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#Post#: 1294--------------------------------------------------
The Book Resource Revolution: From patterns of scarcity to patte
rns of abundance
By: AGelbert Date: June 5, 2014, 7:37 pm
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Inside the Book Resource Revolution
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Jun 3, 2014
Authors Amory B. Lovins Chief Scientist
Jules Kortenhorst CEO
From patterns of scarcity to patterns of abundance
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;D
During the first Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and
early 19th centuries, economic growth and societal progress
faced a problem of relative scarcity—not of resources, which
were then considered inexhaustibly abundant, but of people.
Making people (and the labor processes by which they
manufactured goods and provided services) radically more
productive, the Industrial Revolution unlocked
orders-of-magnitude gains in economic growth.
Today, patterns of scarcity have shifted. People are now
abundant, but many of the resources that metaphorically and
literally fuel our economy, and the nature that absorbs their
wastes and impacts, are becoming scarce. Continued progress must
thus liberate consumption and scarcity from economic growth. We
must define the next Industrial Revolution, one that makes
business and the environment mutually supportive, rather than
one buoyed at the expense of the other.
Natural Capitalism, published in 1999, charted just such a
pathway, based on four principles: 1) radically increase the
productivity of natural resources, 2) shift to biologically
inspired production models and materials with closed loops, no
waste, and no toxicity, 3) move to a “service-and-flow” business
model that rewards the first two shifts, and 4) reinvest in
natural capital. Along the way, companies will necessarily adopt
new technologies, new manufacturing processes, and new
management practices—all of which will drive innovation faster.
Now the new book Resource Revolution, by Stefan Heck and Matt
Rogers, similarly argues that companies have enormous
opportunity to improve resource productivity dramatically,
sparking the next industrial revolution. Companies like Tesla
Motors, Zipcar, Opower, SolarCity, and Nest Labs, write Heck and
Rogers, have capitalized on the resource revolution through five
approaches: substitution, optimization, virtualization,
circularity, and waste elimination.
Substitution
As Heck and Rogers explain, many new materials have begun to
reshape industrial and consumer products. Companies must
consider every resource they use and substitute
higher-performing and less expensive, less risky, or less scarce
materials. One example is carbon fiber. As we showed in
Reinventing Fire, automotive manufacturing investment can be cut
by 80 percent with carbon fiber-based autos vs. steel-based
ones, while providing lighter, more efficient, better
performing, cleaner, and as safe or safer cars.
Optimization
The second approach to resource revolution is optimizing a
resource’s use, akin to Natural Capitalism’s charge to radically
increase the productivity of natural resources. Through
fundamental changes in technology, design, and processes,
farsighted companies are developing ways to make natural
resources—energy, minerals, water, forests—stretch five, ten,
even 100 times further than they do today. For example, UPS
rerouted its trucks to avoid left turns, thus reducing fuel
consumption, improving safety and speed, and saving the company
money. Similarly, OPower has used behavioral science and
cloud-based software to motivate consumers to cut their energy
consumption by two to four percent annually. RMI’s integrative
design further expands the resource-productivity potential,
often at lower cost and hence with expanding returns.
Virtualization
Virtualization encompasses moving processes out of the physical
world, or not doing things actively because they’ve been
automated. In some regards this is similar to Natural
Capitalism’s service and flow model, in which businesses shift
from selling physical goods to delivering a flow of virtual
service. Why sell light bulbs when customers really want
illumination? (Thomas Edison figured this out, but was overruled
in 1892, and apart from street lighting, utilities have been
selling kilowatt-hours ever since.)
Heck and Rogers highlight Nest Labs as one of the companies that
has practiced virtualization with great success. The company
took a traditional thermostat and turned it into a digital
platform that provides multiple dynamic energy and security
services. Another example of virtualization is telecommuting.
The need to physically commute by car, bus, or train is replaced
by the ability to virtually commute via telephone, email, video
chat, and other forms of connectivity. Meanwhile, commuting’s
resource consumption is replaced by more productive time for
employees.
