Entries by Jonathan Marshall

Here's a roundup of some of the week's major news on climate change:

• In his first post-election speech on global warming, President-elect Barack Obama promised on Tuesday to "confront this challenge once and for all" with a combination of investments in clean energy technology and a cap-and-trade market to raise the cost of carbon emissions. 
• Obama's call to action won widespread praise. The head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat said his pledge was a "huge signal" of encouragement to countries that negotiating a new accord to replace the Kyoto protocol on climate change. 
• Members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which includes several leading environmental organizations and utilities, including Pacific Gas and Electric Co., also endorsed Obama's statement. PG&E's chairman and CEO, Peter Darbee, welcomed the president-elect's commitment as "an opportunity to spur a wave of new investment in the technology and infrastructure needed to create a low carbon economy while at the same time providing a badly needed shot of economic adrenaline."
• A new United Nations report indicates that emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialized countries leveled off in 2006 for the first time in six years. That's the good news. The bad news is the study didn't measure emissions from India and China, two of the world's largest and fastest growing sources of carbon dioxide.
• In the meantime, global warming continues to wreak devastation on some ecosystems.  According to the New York Times, prolonged droughts and mild winters have promoted widespread infestations of mountain pine beetles that are killing millions of acres of forests from New Mexico to British Columbia.
• Physical scientists who wonder why their findings have not spurred the world to more decisive action may find answers in the social sciences--including the fields of behavioral decision making, risk analysis, and evolutionary psychology. According to an interesting new analysis of human risk perception, "The way we're psychologically wired and socially conditioned to respond to crises makes us ill-suited to react to the abstract and seemingly remote threat posed by global warming." 
  

Gov. Schwarzenegger yesterday signed an historic executive order directing California's utility's to provide one-third of their power from qualifying renewable sources by 2020, an unprecedented mandate to meet an unprecedented global problem.

"Today is all about changing our goals and raising the bar," he said at a signing ceremony in Sacramento. ". . . This will be the most aggressive target in the nation."

PG&E's senior vice president for public affairs, Nancy McFadden, joined the ceremony to applaud the governor's leadership:

I stand here on behalf of PG&E committed to this process with all of these stakeholders, distinguished group of stakeholders, to move this ball forward . . . so we can meet your ambitious goal, Governor.

The state's investor-owned utilities have been working hard to meet an existing mandate to supply 20 percent of their power from renewable sources (other than large hydropower) by the 2010-2012 timeframe. Progress has been slowed by delays in passing federal tax credits, long lead times in approving and building new transmission lines, disputes over permitting projects sited on sensitive lands, and, in some cases, developer inexperience or financing problems.

The governor acknowledged these problems and pledged to help overcome them. He signed a separate agreement to create a one-stop process for the California Energy Commission and Department of Fish and Game to review permits by renewable energy developers. And he received promises from federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management and Fish and Wildlife Service, to fast-track reviews of projects on federal land.

Still, the challenges will be enormous. Achieving the new goal will require a 225 percent increase in the amount of renewable power available today. As the California Public Utilities Commission stated in a report issued last month, "Serving 33% of California's energy needs with renewable sources will require an infrastructure build-out on a scale and timeline perhaps unparalleled anywhere in the world."

In a previous report, the Commission said that meeting the 33 percent goal could require as much as $60 billion in new investment in generation and transmission.

Data centers -- giant server warehouses that centralize the storage and distribution of bits and bytes -- are notorious power hogs, using up to one hundred times the energy per square foot of typical office space. In Northern California, they account for as much as 2.5 percent of all electricity consumption.

At the opening yesterday of its user event CA World 08 in Las Vegas, business software company CA announced plans to focus on ways to reduce power consumption and costs by letting data centers run at higher temperatures, thus reducing the need for cooling. 

"Every data center on average doubles its power consumption every five years, " said Chris Stakutis, vice president of emerging technologies at CA. ". . . You can save five per cent of your cooling costs for every degree warmer you run it. You just need to put in hundreds of wireless thermometers so you are confident you're not exceeding any limits."

IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems have already invaded this market with a vengeance. So have many startups. Santa Clara-based Power Assure won the $100,000 Smart Power category award at the Clean Tech Open in San Francisco on Nov. 6. It specializes in power management software that throttles back unused data center servers, networking equipment and cooling systems to save as much as 50 percent on data center energy bills.

Not to be outdone, Pacific Gas and Electric Company is leading utility industry efforts to promote more energy-efficient data centers, taking advantage of the fact that its revenues are decoupled from electricity sales.

PG&E offers extensive rebates for new data center construction and upgrades that save energy; it also offers rebates all the way down to the desktop, including power management software, premium efficiency PCs, LCD monitors and thin-client systems. The program is on track to save 7 megawatts of electricity this year, and more next.

Last year, PG&E led the formation of a utility IT energy efficiency coalition to focus on improving power management at data centers. It's proven to be a hit.

"We now have almost 40 utilities in the United States and Canada," says Mark Bramfitt, principal program manager in PG&E's Customer Energy Efficiency department. "We are sharing everything we know to get others to copy our programs."

