New cars in Beijing cut by two-thirds to battle traffic

ASIA-PACIFIC

24 December 2010 Last updated at 03:03 ET

New rules have taken effect in China that restrict car purchases in an effort to combat serious traffic problems in the capital, Beijing.

City authorities will allow only 240,000 vehicles to be registered for 2011 - one-third of this year's total. Car buyers have been swamping dealers in anticipation of the new rules, which will still leave about five million cars on the road in the capital. Traffic and air pollution in Beijing is among the worst in the world.

Beijing officials are trying to balance the desire of a growing middle class to have the convenience and status of car ownership, with a huge congestion problem.

Officials said the new rules would not solve the full extent of the city's problems, only slow the down the rate at which they are worsening. "It will be difficult to dramatically improve the traffic situation in a short time," said Liu Xiaoming, deputy director of the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau. "But it can slow down the pace of worsening traffic congestion."

Car registrations will be allocated by a license plate lottery system from Friday. Under the new rules, government departments will not be allowed to increase the size of their fleets for five years.

About 750,000 new cars appeared on Beijing's streets this year, raising the total of registered vehicles for the city 4.8m. China overtook the US as the world's biggest car and van market in 2009, with 13.6 million vehicles sold within the country.

Scepticism

Nearly 90% of the new licence plates will be allocated for residents; people driving cars into Beijing from other areas will need permits to do so. The authorities have delayed the imposition of a congestion charge - a fee for cars to enter specified zones - saying the idea needed more study.

In anticipation of the new ruling, 30,000 new vehicles were registered in the past week, at least three times the normal rate, Xinhua state news agency reported. "I heard that they were going to change the policy, so I wanted to buy this [car] before the year was over," one buyer, Mr Yang, told the BBC. "We rushed to buy a car, because I need it for work. But it will be really inconvenient for me to drive a car when the streets become so congested," he said.

There remains a high level of scepticism about how well the new measures will work however. Yang Ailun of Greenpeace China told the BBC that the restrictions had come far too late. "We definitely welcome any kind of policies that try to reduce air pollution and control cars. However, the problem is that it comes too late.

"Everything in China now happens so quickly, and the government always fails to anticipate what's coming, and as a result normally policies are only introduced when things are already out of control."

Residents say that Beijing's roads sometimes resemble car parks. A record 140 traffic jams were recorded on one evening in September. A spectacular 120km (75-mile) long traffic jam formed on the Beijing to Tibet route in early September, only a week after another 100km (62-mile) jam had been cleared in the same area.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12072845?print=true

BEYOND FOSSIL FUELS

Using Waste, Swedish City Cuts Its Fossil Fuel Use

Johan Spanner for The New York Times

As part of its citywide system, Kristianstad burns wood waste like tree prunings and scraps from flooring factories to power an underground district heating grid. 

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Published: December 10, 2010

KRISTIANSTAD, Sweden — When this city vowed a decade ago to wean itself from fossil fuels, it was a lofty aspiration, like zero deaths from traffic accidents or the elimination of childhood obesity.

But Kristianstad has already crossed a crucial threshold: the city and surrounding county, with a population of 80,000, essentially use no oil, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses, even during the long frigid winters. It is a complete reversal from 20 years ago, when all of their heat came from fossil fuels.

But this area in southern Sweden, best known as the home of Absolut vodka, has not generally substituted solar panels or wind turbines for the traditional fuels it has forsaken. Instead, as befits a region that is an epicenter of farming and food processing, it generates energy from a motley assortment of ingredients like potato peels, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig intestines.

A hulking 10-year-old plant on the outskirts of Kristianstad uses a biological process to transform the detritus into biogas, a form of methane. That gas is burned to create heat and electricity, or is refined as a fuel for cars.

Once the city fathers got into the habit of harnessing power locally, they saw fuel everywhere: Kristianstad also burns gas emanating from an old landfill and sewage ponds, as well as wood waste from flooring factories and tree prunings.

