Thursday, November 29, 2012

Before Hurricane Sandy, No Advocate For New York's Utility Ratepayers


Matt Sledge
Huffington Post
Posted: 
NEW YORK -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched an investigation two weeks ago into utility companies' performance before and after Hurricane Sandy left millions of New Yorkers powerless -- some for weeks.
But one issue that could be crucial to Cuomo's special commission review is why there is no independent voice in New York state to stand up for electricity ratepayers before storms hit.
Last March, Cuomo rolled the state's independent Consumer Protection Board's Utility Intervention Unit into the Department of State. The unit now has a bare-bones staff with no authority to sue on behalf of ordinary customers. The governor's administration also has yet to issue a contract for independent utility watchdog and non-profit the Public Utility Law Project -- despite appropriations by the state legislature.
Across the Hudson, even though its population is a fraction of New York state's, New Jersey has a Division of Rate Counsel with dozens of employees on guard against jacked-up rates and lowballed tree-trimming budgets. It also can take utilities to court if it needs to.
"Right now as it stands, we have a diminished consumer protection representation," said New York Assembly Energy Committee Chair Kevin Cahill. "It's a serious, serious issue."
Utilities are claiming a staggering $1.5 billion in damages from Hurricane Sandy. If companies like Con Edison argue -- as they likely will -- that consumers should be forced to pay for most of that, there is no one with the technical knowledge necessary to find out what is warranted and what is not.
The lack of consumer protection also means that before Sandy, nobody was looking into whether ConEd was spending enough on maintenance and infrastructure investments, aside from the state regulator, the Public Service Commission.
New York's Utility Intervention Unit has just two employees, according to Cahill. And at a hearing earlier this year, when he asked about its jurisdiction since it had been rolled into the Department of State, he said, nobody seemed to know.
The governor's office and the Utility Intervention Unit did not respond to requests for comment.
Gerald Norlander, the executive director of PULP, said the state now appears to belatedly be moving to approve his outfit's contract. But he also sees a need for a strengthened, politically independent state utility intervention body.
"Under Pataki and Spitzer and Paterson and Cuomo -- it's not just Cuomo -- it's withered for 15 years," Norlander said of the unit. "They don't have the structural power and the independence they should have."
Having a voice independent from the regulator is critical, said Paul Flanagan, the litigation manager for the comparatively well-staffed and well-defined Division of Rate Counsel in New Jersey.
"We tend to be more the adversaries of the utilities, more so than the (regulator's) staff," he said.
An independent advocate can look out for customers before a disaster like Sandy strikes. It was the Division of Rate Counsel that filed a request in July with New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities to require one of the state's leading utilities, Jersey Central Power & Light, to explain how it was spending its storm mitigation money.
"As the utilities come in, which some of them already have and some of them will, to look for monies to pay for the storm … we look at the cost of things in particular, so we want to see whether the ratepayers are getting value for the money that is spent," said Flanagan.
Many other states have a similar ratepayers' advocate, usually funded by the utilities themselves in a way that amounts to pennies per consumer per year. There is even a National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. But New York is missing out.
"One of the problems with the rate-making structure in New York is that utilities can basically submit the bill for their response to storm damage, and it's pretty much passed through to the consumer," said Cahill.
But in many cases, he argued, utilities should have been spending more before the storm, to make outages less likely and shorter. Instead, he said, they have cut back on tree-trimming that can prevent downed lines, upgrading infrastructure, and hiring the lineworkers necessary to keep systems in shape.
"The question from a consumer representation standpoint at the current moment is, should the ratepayers in any way, shape, or form, be saddled with the costs of recovery where those costs could have been avoided with proper preparation?" he asked. "My answer to that is 'no'."

Fiscal Woes, Long-Held Fears Spur Waste-to-Energy Debate


New York is thinking about diverting garbage from out-of-state landfills and using it to generate electricity locally. The plan pits concerns about city spending and carbon emissions against fears of environmental injustice.

