOL), were alerted to what Mills was doing and wanted to learn more. They asked him to visit California for a meeting. ...

WorldChanging has a post on "Priming the Demand for Green Building".

Like virtually every other segment of the global sustainability industry, green building technology can only advance with the support of the end user. Every new practice, every price drop and every advocacy program is dependent entirely on market demand -- and creating that involves reaching the folks who actually want to live and do business in an environmentally-friendly built environment.

This revelation really crystallizes a couple of essential points. First, customer demand will continue to drive the green building industry. Second, developers (the folks with the money) are relegated to a position of "chasing the market" -- that is, reacting to consumer demand and struggling to see what's on the horizon. (The building industry rewards forward-thinking developers, but their numbers are few.) Above all, it makes engaging the end user paramount to the future of the sustainable building industry.

I'm a real estate journalist; a large part of my job involves tracking the projects and announcements from some of the largest architecture and development firms in the US. Building "spec" without a tenant locked into the project is very, very risky -- so much so that the idea of a spec green building is almost completely nonexistent. Thus most green buildings are known as "build to suit" projects -- that is, they're designed and constructed for a specific tenant, often incorporating techniques and materials specified by that tenant. For the past two years, in almost every instance, the developers have built green mainly to satisfy the wishes of the tenant.

Generally, though, the green building industry doesn't market itself to the end user, but to the architects and others in the design community. Long a champions for combining sustainability and aesthetics, these professionals have become the de facto voices of the green building industry. With few exceptions, it's their job to evaluate sustainable building opportunities for a given project; taking advantage of these opportunities often this comes down to basic education and a healthy dose of browbeating.

Sometimes there's a cost premium associated with a green venture, but increasingly that amount is negligible, especially when one factors the associated costs into the lifetime operation of the building. A solar array, for example, might be pricey in the short run -- but if that "first cost" can be rationalized for the 30-year lifespan of the building, then it becomes much more reasonable.

Municipal regulation can also go a long way toward driving the green building industry. In Chicago, the Department of the Environment has established, the Chicago Standard, a rating tool used to ensure that new projects fit with the city's green mandates. The Chicago Standard approximates the U.S. Green Building Council's Silver-level certification and is currently required for all new city-owned building projects.

Last summer, the Windy City joined with Albuquerque, Miami and Seattle to adopt the Architecture 2030 Challenge, which sets out strict deadlines for reducing the carbon footprint of buildings, with a goal of making our built environment carbon neutral by 2030.

Still, the ultimate success of the green building industry will depend on education. The U.S. Green Building Council is its' most visible advocate here in the US; its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system is both robust and pervasive. And there are other resources that can give consumers and builders the know-how to ask tough questions and advance the movement:

* American Institute of Architects boasts its own sustainability venture with links to further resources.
* The U.S. Conference of Mayors has been encouraging cities everywhere to adopt the Kyoto Protocol on a local level. Worldwide, 685 mayors have signed on; the organization's Climate Protection Summit is scheduled for November 1-2 in Seattle.
* Green Globes is a building rating system from the Green Building Initiative that's a bit different from LEED. It's web-based and puts more emphasis on verifying each sustainable component using third parties. Users have also said it's cheaper than LEED certification.
* The Pangea Partnership brings green building advocacy to the developing world -- often with an emphasis on energy savings and youth involvement.
* The World Green Building Council serves to unite all the disparate green building movements in countries around the world, with a special emphasis on countries like China with rapidly developing infrastructure.
* Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility lends a voice to industry professionals who want to take their work beyond the drafting table.

The Independent has an update on the proposed Iraq oil law (yes - they still haven't handed over the oil, though the Kurds are trying to) - "Black gold turns grey as Western giants prepare to draw from the wells of Iraq". Meanwhile Gulf News reports the New oil law is not in Iraq's interest

The big oil multinationals thought the prize was theirs under new production-sharing agreements in the war-torn country. But the 'Iraqi wealth for the Iraqi people' movement is growing amid internecine conflicts and trade union resistance.

Iraq is open for business," promised oil ministry officials. "Investment can reduce Iraq's poverty and help bring peace," came back the chorus from oil company chiefs.

