Climate change challenges power plant operations

By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post

September 9

BOULDER CITY, NEV. — Drought and rising temperatures are forcing water managers across the country to scramble for ways to produce the same amount of power from the hydroelectric grid with less water, including from behemoths such as the Hoover Dam.

Hydropower is not the only part of the nation’s energy system that appears increasingly vulnerable to the impact of climate change, as low water levels affect coal-fired and nuclear power plants’ operations and impede the passage of coal barges along the Mississippi River.

“We’re trying to manage a changing climate, its impact on water supplies and our ability to generate power, all at once,” said Michael L. Connor, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Interior Department’s water-management agency. Producing electricity accounts for at least 40 percent of water use in the United States.

Warmer and drier summers mean less water is available to cool nuclear and fossil-fuel power plants.

The Millstone nuclear plant in Waterford, Conn., had to shut down one of its reactors in mid-August because the water it drew from the Long Island Sound was too warm to cool critical equipment outside the core. A twin-unit nuclear plant in Braidwood, Ill., needed to get special permission to continue operating this summer because the temperature in its cooling-water pond rose to 102 degrees, four degrees above its normal limit; another Midwestern plant stopped operating temporarily because its water-intake pipes ended up on dry ground from the prolonged drought.

Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the safety of America’s nuclear plants “is not in jeopardy,” because the sources of water cooling the core are self-contained and might have to shut down in some instances if water is either too warm or unavailable.

“If water levels dropped to the point where you can’t draw water into the condenser, you’d have to shut down the plant,” he said.The commission’s new chairman, Allison Macfarlane, has asked her staff to look at “a broad array of natural events that could affect nuclear plant operations” in the future, such as climate change, Burnell added.

For more than three-quarters of a century, the Hoover Dam has represented an engineering triumph, harnessing the power of the mighty Colorado River to generate electricity for customers in not just nearby Las Vegas but as far away as Southern California and Mexico.

But the bleached volcanic rock ringing Black Canyon above Lake Mead, the reservoir created by the dam, speaks to the limits of human engineering. Higher temperatures and less snowpack have reduced the river’s flow and left the reservoir 103 feet below elevation for its full targeted storage capacity, which it last came close to reaching in 1999.

In the Colorado River’s 100-year recorded history, 1999 through 2010 ranks as the second-driest 12-year period, yielding an average of 16 percent less energy.

Scientists have just begun to study some key questions, such as the rate of evaporation off dams’ storage facilities. Predicting river flows — which can flood one year and dry up the next — is even harder.

“Because of the variability of river systems, it’s a lot more difficult in modeling how climate change will affect them,” said Jenny Kehl, who directs the Center for Water Policy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s School of Freshwater Sciences.

In Nevada, water managers are adjusting to what they call “the new normal.”

Patricia Mulroy, who oversees the operations of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, since 2003 has imposed watering restrictions on golf courses and homeowners and increased water reuse from golf courses while also instituting an incentive program that to date has paid residents $200 million to pull out turf and replace it with water-efficient vegetation. (Enough turf has been ripped out to lay a stripe of sod stretching three-fourths of the way across the planet; overall, she has reduced total water use by a third in 10 years.) She has raised water rates four times in less than a decade while activating long-held water rights in east-central Nevada in 2004 to ensure that the community is less dependent on the Colorado River.

While some experts have suggested more ambitious measures — such as curtailing growth, making it harder for farmers to get cheap water and removing some dams to allow the Colorado River to regain some of its natural flow — federal, state and local authorities have resisted such proposals.

University of Arizona law professor Robert Glennon, author of the book “Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It,” describes the Colorado River basin in blunt terms. “It’s a collision,” he said.

Rising temperatures have started to affect U.S. coal plants as well. This summer’s drought disrupted the transport of coal delivered by barges on the Mississippi, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had to use dredges to deepen the navigation channel.

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency granted special exceptions to four coal-fired plants and four nuclear plants this summer, allowing them to discharge water into local waterways that was hotter than the federal clean-water permits allowed. Normally the discharge water cannot exceed 90 degrees, but the waiver allowed utilities to release water as hot as 97 degrees.