By Bill Hughes | Wednesday, Oct 10, 2012

CityLimits.org

In the years since a tugboat nosed the last barge full of garbage into the massive Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island when it was officially closed back in March of 2001, the tax burden and environmental impact of dealing with New York City's trash have increased dramatically. City officials estimate that in a single year, tractor-trailers log 40 million miles to haul 3 million tons of trash from the five boroughs to out-of-state landfills, mostly in Pennsylvania and Virginia. The flat cost of shipping trash to landfills has risen from $62 per ton in 2001 to $92 per ton last year. A recent report by the Citizen's Budget Commission concluded that, "The waste that New York City sends to landfills generates about 679,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases per year – the equivalent of adding more than 133,000 cars to the roads."
To address the growing problem, Mayor Michael Bloomberg included a partial solution in his 30-year master plan for the city, PlaNYC, which calls for the construction of a new Waste-to-Energy (WTE) facility to process trash that cannot be recycled. A Request for Proposals (RFP) was issued in March of 2012 to the private sector to build a facility, "…using reliable, cost-effective, sustainable and environmentally sound waste to clean energy technology."
Among the requirements in the RFP was a mandate that the pilot facility be located either in the five boroughs or within an 80-mile radius of the city. It would have to begin by processing 450 tons per day, with the city making no capital investment but paying a tipping fee once it starts sending trash. The 450-ton per day capacity would have to double if the pilot is successful. The bid went out in March, applications were due by June 5th and the award was supposed to be announced in early September. A Bloomberg spokesman last week said the proposals were still under review and an announcement might be made in November. The administration estimates that over 30 years if expanded facilities could accommodate two million tons of trash annually, the city would save about $119 million dollars per year and combined greenhouse gas emissions would be cut by 240,000 metric tons per year.
Almost immediately, environmental justice advocates began protesting, saying the writing on the wall leaned toward a WTE process called thermal processing, which many feel is a fancy code for incineration. The New York Public Interest Research Group reacted to the RFP's announcement by organizing protests and labeling thermal processing as unsafe, unproven and inequitable to communities of color.
Worries about impact on recycling, neighborhoods
The advocates also feel strongly that devoting resources to WTE technology will take away from recycling efforts, where New York lags, ranking 16th out of 27 major U.S. cities in a recent survey. San Francisco, which recycles 77 percent of its household waste, ranked first in the nation, while New York recycled only 15.4 percent in 2011.
"That's just disgraceful," said Eddie Bautista, executive director of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance. "How can it be that with all the wealth and technology available to this city that we can't manage to do better than we're doing today?"
Bautista also worries about who'll be affected most if the city locates a thermal processing facility within the five boroughs: "There are only so many neighborhoods zoned for this type of activity. They're typically located in low-income communities and they're already over-burdened with industrial polluters."
Bautista took part in a protest back in April when city officials took prospective bidders on a tour of potential sites, including the Fresh Kills landfill. And he was not alone.
"We've suffered enough out here and we've suffered disproportionately," said City Councilman Vincent Ignizio of Staten Island at a September meeting of the council's Solid Waste and Sanitation Committee. "When Robert Moses opened Fresh Kills in 1948 it was only supposed to be for three years. It took 50-plus years for us to finally get it closed, and toward the end we were the only dumping ground for all the city's garbage." Ignizio added that he grew up within smelling distance of Fresh Kills and remembers many nights sleeping in his parents' bedroom because they had the only air conditioner which could mask the odor of the dump.
The outcry from residents and Staten Island elected officials was loud enough that the Bloomberg administration removed the entire borough of Staten Island from consideration in the RFP. But the other boroughs are still in the mix.
Technology has defenders
Proponents of WTE technology argue that thermal processing is a form of recycling and that new technologies and EPA regulations have eliminated the odor and air pollution many people connect with the process of incinerating trash. Professor Nickolas J. Themelis, director of the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University, said he thinks that much of the opposition to creating WTE plants in the city stems from people's memories of the bad old days.
"At one point New York had 30 municipal incinerators and about 15,000 residential incinerators with no regulation at all. It was a mess," said Themelis. "There is this kind of animus among people who have been exposed to incinerators in the past. They associate them with black smoke and horrific pollution. But the truth is, those are all gone now. The pollution generated by trucking waste to landfills can't compare to how little a modern WTE facility produces. The people who oppose these technologies are like the Flat Earth Society, they are holding back progress."
Themelis recently completed work on a large collaborative study for the Inter-American Development Bank to recommend the best WTE technology for waste management in Latin America. "Regrettably, we came to the conclusion that the technology we use now is the best to use. Over the past decades roughly 125 plants have been built around the world using thermal combustion … with increasingly strict emissions standards. The data we have collected is, I think, unassailable. These systems produce far less emissions than landfilling."
There are currently 10 WTE facilities statewide licensed by the Department of Environmental Conservation to burn municipal waste and convert it into steam and electricity. One is located in Peekskill, about 50 miles up the Hudson River. The facility is owned by Wheelabrator, a subsidiary of Waste Management, the country's largest waste processor, which serves more than 20 million residential, commercial and municipal customers nationwide.
The Peekskill facility processes approximately 700,000 tons of waste per year, or about 95 percent of the household trash generated by Westchester County, according to Operations Manager Brett Baker. Three, nine-story tall boilers burn about 2,250 tons of pre-recycled trash per day, using the trash as fuel. The heat (over 2,000-degrees Fahrenheit) drives a turbine which generates electricity—60 megawatts of electricity per hour.—which is sold to Con Edison via a direct feed to its grid. The ash is cooled and sifted for recyclable metal and the remains, about 10 percent of the initial volume, are sent to landfills. The emissions are forced through a series of filtering systems until they are below state and federal guidelines for pollutants, then released through one large stack.
"We have about a 90 percent reduction rate in the waste stream," Baker told a reporter in September. "And as you can tell when you drove up here, we burn clean. There's virtually no odor at all coming out of the stack and everything is well within EPA guidelines." Waste Management officials claim they operate enough WTE facilities across the U.S. to power 1 million homes and they expect to double that output by 2020.
Of course, not everyone shares a rosy outlook on the plant. A December 2010 report by the Peekskill Environmental Justice Council identified the facility as, "A major source of air pollution." A state permit issued in March 2012 listed the wide ranges of toxic pollutants the plant is permitted to release, including up to 10 tons per year each of dioxins, mercury, arsenic, lead and cadmium.
Newer technologies and emissions controls were recently approved at a facility run by one of the likely bidders for the NYC contract, Covanta Energy, which currently burns some of New York's trash for $66 per ton at its facility in Newark. Environmental activists believe those changes would not have been made without public pressure. Industry analysts point out that waste processors are trying to find an economic "sweet spot," where new technology implementation costs don't swallow up potential profits.
Searching for viable options
New York's RFP identified several different WTE technologies that companies could propose besides thermal incineration—like plasma gasification, hydrolysis and anaerobic digestion.
In early September The New York Times profiled a non-profit company with a plasma gasification facility in Florida, one that burns municipal waste at more than 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit then electrifies it. The promoters of the technology claim the process breaks down the chemical bonds of carcinogenic material like PCB's, asbestos and medical waste, rendering them harmless without creating dioxin or other harmful byproducts. But opponents point out that pushing such technology will hinder recycling and the development of ecologically friendly products and policies. Others point out that the plasma gasification consumes roughly half the energy it creates to feed its own power requirements. 
The other technologies in the city's RFP, anaerobic digestion and hydrolysis, deal mainly with organic materials and would only handle a small percentage of the city's waste, meaning thermal processing might be the most effective alternative to landfilling.
Proponents of the technology point to several European cities like Vienna, Paris and Copenhagen which have built thermal processing WTE facilities inside their city limits and incorporated them into the cityscape.
But critics like the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives say the higher a country's incineration rate, the lower its recycling rate. The group released a report tracking waste treatment strategies across the 27-member European Union. According to the report, while Denmark had the highest rate of WTE incineration at 54 percent of the country's total waste stream, it only recycled 23 percent. "It is necessary to implement a system that reduces waste generation, reuses and recycles waste, and phases out both incineration and landfilling," the report concluded.
On Oct. 5 San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee announced that the city had reached an 80 percent landfill diversion rate through aggressive recycling, reuse and composting initiatives making it the "greenest" city in North America and moving it closer to the goal of "zero waste"—a target of which Themelis is skeptical.
"There are people who talk about ‘zero waste,' but zero waste is not a reality, it's a fantasy. True, we should recycle as much as is practical, but you cannot neglect that you must do something with what can't be recycled."Themelis added that America's comfort level with landfill arises partially from an excess of open space that few other countries enjoy. "New York City sends 100,000 truckloads of landfill out of state every year, but sooner or later the state borders will be closed, that's not going away."
According to recent EPA data, there are currently 87 facilities in the U.S. burning trash to generate electricity. The combined output of these facilities amounts to approximately 2,500 megawatts, or 0.3 of total national power generation. The agency cites the high construction cost of such facilities as one reason that the public will and financing to build them has been lacking.
It's unclear if the city's fiscal challenge and growing concern about its carbon footprint will create the political support necessary for WTE in New York. Councilwoman Letitia James, who chairs the Sanitation and Solid Waste Committee, said she supports the RFP initiative, but under the conditions that minority communities are not disproportionately impacted and the economics make good sense. "I'm open to examining it," said James during a recent interview. "Not necessarily supporting it, but examining it. Because there's just no way we can continue to afford to ship millions of tons of garbage out of the state." 