The week brought plenty of news keeping climate change on the front burner of public discussion:

• As Congress ponders what steps to take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, two UC Berkeley experts have issued a new report reminding us of the economic stakes to California. If no action is taken, report economist David Roland-Holst and his colleague Fredrich Kahrl, the combined cost to the state's energy, tourism, recreation, real estate, agriculture, forestry, fisheries and transportation sectors and to public health could range from $7 billion to $46 billion annually. In addition, trillions of dollars of assets are in jeopardy, mainly real estate at risk from fires or flooding.
• Japan, the country that hosted the Kyoto accords on greenhouse gas emissions, is at risk of missing its own emissions targets over the next four years, in part because an earthquake closed one of its biggest nuclear power plants last year. Japan must find ways of cutting CO2 emissions by 13.5 percent by 2012 to meet its target.
• More than 130 global investors, which collectively hold more than $6 trillion in assets, urged policymakers worldwide to implement measures that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions 50 to 80 percent by 2050. "As institutional investors, we are concerned with the risks presented by climate change to the global economy and to our diversified portfolios," said Mike Taylor, chief executive of London Pensions Fund Authority.
• 10 scientists from the United States, England and France reported in a new study that the world should aim for even lower CO2 levels in order to avert climate disasters. According to lead author James Hansen of Columbia University, "Following a path that leads to a lower CO2 amount, we can alleviate a number of problems that had begun to seem inevitable, such as increased storm intensities, expanded desertification, loss of coral reefs, and loss of mountain glaciers that supply fresh water to hundreds of millions of people."
• US defense and intelligence officials increasingly view climate change as a national security threat, according to the Washington Times. Among the many threats to U.S. personnel, equipment and installations is the danger of storm surges flooding 63 coastal military facilities and several nuclear reactors.

In a much-discussed op-ed column in Monday's New York Times, Nobel laureate and former Vice President Al Gore declared his support for a crash program to modernize the nation's electrical system:

We should begin the planning and construction of a unified national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from the rural places where it is mostly generated to the cities where it is mostly used. New high-voltage, low-loss underground lines can be designed with "smart" features that provide consumers with sophisticated information and easy-to-use tools for conserving electricity, eliminating inefficiency and reducing their energy bills. The cost of this modern grid -- $400 billion over 10 years -- pales in comparison with the annual loss to American business of $120 billion due to the cascading failures that are endemic to our current balkanized and antiquated electricity lines.

Gore's vision sounds surprisingly similar to that expressed by the Bush administration's Department of Energy in its publication, Grid 2030:

The Nation's aging electro-mechanical electric grid cannot keep pace with innovations in the digital information and telecommunications network. Power outages and power quality disturbances cost the economy billions of dollars annually. America needs an electric superhighway to support our information superhighway.

Change of this magnitude requires unprecedented levels of cooperation among the electric power industry's many stakeholders. Hundreds of billions of dollars of investment will be needed over the coming decades to accomplish modernization of the electric system. National leadership is needed to create a shared vision of the future and to build effective public-private partnerships for getting there. Imagine the possibilities: electricity and information flowing together in real time, near-zero economic losses from outages and power quality disturbances, a wider array of customized energy choices, suppliers competing in open markets to provide the world's best electric services, and all of this supported by a new energy infrastructure built on superconductivity, distributed intelligence and resources, clean power, and the hydrogen economy.

But as DOE itself noted, "national leadership is needed" to turn vision into reality. President-elect Barack Obama says he's ready to step up to the plate. Here's what Obama told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on October 30:

One of, I think, the most important infrastructure projects that we need is a whole new electricity grid. Because if we're going to be serious about renewable energy, I want to be able to get wind power from North Dakota to population centers, like Chicago. And we're going to have to have a smart grid if we want to use plug-in hybrids then we want to be able to have ordinary consumers sell back the electricity that's generated from those car batteries, back into the grid. That can create 5 million new jobs, just in new energy.

The media rush to highlight every major new renewable power project, but another clean energy resource gets far less attention, even though it's flexible, abundant, relatively inexpensive and valued overall at billions of dollars.

According to a recent report by the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), this unheralded resource is equal to 29,000 megawatts of capacity during periods of peak summer demand--as much as all U.S. wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass power combined.

The report calls it "an effective and efficient capacity resource, on equal footing with generation" and says it "will become a critical resource for maintaining system reliability over the next ten years."

What's not to like? Only the name: "demand response." You've gotta love the way the utility industry chose such a dull term to hide one of its hottest products.

Simply put, according to Wikipedia, "demand response (DR) refers to mechanisms to manage the demand from customers in response to supply conditions, for example, having electricity customers reduce their consumption at critical times or in response to market prices."

In most markets, matching supply and demand is no big deal. If supply exceeds demand, sellers build up inventory and sooner or later cut their prices, prompting additional demand. Sellers also regularly adjust prices based on predictable changes in customer demand--think movie matinees or off-season travel discounts.

But until recently, electric utilities had no comparable way to change prices for most customers or to store inventory (excess electricity). Utilities could mainly affect the supply side, for example by ramping up or down infrequently used gas-fired "peaking" plants.

Demand response programs now give utilities a powerful new tool for balancing supply and demand. By encouraging customers to curb demand during periods of extreme peak loads, utilities--and ultimately customers themselves--can save the considerable cost of backup generation capacity that may be needed only a few dozen hours a year.

There are other benefits of demand response.  System reliability benefits because generation and transmission capacity aren't stretched to the limit.  The environment benefits from fewer power plant emissions.  And, last but not least, demand response programs can help utilities manage renewable resources like wind power. When the wind dies down, getting customers to reduce their load can rebalance supply and demand efficiently.

As NERC said of demand response programs in a report issued today, "their critical role in supporting the integration of variable renewable resources will only increase their importance as climate change initiatives progress."