And environmental groups such as the Sierra Club have questioned whether new coal plants should be built in areas that could face water scarcity. In August 2011, the Lower Colorado River Authority—which oversees a river confined to Texas’ borders-- postponed indefinitely its decision to provide 8 billion gallons of water to cool the proposed White Stallion Energy Center, and rejected it outright three months later. While the Sierra Club argued the plant would use too much water, local authorities said contract changes prompted their decision.

At the Hoover Dam, which hasn’t run at capacity since 1983 because of lower river flows and other water demands, the Bureau of Reclamation has taken several steps to compensate for the decline in water availability. The dam loses between 5 and 6 megawatts of capacity for every foot in elevation Lake Mead uses, meaning this year it lost the equivalent of a medium-size power plant.

Aaron Muehlberg, the Hoover Dam’s engineering supervisor, walked through its operations recently and highlighted the mix of antique details and modern improvements that mark the plant. Massive original pipes coated with coal-tar enamel still channel the water speeding through them at the rate of 3,400 cubic feet a second. (“Imagine 3,400 basketballs flying past you,” Muehlberg said.) But it also has updated online controls on the governor that regulate the speed of water around the turbines.

Last year the engineering team installed a wide-head turbine that is 3 to 7 percent more efficient; it will replace an additional four of the plant’s 17 turbines over the next four years. By 2015 the bureau will have put in 11 sets of thinner “wicket gates” that control the flow of water around the turbines: the steel mechanism is akin to a set of circular venetian blinds, and the new ones allow the water to move faster.
“We’re able to jam-pack more water in there, which will give us more energy,” Muehlberg said.

The bureau’s most recent projections suggest that in the next 50 years, the lower Colorado River’s flow will decline between 9 and 10 percent because of climate change, with demand exceeding supply by more than a third. At the same time, it estimates it will take between 3 and 10 percent more water to meet agricultural demands.

In the past, the agency has compensated for a gap in water supplies with sufficient storage, said Terry Fulp, the bureau’s acting regional director for the lower Colorado basin.“Now, the question with the projections we have now is, is storage going to be enough? Probably not,” he said. “We need to start thinking of not just relying on this river system,” he said. Fulp is overseeing a study of the basin’s future supply and demand; the findings will be released in November.

Water managers can start by doing things “that are not too hard and not too expensive,” Fulp added. “But you can only do those things for so long, and then you need to get serious about bigger solutions.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/climate-change-challenges-power-plant-operations/2012/09/09/42b26b8e-f6a5-11e1-8b93-c4f4ab1c8d13_story.html

New York Is Lagging as Seas and Risks Rise, Critics Warn

September 10, 2012

By MIREYA NAVARRO

NY Times

With a 520-mile-long coast lined largely by teeming roads and fragile infrastructure, New York City is gingerly facing up to the intertwined threats posed by rising seas and ever-more-severe storm flooding.

So far, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has commissioned exhaustive research on the challenge of climate change. His administration is expanding wetlands to accommodate surging tides, installing green roofs to absorb rainwater and prodding property owners to move boilers out of flood-prone basements.

But even as city officials earn high marks for environmental awareness, critics say New York is moving too slowly to address the potential for flooding that could paralyze transportation, cripple the low-lying financial district and temporarily drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Only a year ago, they point out, the city shut down the subway system and ordered the evacuation of 370,000 people as Hurricane Irene barreled up the Atlantic coast. Ultimately, the hurricane weakened to a tropical storm and spared the city, but it exposed how New York is years away from — and billions of dollars short of — armoring itself.

“They lack a sense of urgency about this,” said Douglas Hill, an engineer with the Storm Surge Research Group at Stony Brook University, on Long Island.

Instead of “planning to be flooded,” as he put it, city, state and federal agencies should be investing in protection like sea gates that could close during a storm and block a surge from Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean into the East River and New York Harbor.

Others express concern for areas like the South Bronx and Sunset Park in Brooklyn, which have large industrial waterfronts with chemical-manufacturing plants, oil-storage sites and garbage-transfer stations. Unless hazardous materials are safeguarded with storm surges in mind, some local groups warn, residents could one day be wading through toxic water.