Circularity
Finding value in products after their initial use is what
happens in closed-loop, cradle-to-grave product management.
Producers of goods need to be responsible for their fabrication,
maintenance, and ultimate complete reuse and recycling, with
zero waste. In closed-loop production systems, modeled on
nature’s designs, every output either is returned harmlessly to
the ecosystem as a nutrient, like compost, or becomes an input
for manufacturing another product.
Heck and Rogers use the example of cars to show how circularity
can produce greater gains. Systems or components can be
upgraded, refurbished, reused, or materials reclaimed and
recycled, leading to multiple uses, longer life, and much higher
productivity. Tesla created a recycling program for its battery
packs, recapturing the cobalt and separating out the lithium,
allowing for much greater reuse. Another example is DuPont,
which actually transforms its industrial scrap and post-consumer
waste into higher-value products.
Waste Elimination
In this country the amount of material we dig up and move around
and process and use and throw away amounts to about twenty times
one’s body weight per person per day. Worldwide this amounts to
close to a half trillion tons per year—and yet only 1 percent of
it is going into durable products; the other 99 percent is
waste. The second principle in Natural Capitalism, a shift to
biologically inspired designs, seeks not merely to reduce waste
but to design out the very concept of waste. So too write Heck
and Rogers in Resource Revolution. With 3-D printers, they note,
many manufacturing processes can drastically cut waste because
material will only be used exactly where it’s needed, and
“subtractive” manufacturing will become a thing of the past.
Another example is Interface, a global manufacturer of carpets
and interior furnishings. Interface built the least
oil-dependent cost structure in the industry while cutting its
greenhouse gas emissions by 82 percent in 11 years. A quarter of
its profit comes from systematically eliminating waste.
The Next Industrial Revolution
The next industrial revolution, perhaps, will be not about
shifting patterns of scarcity—from people to resources—but about
shifting to a new pattern of abundance and resourcefulness.
Natural Capitalism offered one such pathway, creating abundance
by design. Now, Resource Revolution offers a resounding and
renewed call for such a shift, highlighting the necessary steps
and the innovative companies leading the way.
Book cover courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
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#Post#: 1325--------------------------------------------------
Eye-Opening Map of Front Groups Attacking Renewable Energy
By: AGelbert Date: June 9, 2014, 1:31 am
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Eye-Opening Map of Front Groups Attacking Renewable
Energy
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06/06/2014 03:59 PM
SustainableBusiness.com News
President Obama took a pretty big risk in directing the EPA to
announce power plant emissions rules before the 2014 election.
Democratic candidates in coal states are reeling, but it goes
much farther than that as the fossil fuel industry ramps up
campaign contributions to help Republicans win the Senate
majority.
They want Keystone and natural gas exports approved, and they
want to expand fracking. And the last thing they want are any
regulations.
You can be sure, the Koch Bros are angry about Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid's quest to expose what these two men are doing
to our country: among his many recent attacks, he called them
out for being a main cause of climate change. And he said, they
are "waging a war against anything that protects the
environment."
Which is true, as we have laid out in multiple news stories. The
Koch Bros back some 93 groups working across the country on
local, state and national levels. They are not alone, of course.
Coal, oil, gas and utilities are all pushing to keep the status
quo.
This powerful infographic should make it crystal clear, if you
have any doubts about the extent of their influence.
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Map of Front Groups Attacking State Renewable Energy Policies
2013-2014
Koch Attack Web
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Read the report by the Energy and Policy Institute, which
details what's happening in each of these states:
Website:
www.energyandpolicy.org/renewable-energy-state-policy-attacks-re
port
#Post#: 1326--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth
By: AGelbert Date: June 9, 2014, 1:23 pm
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Renewed Energy
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Nature | Editorial
Reforms at the US Department of Energy are recharging research.
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04 June 2014
When physicist Steven Chu took over as head of the US Department
of Energy (DOE) in 2009, he vowed to reform its research
culture. Many felt that the department had become much too
bureaucratic — too rigid, too unresponsive to new opportunities,
too divided into disciplines and too isolated from the needs of
the marketplace.