The total value of giving utilities nationwide the ability to shave just five percent off peak demand comes to $66 billion, according to estimates by Brattle Group consultant Ahmad Faruqui.

At PG&E, about 119,000 customers now take part in one of a dozen demand response programs. Together they can reduce the utility's peak load by as much as 1,246 megawatts, equal in capacity to about three sizeable gas-fired power plants that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build.

One successful program, which launched last year, is called SmartAC. In return for a $25 incentive payment, customers let PG&E install a radio-controlled switch on their air conditioner or thermostat. During supply emergencies, when customer demand pushes the limits of our electric supply, PG&E can cycle those air conditioners off for brief intervals, preventing any risk of rolling blackouts. More than 9 in 10 customers in the SmartAC program say they never feel the difference.

Another innovative program is SmartRate. It is available to residential and small commercial customers with automated SmartMeter(tm) electric meters, which measure customer usage at frequent intervals-hourly for residential customers, and every 15 minutes for commercial customers. Participants enjoy a discount of 3 cents per kilowatt hour between May 1 and October 31--except a few days a year, when afternoon rates jump by 60 cents per kilowatt hour for residential customers, and by 75 cents per kilowatt hour for commercial customers. Simply by turning off appliances during those hours, no more than 15 days a year, customers and the utility both save money and spare the environment.

Smart entrepreneurs are finding ways to extend the reach of these programs. For example, Ice Energy, which just announced another successful funding round, sells air conditioning units that freeze water at night, when electric rates are low, and use the ice to cool buildings cheaply during the day. Its technology may let commercial buildings shift as much as 40 percent of peak energy demand to off-peak hours, when rates are cheaper.

Last year, Ice Energy and the City of Victorville won one of California's "Flex Your Power" awards. Ice Energy projected that the 31 cooling units it installed in municipal buildings would shift enough of Victorville's energy consumption to off-peak hours to reduce CO2 emissions by 335 tons and reduce NOX emissions by 985 pounds over the next five years.

NERC estimates that the growth of demand response programs through 2017 will slice about a year's worth of normal growth in summer demand. Combined with energy efficiency investments, peak demand growth will be slashed 80 percent over that period, it predicts.

Surely a high-achieving program like that deserves a name better than "demand response." Any nominations?

This week brought more alarming reports from scientists about climate change, and more calls to action by government officials from around the world:

• Cornell University researchers studying oceans in the northern hemisphere say "the rate of warming we are seeing is unprecedented in human history" and is causing a "major ecosystem reorganization" in the North Atlantic. Their findings appear in the November 2008 issue of the journal Ecology.
• Global warming is apparently responsible for the rapid disappearance of Norwegian lemmings. These hamster-sized rodents traditionally exploded in numbers every three to five years, often requiring snowplows to clear their squashed bodies from the roads. Changing snow patterns have apparently disrupted their habitats, slashing their population and forcing predators like foxes and owls to find other species to hunt.
• At a climate conference opening today in Beijing, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao declared that "Developed countries shoulder the duty and responsibility to tackle climate change and should alter their unsustainable lifestyle." China is the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
• At the same conference, the top United Nations climate official, Yvo de Boer, expressed hope that the incoming Obama administration will tackle the challenge of climate change: "Obama is committed to the issue, is committed to developing a strong domestic policy, is committed to engaging in the international negotiations,'' he said. "Leadership from the U.S. on this issue can have a huge impact on the dynamics of these negotiations.''

Getting an extra hour of sleep in the fall, thanks to Daylight Saving Time (DST), is one of life's little pleasures. Sadly, according to two UC Santa Barbara scholars, it turns out to be a guilty pleasure--one that increases energy consumption and creates more pollution.

The United States first adopted DST--starting in World Wars I and II--as a means of saving energy, not as a policy to promote agriculture as sometimes assumed. It was expanded most recently in 2007, following the Energy Policy Act of 2005. More than 1.6 billion people in 76 countries now fumble with their clocks twice a year to practice DST.

But does it achieve its goal? Past research has been scant and inconclusive. Sorting out the specific effects of DST on energy use, separate from all other factors, is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

But in a new paper for the UC Energy Institute, researchers Matthew Kotchen and Laura Grant take advantage of the fact that for many years some counties in Indiana practiced DST while many others did not. In 2006, following federal law, all counties adopted DST. By comparing energy use over time between counties, with and without DST, they were able to detect the program's real impact.

It turns out that DST increases residential electricity demand, most notably in the fall. The extra bill comes to about $9 million a year for Indiana households. Pollution increases as well. Apparently, by changing the time when people are likely to be at home, any reduction in lighting is more than offset by increased demand for heating and cooling. This effect, the researchers conclude, is likely to be even worse in the southern United States due to widespread use of air conditioning.

Are solar cells really as "clean" as they're cracked up to be? Like most things, it all depends on whether you wash them or not.

Petaluma-based OCS Energy, Inc. has just introduced a product it calls SolarWash, touted as "the first commercially available automated photovoltaic (PV) panel cleaning system."

OCS Energy warns that the build-up of dirt over several months can cut power production from a solar cell array by as much as 25 percent. Taking its marketing cues from Proctor and Gamble, the company notes that in addition to dirt, PV system operators must also worry about "dust, tree debris, moss, sap, bugs, bird droppings, water spots, mold, and more."

Using microprocessor-controlled spray nozzles, the SolarWash system promises to maximize solar efficiency while saving on labor costs. It even comes with a web-based interface, something your garden watering system should no doubt incorporate as well.

