Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Four teams from Switzerland, Germany, Australia and South Korea this week launched a solar-powered, emissions-free 80-day around-the-world race from Geneva to draw attention to electric vehicles. The 18,000-mile Zero Race will run through Moscow, Shanghai, Vancouver and San Francisco before stopping in Cancun, Mexico, for a United Nations Climate Conference, and then the vehicles will be shipped to Portugal and end the race in Geneva next January. Two vehicles are battery-powered scooters and the other two are custom sedans. The Zero Race is organized by Swiss adventurer Louis Palmer, the first person to go around the world in a solar-powered vehicle.

Iceland to become world leader in electric cars? A Forbes article suggests Iceland could be the first to make electric vehicles the default national transportation. Three quarters of the island nation's 317,000-plus population lives within 37 miles of the capital Reykjavik. Forbes says rural areas could probably be wired with just 15 fast-charging stations. "That, coupled with with the fact that 80 percent of  Iceland's energy is cheaply produced renewable (from geothermal and hydro) should give you a good idea why this is the ideal test bed for electric vehicles," the article says. Iceland has an agreement with Mitsubishi to deliver i-MiEV all-electric cars to the island with a claimed range of 80 to 100 miles.

The greenest college in the land is small Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vt., according to a survey by the Sierra Club's Sierra magazine. The college, with 820 undergrads, offers an extensive environmental studies program, burns wood chips and methane from cow manure for heat and electricity, and aims to become carbon neutral. The magazine sent an 11-page questionnaire to 900 colleges and universities to find the greenest institutions and received 162 responses. After Green Mountain, the top 10 colleges based on criteria from energy sources to financial investments included Dickinson College (Pennsylvania), Evergreen State College (Washington), University of Washington, Stanford University (California), University of California-Irvine, Northland College (Wisconsin), Harvard University (Massachusetts), College of the Atlantic (Maine), and Hampshire College (Massachusetts). 
 

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

It’s called “small hydro,” but U.S. Department of Energy and industry experts say there's big potential to create more renewable energy from hydroelectric projects of 30 megawatts or less.

A 2006 study by DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory identified more than 5,000 potential small hydro sites, mostly in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, totalling 18,000 MW of capacity. That's about six times the current small hydro capacity in the United States.

A recent study commissioned by the National Hydropower Association (NHA) offered a much bigger estimate of 60,000 MW from potential small hydro projects at existing dams or greenfield sites by 2025. 

By contrast, total installed solar capacity in the United States hit just 481 MW last year.

Hydropower has many ideal attributes. It creates no greenhouse or toxic air emissions. Unlike wind, solar or nuclear power, it can be turned on or off as needed. And it takes up less “footprint” than utility-scale wind farms or solar installations. In 2008, small hydro made up about one-fifth of PG&E's renewable energy mix.

However, greenfield hydro projects invariably run into intense environmental opposition because of potential impacts on fish and the flooding of valuable land. But new kinds of turbines, as well as underwater hydrokinetic devices, appear to radically reduce fish kills, suggesting that clean hydropower need not significantly damage aquatic habitats.

The biggest impact to the environment comes not from the power turbines but from dams. Where dams already exist, the damage (pun intended) is mostly done, so adding small hydro would have minimal net impact. “Only 3 percent of the nation's 80,000 dams currently generate electricity – so the potential for adding electric generation to non-powered dams is enormous,” notes NHA. 

Interest in small hydro is soaring thanks to new financial incentives. In 2009, Congress extended a generous investment tax credit to hydro projects at existing dams. DOE is also handing out grants to support small hydro development. 

NHA complains, however, that it takes an average of five years to win a license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission even to add power generation capacity at existing dams—a deadly obstacle to smaller projects.

Tapping the country’s potential for more clean hydropower “will not occur without a series of changes to the status quo, including improvements in certain aspects of the regulatory process for hydropower development,” NHA says. Hopefully, FERC will continuing taking steps to streamline applications in the interests of clean and sustainable energy.

Posted by: Kory Raftery

Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:

Reports released by the National Research Council warn the longer we wait to begin making a drastic reduction in carbon emissions, the harder and more expensive it will be. Congress commissioned the report as part of a series focused on global warming. The authors claim a carbon pricing system is the most cost effective way to drive change. They also state we need to start a measurable budget for greenhouse gas emissions - adding that to really make an impact, we must depart from “business as usual emissions trends, which in the U.S. have been rising at the rate of one percent per year for the last three decades.”