Related stories
•Solar energy: Springtime for the artificial leaf
•Opportunities and challenges for a sustainable energy future
•Activation energy
The following year, Chu launched five Energy Innovation Hubs
intended to mimic the research style that he remembered from his
time working at the AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey.
Each hub would focus on a well-defined challenge in the area of
renewable energy — a top priority for the then-new
administration of US President Barack Obama. It would bring
together all the necessary expertise, from basic and applied
research to engineering and early product development.
Four years later, there is justified, if cautious, optimism
about the outcome of Chu’s experiment. Viewed purely as research
projects, most of the hubs seem to be doing well. In the next
few months, the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis,
headquartered at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, hopes to demonstrate a first-generation prototype of
an ‘artificial leaf’ — a cheap, robust and highly efficient
system able to make liquid fuels out of sunlight, air and water
(see page 22). The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research,
headquartered at the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory near
Chicago in Illinois, is likewise making good progress towards
its goal: devices that can store much more electricity in much
less space than the current champions, lithium-ion batteries
(see Nature 507, 26–28; 2014).
Only one of the five hubs has fallen by the wayside. The Energy
Efficient Buildings hub, headquartered in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, was eventually judged to be too diffuse in its
goals for DOE purposes, and too oriented towards trying to get
people to use currently available technology. But it still
exists. In April it took a new name — the Consortium for
Building Energy Innovation — and relaunched itself as an
independent research and demonstration centre.
There are also grounds for optimism about the hubs’ larger
purpose of transforming the DOE research culture — although in
this case, the progress is less clear-cut. In some ways the
agency is as bureaucratic as ever. And talk of change within the
department has provoked its share of resistance from individuals
who feel that their programmes are threatened.
“There is considerable excitement in the Department of Energy —
a sense of new opportunities, new ventures, new people.”
Nevertheless, there is considerable excitement in the DOE — a
sense of new opportunities, new ventures, new people. The hubs
are responsible for some of that feeling, as are innovations
such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E),
established in 2009 to fund speculative, high-risk, high-reward
investigations, and a network of Energy Frontier Research
Centers, launched the same year to promote cutting-edge basic
research.
But at least as important is the sense that the people at the
top understand and support reform. Chu’s initiatives have been
continued by his successor, physicist Ernest Moniz — who last
year told Congress that the hubs would be a good model for
reforming the DOE’s network of 17 national laboratories. Last
month, Moniz appointed a panel to review the national labs, with
a report due early next year.
Obama’s administration has been supportive. In both his 2013 and
2014 State of the Union addresses, Obama called for a
US$1-billion National Network for Manufacturing Innovation. An
interagency programme modelled in part on the DOE’s energy hubs,
this would comprise 15 or more centres looking to cut the
energy, time and materials required to make things. The goal is
to help US industries to compete with low-cost factories in
emerging nations such as China, and to make it easier for
start-up companies — including many renewable-energy firms — to
bring new products to market. Congress has not yet acted on this
proposal, but the administration has established several centres
using existing funds from the DOE and other agencies.
Such efforts need to be supported and encouraged — especially by
Congress, which holds the federal purse strings, and by the
energy industry, which can tap vast amounts of cash for
activities it perceives to be in its interest. And even here
there is reason for optimism. Despite the ideological warfare
that has riven Washington DC in recent years, both parties have
generally endorsed the DOE’s reform efforts. And industry
leaders seem ready to work closely with researchers to bring
innovative products to market. One example is the Clean Energy
Trust, a Chicago-based consortium of energy companies that
supports renewable-energy start-ups.
Congress and the Obama administration could greatly help this
movement by reviving the idea of the Clean Energy Deployment
Administration: a ‘green bank’ that would pool public and
private money for large-scale investments in clean-energy
infrastructure. The idea was proposed a few years ago, but
abandoned amid budget wrangles. Now that the federal deficit is
easing and the economy has begun to improve, it could find
renewed support on both sides of the aisle. The future, for
once, is starting to look brighter.