Farther down the road, another technological breakthrough promises to shed even more light on solar cells. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute say they have discovered a new antireflective coating that allows solar panels to absorb 96 percent of all light that falls on them. Typical untreated silicon cells today absorb only 67 percent of available light, wasting the rest.

By absorbing radiation from a wide variety of angles and broad spectrum of frequencies (infrared through ultraviolet), the nanocoating promises to dramatically increase the efficiency of electricity generation from PV installations.

Rainforests have long been known as remarkable natural laboratories of life-saving and life-enhancing medicinal drugs (not to mention some mind-expanding illegal drugs as well). Now it turns out they may be natural laboratories for biodiesel fuels that could potentially power clean cars and trucks.

Montana State University's Gary Strobel says his team of researchers has discovered a fungus that breaks down plant cellulose directly into diesel compounds without any added enzymes or extra steps. The fungus lives in the Ulmo tree in the Patagonian rainforest.

Strobel said of their discovery, "The results were totally unexpected and very exciting and almost every hair on my arms stood on end."

The team is now working on steps to make the biodiesel production process commercially viable. They'll have competition from another rainforest inhabitant, a freshwater species of green algae discovered in Thailand. One Thai scientist estimated that a commercial farm of this algae could produce as much as 136,900 liters of oil per hectare.

Researchers had better move fast to investigate the remaining riches of the rainforest. By some estimates, 80,000 acres of rainforest are burned, plowed or otherwise destroyed every single day.

Scientists this week issued a number of disturbing new reports about climate change, but the news brought glimmers of hope as well:

• Millions of tons of methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, entered the Earth's atmosphere in 2007 for reasons yet unknown, MIT scientists reported. Methane, which traps about 25 times much heat as carbon dioxide, today accounts for about a fifth of human-caused global warming. Sources of methane include rice paddies and wetlands, the oil and gas industries, and cattle.
• Frogs and salamanders are dying out in Yellowstone National Park at a frightening pace due to global warming, according to Stanford researchers. High temperatures and droughts are drying up the ponds they need for reproduction.
• Walden Pond, made famous by writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau as a natural haven, has in the past century and a half lost more than a quarter of the species documented by Thoreau, according to a report in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Another 36 percent of species that existed in his time are in danger of disappearing. The culprit appears to be temperatures that have warmed an average of more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.
• Within four decades, Sydney's famous beaches, coastal homes and other infrastructure may be eroded or inundated by rising sea levels triggered by global warming, according to an Australian government-sponsored study.
• Can you spare a dollar a day to save the planet? Another Australian government study--this time by the Treasury--concludes that greenhouse gas emissions can be rolled back through carbon trading schemes at a cost to households of only $7 a week more for electricity and gas. Real disposable income would continue growing about 1 percent per year. "What this modelling absolutely shows is there is a way ahead which is both pro-growth and pro-jobs," the Treasurer said. "The Australian economy will continue strong growth while reducing emissions. The earlier Australia acts, the cheaper the cost of action, and many of Australia's industries will become more, not less, competitive."
• More and more American businesses are beginning to acknowledge the material significance of climate change risks. After a deal brokered by former US Vice President Al Gore and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Houston-based Dynegy announced it would provide information on its carbon footprint and related risks in its annual reports. Dynegy, which operates power plants in 13 states, is reportedly one of the largest consumers of coal in the United States.

If you're an olive lover, don't throw out those pesky pits: in the right hands, they could be a valuable new source of energy (or moonshine), according to Spanish researchers.

According to a study published in the Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology, olive stones are rich in natural chemicals that can be converted to sugar and then to ethanol. The process uses high-pressure hot water to produce the sugar and yeast fermentation to produce ethanol.

For every 100 kilograms of olive stones you save, count on being able to produce 5.7 kilograms of ethanol with the right equipment. Just be sure to check with your spouse before making any plans.

Despite its preference for the color green, the U.S. Army isn't the first organization that usually comes to mind when you think of environmental sustainability. But with annual spending of at least $3 billion on energy, the army says it's getting serious about energy efficiency and more sustainable energy production.

In addition to appointing a Senior Energy Council to advise the Army on energy policy, programs and funding, the secretary of the Army recently announced several new projects, including:

• the purchase of 4,000 small Neighborhood Electric Vehicles to replace gasoline-powered vehicles traditionally used by maintenance and operations staff for use on its posts;
• a major geothermal project at Hawthorne Army Depot, Nev., capable of producing 30 megawatts of clean power;
• biomass fuel demonstrations at six Army posts;
• a pilot energy savings performance contract with the private sector to serve as a model for monitoring and reducing energy consumption;
• and perhaps most exciting, a plan to partner with the private sector to construct a 500 megawatt solar thermal plant at Fort Irwin, Calif., in the Mojave Desert, to provide renewable power on the grid and provide the Army post with added energy security against disruption of power supply.

The Army's planned solar power installation enjoys a unique advantage: the Army owns its site and can thus streamline the permit process. Many solar pioneers are reportedly facing long and costly permit delays for projects on parcels controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Oakland-based BrightSource Energy has warned that if the review process isn't speeded up, delays could send "a chilling signal to large-scale solar developers and their investors."

Bakersfield, California, sometimes called "the city that oil built," yesterday celebrated its commitment to what may well become the 21st century's leading rival to fossil-fuel energy: solar power.

At a Bakersfield ceremony attended by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and PG&E Chairman, CEO and President Peter Darbee, Palo Alto-based Ausra, Inc. unveiled the first solar thermal energy plant built in California in nearly 20 years.