“A lot of attention is devoted to Lower Manhattan, but you forget that you have real industries on the waterfront” elsewhere in the city, said Eddie Bautista, executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, which represents low-income residents of industrial areas. “We’re behind in consciousness-building and disaster planning.”

Other cities are also tackling these issues, at their own pace.

New shoreline development around San Francisco Bay must now be designed to cope with the anticipated higher sea levels under new regional regulations imposed last fall. In Chicago, new bike lanes and parking spaces are made of permeable pavement that allows rainwater to filter through it. Charlotte, N.C., and Cedar Falls, Iowa, are restricting development in flood plains. Maryland is pressing shoreline property owners to plant marshland instead of building retaining walls.

Officials in New York caution that adapting a city of eight million people to climate change is infinitely more complicated and that the costs must be weighed against the relative risks of flooding. The last time a hurricane made landfall directly in New York City was more than a century ago.

Many decisions also require federal assistance, like updated flood maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that incorporate sea level rise, and agreement from dozens of public agencies and private partners that own transportation, energy, telecommunications and other infrastructure.

“It’s a million small changes that need to happen,” said Adam Freed, until August the deputy director of the city’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. “Everything you do has to be a calculation of the risks and benefits and costs you face.”

And in any case, Mr. Freed said, “you can’t make a climate-proof city.”

So city officials are pursuing a so-called resilience strategy that calls for strengthening the city’s ability to weather the effects of serious flooding and recover from it.

Flooding Threat Grows

Unlike New Orleans, New York City is above sea level. Yet the city is second only to New Orleans in the number of people living less than four feet above high tide — nearly 200,000 New Yorkers, according to the research group Climate Central.

The waters on the city’s doorstep have been rising roughly an inch a decade over the last century as oceans have warmed and expanded. But according to scientists advising the city, that rate is accelerating, because of environmental factors, and levels could rise two feet higher than today’s by midcentury. More frequent flooding is expected to become an uncomfortable reality.

With higher seas, a common storm could prove as damaging as the rare big storm or hurricane is today, scientists say. Were sea levels to rise four feet by the 2080s, for example, 34 percent of the city’s streets could lie in the flood-risk zone, compared with just 11 percent now, a 2011 study commissioned by the state said.

New York has added bike lanes, required large buildings to track and reduce their energy use, banned the dirtiest home heating oils, and taken other steps to reduce the emissions that contribute to global warming. But with shoreline development that ranges from public beaches to towering high rises — and a complex mix of rivers, estuaries, bays and ocean — the city needs to size up the various risks posed by rising seas before plunging ahead with vast capital projects or strict regulations, city officials argue.

Yet the city’s plan for waterfront development dismisses any notion of retreat from the shoreline. Curbing development or buying up property in flood plains, as some smaller cities have done, is too impractical here, city officials say, especially because the city anticipates another million residents over the next two decades.

Rather, the city and its partners are incorporating flood-protection measures into projects as they go along.

Consolidated Edison, the utility that supplies electricity to most of the city, estimates that adaptations like installing submersible switches and moving high-voltage transformers above ground level would cost at least $250 million. Lacking the means, it is making gradual adjustments, with about $24 million spent in flood zones since 2007.

Some steps taken by city agencies have already subtly altered the city’s looks. At Brooklyn Bridge Park, a buffer between the East River and neighborhoods like Dumbo, porous riprap rock and a soft edge of salt-resistant grass have been laid in to help absorb the punch of a storm surge. Sidewalk bioswales, or vegetative tree pits that can fill up with rainwater to reduce storm water and sewage overflows and also minimize flooding, are popping up around the city.

Over all, the city is hoping to funnel more than $2 billion of public and private money to such environmental projects over the next 18 years, officials say.

“It’s a series of small interventions that cumulatively, over time, will take us to a more natural system” to deal with climate change, said Carter H. Strickland, the city’s environmental commissioner.

Planning experts say it is hard to muster public support for projects with uncertain or distant benefits.