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Nature 510, 7–8 (05 June 2014) doi:10.1038/510007b
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Re: The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth
By: AGelbert Date: June 9, 2014, 2:46 pm
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[move][font=courier]How Doubling Renewable Energy Worldwide
Could Save $740 Billion per Year[/font][/move]
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Brandon Baker | June 6, 2014 12:21 pm
When combining all of the world’s countries, 18 percent of the
world’s electricity consumption comes from renewable sources. A
global agency estimates that amount could be doubled in a little
more than 15 years while saving a combined $740 billion per year
in the process.
The latest study, REmap 2030, from the International Renewable
Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates that amping up renewables to
constitute 36 percent of the international energy mix would more
than offset the costs associated with fossil fuel pollution. It
would also reduce the global demand for oil and gas by about 15
percent, and for coal by 26 percent.
Some of the graphics within REmap include annual investment
needs and percentage breakdowns in doubling renewables’ share of
the world’s TFEC—total final energy consumption—by 2030.
SLIDESHOW ► (at link ;D)
To IRENA, the question isn’t if it can be done, but how
investment dollars should be spent to ensure that renewable
energy doubling happens.
“The central policy question is this: What energy sources do we
want to invest in? Our data shows that renewable energy can help
avert catastrophic climate change and save the world money, if
all costs are considered,” Adnan Z. Amin, director-general of
IRENA, said at the report’s unveiling in New York. “In answering
this question, REmap 2030 makes a clear case for renewables. It
shows the transition is affordable based on existing
technologies, and that the benefits go well beyond the positive
climate impact. [img width=120
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“Countries today face a clear choice for a sustainable energy
future.” ;D
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Re: The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth
By: AGelbert Date: June 10, 2014, 6:20 pm
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East Africa Pushes to Adopt Solar Energy [img width=100
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Renewable Energy World Editors
June 10, 2014 | 1 Comments
LONDON -- Rwanda’s government has signed a Memorandum of
Agreement (MOA) with the Goldsol II energy consortium for the
construction of a 10-MW solar power plant in Kayonza, Eastern
Province.
The US$20 million project, which will be among the largest such
projects in East Africa, is expected to be operational by 2016.
Comprising of TMM Renewables, Gesto Energy Africa and 3E Power
Solar, the Goldsol II consortium will initially carry out a
feasibility study which will then develop into a long term
agreement to generate, manage and distribute power.
Commenting on the development, Valentine Rugwabiza, the Rwanda
Development Board’s chief executive officer, said: “The current
installed generation capacity is close to 120 MW. The 2017
energy target is 563 MW to allow for affordable access to power
to cover most of the country, which is currently at 19.4 percent
to increase to 70 percent by 2017.”
The solar power project was awarded to the consortium through a
competitive tender project run by the Energy Water and
Sanitation Authority (EWSA).
Rwanda has established a solar energy target of 20 MW by 2017.
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Google Aims To "Fundamentally Change the World of Power&quo
t;
By: AGelbert Date: June 11, 2014, 5:51 pm
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Google Aims To "Fundamentally Change the World of Power"
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According to sources familiar with the company, Google has set
its sights on transforming the delivery of electrons.
Brian Womack and Mark Chediak, Bloomberg
June 11, 2014
SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Inc. plans a deeper push into the
$363.7 billion U.S. power-sales market by working on tools that
help utilities deliver electricity to homes and businesses more
efficiently, people with knowledge of the matter said.
The operator of the most popular Internet-search engine is in
the early stages of building software and hardware tools to
manage power lines and other infrastructure, said the people,
who asked not to be identified because the matter is private.
The technology is being developed by Google’s EnergyAccess team
and led by Arun Majumdar, vice president of the company’s energy
unit, the people said.
Google, a big consumer of electricity for the computer servers
that power its services, is looking at ways to transform the
century-old utility industry, which has been struggling to adapt
to changing demands for power management and production. As
solar, wind and other renewable energy sources come online, the
power grids that transmit electricity will need to be more
flexible and efficient.