The 5-megawatt (MW) Kimberlina demonstration plant, with its thousand-foot long mirrors, uses the same core technology that Ausra plans to install a couple of years from now in a 177-MW plant east of San Luis Obispo that will serve tens of thousands of PG&E customers.

Ausra's Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) solar technology focuses heat from the sun's rays to create steam to power steam turbine generators, much like traditional power plants, but without use of fossil fuels or harmful emissions.

PG&E's Darbee called the opening of the Kimberlina plant "an important step on the path to commercialization of this new technology."

He also underscored the importance of making continued investments in clean energy projects, despite the nation's difficult economic straits, in order to fight the enormous challenge of climate change.

"I want to restate our commitment as PG&E . . . that we will not take our eye off the ball, that we will continue to pursue energy efficiency, we will continue to pursue demand management, we will continue to pursue renewables," Darbee said.

Commenting on the financial risks that could delay new investments in clean energy projects, Darbee added, "PG&E stands ready, as we were before, to take on the challenge of financing renewables, to work with people collaboratively to move renewable generation forward."

The American Wind Energy Association's call for more investment in electric transmission, noted in Len Anderson's posting, won a major endorsement today from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), whose mission is to ensure the reliability of the bulk power system in North America.

In its 2008 Long-Term Reliability Assessment, NERC highlights both the extraordinary growth of wind power and the challenges posed by integrating such an intermittent resource into the nation's power system.

Over the next 10 years, NERC predicts, the total capacity of wind farms in North America will soar 750 percent--but this clean, renewable power will only do us good if high-capacity transmission lines connect big cities and other load centers with turbines in West Texas, the Dakotas, and other remote areas.

New transmission is also needed to connect reserve power sources, which can be cranked up when the wind dies down.

Unfortunately, owing to local opposition and environmental concerns, transmission permitting, siting and construction typically takes 7 to 10 years, much longer than for new generation, according to the report.

"We need more transmission resources to maintain reliability and achieve environmental goals," commented Rick Sergel, president and CEO of NERC. "Transmission lines are the critical link between new generation and customers, yet we continue to see transmission development lag behind generation additions. Faster siting, permitting, and construction of transmission resources will be vital to keeping the lights on in the coming years."

San Francisco-based GreenVolts, which is on track to become the first supplier of utility-scale solar power to PG&E, yesterday announced that it won a $250,000 competitive grant from the California Energy Commission's Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program for a proposal to develop low-cost installation methods for concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) power.

CPV power uses lenses or mirrors to focus solar energy on photovoltaic cells that convert the sun's radiation directly into electricity. The Energy Commission's PIER program supports research, development and demonstration projects aimed (among other objectives) at "developing renewable energy technologies, products, and services that provide electricity customers with more affordable electricity, improved reliability, and a selection of choices."

GreenVolts is currently developing a two-megawatt facility using that technology in Byron, south of Brentwood, under a 20-year power purchase agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric. The full project should be completed next year.

The Environmental Protection Agency this month released its fuel efficiency rankings for model year 2009 vehicles--and not surprisingly, the Toyota Prius topped the list of gas misers with 48 miles per gallon (mpg) in city driving and 45 mpg on the highway.

Aside from the Honda Civic Hybrid at 40/45 mpg, mileage ratings dropped quickly into the 30s and below. The Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD earned a booby prizes with a rating of only 11/14 mpg, not much better than a tank.

But while the world rightly applauds the innovation and performance of the Prius, how quickly we forget some car models going back more than a decade that achieved equal or better fuel efficiency, only to be sidelined by cheap gas prices and customer demand for faster acceleration and roomier interiors.

The 3-cylinder Geo Metro XFI, for example, earned stunning ratings of 53/58 mpg, and the much peppier Honda Civic VX managed 48/55 mpg in 1992. The rating system has changed a bit since then, and safety standards have improved, but those models apparently still sell well on eBay thanks to their oustanding fuel efficiency.

Of course, none of these models holds a candle to a single-passenger vehicle designed at the University of British Columbia, which won the annual SAE competition in 2006 with a record 3,145 miles per gallon!

They say virtue is its own reward--but it's always nice when there's an extra prize thrown in for good behavior. In the case of energy efficiency, the extra bonus for doing right by the environment is more jobs, according to a new study by UC Berkeley economist David Roland-Holst.

Roland-Holst's paper, "Energy Efficiency, Innovation, and Job Creation in California," finds that savings from the state's pioneering efficiency measures have allowed California households to spend less on energy and correspondingly more on other goods and services, creating about 1.5 million jobs with a total payroll of $45 billion over the period 1972-2006.

The service sector saw an increase in compensation of nearly $18 billion; wholesale and retail trade enjoyed an increase of just over $11 billion in payrolls, and the financial sector saw an uptick in compensation of more than $7 billion.

At a time when many critics wonder whether the country can afford to fight climate change, the study reminds us to the contrary that "in addition to energy price vulnerability and climate damage, the risks of excessive energy dependence include lower long-term economic growth. A lower carbon future for California is a more prosperous and sustainable future."