Glacial melting in Greenland is being linked to coastal rising. A recent study completed by University of Miami scientists claims some coastal areas are rising by nearly one inch per year. If current trends continue, scientists fear that figure could increase to two inches per year by 2025. "Greenland's ice melt is very important because it has a big impact on global sea level rise," one of the study’s co-authors said. "We hope that our work reaches the general public and that this information is considered by policy makers."

The Obama administration submitted its revised plan for running the hydroelectric dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers while minimizing the impact on wild salmon runs. The plan covers 10 years of hydropower operations. It will help to combat global warming as hydropower is a source of carbon-free electricity generation. In addition, fish and wildlife experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the plan will not put critical fish habitat in jeopardy. The plan is supported by a majority of Northwest tribes and states. Its opponents include the state of Oregon, the Nez Perce Tribe and a coalition of fishing and conservation groups, who argue it favors power production and shipping interests rather than threatened and endangered fish.

Pacific island nations are asking the UN Security Council to break the stalemate in negotiations over a global warming treaty, comparing global warming to an invading army. In a letter to the UN, the 11 nations that make up the Pacific Small Island Developing States asserted the threat they face due to a warming world is comparable to damage inflicted on a nation resulting from armed conflict. The group said global warming is contributing to severe food and water shortages in the Pacific and already making refugees of people in Vanuatu, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

After all the rain and snow we’ve had this season, I was startled to read in a press release last week from the state Department of Water Resources: “California’s water crisis remains. . . . The harsh reality is that we continue to have a severe problem with water in California.”

I can just imagine what the cautious water managers would have told Noah after the Great Flood: “Not so fast, Noah. One cupful per animal is all we can spare.”

All kidding aside, even one reasonably wet year doesn’t erase the deficit caused by three years of drought. The State Water Project’s premier Northern California reservoir, Lake Oroville, is still less than two-thirds full, so water contractors this year will receive only 40 percent of their requested deliveries.

Unfortunately, the same long-term deficit also affects the state’s hydroelectric resources. While the hydrology experts at PG&E are grateful for the wetter season, they point out that the type of precipitation we received as well as the long-term deficit in water stored in the sponge-like volcanic rocks in Northern California will keep customers from enjoying all the hoped-for benefits of cheap and clean hydropower.

Snow levels in the Northern Sierra were at 202 percent of normal on May 6, and 148 percent statewide.  At Squaw Valley, snow levels reached 530 inches, deep enough to bury even an Abominable Snowman. Great news, right?

Well, it turns out that a major reason for the huge snowpack is that colder-than-usual weather turned drops of precipitation into flakes. Instead of running into the ground and into reservoirs, the water now sits above ground. As a result, hydropower generation during the winter was lower than I had imagined from all the stormy weather—only about 70 percent of average from January to March, according to PG&E hydrologist Jan Grygier.

If the weather turns hot all of a sudden, he warns, a fast snow melt could overwhelm reservoir capacity and have to be spilled. That would mean a short season for peak hydropower production followed by only average levels in the summer.

Worse yet, California’s reasonably wet winter came at the expense of the Pacific Northwest, which had the driest winter in years. The forecast for spring-summer flows on the Columbia River is only 67 percent of average.

“This is a bad situation that has just gotten worse,” said Steve Wright, administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration, on May 7. “We had hoped a wet spring would help snowpack across the Columbia River Basin, but that didn’t happen.  We are now looking at the fifth lowest runoff since the hydro system has been in existence.” 

As a result, California will be able to import less hydropower this summer, and will have to rely more on purchases from natural gas-fired generators.

So, get out your prayer books and ask for a continued cool spring and early summer to slow the snow melt. If your luck holds, pray for a wet winter next season to bring equal parts rain and snow, so the groundwater can recharge and our snowbanks bulge once again. 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

SolarCity, a solar power system design, financing and installation company, has secured an additional $90 million fund from a unit of U.S. Bancorp to finance expansion of its solar projects in the western states. In January, Pacific Venture Capital, a subsidiary of PG&E Corp., announced $60 million in financing for SolarCity installations mainly in California with some in Arizona and Colorado. SolarCity also serves Oregon and Texas.

Former Edison International CEO John Bryson plugged some green startup companies at the U.C. Berkeley Energy Symposium on Thursday: Santa Monica-based Coda Automotive, maker of electric vehicles in China; smart-grid wireless company On-Ramp Wireless, of San Diego; and Ostendo, maker of solid state lighting displays based in Carlsbad, California. Bryson, a member of Coda's board of directors, was a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and president of the California Public Utilities Commission.