As the executives toasted one another with cocktails sponsored by Lukoil at the Iraq Petroleum 2007 conference in Dubai earlier this month, ordinary Iraqis were living in a state of emergency. Oxfam reports that 28 per cent of the country's children are malnourished, that four million people regularly can't buy enough to eat, and that 70 per cent are without adequate water supplies. With 60,000 Iraqis fleeing their homes each month and reports of an average of 62 violent deaths per day, the soft carpets, piped music and quiet deal-making at the Hyatt Regency hotel were a world away from occupied Iraq.

At the same time, a parallel conference was taking place in Basra under the banner, "Oil wealth belongs to the Iraqi people". Organised by the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (Ifou) and attended by civil society leaders, activists and academics from all over the country, this was Ifou's third conference aimed at stopping the likes of Shell and BP from gaining a controlling stake in Iraq's oil wealth.

With a growing movement to keep the oil in the public sector, disputes between the Kurdish regional government (KRG) and Baghdad, and no legal framework for investment, the black goldrush that international oil companies are banking on is not a done deal.

Iraq, with proven reserves of 115 billion barrels represents the biggest untapped oil and gas market on the planet. Iraqi oil production stands at just 2.5 per cent of the world's total even though the country possesses 10 per cent (or potentially double that, according to some estimates) of global reserves. With just 4 per cent of the world's oil in the hands of multinationals and a growing trend for nationalisation in countries from Venezuela to Kazakhstan, Iraq is seen by many international groups as their best chance to turn the tables.

Central to their hopes is a new oil law friendly to foreign investment. Drafted in closed-door consultations between international oil companies, the International Monetary Fund and the American and British governments, this law is the blueprint for foreign companies to explore, develop, produce and sell Iraqi oil under exclusive contracts lasting up to 30 years.

Regardless of whether Iraq's parliament passes the law, oil minister Hussain al-Shahristani (pictured right) has declared the country open for business and plans to invite companies to invest under existing Baath regime legislation to speed up the process. "There is no legal vacuum in Iraq," he declared at the Iraq Petroleum conference in Dubai. "We are now under the oil law of Iraq that has been in force for a few years. We are going to go ahead and prepare our model contracts."

Controversy has raged over the provisions of the new law, with political parties, religious authorities, oil experts and trade unions calling for a referendum and a moratorium on any long-term contracts with foreign groups. Planning minister Ali Baban has pledged to resign if the law is passed; the Association of Muslim Scholars has issued a fatwa against it; more than 100 senior technocrats and experts have written to the government boycotting it; and Iraqi oil unions have not ruled out strike action.

Asked about the possibility of a consultation involving Iraqi civil society and unions over the law – a senior source at the Iraqi ministry of planning, who did not wish to be named, said: "Well Iraqi workers, they come from a low class – they are not well informed about these things. They are always demanding something: whether it's higher wages or conditions, they are always wanting something." He denied they should be included in consultations.

Oil and gas lawyer Jay Park has run training workshops for the oil ministry and international companies on the draft law. He was the author of oil legislation in both Somalia and Kurdistan and has represented foreign companies and the KRG in contract negotiations. In a workshop at the Dubai conference, Parks paraphrased Bismarck, quipping: "Laws are like sausages: you don't want to know how they were made, you don't want to know how the sausage machine works."

But it is not on sausage machines that Iraqi civil society begs to differ. A recent research poll commissioned by US and UK human rights groups found that just 4 per cent of Iraqis felt they had received enough information about the oil law. Some 63 per cent said they believed their oil industry should be developed by state companies, with 32 per cent of those indicating a strong preference. ...

The type of contracts on offer has also been a source of controversy. Production-sharing agreements (PSAs) were the first to be touted by the law – exclusive long-term deals that Iraq's unions liken to earlier, colonial-era concession agreements. These gave companies virtually unlimited profits, and control over the production, depletion and sale of Iraq's oil.

PSAs are usually used by countries with reserves to which it is hard to gain access and, as a result, high extraction costs. None of the top six Opec countries use the agreements, opting instead for service contracts. These allow the state to retain full authority over all production decisions and consign the investing company to the role of contractor.

But the international groups want PSAs. In 2004, BP, Shell, Chevron, Exxon, Total and ENI employed the services of Washington-based corporate lobbyists the International Tax and Investment Centre. The ITIC produced a document which concluded that PSAs were the only investment option for Iraq. Officials from the British Foreign Office and Treasury advised the ITIC in late 2004 on their strategy for influencing the Iraqi government. The British ambassador to Iraq then sent the document formally to the Iraqi finance minister. ...