Climate change remained a hot topic in the news this week:

• The worldwide meltdown of financial markets called into question the political will to enact cap-and-trade legislation or other curbs on carbon emissions. "The truth is there is a very large question mark hanging over the idea that Congress would take economywide action on global warming with the economy in such anemic shape," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. In Europe, one expert said, "The Germans are giving up and the Italians are getting ready to follow."
• California Gov. Schwarzenegger doesn't buy the calls for caution. "We all know we're going through tough economic times right now, but that's no reason to slow down when it comes to protecting our environment and investing in clean, green technologies," Schwarzenegger said while dedicating a new solar facility at Applied Materials in Sunnyvale.
• EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso rejected the go-slow crowd as well. Speaking to European leaders on Tuesday, he said "Climate change does not disappear because of the financial crisis. Tackling climate change is central to Europe's future prosperity and to preserve the quality of life on our planet." UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a similar declaration to the European Union today.
• At least the British government doesn't appear to be shrinking from the challenge. It plans to issue legally binding targets in a new climate change bill that will require the UK to cut its carbon emissions by 80 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050.
• According to Johan Eliasch, the UK's Special Representative on Deforestation, major reforms in world forestry practices will be an essential part of any program to address climate change. "Without action on deforestation, avoiding the worst effects of climate change will be next to impossible, and could lead to additional climate change damages of $1 trillion a year by 2100," he said.
• Meantime, scientists say air temperatures in the Arctic have reached record levels, as the loss of sea ice reduces the amount of sunlight reflected back into space.
  

PG&E's leadership in customer solar, recognized today by an award at the Solar Power International conference and described in Katie Romans' accompanying post, reflects in part the remarkable leadership the state of California has shown in this sector. 

The California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) reported a few days ago that more solar panels were installed in the first nine months of 2008 under the auspices of the California Solar Initiative than in any previous full year.

PG&E and the state's other two investor-owned utilities together hosted new installations of grid-connected solar photovoltaic capacity totalling 111 megawatts in the first three quarters of this year, up 37 percent over the total for all of 2007.

The California Solar Inititiative is slated to provide more than $2 billion in utility-sponsored rebates for customer solar installations over 10 years.

Thanks in part to programs like this, California housed 69 percent of all grid-connected photovoltaic capacity in the United States last year, according to a recent report by the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. California's total worked out to 9.1 watts per person, compared to 7.8 watts per person in Nevada.

The CPUC's report notes that customer demand for solar installations appears to be accelerating, based on the record-breaking number of new applications received in the third quarter (more than 3,000). However, a story in GreenTechMedia reports that some customers are opting to wait until next year to install systems, in order to cash in on higher tax incentives. Even so, the strong growth trend is likely to continue.

Do you wonder if you are a good candidate for rooftop solar power? Do you have $100 million to spend on a utility-scale solar plant, but need the ideal location?

German researchers, publishing in this month's issue of Nature Geoscience, are reporting evidence that the arid Sahara desert used to be a virtual Garden of Eden--not once but three times over the past 120,000 years. By studying marine sediments off the coast of Northwest Africa, they determined that grass and lakes covered what are now sandy wastelands, thanks to more favorable rainfall patterns in the past.

 The desert may yet turn green again if an initiative called the Sahara Forest Project gains any traction. A collaboration of inventor Charlie Paton, architect Michael Pawlyn, and engineer Bill Watts, the project marries concentrated solar power installations with a unique Seawater Greenhouse to produce electric power, fresh water and a cool, humid environment suitable for high-yield agriculture in dry coastal regions.

A first-generation greenhouse design, invented by Paton, was built in the Canary Islands; a lower-cost, second-generation model was erected in Abu Dhabi and a third was built recently in Oman. They use cold seawater to condense fresh water out of humid air.

The Sahara is an ideal place to site concentrated solar power plants, which could send electricity to Europe over high-voltage DC transmission lines. (Gordon Brown and Nicholas Sarkozy have reportedly both endorsed this concept.) In a clever feat of synergy, the power plants would also contribute waste heat to evaporate seawater for desalination. The greenhouses would use only about a quarter of the fresh water produced, leaving the rest to irrigate ground crops and trees or for use by the solar steam turbines.

The project has been called a "supremely elegant example of sustainable design."  And as another admirer said, it "could potentially produce enough energy for all of Africa and Europe while turning one of the world's most inhospitable regions into a flourishing oasis."

Last Friday's Green Inc. blog offered advice on ways to save money and energy while washing clothes, like using cold water and cleaning the dryer's lint trap after every load.

How 20th century.

Coming soon, the greenest way to clean up grease and grime may be with plastic, not water and detergent or dry-cleaning solvents.

You read that white.

Professor Stephen Burkinshaw at Leeds University in England claims that he has invented a method of washing an ordinary load of laundry with only one cup of water--using thousands of reusable plastic chips to scrub away dirt. Clothes emerge all but dry in the process.

A story in the London Independent quotes him as saying, "We've shown that it can remove all sorts of everyday stains including coffee and lipstick while using a tiny fraction of the water used by conventional machines."

Drought-stricken California residents would certainly welcome such a technology. And besides saving millions of gallons of precious water, they would also save huge amounts of energy now used to heat water in traditional washers and driers.

Xeros, Ltd. is commercializing the technology and says it may have a product to market as early as 2009.