“They recognize there is a huge wide-open space and that the
utility companies are not stepping up to the plate,” Steven Chu,
former secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, said of
Google during an interview last month at an energy conference in
Fremont, California. “They see a huge market opportunity.”
Chu said he isn’t familiar with Google’s plans and was
expressing his views on what the company might do. Kelly Mason,
a spokeswoman for Mountain View, California-based Google,
declined to comment on its energy project and who is handling
the effort.
Power Projects
Others have pushed into energy-management services. ABB Ltd.,
Siemens AG and Alstom SA are among the companies offering tools
that can help utilities integrate rooftop solar systems and
quickly respond to changes in electricity demand such as on hot
summer days when air-conditioning units tax the grid.
Google, which is also funding projects in health care,
computerized eyewear and self-driving cars, has been stepping up
investments in recent years to make energy more clean and
efficient. Earlier this year, it spent $3.2 billion to acquire
Nest Labs, a digital-thermostat company, and is an investor in
Atlantic Grid Development LLC, a project designed to help
deliver electricity in New Jersey.
Google has also put more than $1 billion into environmentally
friendly energy power projects in the U.S. and around the world.
That includes everything from wind farms in Oregon to solar
efforts in Germany.
Such investments have given the company experience in the power
industry, preparing it to develop new products that could help
with managing the increasingly complex power market.
Electric Grid
Already, advances in areas including sustainable power and home
energy management have begun to threaten the traditional utility
business model.
Most electricity now moves from large, centralized generation
stations to homes and businesses, powering heating units,
laptops and blenders. While generally effective, that approach
has raised concerns for potentially being inefficient, polluting
and costly -- especially when compared to the decentralized
movement of bits of information on the Internet.
Now, electricity has begun to flow in new ways on the grid,
empowering consumers and prompting demand for new services to
efficiently manage the distribution of electricity. Technologies
are emerging that will allow for more granular control and
movement of electricity, similar to how data is processed and
moved over broadband networks.
Google’s Energy Access team is part of a larger group looking at
infrastructure, Internet access andenergy that is led by Craig
Barratt, who recently joined Chief Executive Officer Larry
Page’s top team of leaders, one person familiar with the company
said.
Energy Control
“Google is working on innovative solutions for access to clean,
low-cost electricity,” according to a job posting on Google’s
website. “Google is seeking to develop technologies and products
to address global opportunities for electricity delivery via new
and improved infrastructure.”
The company didn’t hold back in its assessment of the potential,
saying it involved “solutions that aim to fundamentally change
the world of power.”
Google also has some patents that target power efficiency. One
patent published in 2012 cites an apparatus to manage the flow
of electricity on the grid with an eye on how the power is being
used by electric vehicles, batteries and household appliances.
“Appropriate control of power use over time can compensate for
variations in power supply or demand elsewhere in an electrical
grid,” the patent said. “Further, such control of energy use can
improve the stability of the electrical grid.”
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Mass Production
There are at least two postings tied to the project referred to
as “Energy Access/Bottom Up Grid” -- one for a hardware engineer
in power electronics and the other for a mechanical/thermal
engineer. The project is slated to get to “mass production,”
according to one of the job listings.
Majumdar joined Google in December 2012. Before that, he worked
with Chu at the Department ofEnergy, where he pushed for
innovation and new products through the Advanced Research
Projects Agency Energy group, known as ARPA-E.