Schneider helps cities switch on to save


Updated: 2012-11-21 11:14
By Meng Jing ( China Daily)


Opportunities abound as company's projects suit China's soaring demand
Every working day exactly 15 minutes after employees at Schneider Electric's China headquarters in Beijing are to leave work, the lights in the building go out. Those who need to stay late have to turn them back on to prevent their workspaces from being shrouded in darkness.
It is that kind of attention to saving energy that helped the French energy management company reduce the power used in its Beijing building from 160 kilowatt-hours per square meter a year in 2009 to 105 kW/h in 2011. The company now says it expects to have the amount reduced to 90 kW/h by 2014.
Making buildings energy efficient is one of Schneider Electric's specialtiesAnd it has now setits sights on a bigger goalmaking cities more sustainableefficient and livable.
"It doesn't make sense to be leaders in energy management if we cannot addressexpectations and challenges cities are facing today," said Patrick GaonachChina senior vice-president of strategy and business development at Schneider Electric.
"And China will represent a big proportion of this new market for us due to the number of itscities and the challenges they have."
Starting this yearSchneider Electric has been preparing to move forward with its initiative,Smart City Solutionswhich will use different kinds of technologies to efficiently manage cities'energyenvironmentswaterspace and other resources.
Gaonach noted that cities occupy about 2 percent of the land in the world but are home toabout half of the populationuse about 75 percent of the energy and are the source of about80 percent of carbon emissions.
"As everyone wonders how to meet the growing demand for energy and resources whiledrastically reducing global carbon emissionsone thing is clearThis challenge will be won orlost in the cities," said Gaonachwho has worked for Schneider Electric for about 25 years.
In the pursuit of its goalsSchneider Electric is working with around 230 cities and regions onprojects to help them improve the efficiency and sustainability of their urban infrastructuresetand meet ambitious environmental goals and all the while staying within their budgets.
Schneider Electric is working on a variety of projects in Europe and even more in the United StatesBut of all the countries where it has a presenceChina probably has the strongest willto make its cities sustainableGaonach said.
The scale and pace of urban expansion in China is unprecedentedLast yearfor the first time,more than half of the 1.3 billion people making up its population were classified as urbandwellers.
According to a report by the economics think tank McKinsey Global Instituteas many as 100of the world's top 600 cities are expected to be in China by 2025.
"Going green is definitely a trend among Chinese citiesno matter how big or small they are,"Gaonach said. "With rapid developmentcities also want to be more cost-effectivenot only inbuilding those cost-intensive infrastructuresbut also in operating and maintaining them.
"Last but not leastcitizens in China are now becoming more and more demandingThey wantcities to be more convenient and livable."
Such demands are broadhe saidAnd Schneider Electric is working to meet them in a varietyof wayswhether it be through providing power gridstransportwater and public services orbuildings and residences.
"For sureit is quite a significant move for Schneider Electricwhich is moving from being ahardware and software provider to more and more integrated solutions," Gaonach said. "Butthis is a strategic direction we are taking to better meet the needs of our key stakeholders in China."
To achieve that goalSchneider Electricwhich reported sales of 22.4 billion euros ($29.2billionlast yearacquired other IT solution providers in 2011, including the Spain-based IT andindustrial automation company Telvent GIT SASchneider Electric said the convergence ofinformation and communications technologies and energy has become common enough toconstitute a global trend.
Cities can overcome various difficulties through the use of information and communicationtechnologyfor instanceby relying on car rental arrangements to reduce the number ofvehicles on the roads.
According to the Smart 2020 reportpublished by the IT services and consultancy companyAccenture last yearthe use of smart technologies in electrical gridstransportshipping,buildings and industrial motors could reduce global emissions by 15 percent by 2020 and saveabout $900 billion a year in energy costs.
Gaonach said Schneider Electric has many opportunities in China. "What we are trying to do isto be more selective in partnerships and take a step-by-step approach," he said.
The company has around 50 SmartCity projects in Chinaeach of which concentrates on oneor two specific undertakings rather than the integrated solutions Schneider Electric can offer,Gaonach saidadding that about 10 of those cities will become the company's long-termstrategic partners.
Those relationships will require extensive cooperation between local governmentsprivatecompanies and investors and will call on participants from different walks of life to worktogether on sustainable development models.
"It is one thing to do a specific projectit is another to become long-term partnerswhich ismuch more complicated," Gaonach said. "We are trying to develop our strategic partners fromthose cities we have solidconcrete projects with."
The clients are likely to be some of the large cities found in China's more developed coastalregionsas well as expanding inland citieshe said.
He estimated that a complete renovation of a city can take 10 years or more.
"The top priority for us is to develop in China for China solutions," he said. "We have a veryambitious research and development plan with a new R&D center being established in Chinalater this year."
Schneider Electric invests 5 percent of its annual revenue in research and developmenthesaidand a growing proportion of that money is being put into China.