Here's a roundup of some of the week's major news on climate change:

• The director of the U.N. University's Institute on the Environment and Human Security warned this week that environmental damage caused by climate change, including flooding and desertification, could displace 200 million people by 2050.
• As many as three-quarters of major Antarctic penguin colonies could be damaged or killed if global temperatures are allowed to climb by more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), according to a report released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
• Keeping world temperatures from rising beyond that level will require cutting greenhouse gas emissions about 60 percent below current levels, according to Britain's independent Climate Change Committee. For Great Britain, that will mean eliminating nearly all use of fossil fuels to produce electric power.
• A new report by health experts at the Wildlife Conservation Society cites 12 deadly diseases that could spread into new regions as a result of climate change, putting human health at risk. The "deadly dozen" include plague, Ebola, tuburculosis, cholera, and avian flu. Sleep well on that tonight.
• Enough bad news. While most of the world is warming, one part of south-eastern Spain has actually been cooling an average of 0.3 °C per decade since 1983. The secret is the region's 26,000 hectares of greenhouses. According to a Spanish researcher, the white structures reflect so much sun that they cool the earth!
  

California was a leader in the early days of wind power, with the development of huge wind farms at Altamont Pass and Tehachapi Pass. Now a San Francisco-based startup, Principle Power, is racing to become the first U.S. firm to develop a wind farm offshore.

Principle Power, which also has an office in Seattle, recently signed an agreement with an Oregon agency to begin work on a phased development of a 150 megawatt floating wind power plant off the coast of Tillamook County.

Unlike existing offshore wind farms in Europe, which mount turbines on large steel tubes embedded tens of meters into the seabed, Principle Power plans to use unique floating platforms designed by Berkeley-based Marine Innovation & Technology. The project as currently envisioned would consist of 30 floating turbines, each with 5 MW of capacity.

The attraction of putting wind farms offshore may not be immediately obvious, given the harsh conditions and complicated logistics. But winds often blow harder and more consistently offshore than on land. Site acquisition costs are typically much lower offshore. And offshore wind farms may actually be closer to load centers than their terrestrial counterparts.

Principle Power has lots of competition. A recent report by the Department of Energy says the eight or nine proposals currently under development in state or federal waters total 1,500 MW.

Perhaps the best known is Cape Wind, whose plans to site turbines off of Nantucket have been stalled by esthetic objections.

Garden State Offshore Energy this month was awarded rights by New Jersey regulators to build a $1 billion wind farm off the southern coast of that state. Other projects are afoot off the coasts of Delaware and Rhode Island.

The Interior Department's Minerals Management Service is reportedly putting the finishing touches on a rule to govern leasing of offshore lands for alternative-energy production, which will be a boon to developers.

Principle Power has a long way to go to raise money and prove that it can deliver. As the Department of Energy report noted, "the commercialization of offshore energy faces many technical, regulatory, socioeconomic, and political barriers." But since when did that ever stop dedicated entrepreneurs from trying?

The long struggle to extend federal tax credits for the renewable energy industry resembled a season of The Perils of Pauline: By one count it took nine votes in Congress before the long-awaited investment and production credits finally passed last week as part of the $700 billion financial rescue package.

The solar industry won an eight-year extension of a 30 percent credit for residential and commercial solar power installations. One industry-sponsored study predicts that this credit will create more than 400,000 new jobs in the solar power industry.

The bill also extends production tax credits to the biomass, geothermal and marine (wave and tidal) energy industries for two years, and to the wind power industry for one year.

By spurring the development of renewable energy, the credits promise a win for the environment, a win for the increasingly depressed U. S. economy, a win for emerging industries, and a win for PG&E and other utilities that have contracted with renewable power companies to provide cleaner energy for their customers.

Since the start of 2007, PG&E has contracted for more than 2,600 megawatts of new renewable power. Many of those projects are still under development and count on tax credits as a condition of financing and development. Failure to renew the credits could have put them, and hundreds like them around the country, in jeopardy.

PG&E worked hard to help Congress understand the need to act, in partnership with organizations such as Alliance to Save Energy, Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Clean Energy Now, Edison Electric Institute, and Solar Energy Industry Association. PG&E chief executive Peter Darbee stressed the critical need for tax incentives in an address to the 2008 United Nations Investor Summit on Climate Risk and in a lead opinion column in the San Francisco Chronicle, among other places.

Extension of the tax credits removes the single biggest hurdle to the development of renewable power, but not the only one. As the California Public Utilities Commission (and many other parties) have noted, continuing challenges include the cost and delay in building transmission to serve new renewable power plants, developer inexperience, financing uncertainty, and site control and permitting.

With new warnings about the perils of global warming emerging almost daily, most experts agree on the urgency of finding ways to use energy more efficiently in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without slowing economic growth.

A new scorecard issued by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) gives California the top prize among all 50 states for energy efficiency, with a total score of 40.5 out of 50 points. Oregon, Connecticut and Vermont were close runners up.

The bottom-ranked state was Wyoming, with a grand total of zero points. Wyoming just barely saved North Dakota and Alabama, with 1.5 points each, from sharing the booby prize.

Califonia's leadership is no accident. The state's Energy Action Plan makes energy efficiency "the resource of first choice for meeting California's energy needs." The California Energy Commission estimates that the state's building and appliance standards alone "have saved consumers more than $56 billion in electricity and natural gas costs since 1978 and averted building 15 large power plants."

PG&E and other utilities have long had programs to help customers save money by saving energy. Since 1976, PG&E's energy efficiency programs have saved an estimated $22 billion and prevented 135 million tons of CO2 emissions. The ACEEE report gives California and Connecticut top marks for providing utilities with incentives to promote energy efficiency.