“There’s a lot of concern about angering developers,” said Ben Chou, a water-policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

New York planners have proposed requiring developers to assess the climate-change risks faced by new buildings so they can consider protection like retractable watertight gates for windows. But no such requirements have been imposed so far.

While some new buildings are being elevated or going above current required flood protections — like a new recycling plant on a Brooklyn pier and the Port Authority’s transit hub at the World Trade Center site — most new construction is not being adapted to future flood risks yet, industry representatives said.

Some experts argue that the encounter with Hurricane Irene last year and a flash flood in 2007 underscored the dangers of deferring aggressive solutions.

Klaus H. Jacob, a research scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, said the storm surge from Irene came, on average, just one foot short of paralyzing transportation into and out of Manhattan.

If the surge had been just that much higher, subway tunnels would have flooded, segments of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and roads along the Hudson River would have turned into rivers, and sections of the commuter rail system would have been impassable or bereft of power, he said.

The most vulnerable systems, like the subway tunnels under the Harlem and East Rivers, would have been unusable for nearly a month, or longer, at an economic loss of about $55 billion, said Dr. Jacob, an adviser to the city on climate change and an author of the 2011 state study that laid out the flooding prospects.

“We’ve been extremely lucky,” he said. “I’m disappointed that the political process hasn’t recognized that we’re playing Russian roulette.”

With more rain and higher seas, some envision more turmoil — like mile after mile of apartment buildings without working elevators, lights or potable water.

“That’s a key vulnerability,” said Rafael Pelli, a Manhattan architect who serves on a climate-change committee that advises the Department of City Planning. “If you have to relocate 10,000 people, how do you do that?”

Barriers to Block Tides

Some New Yorkers argue that the answer lies not in evacuation, but in prevention, like armoring city waterways with the latest high-tech barriers. Others are not so sure.

At a recent meeting of Manhattan community board leaders in Harlem, Robert Trentlyon, a resident of Chelsea, argued for sea gates.

A 2004 study by Mr. Hill and the Storm Surge Research Group at Stony Brook recommended installing movable barriers at the upper end of the East River, near the Throgs Neck Bridge; under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge; and at the mouth of the Arthur Kill, between Staten Island and New Jersey. During hurricanes and northeasters, closing the barriers would block a huge tide from flooding Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and New Jersey, they said.

City officials say that sea barriers are among the options being studied, but others say such gates could interfere with aquatic ecosystems and with the flushing out of pollutants, and may eventually fail as sea levels keep rising.

And then there is the cost. Installing barriers for New York could reach nearly $10 billion.

There is more agreement on how to protect the subway system. Several studies have advised the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to move quickly to increase pumping capacity at stations, raise entrances and design floodgates to block water from entering.

In 2009, a commission warned that global warming posed “a new and potentially dire challenge for which the M.T.A. system is largely unprepared.”

Five years ago, a summer-morning deluge brought about 3 1/2 inches of rain in two hours and paralyzed the system for hours, stranding 2.5 million riders.

That prompted the transit agency to spend $34 million on improvements like raising some ventilation grates nine inches above sidewalks and building steps that head upward, before descending, at flood-prone stations. All the money came from the agency’s capital budget, which also pays for subway cars and buses.

“This is a vicious circle of the worst kind,” Projjal Dutta, the transportation agency’s director of sustainability, said of the financial effect. “You’re cutting public transportation, which cuts down greenhouse gases, to harden against climate change.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/nyregion/new-york-faces-rising-seas-and-slow-city-action.html?_r=1&hp

China rolls out new $2.2 bln subsidy scheme-Xinhua

BEIJING, Sept 9 

(Reuters) - China will provide subsidies worth $2.2 billion to buyers of energy-efficient computers and air-conditioners in the latest effort to stimulate domestic demand and encourage the use of environmentally friendly technology, Xinhua reported on Sunday.

The one-year subsidy programme will cover purchases of desktop computers, air-conditioners, fans, water pumps, compressors and transformers, Xinhua said, quoting sources at China's Ministry of Finance.

It is expected to raise the market share of the energy-saving products to more than 40 percent.

"The move marks the government's effort to combine stabilising economic growth and stoking domestic demand with promoting energy savings and emission reductions," the state news agency quoted an official at the ministry as saying.