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Re: The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth
By: AGelbert Date: June 12, 2014, 11:14 pm
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Re: The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth
By: AGelbert Date: June 15, 2014, 1:18 am
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Why the Barclays Downgrade of the Entire U.S. Electricity Sector
Means an Upgrade for Consumers ;D
Barclays recently downgraded the U.S. electricity sector. That’s
right, the whole sector. It’s now listed as “underweight,”
meaning that if you were to hold a full portfolio of bonds for
the U.S. economy, you might want to be a bit light on U.S.
electric utilities, as they might not keep up with the broader
economic growth trends. Why? One answer is the disruptive threat
of solar-plus-battery systems. [img width=30
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/>From the Barclays report:
Over the next few years… we believe that a confluence of
declining cost trends in distributed solar photovoltaic (PV)
power generation and residential-scale power storage is likely
to disrupt the status quo. Based on our analysis, the cost of
solar + storage for residential consumers of electricity is
already competitive with the price of utility grid power in
Hawaii. Of the other major markets, California could follow in
2017, New York and Arizona in 2018, and many other states soon
after.
In the 100+ year history of the electric utility industry, there
has never before been a truly cost-competitive substitute
available for grid power. We believe that solar + storage could
reconfigure the organization and regulation of the electric
power business over the coming decade.
If that language sounds familiar, it’s because Barclays’ logic
is very similar to that of our recent report, The Economics of
Grid Defection, in which we forecasted the declining costs of
solar plus storage and the time—coming soon—when those systems
could reach parity with grid-sourced retail price electricity in
a growing number of markets, including Hawaii, California, and
New York. In fact, the Barclays report cites RMI as a key source
in several of its analyses that lead to this conclusion.
Barclays believes we’re entering a post-monopoly world in which
distributed energy resources will take a place alongside
large-scale central generation as a critical energy resource and
a widely available and affordable customer option. In a
surprisingly strong prediction for analysts, Barclays views this
transition as inevitable: “Whatever roadblocks utilities try to
toss up—and there's already been plenty of tossing in the states
most vulnerable to solar, further evidence of the pressures
they're facing—it's already too late.”
If you’re a utility, or an investor who’s got money in
utilities, that’s some ominous language. Admittedly, a downgrade
suggests two possible outcomes in the near future: 1) analysts
tend to move in herds, so expect more news on the U.S. electric
sector soon, and 2) capital is likely to get a bit more
expensive for utilities, as millions of dollars shift out of the
sector.
It’s not all bad news. As we discussed recently in “Caveat
Investor,” this should ultimately lead to a stronger, more
resilient power sector with stronger overall valuations, but the
transition is likely to be volatile. The Barclays report
suggests we’re about to enter that volatile transition phase.
So, what are the major trends we can learn from this, and what
does a utility downgrade mean for the future of distributed
renewables?
1) Distributed energy is hitting the mainstream. Historically,
it’s renewables’ creditworthiness that has been challenged
(while utilities have been considered rock solid), but now this
trend appears to be reversing. We’ve seen declining costs of
capital in solar (as recent securitizations demonstrate), new
financial instruments emerging for related technologies, and
lower costs overall. Despite this progress, there is still a
large gap between the market acceptance of renewables and the
market acceptance of central, fossil-fueled generation. The
recent downgrade suggests that people are starting to take
distributed renewables seriously, and that utilities and
renewables are entering a period of equal (or at least
comparable) market strength.
2) Issuing new bonds for thermal fossil generation will become
more expensive. While many people focus on the construction
costs of new assets (central and distributed generation alike),
it’s more often the cost of capital that determines project
viability. Traditionally, utilities have almost always been the
lowest-cost provider of new energy resources, and part of this
advantage has rested on ready access to and favorable terms from
the bond market. If that advantage is eroding, then expect new
players to be able to compete for providing the nation’s energy,
including providers of much smaller, distributed generation.
3) Distributed storage, when combined with already mature trends
in generation and energy efficiency, compounds the disruptive
threat of consumer-scale investments in energy. Many people have
worried that declining demand (through energy efficiency) and
distributed generation are putting enormous stress on the
traditional business model for investments in central
generation. That has not changed at all. So why does the
emergence of storage, something that doesn’t reduce consumption
or increase generation, suddenly give the markets concern?
Simply put, the addition of storage gives customers the option
to entirely disengage from their relationship with the utility.