Joseph Romm, former acting assistant secretary of energy and founder of the non-profit Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, lauded California's record earlier this year in Salon magazine:

While a few states have energy-efficiency strategies, none matches what California has done. In the past three decades, electricity consumption per capita grew 60 percent in the rest of the nation, while it stayed flat in high-tech, fast-growing California. If all Americans had the same per capita electricity demand as Californians currently do, we would cut electricity consumption 40 percent. If the entire nation had California's much cleaner electric grid, we would cut total U.S. global-warming pollution by more than a quarter without raising American electric bills. And if all of America adopted the same energy-efficiency policies that California is now putting in place, the country would never have to build another polluting power plant.

How did California do it? In part, a smart California Energy Commission has promoted strong building standards and the aggressive deployment of energy-efficient technologies and strategies -- and has done so with support of both Democratic and Republican leadership over three decades. . . .

Significantly, California adopted regulations so that utility company profits are not tied to how much electricity they sell. This is called "decoupling." It also allowed utilities to take a share of any energy savings they help consumers and businesses achieve. The bottom line is that California utilities can make money when their customers save money. That puts energy-efficiency investments on the same competitive playing field as generation from new power plants.

This week brought more doom-and-gloom warnings about climate change, as well as some belated action from Congress to promote renewable energy: 

• Scientists assembled at a three-day summit, sponsored by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, warned that global warming could kill up to a third of the planet's species by the end of the century if dramatic steps aren't taken to protect fragile ecosystems.
• The British government's top climate change expert, Vicky Pope, warned that if the world takes no action to slash greenhouse gas emissions, "temperatures could rise as high as 7C above pre-industrial values by the end of the century. This would lead to significant risks of severe and irreversible impacts." Even in the most optimistic scenario, where emissions fall 3 percent a year instead of increasing (as today) by 1 percent a year, temperatures are likely to grow about 2C by the end of the century.
• Taking strong measures to reduce GHG emissions by cutting the use of fossil fuels could produce tens of billions of dollars in ancillary benefits to the European Union (not to mention other parts of the world) by curbing other harmful emissions (such as particulates) that are known to increase mortality, according to a new study by three environmental organizations.
• The first U.S. cap-and-trade auction designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sponsored by a group of Northeastern states known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, raised $40 million last week. The auction set the price of carbon  at just over $3 a ton. Ned Raynolds, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, "This shows it's possible to put a price on polluting and the sky won't fall. What was a concept now is a reality."
• The U.S. Congress this week passed a $700 billion bank rescue bill that included billions of dollars in tax incentives for the renewable energy industry, plug-in electric vehicles, and energy efficiency improvements. The extension of these credits should spur new investment and potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs in wind, solar, geothermal and other relatively clean energy technologies.

Everyone these days is talking about the potential for new jobs in sectors that promise to help the environment.

The latest example is a new study commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which projects that investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency will create 4.2 million new "green" jobs over the next three decades, making it perhaps "the fastest growing segment of the economy."

But those jobs won't all just happen automatically. The city of Oakland is jump-starting the process by contracting with three organizations to inaugurate the Oakland Green Job Corps, described by the Oakland Tribune as "an ambitious plan to lift at-risk youths out of lives of poverty and violence and place them into jobs helping the environment."

The training will start with general job readiness skills and basic construction practices, followed by modules on topics like solar installation, hazardous waste recycling and energy efficiency practices. The program will train about 40 students the first year and then seek to place them as apprentices with various Bay Area employers.

The city plans to tap three non-profit institutions--Laney College and Cypress Mandela, Inc. of Oakland, and Growth Sector Inc. of San Francisco to design and operate the program for its first eight months.

Funding comes from a national green-job training program authorized by Congress after the idea was championed by Van Jones, founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland and chief executive of Green for All.

A colleague was complaining in the lunch room today that weather forecasts call for possible rain this weekend. All I could think of were these ominous facts issued today in the California Department of Water Resources' Weather and Climate Newsletter. (Caution: Do not read the following information if you are prone to depression.)

• This water year, Oct. 1, 2007 - Sept. 30, 2008 has seen a deficit of as much as 10-20 inches of precipitation in the Sierra, source of much of our State's water supply.
• The seven-month period March-Sept, 2008 was the driest on record in the Northern Sierra. Only 3.5" of rainfall was received; merely 23% of average.
• For the Northern Sierra, the last 2 water years are the 9th driest 2-year period on record (88 years of record).
• Statewide precipitation for the six-month period, March - August, 2008 was only 31% of average; the driest March - August in 114 years of record for the State.
• State's major reservoirs are storing about 1/3rd of their capacity at a time they would typically be at about 2/3rds.
• Lake Oroville is at its lowest carryover storage since the drought of 1977. By the end of the calendar year, it may fall to a new record low.

Continued drought conditions will mean less inexpensive hydropower, degraded plant and wildlife habitats, and more devastating fire seasons. They may ultimately result even in browner golf courses. So pray for rain!

California's Gov. Schwarzenegger yesterday signed a pioneering bill to reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions--not by controlling energy use directly, but instead by curbing sprawl development that makes long car trips all but inevitable.

SB375, authored by State Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), aims to reduce the number of miles people drive by promoting housing and land-use plans that foster sustainable communities, alternative transportation options (including walking), and healthier lifestyles.

The new law is the first of its kind in the country. "This landmark bill takes California's fight against global warming to a whole new level, and it creates a model that the rest of the country and world will use," Governor Schwarzenegger said.

To learn more about some of the planning options Steinberg has in mind, check out the new report Smart Infill, published by the Bay Area conservation organization Greenbelt Alliance. Steinberg says it gives "local leaders practical tools to encourage climate-friendly development in their communities."