Greenest city in the world? Reykjavik, Iceland, tops a list for sustainability, according to Global Green Blog at GlobalPost. Reykjavik runs entirely on green power, including geothermal and hydroelectricity, and the city's transit system moves people around on hydrogen buses. Light-rail and bicycle leader Portland, Oregon, comes second, followed by Curitiba, Brazil, where sheep trim the parks; Malmo, Sweden, developing sustainable neighborhoods; and Vancouver, British Columbia, where 90 percent of its electricity comes from hydropower.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Here at PG&E, we (like most Californians) have a love-hate attitude toward the rain. Like bitter medicine, it's not enjoyable in the moment, but deep down we know it's good for us.

Wind-driven precipitation knocks trees into our power lines, topples power poles and floods our facilities, creating outages and public safety risks. In fact, last week's storms impacted service to 1.5 million customers and damaged more than 500 poles, 250 miles of electrical lines and 800 transformers.

About the only good thing we can say during a storm is it brings out the best in our heroic repair crews and our customers, who (mostly) suffer service disruptions with patience and understanding.

But come spring and summer, if we haven't had enough rain, we at PG&E start to miss the clean, efficient hydropower driven by all the water in our mountain rivers and reservoirs. We also miss the wet ground that keeps vegetation from drying out and becoming tinder for giant wildfires that threaten our facilities and our customers' homes and businesses.

Before the onslaught of storms last week, California was headed into another drought year--its third in a row.

Just before the storms hit the state, the Department of Water Resources painted a bleak picture of continuing drought conditions:

This year's precipitation as of mid-January 2009 is well below average, with 20-30" of additional rain and snow needed to produce average runoff. The previous two water years, October 1,  2006 thru September 30, 2008 left a deficit of nearly 28" of precipitation in the Northern and Central Sierra, source of much of our water supply. . . . Statewide average reservoir levels are 68% of average for this date.  Last year at this time they were at 80% of average.

And the bottom line: "As of January 1, 2009, the statewide runoff is forecast to be dry to critically dry this year."

The result of the prolonged drought was to reduce PG&E's hydropower generation from 13,800 gigawatt-hours in 2006 to 7,700 GWh in 2007 and 7,900 GWh in 2008. (Preliminary data suggest that 2009 was a little better, but still far below normal.) This loss of about 7 percent of our total generation had to be offset by sharply higher power purchases, mostly from natural gas-fired generators, which increased costs to customers and greenhouse gas emissions as well.

Fortunately, this picture brightened last week even as the skies darkened. According to PG&E's hydro experts:

The recent wave of severe winter storms have produced significant amounts of snow and precipitation in PG&E service areas and hydro watersheds. As a result the cumulative precipitation picture has improved substantially: The California statewide average snow water content increased from 79 percent of normal on 1/7/2010 to 107 percent of normal on 1/21/2010; PG&E's hydro-weighted precipitation, from 15 representative stations, increased from 68 percent of normal to 91 percent of normal to date. If the wet trend continues, it could lead to better-than-average annual hydro generation year.

So as you struggle with your umbrella, or sit in the dark for a few hours, take heart in knowing that all this rain may end up saving you money and sparing the environment.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

The view from my window is not pretty today: cloudy, gray and damp. It would actually be a lot prettier, to my eye, if it were pouring rain.

That's because the state desperately needs more precipitation to break two years of drought, going on three. Unless we see a dramatic change in the weather, we'll likely suffer another rash of early season fires that scorch forests, grasslands and homes.

Residential and agricultural water users will feel the pinch of tighter rationing. Already, 21 water agencies across the state have imposed water rationing, and more will surely follow.

We'll also have less water for hydro generation, forcing PG&E and other utilities to rely more on fossil fuels for power. That will mean more greenhouse gas emissions and (other things being equal) higher rates. (Last year the utility's hydropower output was only about three-quarters of normal.)

One drought year is manageable. But water runoff has been low in California the previous two years--only 53 percent of average in 2006-7 and 60 percent of average in 2007-8. At the end of December, Oroville Reservoir was at the lowest level in history, and other major reservoirs are desperately low as well.

With the dry start to 2008-9, simply working our way back to an average runoff year would take another 10 feet to 20 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada, according to the state Department of Water Resources.

The good news, says Gary Freeman, PG&E's principal hydrologist, is that weather fronts should bring some precipitation to northern and central California almost every day from now to the end of January.

The bad news is that "the amount of wetness will probably be small," Freeman says. "These storm fronts won't amount to much."