Over the last five years, many European countries have increased their reliance on renewable energy, from wind farms to hydroelectric dams, because fossil fuels are expensive on the Continent and their overuse is, effectively, taxed by the European Union’s emissions trading system.

But for many agricultural regions, a crucial component of the renewable energy mix has become gas extracted from biomass like farm and food waste. In Germany alone, about 5,000 biogas systems generate power, in many cases on individual farms.

Kristianstad has gone further, harnessing biogas for an across-the-board regional energy makeover that has halved its fossil fuel use and reduced the city’s carbon dioxide emissions by one-quarter in the last decade.

“It’s a much more secure energy supply — we didn’t want to buy oil anymore from the Middle East or Norway,” said Lennart Erfors, the engineer who is overseeing the transition in this colorful city of 18th-century row houses. “And it has created jobs in the energy sector.”

In the United States, biogas systems are rare. There are now 151 biomass digesters in the country, most of them small and using only manure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The E.P.A. estimated that installing such plants would be feasible at about 8,000 farms.

So far in the United States, such projects have been limited by high initial costs, scant government financing and the lack of a business model. There is no supply network for moving manure to a centralized plant and no outlet to sell the biogas generated.

Still, a number of states and companies are considering new investment.

Last month, two California utilities, Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric, filed for permission with the state’s Public Utilities Commission to build plants in California to turn organic waste from farms and gas from water treatment plants into biogas that would feed into the state’s natural-gas pipelines after purification.

Using biogas would help the utilities meet requirements in California and many other states to generate a portion of their power using renewable energy within the coming decade.

Both natural gas and biogas create emissions when burned, but far less than coal and oil do. And unlike natural gas, which is pumped from deep underground, biogas counts as a renewable energy source: it is made from biological waste that in many cases would otherwise decompose in farm fields or landfills and yield no benefit at all, releasing heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming.

This fall, emissaries from Wisconsin’s Bioenergy Initiative toured German biogas programs to help formulate a plan to develop the industry. “Biogas is Wisconsin’s opportunity fuel,” said Gary Radloff, the initiative’s Midwest policy director.

Like Kristianstad, California and Wisconsin produce a bounty of waste from food processing and dairy farms but an inadequate supply of fossil fuel to meet their needs. Another plus is that biogas plants can devour vast quantities of manure that would otherwise pollute the air and could affect water supplies.

In Kristianstad, old fossil fuel technologies coexist awkwardly alongside their biomass replacements. The type of tanker truck that used to deliver heating oil now delivers wood pellets, the major heating fuel in the city’s more remote areas. Across from a bustling Statoil gas station is a modest new commercial biogas pumping station owned by the renewables company Eon Energy.

The start-up costs, covered by the city and through Swedish government grants, have been considerable: the centralized biomass heating system cost $144 million, including constructing a new incineration plant, laying networks of pipes, replacing furnaces and installing generators.

But officials say the payback has already been significant: Kristianstad now spends about $3.2 million each year to heat its municipal buildings rather than the $7 million it would spend if it still relied on oil and electricity. It fuels its municipal cars, buses and trucks with biogas fuel, avoiding the need to purchase nearly half a million gallons of diesel or gas each year.

The operations at the biogas and heating plants bring in cash, because farms and factories pay fees to dispose of their waste and the plants sell the heat, electricity and car fuel they generate.

Kristianstad’s energy makeover is rooted in oil price shocks of the 1980s, when the city could barely afford to heat its schools and hospitals. To save on fuel consumption, the city began laying heating pipes to form an underground heating grid — so-called district heating.

Such systems use one or more central furnaces to heat water or produce steam that is fed into the network. It is far more efficient to pump heat into a system that can warm an entire city than to heat buildings individually with boilers.

District heating systems can generate heat from any fuel source, and like New York City’s, Kristianstad’s initially relied on fossil fuel. But after Sweden became the first country to impose a tax on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, in 1991, Kristianstad started looking for substitutes.