New York tells Con Ed to prepare in case Indian Point shuts


Wed Nov 28, 2012 3:02pm EST
* New York governor wants Indian Point shut
* Entergy wants to run reactors for 20 more years
* Indian Point current licenses expire in 2013, 2015
By Scott DiSavino
Nov 28 (Reuters) - New York energy regulators told power companies in New York City to develop plans to keep the lights on in the Big Apple in case the giant Indian Point nuclear power plant, which supplies about a quarter of the city's electricity, is forced to shut down.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants the two reactors at Indian Point shut when their operating licenses expire in 2013 and 2015 in part because the nuclear plant is located in the New York metropolitan area, home to some 19 million people.
The governor has said even the most unlikely possibility of an accident is too much in the heavily populated area.
U.S. power company Entergy Corp, which owns Indian Point, says, however, the plant is safe, and the company is seeking to extend the reactors' licenses for another 20 years.
The 2,063-megawatt (MW) Indian Point plant is about 40 miles (60 km) north of Manhattan along the Hudson River.
"Entergy and its employees continuously demonstrate the plants are safely operated, and is committed to safely operating this important facility for many more years to come," Entergy spokesman Jerry Nappi told Reuters Wednesday in an email.
On Tuesday, the state's energy regulator, New York Public Service Commission (NYPSC), directed New York City power company Consolidated Edison Inc to work with the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to develop a contingency plan to address the needs that would arise in the event Indian Point shuts down.
NYPA is a state-owned power generator that supplies electricity to government customers in New York City, including schools, hospitals, government buildings, subways and commuter trains.
"We will comply with the Commission's directive to work with the New York Power Authority to develop a contingency plan addressing the needs that would arise in the event of an Indian Point shutdown," Con Edison told Reuters in an emailed statement.
A shutdown of Indian Point, without sufficient alternatives, would threaten electric system reliability and potentially raise electric market prices, Con Ed said.
Several energy companies have already proposed power plants and transmission lines that could partially replace Indian Point, including units of NRG Energy Inc, Brookfield Asset Management Inc, BP Plc, Calpine Corp , GenOn Energy Inc and Iberdrola SA.
ENTERGY SEEKS NEW LICENSES
To keep the reactors running over the next couple of decades, Entergy filed with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2007 to renew the Indian Point licenses.
A decision by the NRC commissioners on the licenses might not happen for years, as agency judges are still holding hearings on challenges to the plant's continued operation.
Entergy, however, can continue to operate the reactors even after their licenses expire so long as the federal renewal process is ongoing.
The three judges at the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB), which serves as the agency's judicial arm, started evidentiary hearings near the plant in October to consider 10 complaints raised by New York State and two public interest groups, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Inc and Riverkeeper Inc.
The NRC has scheduled several days of hearings through at least mid-December. On Wednesday, the NRC said it did not know when, or if, a second round of hearings would be scheduled and that a decision on the challenges would likely come months after the hearings are done.
SANDY PROMPTS ACTION
The contingency plan for Indian Point was one of Governor Cuomo's Energy Highway Blueprint proposals issued by a task force in October.
Cuomo proposed the Energy Highway plan in January to modernize the state's energy infrastructure.
The state's Public Service Commission said it decided to move forward this week on three proposals in the Energy Highway Blueprint, including the Indian Point proposal, because of Superstorm Sandy.
Sandy caused billions of dollars of damage and left millions of New Yorkers in the dark - some for more than two weeks - after striking the U.S. East Coast in late October.
The other Blueprint recommendations the Public Service Commission said it has decided move forward on now are proposals to build over 1,000 MW of new transmission capacity between upstate New York and New York City, at an estimated cost of $1 billion, and proposals to expand the state's use of natural gas by residential and business customers.
One megawatt can power about 1,000 homes in New York.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Car Sharing Widens the Lanes of Access for City Drivers