With half of our precipitation season yet to run, there's still a chance of turning the current dry spell into a normal or even wet year. But the probability of that happening is receding every day.

"Even if precipitation is normal going forward, we'll only end up at 80 percent of normal for the year," Freeman says. "That's pretty dry."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• California is beginning the new year with a requirement for new 2009 cars sold in the state to display a sticker that shows information on the vehicle's environmental impact. The sticker will provide a global warming score and a smog score on a 1-to-10 scale, with 10 the best score and 5 the average. The California Air Resources Board has set up a consumer Website with more information on the cleanest and most efficient cars.
• Toyota Motor Corp. is said to be secretly developing a solar-powered car. Toyota is working on an electric vehicle that will get some of its power from solar cells equipped on the vehicle, and that can be recharged with electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of homes, Japan's Nikkei newspaper says. Toyota also plans a car powered totally by solar cells on the vehicle.
• Two electric utilities in Europe are offering their customers plans to purchase carbon-free electricity generated at nuclear power plants. Germany's R.W.E. utility is marketing a purchase plan that promises customers 70 percent of their power will come from nuclear generation with the remainder from hydroelectricity and renewable energies. Finland's Fortum power company offers two plans for business customers in Finland and Sweden -- Fortum Carbon Free, a mix of nuclear and hydropower, and Fortum Renewable, a blend of renewable resources.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

After a long brown spell, California ski resorts are once again covered in white and looking forward to earning some real green over the holidays. For PG&E and its customers, recent precipitation--and the promise of more to come--bodes well for supplies of clean, inexpensive hydropower next year.

Though it didn't last long, recent cold storms dumped piles of hail on San Francisco and snow on Berkeley's Tilden Park, both memorable events. Up in the Sierra, major resorts now report two-to-three feet of snow.

"What a phenomenal change one storm has made for the mountain," said a spokeswoman for Alpine Meadows and Homewood Mountain ski resorts. "It is wonderful and humbling how quickly Mother Nature can move in and create something amazing. We couldn't have received this kind of snow at a better time."

Even so, the snow that provides so much of California's water is still running only 35 percent of normal--and only 19 percent of normal in Northern California. That leaves a lot of catching up to do.

At PG&E, principal hydrologist Gary Freeman watches snow and rainfall forecasts closely, since one of his jobs is to help the utility plan its use of clean hydroelectric resources. He says the watersheds that feed PG&E's hydro system stand a good chance of beating the drought after two years of sub-par precipitation.

"Next week we could get hit by some very wet storms tapping into subtropical moisture--what we used to call the Pineapple Express," Freeman said. "We should see lots of snow and rain right around Christmas, which will fill some of our lower-elevation reservoirs and build some snowpack. We could have another subtropical storm after that, so California could be back to normal or even wet by mid-January."

Full reservoirs will allow the utility to substitute hydropower for natural gas-fired generation, helping the environment and lowering costs. The only downside is likely to be the landslides and mud flows in watersheds laid bare by this summer's widespread and intense fires.

Freeman notes that PG&E's service territory is seeing relatively less snow and more rain than it did 30 years ago as a result of California's warming climate. The snowpack is also melting two-to-three weeks earlier. So far, that's not a problem. But if warming continues apace, heavy runoff from fast-melting snows could create potential operational challenges.

President-elect Obama's appointee as secretary of energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Director Steven Chu, commented last year on the longrun impact of climate change on California's snowpack: "I think that's a much more serious problem than the gradually rising sea level, unless Greenland just completely melts," Chu said. "This is a huge water supply concern for California and the Southwest."

Posted by: Katie Romans

Okay, so it's not a slogan for the visitor bureau, but my Reno Gazette-Journal today reported that this year's runoff has hit peak and will be on a diminishing trend from now on.

I'm not sure if this forecast took into account the May snow I drove through on my way here or the cloudy skies above, but certainly a few flakes has little effect on a 72-mile, 1,000-ft-deep lake.

Aside from being a disappointment for Lake Tahoe, with river runoff projections as low as 38 percent, this will undoubtedly impact hydroelectric capacity as we look into summer. Apparently, last week's heatwave burned right through the snowpack, causing a quick and final rise in stream and river levels before they begin their steady drop with rising summer temperatures. It seems that the optimism of early winter's heavy snows went down the proverbial drain.

As for Tahoe, the Federal Water Master's Office in Reno reports that, after the couple of inches that should come with this weekend's thunderstorms (great), the rate of lake evaporation will exceed river and stream runoff, and Tahoe will begin to drop. A sad reality, though definitely not a first for this Cal-Neva treasure.