While most customers won’t choose to leave, and for good
reasons, the threat of grid defection creates consumer leverage
that will slow recent upward trends in utility rates out of
competitive necessity.
4) These trends are likely to accelerate. As capital shifts from
central to distributed generation, this just improves the
economics of distributed resources even further, through scale
benefits as well as lower cost of capital. Few people would say
that we’ve even come close to market saturation for any customer
segment for renewables and efficiency. As the traditional
electric sector becomes a more challenging place to park capital
(or even just a less certain place), more investors will start
to notice that investments in distributed resources have similar
risk-reward profiles, and this movement of capital will be
self-reinforcing.
Barclays took a fairly surprising stance for an industry not
traditionally known for looking years into the future. That’s a
great sign for the markets, which need to start responding to
global, long-term trends. And while the Barclays report isn’t
likely to move markets in the next 6 or 12 months, it does
signal an important shift under way—distributed generation is
likely to be an affordable and accessible choice for more and
more customers alongside traditional utility-provided
electricity. More options means more competition and increased
relevance of the customer. And that’s an upgrade for users of
electricity everywhere.
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/looksmiley.gif
HTML http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2014_06_10_the_barclays_downgrade_of_the_entire_us_electricity_sector
#Post#: 1408--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth
By: AGelbert Date: June 17, 2014, 6:33 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
New England Clean Power Link Will Generate Nearly $400 Million
Annually ;D, Says Analysis
During the construction period, planned for 2016 to 2018, the
project is expected to create an average of more than 140 direct
construction jobs annually in Vermont.
Corina Rivera-Linares, Senior Analyst, TransmissionHub
June 16, 2014
TDI New England’s proposed New England Clean Power Link will
generate nearly $400 million annually in new economic activity
for the New England region as a whole during the first 10 years
of commercial operations, according to a new report by London
Economics International.
As noted in the report, the 150-mile underwater and underground
HVDC transmission line, to be located in Vermont, will deliver
1,000 MW of clean, low-cost energy into the New England
wholesale power market.
“The New England Clean Power Link is an innovative, privately
financed project that will create hundreds of new jobs, save
consumers millions of dollars and spur economic growth across
Vermont and the wider region,” TDI New England CEO Donald
Jessome said in a June 11 statement. “The significant energy
savings means more money in the pockets of businesses and
homeowners — savings they can then reinvest in communities
throughout New England, creating long-term permanent job growth
and a stronger regional economy.”
Cable manufacturing could begin as early as 2015, along with
some site preparations, a company spokesperson told
TransmissionHub on June 11, adding that construction would begin
in early 2016 and be completed by the end of 2018.
The project is expected to begin service in early 2019. The
company filed its application for the Presidential permit from
the U.S. Department of Energy last month and will apply its
application for approval from the Army Corps of Engineers next
fall. The spokesperson also said that the company will file for
the Vermont 248 siting permit by the end of this year.
London Economics, an economic, financial and advisory firm
headquartered in Boston, Mass., noted in a disclaimer that it
was engaged by TDI New England to develop an economic impact
analysis of the proposed project, adding that the report is
based upon current data concerning economic conditions in New
England and on current information available concerning
construction and operation of the proposed project.
Additionally, the report is not intended to be a complete and
exhaustive analysis of the proposed project.
London Economics analyzed the potential economic benefits of the
proposed project in terms of the employment and gross domestic
product (GDP) impacts to Vermont and the rest of New England,
using the PI+ model developed by Regional Economic Models Inc.
(REMI). That model is an economic forecasting model that is
widely used in the public and private sectors to simulate the
dynamic and interactive effects over time and across industries
that result from large investments, policy changes and
infrastructure projects like the Clean Power Link, according to
the report.
The model generates year-by-year estimates of the total regional
effects of any specific policy initiative or large investment.
London Economics also said that the model used for the analysis
was a 70-sector, state-level model that covers the entire New
England region. Those sectors included forestry and logging,
fishing, hunting and trapping, as well as oil and gas extraction
and nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing.