By 1993, it was taking in and burning local wood wastes, and in 1999, it began relying on heat generated from the new biogas plant. Some buildings that are too remote to be connected to the district heating system have been fitted with individual furnaces that use tiny pellets that are also made from wood waste.

Burning wood in this form is more efficient and produces less carbon dioxide than burning logs does; such heating has given birth to a booming pellet industry in northern Europe. Government subsidies underwrite purchases of pellet furnaces by homeowners and businesses; pellet-fueled heat costs half as much as oil, said Mr. Erfors, the engineer.

Having dispensed with fossil fuels for heating, Kristianstad is moving on to other challenges. City planners hope that by 2020 total local emissions will be 40 percent lower than they were in 1990, and that running the city will require no fossil fuel and produce no emissions at all.

Transportation now accounts for 60 percent of fossil fuel use, so city planners want drivers to use cars that run on local biogas, which municipal vehicles already do. That will require increasing production of the fuel.

Kristianstad is looking into building satellite biogas plants for outlying areas and expanding its network of underground biogas pipes to allow the construction of more filling stations. At the moment, this is something of a chicken-and-egg problem: even though biogas fuel costs about 20 percent less than gasoline, consumers are reluctant to spend $32,000 (about $4,000 more than for a conventional car) on a biogas or dual-fuel car until they are certain that the network will keep growing.

“A tank is enough to get you around the region for the day, but do you have to plan ahead,” Martin Risberg, a county engineer, said as he filled a biogas Volvo.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/science/earth/11fossil.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1292090416-CsOulNJUS2daJ/WxJPt%20Rg&pagewanted=all

A version of this article appeared in print on December 11, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

December 9, 2010

City Council Hears Sides of Bike Lane Battle

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

The Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, sang a self-written song about bicycle lanes to the tune of a popular selection from “The Sound of Music”: “These are a few of my favorite lanes.” A 40-year resident of Park Slope, Brooklyn, testified that an influx of cyclists had made her afraid to cross the street in front of her house. A group of cycling advocates wondered why the city would reject a nimble, environmentally friendly mode of transportation in favor of bulky, polluting automobiles.

The battle of the bike lanes, a civic discussion that has turned increasingly contentious and common at community boards and dinner tables throughout New York, made its way to the City Council on Thursday. The theatrics seemed to survive the transition.

Dueling protests, vicious invective from both sides and good old New York-style kvetching have been hallmarks of the bicycle debate since the Bloomberg administrationbegan installing hundreds of miles of bicycle-only lanes throughout the city.

Thursday’s oversight hearing was the first time that Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transportation commissioner, sat for formal questioning from city politicians about the implementation and enforcement of the ambitious new cycling network she has been overseeing.

“Nobody disagrees that using more bicycles is a good thing, but in a city where traffic is horrendous and finding a parking space is difficult, bike policy is all about trade-offs,” said James Vacca, the chairman of the Council’s transportation committee, as he introduced the hearing.

But Ms. Sadik-Khan firmly defended her department’s actions, countering a barrage of questions from council members who were irritated and enraged about the subject.

“While there are inevitable growing pains as cycling moves from the margins to the mainstream, its growth in New York is already delivering substantial safety, mobility and health dividends,” Ms. Sadik-Khan said. “The city’s bicycle program, with your assistance and support, is a huge success.”

The discussion touched on topics like the proper regulation of conduct on the road (Ms. Sadik-Khan said she planned a major advertising campaign featuring celebrities who would warn cyclists “to stop riding like jerks”) and whether the city had sufficiently solicited the views of people in communities where bicycle lanes have been installed (the commissioner said yes; several council members said no).

Advocates argued that the lanes encourage a safer, more environmentally friendly mode of transportation while making the city safer for pedestrians. “You’ve got to lay the tracks before you run the train,” said Noah Budnick, a deputy director at Transportation Alternatives, a cycling and pedestrian advocacy group.

Opponents lamented the loss of parking spaces and traveling lanes for automobiles, as well as complaining about what they labeled an imperious approach by city officials.