China's economic growth has slowed for six straight quarters and analysts expect the trend to extend to a seventh when third quarter GDP data for 2012 is published. Growth in Q2 was 7.6 percent, its slackest in more than three years.

Recent data have cemented views that growth for the full year will be its lowest since 1999, likely below 8 percent and may even struggle to hit the government's 2012 growth target of 7.5 percent.

Officials last week revealed they had given the green light to 60 infrastructure projects worth more than $150 billion, as Beijing seeks to energise the economy.

The announcement fuelled investor hopes the world's growth engine may get a lift in the fourth quarter of the year and beyond.

"The subsidy program will help save 31.3 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh) of electricity every year and drive sales of the energy-saving products by 155.6 billion yuan ($24.5 billion)," the official said.

China has around 130 million desktop computers, which consume 31.2 billion kwh of electricity every year, Xinhua said, adding that the annual power consumption of air-conditioners reach 350 billion kwh.

Xinhua said the power consumption of fans, pumps, compressors and transformers accounted for 40 percent of total energy use in 2011, but they were only 80 percent as efficient as those in developed countries.

China has subsidised energy-efficient products since 2009. It extended the scheme to five types of home appliances - air conditioners, flat-panel televisions, refrigerators, washing machines and water heaters - from June 1 this year.

Xinhua said the subsidy policy had boosted sales of energy efficient products by over 600 billion yuan and saved 28 billion kwh of electricity each year since 2009.

The report did not say when the program would start.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/09/china-economy-subsidies-idINL5E8K91H920120909

London to benefit from £30 million sustainable industries hub

As London gets on with normal life after its Paralympic and Olympic triumph, Mayor Boris Johnson has announced a £30 million investment in a sustainable industries hub.

The London Sustainable Industries Park in Dagenham aims to be the largest of its kind in the UK and will include a £21 million anaerobic digestion waste recycling facility, which will be built and run by the TEG Group.

The waste plant, which is being part funded by the Mayor’s £100 million Green Fund through the Foresight Environmental Fund, will divert over 49,000 tonnes of food waste from land fill a year to generate renewable heating and power for use on the site.

The Mayor has committed a further £10.3 million for a works programme to transform the brownfield site into a business quarter for environmentally focused enterprises in recycling and renewable energy, including wind and solar power, and biomass.

Closed Loop Recycling is already in occupation on the site, but the Mayor says the Greater London Authority (GLA) is in talks with a major potential tenant, which wants to build one of the UK’s largest industrial gasification plants in the park.

Construction on the 197,000 sq ft building on the 8.3 acre site, which would take municipal and industrial waste to produce energy, could start as soon as January 2013.

“This exciting new project is set to bring hundreds of much needed new jobs into Dagenham,” commented Johnson. “Low carbon industries represent a growth market, which will support a new generation of jobs for Londoners but also bring cleaner, energy efficient businesses that contribute to a better quality of life.”

The Mayor says the Park will create up to 750 long term jobs and 500 construction jobs.

http://www.energyefficiencynews.com/articles/i/5355/?cid=4

A dirty plan for San Francisco

Steven B. Falk

Sunday, September 9, 2012

SFGate

This November, San Francisco residents and businesses will be asked to tax themselves to pay for education, housing, parks, economic development, and other programs and services the city and state no longer have the financial ability to fully support. Yet at the same time our city leaders are asking us to make these important investments, they are quietly moving forward with a $13.5 million public power plan.

The city plans to contract with Shell Energy to bring what it is falsely labeling as "100 percent renewable energy" to a subset of city households for less than five years. By any standard, this is a dirty plan for San Francisco.

The CleanPowerSF program will increase costs on customers by 77 percent just to break even. This amounts to $216 per year for the average customer, according to a city controller's report. City agencies will also have to pay more for power, potentially resulting in even further cuts to programs and services.

The true cost of starting the program will be even higher. The state of California requires customers leaving an existing utility to pay a portion of long-term energy contracts. This "power choice indifference" payment is nearly another penny on every kilowatt-hour used, or about $36 per year, in addition to the $216 increase customers will already be paying. The city's public power plan will cause money to flow out of our local economy and cost jobs.