The model incorporates several modeling approaches, including
input-output, computable general equilibrium theory, econometric
equations and new economic geography theory to create a
comprehensive model that understands detailed interrelated
changes in a regional — or state — economy.
London Economics also noted that the model, which is used by
government agencies and others, estimates comprehensive economic
and demographic effects in wide-ranging initiatives, such as
economic impact analysis; policies and programs for economic
development, infrastructure, environment, energy and natural
resources; and state and local tax changes.
Regarding modeling inputs, London Economics noted that TDI is
expecting the project to undergo a 36-month construction phase,
starting in 2016 and finishing by the end of 1Q19. The operating
life of the project, beginning in 2Q19, is expected to go out 40
years or even longer. For its analysis, London Economics added
that it has focused on the first 10 years of operation. Given
the significance of the installation costs for the project, more
than $80m in capital costs for the project will be spent in
Vermont to build and install the project.
Additionally, the project will bring, on average, 140 direct
construction jobs annually to Vermont during the construction
period. Once commercial operations begin, the project is
expected to reduce the wholesale market price of energy in ISO
New England (ISO-NE) for the benefit of consumers.
The reduction in retail electricity costs to New England
electricity customers is estimated to be about $195 million per
year on average for the first 10 years of commercial operation,
or 2019 to 2028, according to the analysis. Electricity cost
savings are projected based on simulation modeling of the ISO-NE
wholesale market — assuming a 95 percent utilization rate on the
project. On average over the 10 years modeled, the project
produces more than $1/MWh reduction in annual average energy
prices across the region.
Based on the analysis, the project is expected to create on
average more than 640 direct, indirect and induced jobs in
Vermont during its 36-month construction phase and 2,000 jobs
across the region, including Vermont, in the first 10 years of
commercial operation.
That local employment and spending will expand state economic
activity, as measured by GDP, by $58 million per annum on
average, or about 0.2 percent of Vermont’s GDP based on 2012 GDP
levels.
London Economics added that its analysis suggests that the
economic activity that will be generated by the construction
phase will ripple through the rest of the region. That phase
will generate on average more than 850 jobs, including 670
indirect and induced jobs, across the region, including Vermont,
and will increase New England’s regional GDP by about $78
million per year.
Furthermore, during the first 10 years of commercial operation,
London Economics estimates that Vermont’s GDP would increase by
an average of $30 million per annum due to reduction in energy
costs, and an increase in jobs and spending within Vermont for
continued operations and maintenance of the line.
Based on London Economics’ analysis of those reduced electricity
costs using the PI+ model, together with the ongoing local
spending by the project for operations and maintenance of the
project, the project will produce an average of more than 2,000
direct, indirect and induced jobs across the region during the
first 10 years of commercial operation and lead to an increase
in regional GDP by an average of about $400 million per year.
HTML http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/06/new-england-clean-power-link-will-generate-nearly-400-million-annually-says-analysis
#Post#: 1502--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth
By: AGelbert Date: July 8, 2014, 1:27 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[img width=640
height=480]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-080714141451.gif[/img]
Renewable Energy Provided One-Third Of Germany’s Power In The
First Half Of 2014 ;D
By Kiley Kroh on July 8, 2014 at 1:51 pm
[quote]Helped along by low demand on a holiday, Germany
nevertheless set another solar power record in June, generating
50 percent [img width=100
height=100]
HTML http://images.ame4u.com/Animated_Clipart/Animated-Solar/sun_shining_solar_panel_hg_clr__st.gif[/img]http://www.freesmileys.org/emoticons/emoticon-object-081.gif<br
/>
HTML http://www.freesmileys.org/emoticons/emoticon-object-102.gifof<br
/>its overall electricity demand from solar for part of the day.
And in May, renewable energy sources combined to account for 75
percent of power demand for part of the day. ;D
As a point of comparison, approximately 13 percent of the U.S.
electricity supply was powered by renewables as of the end of
2013, roughly half of Germany’s rate.
[/quote]
HTML http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/08/3456934/renewable-one-third-germany/
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