Josie Garthwaite
For National Geographic News
Published November 26, 2012
Behind Valencia Street's widened sidewalks and bike lanes, San Francisco has another tool ready to cut traffic and transit crowding. Nestled in the neighborhoods surrounding this longtime transportation corridor are hundreds of parked cars—available for sharing.
Brian Scates, creative director at a Silicon Valley startup, rented out his 2000 Audi All-Road last year for $50 to $60 a day, rather than let it sit unused while he biked around town and commuted to work by train. Meanwhile, Sebastien Rouif throws his surfboard into the back of his neighbor's pickup truck on Saturdays to drive down the coast and catch some waves. The fee and gas total about $40, cheaper than other rental options—and it's a lot less expensive than owning a car. (Related Pictures: "Twelve Car-Free City Zones")
Scates has since cut back on sharing his car, but still believes in the idea: "I'm all about fewer cars on the road, and maximizing the value that we get out of those vehicles."
Scates and Rouif, who both rented through Getaround, a car-sharing network, are in the vanguard of San Francisco residents who have given peer-to-peer car sharing a whirl. P2P, as it's known, aims to help address transportation problems by mining a largely untapped resource: Most cars sit unused most of the time. At least 30 companies worldwide are offering P2P car sharing, which enables short-term access to personal vehicles in a way that is convenient, smartphone-friendly, and cheap.
The system is not without its problems. Sharers have to be willing to tolerate additional wear and tear on their vehicles; for some, that alone is a deal breaker. And though a few states have passed laws establishing rules on car-sharing insurance coverage, liability issues remain.
Still, cities like San Francisco—feeling the strain both of too many cars on the road and crowded public transit—are taking steps to encourage car sharing. Indeed, they echo the P2P startups in touting the business opportunity inherent in helping people to consume less through sharing.
"If you ask how to transform a car from a product into a service, you get a whole new economy," said Shannon Spanhake, deputy innovation officer for the City of San Francisco. 
Community Cars
Car sharing isn't entirely new. One program begun in a Swiss housing cooperative in 1948 continued for 50 years; individuals who couldn't afford a car on their own instead gained mobility by sharing a few vehicles. A series of car-sharing experiments were launched in the 1970s in Europe, after the Arab oil embargo caused worldwide energy prices to skyrocket. But one of the earliest studies on the concept concluded in 1969 that "community garages" never would work in the United States because cities here had "numerous rivers" of highway and "oceans" of parking space to accommodate individual car ownership.
Four decades later, with jammed highways and astronomical parking prices a near-universal feature of life in U.S. cities, a few nonprofits and businesses have begun to see opportunity in offering car sharing as an alternative. (Related: "Five Signs California Is Ditching Its Car Habit")
A leader in the movement was Zipcar, the 12-year-old membership-based network with some 730,000 users in 20 cities and college campuses in North America, Spain, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Peer-to-peer car sharing embraces the Zipcar idea—short-term rentals and convenience enabled by mobile technology. But P2P takes the concept a crucial step further by cutting out the expense of keeping a fleet of cars as well as maintenance crews and dedicated parking spaces.
Network members list their own cars for rental. Carless city dwellers join to gain occasional access to a set of wheels. The car-sharing company typically screens renters and vehicles, offers a platform for matching up car owners and drivers, facilitates payments (while taking its cut), and provides insurance.
Car sharing can be relatively low tech. For many RelayRides and Getaround sharers, for example, the car owner meets the renter in person, checks the driver's license, offers a quick orientation on the car, and hands over the keys. But many companies use technology to allow the rentals to take place without such face-to-face meetings. RelayRides can enable keyless access if the car owner subscribes to General Motors' OnStar service.  Wheelz has its own technology (and Getaround is deploying a similar device) to enable renters to unlock strangers' car with apps on their smartphones.
Wheelz, which started out on college campuses but rolled out to the general public in San Francisco last month, says it installs $100 to $200 worth of proprietary gear under the dash of each car in its network, not only for keyless entry, but for tracking vehicle location and calculating fuel use (the cost of which is then added to the driver's tab). Many of the car-share companies also plug into the power of social networks to enhance trust; they have online communities of users where car owners and renters rate each other publicly, following the eBay model. (Related: "California Tackles Climate Change, But Will Others Follow?")
Advocates of peer-to-peer car sharing see these services as part of a larger trend, known by turns as "collaborative consumption, the "sharing economy," or simply, the "mesh." The idea is to turn goods into services, through an economy built on "accessing" cars, bicycles, power tools, homes, workspaces, or garden plots. (Related: "Bike Share Schemes Shift Into High Gear") The epitome of the notion is the rapidly growing Airbnb marketplace for sharing apartments, houses, and other spaces, which has expanded in four years to 26,000 cities in 192 countries.
Peer-to-peer car sharing has caught fire around the globe, expanding to more than 30 companies worldwide, up from only a handful in 2010. Investors are betting that peer-to-peer car sharing is an idea whose time has come. RelayRides has a slew of venture capital backing, from Google Ventures to General Motors Ventures. In August, Getaround announced it had attracted $13.9 million in funding, including from Google co-founder Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors, Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer, and actor Ashton Kutcher.
Among the backers of Wheelz is the car-sharing giant Zipcar. The companies portray the services as complementary rather than competitive. Wheelz chief executive and co-founder Jeff Miller says vehicles in the Wheelz network are priced, on average, about 10 to 15 percent lower than comparable Zipcar vehicles. That's not a huge discount; what distinguishes Wheelz cars is their convenience, he said. "The cars are where people live. They're in your neighborhood, they're across the block." Plus, he added, "It has sort of a feel-good ethos to it," because the cars—and much of the fee—stay within the community. (Wheelz takes 40 percent of the rental fee, while the owner keeps 60 percent.)
General Motors is not the only automaker that is taking the trend of access over ownership seriously. Car2go, a program from the German automaker Daimler, allows members in 15 cities and five countries to borrow pint-sized Smart Fortwo cars. Similar networks have been set up by BMW in San Francisco and four German cities, and by Renault in France. Sydney, Australia, is now home to more than 9,000 car-sharing members, and by 2016 the city aims to boost car sharing among its residents to 10 percent of all households. The city is supporting the trend by offering convenient curbside parking, particularly in urban renewal areas. (Related: "Coal-Fired Australia, Buffeted by Climate Change, Enacts Carbon Tax")
Evolving Rules of the Road
The rules of the road are still evolving.
"There are all these apps and other ways of accessing transportation within cities, which are all part of the solution, but it's getting ahead of policies," said Rick Hutchinson, chief executive of San Francisco Bay area's pioneering nonprofit car-share service City CarShare, at a recent panel discussion.  For instance, regulators in California and New York City have recently clamped down on operations of several companies they said were acting essentially as unlicensed taxi services, enabling citizens to hail and pay for chauffeured rides by smartphone. (Related: "To Curb Driving, Cities Cut Down on Parking")
For peer-to-peer car sharing, one of the trickiest questions has been insurance coverage. California, Oregon, and Washington state all have passed laws within the past two years aimed at ensuring drivers are covered (generally by the car-sharing company and its insurance partners), while protecting the vehicle owner from the risk of losing his or her own insurance coverage.
In U.S. states without such explicit law, insurance companies that write personal auto insurance typically view car sharing as an invalidating commercial use of a vehicle. In Boston earlier this year, a RelayRides renter died and four riders in the other vehicle were severely injured in a crash where lawyers anticipated the claims would surpass the $1 million insurance provided by the car-sharing company. Who will ultimately pay the balance will depend on the outcome of wrangling among insurance companies and, possibly, the courts. But a New York Times report on the case in August noted that the owner, who received a check from the car-sharing service insurance to cover the cost of replacing her car, immediately listed her new vehicle on RelayRides.
But are there enough enthusiastic car sharers out there to for P2P to grow into the kind of business its investors envision? In San Francisco, a hotbed of P2P activity, only about 1,500 of the city's 400,000 registered cars are shared vehicles, said Timothy Papandreou, deputy director of sustainable streets planning and policy for the city transit agency. The city is actively crafting a strategy for supporting—and regulating—sharing of "anything that moves," he said, from cars to electric scooters, and a much-anticipated bicycle-sharing service rolling out in January. Papandreou says that if the number of shared vehicles in San Francisco increases fivefold, total car ownership could potentially drop by an estimated 25 percent. That would ease crowding on roadways, and hopefully, on the city's strained streetcar and rapid transit system. "Everything comes down to transit crowding," he said. "Our transit is at peak capacity."
Whether P2P can take a bite of city transit problems will depend on the experience of the sharers. Sebastien Rouif, the surfer, who works as a transportation analyst with the French consulate, has tried to persuade his roommates to list their cars on Getaround. In addition to helping the concept to spread, it would also enable him to borrow their vehicles and be covered by Getaround's insurance. So far, he said, they are not convinced.
Scates found that renting out his Audi through Getaround allowed him to bring in about $1,200 over the course of a year, offsetting a portion of the $300 per month he was paying for parking. "Everyone was nice and most of them brought the car back without issues, and had it clean and full of gas," he said. "Only one renter ever brought it back dirty and not full. I'd say it was 90 percent positive."
Still, there were downsides. "The individual renter is spending time handing off keys and coordinating rentals, keeping the car full of gas and clean, getting it serviced more often, and dealing with increased repairs," Scates said. "So even with the extra income, there are tradeoffs."
Once, his Audi came back with a broken cigarette lighter; another time there was a broken air spring in the suspension system. Because of the problems, and the fact that he no longer pays for parking (he now parks his car outside the city), Scates dropped out of active sharing. He doubled his rental rate, and has had no takers at the new price. Nonetheless, Scates says he'd still recommend the service to recoup some of the cost of keeping a car in a city like San Francisco, especially for "for folks who aren't emotionally invested in their cars."
The ranks of such drivers may well be growing, with statistics clearly showing that younger Americans are buying fewer cars and driving fewer miles than their peers in previous generations. Networks like Getaround, RelayRides, Wheelz, and others are betting that in the next chapter of the American love affair with the automobile, drivers will be less smitten with the vehicle, and more devoted to sharing the ride. (Related Pictures: "Cars That Fired Our Love-Hate Relationship With Fuel")
This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Using Carbon Credits To Pay For Energy Retrofits