Because Shell Energy does not produce electricity within San Francisco, increased electric payments made to the company - to the tune of $13.2 million - will leave San Francisco's economy. Overall, the city controller estimates the program will result in the loss of nearly 100 local jobs.

Perhaps the dirtiest secret of the CleanPowerSF program is that absolutely no new green power would be created in San Francisco or even in California. In fact, the contract stipulates that no new green generation is required anywhere. The 100 percent renewable energy promised in the plan will come from a combination of green energy bundled with other sources - many potentially nonrenewable - and renewable energy credits purchased from existing out-of-state supplies.

Finally, the program is not entirely voluntary. Residents will be enrolled automatically in the program and, if they don't remember to "opt out," they could be charged exit fees. This feels a lot more like "pulling a fast one" on city residents than providing options to reduce our carbon footprint.

As San Franciscans are being asked to pony up more for critical public services, this hardly seems like the time to nearly double the cost of our energy without any guarantee of a greener future. It's time to pull the plug on the city's dirty public power program.

Steven B. Falk is the president and CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. To read the controller's report, go to sfg.ly/NR4Tca.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/A-dirty-plan-for-San-Francisco-3851974.php#ixzz2678JMJTI

Hourly metered parking fee to hit $5.25

SFGate.org

8/27/12

A handful of San Francisco's curbside parking meters will hit the $5.25 mark for the first time as the city continues its quest to find the sweet spot for pricing.

The Municipal Transportation Agency announced the seventh parking-rate adjustment under the experimental SFpark program, which attempts to manage parking with meter rates. The goal is to set the price so there's approximately one parking spot always available on every metered block. The cost is adjusted based on demand.

The prices, which can be changed no more than once a month, fluctuate by location and time of the day.

For example, afternoons on the 400 block of Battery Street in the Financial District, when the average parking space occupancy rate is between 92 and 94 percent, the cost to park will be set at $5.25 an hour, a 25-cent increase. But before noon, when just 25 percent of the spaces are filled, the cost will be $1 - 50 cents less than the current charge. The drop in price is intended to lure more drivers to park there.

About 8,200 parking meters, or a quarter of the city's stock, are part of SFpark.

Using the measurement of metered hours, parking officials calculated that the hourly price will go up 25 cents for 26 percent of the operating hours, decrease 25 cents for 24 percent, fall 50 cents for 2 percent and stay the same for 48 percent.

"We did see the highest percentage of meters staying the same, which suggests we're hitting the right price for hitting our goals," said Paul Rose, spokesman for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

Once the rate adjustments go into effect this week, 1.7 percent of SFpark meters will cost $5.25 an hour and 4.3 percent will cost 25 cents an hour. The largest number - 43 percent - are priced at $2 or less; 2.4 percent cost $5 or more. The rest fall in between.

The most the city will be able to charge under the SFpark program is $6 an hour, unless there's a special event, such as a ballgame or street fair. The cap for those times has been set at $18 an hour.

The meter rates aren't the only things changing. So are the parking policies. The agency plans to expand meter operations into the night around the Giants' China Basin ballpark, and starting citywide on Jan. 1, drivers will have to start plugging the meters on Sundays.

- Rachel Gordon

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Hourly-metered-parking-fee-to-hit-5-25-3816977.php#ixzz25z7NAaYh

China price war drains jobs in Germany’s Solar Valley

Sydney Morning Herald
9/8/12

When Thomas Behling returned to his home state of Saxony-Anhalt in 2006, he was drawn by a job in the solar industry and the chance to participate in Germany’s renewable energy boom. He was fired in July.

Behling’s employer, Sovello, produced its last solar panel on Aug. 26, sending 1,000 workers home after attempts to find an investor to save the seven-year-old company failed. Next door, Q-Cells SE, once the world’s largest solar-cell maker, is being acquired by Hanwha Group of South Korea as soaring debt brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. At least 12 German solar companies filed for protection from creditors in the past year.