Jessica Lappin, a councilwoman from the Upper East Side, has introduced a bill that would require the Transportation Department to release detailed information about traffic accidents, including a count of those involving bicycles. Transportation officials have said the Police Department keeps the data, and Ms. Sadik-Khan testified that she had not yet read the bill, an assertion that Ms. Lappin seemed to doubt.

“I will tell my staff that despite our negotiations, I guess the top of the agency is not engaged,” Ms. Lappin said after her questioning of Ms. Sadik-Khan.

In her remarks, Ms. Sadik-Khan emphasized that she believed bicycle lanes provided significant improvements to street safety, and offered statistics showing fewer pedestrian injuries and a slower flow of traffic where lanes had been installed.

But when asked by Mr. Vacca how many people in the city ride bicycles every day, Ms. Sadik-Khan could not immediately produce an absolute number. Mr. Vacca said he was surprised that the city would engage in a large-scale change to the city’s roads without a more precise count of how many New Yorkers might use it.

“We don’t have the number of cars in the street, either,” Ms. Sadik-Khan replied.

Mr. Vacca responded: “Maybe we should have those numbers, too.”

(Officials later cited a survey from 2007 that showed about 500,000 New Yorkers identified themselves as regular cyclists.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/nyregion/10bikes.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

San Francisco completes massive solar project

The Associated Press

Posted: 12/07/2010 09:11:08 PM PST

Updated: 12/07/2010 09:11:09 PM PST

SAN FRANCISCO—San Francisco is now home to what city officials say is California's largest municipal solar installation.

Mayor Gavin Newsom on Monday announced the completion of the Sunset Reservoir Solar Project, which has almost 24,000 solar panels covering an area the size of 12 football fields.

Officials say the installation generates 5 megawatts of renewable energy daily, more than tripling the amount of solar power used by the San Francisco government.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission will buy the electricity from Recurrent Energy, which built, owns and operates the project.

Officials say the Sunset Reservoir will help the city move toward its goal of generating all of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_16802906?nclick_check=1

'Green deal' for energy efficient homes begins parliamentary journey

Bill provides homeowners with up to £6,000 for insulation and places legal obligations on power companies to cut emissions

• Damian Carrington
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 December 2010 07.00 GMT

The government estimates that 14m of the UK’s 27m homes would benefit from cavity, solid wall or loft insulation. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

A flagship coalition policy to provide homeowners with thousands of pounds to make their properties more energy-efficient will be introduced to parliament today.

The energy security and green economy bill is expected to place legal obligations on power companies to cut the greenhouse gas emissions in their customers' homes. It is expected to allow the companies to offer incentives, such as holidays abroad, to encourage take-up of the "green deal" loans.

Chris Huhne, the secretary of state for energy and climate change, has signalled that other incentives to install energy-saving measures may include rebates on council tax bills or, in future, reductions in the stamp duty paid by homebuyers. Huhne has been working on the incentives with Downing Street's so-called "nudge unit" – the behavioural insight team.

Tesco, B&Q and Marks & Spencer are among the big brands that have held talks with the government about delivering the green deal, along with energy companies. The green deal is likely to see billions of pounds lent every year and to create new jobs. The government estimates that 14m of the UK's 27m homes would benefit from cavity, solid wall or loft insulation.

The energy used for heating rooms and water in the nation's buildings generates about 33% of the UK's carbon emissions and must be cut by 20% if the government is to meet its legally binding emissions targets. On Tuesday, the government's official advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, said a green deal that vastly improved home energy efficiency was one of the three key tests of the coalition's pledge to be the "greenest government ever", alongside delivering low-carbon energy and implementing ambitious targets for emissions cuts.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc) has indicated that a "golden rule" will apply to the loans made for energy-efficiency measures which dictates that the cost of the loan repayments will always be lower than the fuel bill savings delivered. The more expensive measures, such as solid wall insulation, appear by thegovernment's own figures to break the golden rule. But the new bill is expected to use powers from the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target – and possibly its expected 2013 replacement, the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) – to make energy suppliers balance the books.