Washington has referred to the oil legislation as a revenue- sharing law and reconciliation measure. Yet just one of the 46 provisions refers to revenue sharing and mentions it as the subject of a second law. The "reconciliation" aspect is the incentivising of regional authorities to counter insurgency and achieve their own political and religious ambitions by controlling oil policy. This has led some commentators to call the law an "oil for peace" measure, and others a plan for the dismemberment of the country.

The New York Times has an article on Blackwater ("the hired guns of the State Department") and the "mercenary evangelical complex". I'm all for a bit of weirdness as a general rule but the US occupation of Iraq long ago ceased to be funny in any way.

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster,” Nietzsche said. “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

We’re gazing into the abyss all right, and Blackwater is gazing back.

Besides having an army for hire, brave kids who are paid to fight so that most Americans are not personally touched by war, we have the real mercenaries. And they’re a spooky cadre, careening outside the laws of Iraq, the United States and the military. President Bush continues to preach that we must defeat the “dark ideology” of extremists with “a more hopeful vision.”

But the compromises W. makes to slog on in Iraq, be it with warlords, dictators or out-of-control contractors, are spreading a dark stain on America’s image. “Blackwater appears to have fostered a culture of shoot first and sometimes kill, and then ask the questions,” said Representative Elijah Cummings, a Democrat, yesterday at a House hearing.

The Times reports today that Blackwater’s explanation of an incident in Baghdad on Sept. 16 that left 17 dead and 24 wounded is sketchy. It seems as though a bullet struck an Iraqi man driving his mother to pick up his father, a pathologist, at the hospital. The dead man’s weight, The Times reports, “probably remained on the accelerator and propelled the car forward” toward a Blackwater convoy.

Blackwater guards then unleashed a spray of gunfire and explosives, even though witnesses did not see anyone shooting at the American convoy and even though Iraqis were turning their cars around and escaping the scene. Newsweek quotes the Iraqi national police as saying that Blackwater vehicles “opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason.”

The Blackwater desperados are a sinister symbol of how little progress we’ve made in Iraq, that V.I.P.’s — or “packages,” as the contractors call them — can’t make a move in the country without the high-priced hired guns of the State Department.

Americans have been antimercenary since the British sent 30,000 German Hessians after George Washington in the Revolutionary War. But W. outsourced his presidency to Cheney and Rummy, and Cheney and Rummy went to war on the cheap and outsourced large chunks of the Iraq occupation to Halliburton and Blackwater. The American taxpayer got gouged, and so did the American reputation. …

Once there was the military-industrial complex. Now we have the mercenary-evangelical complex.

Links:

* The Energy Blog - Macy's to Install 8.9 MW of Solar Power in California Stores, Combined with Energy Efficiency Program Utility-Provided Energy to be Reduced 40%
* Christian Science Monitor - New math for power utilities: sell less, make more. Seems a little dodgy to me - I don't see this sort of regulation leading to clean power - just taxpayer funded lockins of the untenable status quo.
* Beyond The Beyond - Spime Watch: More from Spime Inc, The Location Based Service
* Reuters - Quebec introduces carbon tax, Canada CEOs urge more
* Crikey - One World, Two Newspapers
* SMH - Beaches, islands raise climate change alarm
* TreeHugger - Climate Paranoia Strikes Deep. Bill Hefffernan makes TreeHugger. "When denial collapses, paranoia fills the gap".
* Reuters - Ships to shun Northwest Passage. Too many rocks in the inner passage - they'd prefer to go over Russia or across the North pole once it has melted.
* SMH - Ozone hole 'shrunk by nearly a third'.
* The Australian - BHP facing a war in oil search. Venturing to the Falkland Islands. Maybe sheep farming isn't their primary attraction after all.
* The Energy Blog - VeraSun Energy Suspends Construction of Ethanol Refinery. Falling ethanol prices claim a victim.
* SMH - Olympic Dam to expand. Ramping up the uranium supply.
* The Energy Blog - Contract Awarded to Study Recycling of Nuclear Waste
* Richard Heinberg - As The World Burns
* Daily Kos - Darrell Issa to Henry Waxman: Investigate Blackwater and Die
* TomDispatch - Having a Carnage Party In Iraq
* Past Peak - What Ahmadinajad Said At Columbia
* BBC - Burning chilli sparks terror fear
* Beyond The Beyond - China Mieville Doesn't Believe in Floating Libertarian Utopias. Mr Cranky.