By Justin Gerdes
Forbes
9/25/12
One of the signal achievements of the Obama administration is a success hidden in plain view. Scorned by Republicans and rarely mentioned by Democrats, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), or simply “the stimulus,” was many things at once – tax cut, lifeline for cash-strapped states and local governments, and, as noted by Michael Grunwald in his important new book The New New Deal, “the biggest and most transformative energy bill in U.S. history.”
The stimulus directed $3.2 billion to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants program. As I wrote at this blog in January and again in June, these grants have enabled dozens of California cities to slash their energy bills by investing in LED streetlights and other energy-saving upgrades.
The stimulus also included a one-time supplemental appropriation of $5 billion for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program. In December 2011, DOE announced it had reached its goal, three months ahead of schedule, of weatherizing 600,000 low-income homes nationwide. According to DOE data, as of January 2012, 612,390 homes or apartments had received energy retrofits courtesy of the stimulus.
Many states dramatically scaled up staffing and other resources to handle the surge of energy efficiency-related stimulus funding. What happens now that the ARRA spigot has run dry?
Weatherization and carbon trading
In a September 19 post at Home Energy magazine’s blog, Macie Melendez reported on a plan that could enable states to maintain their scaled up weatherization programs. A major topic of discussion at the recently convened annual conference of the National Association for State Community Services Programs (NASCSP), Melendez wrote, was how to keep weatherization programs relevant and funded in a post-ARRA world. Carbon markets just might be the answer.
One of the presenters at the NASCSP conference was the organization’s new Carbon Trading Project Director, Jo-Ann Choate. Melendez recounted Choate’s plan:
Weatherization reduces carbon but states/companies/organizations aren’t currently being monetarily rewarded for doing so. In order to leverage additional funding for WAP [Weatherization Assistance Program] and receive those ‘rewards,’ NASCSP is currently developing a national framework to measure carbon emission reductions from weatherization activities and sell carbon offsets in the voluntary carbon markets in compliance with the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS).
The NASCSP would verify, register, and sell carbon offsets for the participating states. After credits are sold in carbon markets, NASCSP would distribute the proceeds back to each state.
The plan is not without precedent. In December 2010, the Verified Carbon Standard approved the first new methodology for crediting reductions of greenhouse gases achieved through home weatherization. The methodology was developed by MaineHousing for the Efficiency Maine program. The operating assumption is that weatherized homes that perform better than a pre-determined benchmark are eligible for salable carbon credits.
The Maine program has been beset by controversy surrounding its cost and alleged conflict of interest among its key stakeholders, but many states are keen to press ahead. Melendez reported that 17 states have signed on to participate in NASCSP’s Carbon Trading Initiative.
Carbon metering
How confident can NASCSP or Verified Carbon Standard be that a weatherized home produces measurable energy and carbon savings? In search of an answer, I recently spoke with Mark Aschheim, Professor and Chair, Department of Civil Engineering, Santa Clara University (SCU). Aschheim and Jorge Gonzalez, a former SCU mechanical engineering professor now at City College New York, co-lead a team that developed a carbon metering method that quantifies real-time energy savings in buildings and associated carbon offsets. The technology, Carbon Meter, was developed to measure the energy performance of Santa Clara University’s entries into the 2007 and 2009 Solar Decathlon.