The government hopes the green deal will allow householders without the money to fund energy-efficiency measures to gain access to upfront capital, expected to be capped at about £6,000. Those renting may get the power after 2015 to force landlords to install energy-efficiency measures. The green deal loans made are expected to be legally attached to the property, not the owner. This would mean that someone thinking about moving home would not be deterred from taking up the scheme by the prospect of not benefiting from the savings delivered by the work.

Campaigners have expressed concern that the involvement of private sector companies could make the scheme more expensive. They also insist that any incentives given – such as holidays – must not cancel out the emissions savings. Another concern is that without a robust quality assurance system and guarantees, householders may fear poor work carried out by "cowboy" builders.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/08/green-deal-energy-efficient-homes/print

New York relying much less on Indian Point for energy

New York relying much less on Indian Point for energy

TUESDAY, 07 DECEMBER 2010 09:49

BY ROGER WITHERSPOON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Entergy Nuclear has dropped its share of electricity supporting New York City and Westchester County to about 4 percent of the area's power needs while selling increasing portions of its juice in an open market stretching from Maine to Delaware.

The company is spending millions of dollars on an extensive campaign to convince the public that the region would suffer if the nuclear plants at Indian Point were shut and its 2,100 megawatts were withdrawn. Simultaneously, however, Entergy is withdrawing all but 560 megawatts and is selling the rest elsewhere through the interconnecting New England, New York, Mid-Atlantic, Quebec and Ontario power grids.

In its search for the highest profit margins, industry analysts and power operators say Entergy may well opt to sell nearly all of its electricity from Indian Point 2 and 3 in Buchanan to customers outside the New York City/Westchester County service area. And because of the success of the wholesale power markets and transmission networks run by the non-profit Independent System Operators, the absence of Indian Point's megawatts has no effect on the region's electricity needs or power system reliability.

"Whether or not Entergy is going to phase out of New York City and Westchester entirely is an open question," said Justin McCann, senior industry analyst for Standard & Poor's Equity Markets. "If you look at Gov. Cuomo, there is a hostile political environment, so there is going to be a tension here and how that is going to play out, I have no idea.

"But they will go wherever they see the best market."

Entergy bought the Indian Point 3 and James A. FitzPatrick nuclear power plants from the New York Power Authority in 2000, and Indian Point 1 and 2 from Consolidated Edison in 2001. At that time, Con Ed was getting out of the power generating business and concentrating on being solely an electric transmission company. In that capacity, it delivers all of the electricity used in the New York City/Westchester section of the state's power grid. Con Ed's transmission lines carry some 9,000 to 13,000 megawatts of electricity during peak periods, with the highest usage occurring during the hottest days of summer. The 2000 megawatts provided by the twin reactors at Indian Point accounted for 22% of that energy mix in winter and 15 percent in the summer.

Under terms of the separate sale agreements, Entergy contracted to sell all of the power from Indian Point 2 to Con Ed, and all of the power from Indian Point 3 to NYPA. But these contracts were not open ended. The power markets were deregulated in 1999, just a year before the sales occurred, and how well the networked wholesale markets would work was still more theory than fact. Locking up Indian Point's electricity at a set price point for at least five years was deemed a prudent measure for Con Ed and NYPA to take as the free market system evolved.

Entergy's contract with Con Ed required Indian Point 2 to provide 1,000 megawatts through 2009. The output fell to 875 megawatts through 2010, and drops further to 360 Megawatts for 2011 and 2012, according to Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert and the company's 2010 Annual Report.

NYPA's contract with Entergy for 2009 through 2013 secures just 100 megawatts from Indian Point 3 and 100 from Indian Point 2. The current contracts with NYPA and Con Ed, therefore, drop Indian Point's contribution to the region's electricity needs to just 6.2 percent in winter and 4.3 percent in the summer.

For NYPA, replacing that drop of 800 megawatts was not an obstacle, said spokesperson Connie M. Cullen.

"It was not difficult," Cullen said. "NYPA follows an established procurement process where we issue a request for proposals from electricity suppliers, receive bids, evaluate them, and then enter contracts. It is a well established process."

It needs to be.

Both NYPA and Con Ed purchase power wholesale and then sell it to residential, business and municipal customers. NYPA, which has its own hydro electric plants upstate, provides some 2015 megawatts of power to the region daily. According to NYPA, that breaks down to 115 megawatts for Westchester County municipal customers, government buildings, and Westchester airport; and 1,900 megawatts for New York City's government buildings and operations, the city Housing Authority, Metropolitan Transit Authority, state buildings, LaGuardia Airport, and the Jacob Javits Convention Center. JFK Airport has its own power generation.

Con Ed, on the other hand, has its own residential and non-government business customers, delivering 9,000 to 11,000 megawatts to some 345,000 Westchester and 2.8 million New York City residents.

Entergy's individual contracts are not a matter of public record and the company may be selling electricity to large clients in this region. But their contention that it is the electricity from Indian Point which keeps the subways running, La Guardia Airport operating, and the lights on at City Hall are no longer valid.

The disclosure that Entergy has quietly shifted its electricity elsewhere prompted an angry response from Gary Shaw of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, which is comprised of several non-profit organizations seeking to block relicensing of the plants.

"We have known for a long time that Entergy has no credibility," said Shaw. "But this new revelation is a factual contradiction of their contention that Indian Point's output is vital to our region.

"Indian Point represents a nuclear risk to the residents of this area while supplying only a small fraction of its electricity needs. We would be foolhardy to give it another 20 years to operate in our backyard when we are getting so little benefit."

Kenneth Klapp, spokesman for the New York ISO, said large power generators like Entergy have two options for their product. "They can sell electricity in the wholesale markets we operate," Klapp explained, "or bilaterally by themselves to a load serving entity — which is a transmission company like Con Edison or a large individual customer.

"In New York State, 50% of the energy sold is bilaterally through contracts and the other half goes to either of the two markets we operate: the day-ahead market, which gets the majority of the traffic; and the real time, spot market which is dispatched every five minutes. We have 300 market participants in New York. But providers like Entergy can bid into other markets as well."

By participating in the New York ISO, Indian Point is in an expanded marketplace provided by the ISO New England, Pennsylvania-Jersey-Maryland ISO, the Ontario ISO and the Quebec Provincial Utility.

In the current, volatile energy marketplace there are good reasons for Entergy to shop around. Standard & Poor's McCann said "the spot market at this time is weak. If you look at the market now for next July, the prices are between $47 and $48 dollars a megawatt/hour. And the prices will be lower in 2011.

"But Entergy has contracts for 90% of their output through the end of this year and throughout 2011 at $57 per megawatt hour. For 2012 they have already contracted 76% of their output at $50; for 2013 they have sold 31% at $49; for 2014 and 2015 they have sold 25% at $51. It is prudent for them to lock in prices at this time."

It is equally prudent for Con Edison and NYPA to reduce their dependency on Indian Point's electricity at a time when their nuclear plant operating licenses are expiring and their long term future is still not decided.

Part of the reason the electricity from Indian Point has been considered so vital to the New York City /Westchester electric infrastructure is due to widespread misunderstanding of the term "baseload electricity." The use of that term by nuclear industry proponents usually implies that it is an essential foundation on which regional electricity needs are built. That is not the case.

"We have three classifications of electricity providers," said Ellen Foley, spokeswoman for ISO New England, which includes Entergy's Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim nuclear plants in its energy mix. "Baseload plants typically run all of the time. Intermediate plants can go on and off, or increase and decrease their power in a short period of time. The peak units can be turned on or off in 10 minutes and are used — as their name implies — in periods of very high demand.

"It can take a couple of days to power up a nuclear plant. If that changed, and they had more flexibility and could power up and down in a short time, they would be considered intermediate just like hydro or natural gas."