One of the goals of the Carbon Meter, Aschheim told me, is to be able to measure the gap in performance of a house or commercial building performing to a baseline (say, California’s Title 24 building energy efficiency standards) and one going beyond it. Once you quantify that differential, he said, it opens up other possibilities, including salable carbon credits. The meter also quantifies the benefit of electricity generated by photovoltaic cells.
With the ability to measure real-time energy performance, Aschheim said, you can quickly develop a thermal model for how the building is performing – as a system, not just individual components. “That can be useful because you can verify that performance met the intention,” he said.
LEED and other green building rating programs are good on paper, Aschheim commented, but not so good with verification. “This is a way to field verify that you’re getting the performance you intended,” he said. “It might tie into guidance as to what the best retrofit options are – given that your house is performing this well and you have these kinds of windows and insulation, here’s the best bang for the buck.”
California regulators have approved four categories of carbon offsets in its soon-to-launch cap-and-trade program: forestry, urban forestry, ozone depleting substances, and agricultural methane. On September 17, Reuters reported on an American Carbon Registry study finding that California’s carbon market could be 29% short of offsets in its pilot phase (2013-2014) and 67% short of offsets in its third phase (2018-20), unless regulators expand the categories of approved offset project types.
At a minimum, the Carbon Meter represents for California regulators a potential new offset category: carbon savings from retrofits. Coupled with NASCSP’s Carbon Trading Initiative, the Carbon Meter presents California and other states with the means to generate a source of salable carbon offsets that could help keep weatherization programs alive.
Aschheim conceded that he and his team have focused more on the technical demands of the Carbon Meter project than financial returns. They filed both an invention disclosure and patent application but have not marketed the tool.
The Carbon Meter is listed at the Stanford University Office of Technology Licensing portal. (Stanford handles intellectual property for Santa Clara University, Aschheim told me.)
“It’s out there waiting to be grabbed and used,” he said. Entrepreneurs, get on it.