Nuclear power is considered baseload because, when compared to other forms of power generation, they have an inferior on/off switch.

Since they have to operate at full capacity, Foley said, "Typically what they will do is sell their output through contractual arrangements to stay on line at their maximum level. With Vermont Yankee, there is no way to know how much of their power stays in Vermont and how much goes elsewhere. More than likely, they are running and selling their power throughout New England."

While the market place is wide open and constantly evolving, some things do not change.

"Entergy can sell electricity wherever there is a buyer," said McCann, "but it cannot produce it wherever it wishes to. Physically, they are here. These people will negotiate for every nickel and dime, but I can't see them abandoning Indian Point."

Electricity Fact Sheet

Q: How much electricity do Indian Point 2 and 3 produce?

A: According to Entergy's annual report for calendar year 2009, Indian Point 2 produces 1,028 megawatts of electricity and Indian Point 3 produces 1,041 megawatts.

Q: How much electricity is used in the New York City / Westchester County service area of the NY State power grid?

A: New York City and Westchester County use 9,000 to about 13,000 megawatts of electricity during peak periods daily, according to Consolidated Edison, which transmits all of the electricity. The lowest use is in the winter, the highest in the summer.

Q: What percentage of the area's electrical needs was met by Indian Point when it sold all of its power to Con Ed and NYPA?

A: The percentage ranged from about 22% in the winter to 15% in the summer.

Q: What percentage of the area's electrical needs is met by Indian Point now?

A: The 560 megawatts contracted to Con Ed and NYPA amount to 6.2% in the winter and 4.3% in the summer.

Q: Entergy claims Indian Point provides up to 40% of the electricity used in the New York City/ Westchester County grid. How do they arrive at that figure?

A: Energy use is based on the peak, or maximum load of the day when people are actually using electricity. For Entergy's 40% claim to be accurate,electricity usage in New York City and Westchester would have to fall to only 5,000 megawatts.
Con Ed reports that the energy load drops to that level between 3 AM and 5 AM, Sunday mornings, about three times in the late spring and three times in the early fall when it is too cool for air conditioning, too warm for electric heaters, and the city sleeps. During those isolated periods the 2,000 megawatts from Indian Point - if it were all used in the region - would comprise 40%.

Q: Is it legitimate to use the exception - when everyone sleeps - to calculate Indian Point's value to the regional power grid?

A: No. The industry's buyers and providers base their contracts on maximum projected electricity use, not the occasional exceptional circumstance.
If it were legitimate to use the exception, when most electrical systems were turned off, it would also be legitimate to claim that the most consistent power source in the region is the Eveready Bunny, whose batteries powered flashlights throughout the New York City/ Westchester County grid during the 2003 Blackout.

State and Local Power Distribution

Q: How much electricity is generated in New York state?

A: According to the New York Independent System Operator, which runs the power grid, total electric power generation in the state is 37,416 Megawatts transmitted over 10,877 miles of high voltage lines.

Q: How much electricity is generated in the New York City/ Westchester power section of the grid?

A: The NY ISO reports there are 11,087 Megawatts of generating capacity in this region.

Q: What were the peak electric load forecasts for 2009 and this year?

A: The NY ISO reported the projected peak usage for 2009 was 33,425 Megawatts though the actual peak reached just 30,844 Megawatts. The projected peak this year was 33,025 Megawatts.

Q: How has the price of electricity changed in the wholesale marketplace?

A: The average annual cost of electricity in 2008 was $95.31 per megawatt/hour. In 2009, the average annual cost of electricity was $48.63 per megawatt/hour.

Q: How does the cost of natural gas affect the price of electricity generated by nuclear power?

A: Natural gas sets the market price in the day-ahead and spot markets, which are calculated every 5 minutes. Nuclear power comes in at a lower cost than natural gas and the difference is the profit earned by the nuclear operator.

Q: How much of the electricity generated in New York is sold in the markets and how much is sold under long-term contracts?

A: About half the electricity generated in New York is sold under long term contracts to distributors such as Con Ed and NYPA, or to individual users like Fordham and New York Universities, and the Metropolitan Transit Authority. The remaining 50% is sold on either the day-ahead, or the spot markets.

Q: Must the electricity made in New York be sold to companies or distributers within New York?

A: No. The NY ISO is connected to ISO New England, the Pennsylvania-Jersey-Maryland ISO encompassing the Mid-Atlantic states and, in Canada, the Ontario ISO and the Quebec Provincial Utility. Electricity can be sold in the day-ahead and spot markets, or long term contracts made to clients throughout the network.

Q: What does Indian Point primarily rely on: long-term contracts or the markets?

A: According to an analysis by Standard & Poor's Entergy has contracts for 90% of Indian Point's electricity this year; 95% of its output in 2011, 76% of its output in 2012, 31% of its output in 2013, 25% of its output in 2014, and 15% of its output in 2015.

Locally, Indian Point is contracted to provide NYPA with 200 megawatts through 2013. It is contracted to provide Con Ed 875 megawatts through the end of 2010, and 360 megawatts through 2012.

Roger Witherspoon writes Energy Matters at www.RogerWitherspoon.com

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/science-updates/new-york-relying-much-less-on-indian-point-for-energy

How To Buy Energy-Efficient TVs, Electronics

Amy Clancy

KIRO 7 Eyewitness News

Posted: 4:06 pm PST December 7, 2010

SEATTLE -- Electronics are expected to be some of the hottest gift items this holiday season.

But the City of Seattle would like to remind you that if you're in the market for a new television, you might as well make sure it's an energy-efficient model.

Christine Bunch, Retail Programs Manager for Seattle City Light tells KIRO 7 that plasma TVs are the least energy-efficient, while flat screen LCDs are the most efficient.

MORE ON THIS STORY Visit these websites for more information on energy-efficient TVs and other electronics: SeattleChannel.org EnergyEfficientElectronics.org EnergyStar.gov

According to Bunch, flat screen LCDs also have more controls for adjusting energy-draining settings.

Another big factor, says Bunch, is size. Bigger screens obviously suck more power.

Bunch says that with technology advancing all the time, you don’t have to sacrifice quality for energy-savings.

http://www.kirotv.com/money/26052954/detail.html

U.K. plans payment for "negawatt" to curb power use

By Catherine Airlie - Dec 7, 2010 5:53

The U.K. will propose paying big power consumers to use less during peak demand periods as part of a plan to overhaul the electricity market due to be drafted by Christmas, Minister of State for Energy Charles Hendry said.

The government may pay major users for each “negawatt” of capacity they switch off, Hendry said in an interview in London yesterday. The proposals, which may form a draft bill for submission to parliament in spring, may also include so-called capacity payments for generators who supply the grid.

The payments both for keeping the grid supplied and switching off when use is high are meant to balance supply and demand as Britain seeks to attract investors and meet targets for reducing carbon emissions. The rules are part of measures that may bring about the biggest change in the market in 30 years, Hendry told delegates at an event hosted by the Major Energy Users Council.

“We’re looking at capacity payment to take demand out of the system,” Hendry said in the interview at the event. “What is the best way to manage demand? Either provide physical supply or shave demand.”

U.K. utilities need to spend 200 billion pounds this decade to upgrade infrastructure and replace stations to meet climate- change targets, according to U.K. regulator Ofgem. Electricity costs are set to rise as about a third of Britain’s power plants shut and are replaced by more costly nuclear and renewable generation.

“There has never been a better time for demand side participation to contribute to our energy policy goals” said Graham Meeks, director of the Combined Heat & Power Association, whose members include E.ON U.K., RWE npower, and British Sugar. “With the enormous cost of new generating capacity, the value of energy savings and flexible action by energy consumers is considerable.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-07/u-k-plans-payment-for-negawatt-to-curb-power-use-update1-.html