This article is available online at:

3,300 gas leaks are found in Boston


Most are small; perspectives differ on risk


Natural gas is escaping from more than 3,300 leaks in ­Boston’s underground pipelines, according to a new ­Boston University study that underscores the explosion risk and environmental damage from aging infrastructure ­under city sidewalks and streets.
The vast majority of the leaks are tiny, ­although six locations had gas levels higher than the threshold at which explosions could ­occur. Although there have been no reports of explosions in ­Boston from any of the leaks, the study comes three years ­after a Gloucester house ­exploded probably because of a cracked and corroded gas main dating to 1911.
The research, being published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Pollution, confirms what Bostonians sometimes smell on city streets: a telltale whiff of gas.
“It is something that is distributed across all neighborhoods in Boston,’’ said Nathan Phillips, associate professor in BU’s Department of Earth and Environment and a lead author of the study. Phillips and an assistant drove a black hatchback over every one of Boston’s 785 miles of roads to test methane, the primary ingredient in natural gas, in the air. “And we know once we go outside of Boston, Newton is just as leaky. . . . Any old, mature city is going to have this problem.”
Gas companies and the state Department of Public Utilities say the risk of an explosion from the leaks is exceedingly small. Serious leaks are repaired right away — as were the six that Phillips’s research team discovered — and the remaining ones are not at levels high enough to cause an explosion.
“Do they pose a safety problem to the public? No, safety is our highest priority,’’ said Ann G. Berwick, chairwoman of the state Department of Public Utilities. She said the agency has a financial incentive program to encourage gas companies to replace aging mains.

Leaks can develop in corroded pipes but are most often caused by contractors or homeowners using excavation equipment, according to the public utilities department. During cold weather, frost can penetrate deep into the ground and shift the earth around mains to cause hairline fractures. Other cracks can form at joints where service lines to homes or businesses join mains.
A spokesman for National Grid, the predominant gas distributor in Boston, said it does not make sense to repair all the minor leaks if they are not causing a safety problem. Rather the company is working to replace aging pipes with more flexible plastic pipe as quickly as possible, at a rate of about 150 miles a year in Massachusetts. “It’s a better course of action,” said David Graves, the spokesman, adding that National Grid investigates every report of a gas odor — actually the rotten egg smell of mercaptan, an odor added to odorless gas.Leaks can develop in corroded pipes but are most often caused by contractors or homeowners using excavation equipment, according to the public utilities department. During cold weather, frost can penetrate deep into the ground and shift the earth around mains to cause hairline fractures. Other cracks can form at joints where service lines to homes or businesses join mains.“Do they pose a safety problem to the public? No, safety is our highest priority,’’ said Ann G. Berwick, chairwoman of the state Department of Public Utilities. She said the agency has a financial incentive program to encourage gas companies to replace aging mains.
“We always respond and always make the situation safe,” he said.
About 9 billion cubic feet of natural gas was unaccounted for in Massachusetts gas distribution system in 2010, which includes leaks, thefts, and purging of pipelines for maintenance, according to federal energy statistics. That represents about 5 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions each year in Massachusetts, Phillips said. Counting only leaks that utilities have documented, it would represent about $40 million worth of gas, according to an analysis by the Conservation Law Foundation, a Boston-based legal advocacy group. Many leaks are not known.
The problem is not one of safety alone. Leaking natural gas can damage vegetation and trees by displacing oxygen in the soil, scientists say. It is also a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change: Methane is over 20 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, although it is not as long-lived. Phillips and co-author Robert B. Jackson of Duke University began their research in part with global warming in mind. Natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal when it burns, and new reserves have driven down its price, greatly expanding its use in power plants, homes, and businesses. But Phillips and Jackson were curious whether leaks — and other emissions that occur during the extraction and transportation of natural gas — might mean the fuel is not as friendly to the climate.
“The question we are struggling with is how leaky is natural gas as a fuel source,’’ said Jackson.
To test the air, Phillips and an assistant drove about 15 to 20 miles an hour down one side of a street with a device in the back that measured methane in the air higher than 2 parts per million — the amount normally in the air. Sometimes when they got a high reading, they would get out of the car and test the air — in some cases they traced it to a specific manhole cover. They knew it was gas from pipelines, rather than landfills or other sources, because of its chemical signature, which showed it was an old fossil fuel rather than newer methane created from decaying garbage, for example. The study was funded by Barr Foundation.
Phillips, who credits gas companies for working hard to fix gas leaks, said his work captures only a hazy picture of leaking gas in Boston; he drove down only one side of streets, and gas readings depended heavily on wind and other weather. The amount of methane in the air also does not directly reflect what is happening underground. For example, a large amount of gas could be trapped underneath a street and only a small amount makes it to the surface.
“There are a lot of unknowns,’’ said Phillips. He and Jackson have put sensors on Boston buildings to understand the collective effect of gas leaks in the city — and how much escapes to the atmosphere.
Shanna Cleveland of the Conservation Law Foundation, which has a natural gas leak report coming out soon, said the state Department of Public Utilities could require timelines for gas companies to repair various grades of leaks and improve upon accelerated reimbursement rates for gas companies that replace old gas lines.
A bill sponsored by state Representative Lori Ehrlich of Marblehead that would require a timeline for the most serious leaks to be fixed and require utilities to notify police and fire of the locations of leaks unanimously passed the House in June and is before the Senate.
Ehrlich said better regulations are needed for gas pipelines. “If everyone could see methane, I doubt if there would be any leaks left,” Ehrlich said. “Can you imagine if it came out red?”