Their demise, fueled by price competition from China and a cut in German subsidies from April, has hobbled Saxony-Anhalt’s effort to turn a 350-hectare (1.4 square miles) business park near the town of Bitterfeld-Wolfen into Europe’s solar-power nucleus. Even as Chancellor Angela Merkel pins Germany’s exit from nuclear energy on power derived from the sun and wind, a global glut of solar panels is killing the fledgling firms.

“I believed that I was working in an industry with a future,” Behling, a 31-year-old industrial mechanic, said in an interview. “That it’s over now is very sad.”

The European Union yesterday threatened to impose tariffs on solar panels from China, echoing a similar move by the U.S., as it opened a probe into whether Chinese manufacturers are selling them below cost, a practice known as dumping. Tariffs however will come too late for Sovello and many German firms.

Bosch closing

The closures aren’t confined to Saxony-Anhalt. Robert Bosch, the world’s biggest car parts manufacturer that has invested at least 1.5 billion euros in its solar division, said last week it would close a plant in the state of Thuringia by the end of the year. First Solar Inc. of the U.S. said in April it would shutter its biggest European manufacturing site in Brandenburg that employs 1,200 people.

China’s share of global crystalline silicon-cell capacity surged to 66 percent last year from 26 percent in 2006, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Germany’s share sank to four percent from 23 percent six years ago.

Crystalline-based cells are the principal device in most solar panels.

Of the world’s 10 biggest solar-cell manufacturers with a combined production capacity of almost 17 gigawatts, eight were mainly based in China and two in Taiwan as of last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. JA Solar, the biggest cell-maker based in Shanghai, more than tripled its capacity to 2.8 gigawatts from 2009 to 2011.

Chinese panel makers led by Suntech Power are grabbing market share from European rivals in a price war that drove solar-panel prices down by about 50 percent last year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Price matters

“Quality matters, but what matters more is price,” Heinz Steffen, an analyst at Fairesearch GmbH in Kronberg, said in an Aug. 30 interview.

The Bloomberg Industries Global Large Solar index has fallen about 37 percent this year as German solar companies including Solon SE, Solar Millennium AG and Solarhybrid AG filed for insolvency. That compares with the 2.7 percent gain in the period by the MSCI World Index, a 1,625-member global benchmark.

The collapse flies in the face of a German plan to use renewable energy as a pillar to rebuild the economy in the eastern part of the country after reunification in 1990.

The policy helped turn a landscape that in the 1980s was dotted with coal-fired power stations that emitted fly ash and chemical plants that pumped waste into local rivers, earning it the title of Europe’s dirtiest region, into a clean-energy hub.

Solar survives

The government pumped about 375 billion euros ($450 billion) into eastern Germany in the 20 years after reunification, according to a study by the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Dresden. It led industrial nations in subsidizing renewable energy generators, which supplied 25 percent of the nation’s power in the first half of this year.

German Environment Minister Peter Altmaier said on Aug. 16 that “it’s in Germany’s interest” that the domestic solar industry survives.

Germany’s introduction in 2004 of the world’s first above-market rates for solar energy turned the country into the single-biggest photovoltaic market that same year, prompting Spain, Britain and Japan to follow suit with similar initiatives aimed at generating “green jobs.”

Q-Cells produced its first solar cell in 2001, with 19 workers. Six years later, it had more than 1,700 employees and generated annual sales of 860 million euros. By 2008, it had overtaken Sharp of Japan as the world’s biggest producer of solar cells.

Purge overcapacity

“The solar industry needs this storm to purge some of the overcapacities, not just in Germany but in Asia too,” Fairesearch’s Steffen said. “German solar companies still have excellent intellectual property, so there’s hope that some will survive.”

While German cell- and panel makers have largely stayed domestic, the U.S. solar industry, led by First Solar of Arizona, is focusing on thin-film technology and is producing mainly in Southeast Asia.

The U.S. government mainly supports installations with a 30 percent investment tax credit for solar projects through 2016 and has backed projects with billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees. First Solar got $3.1 billion in such guarantees for three projects it later sold.

As Chinese companies took market share from Q-Cells and the failed Solyndra LLC of the U.S. in the last few years, they’ve become burdened with billions of dollars in debt amid the global drop in profit margins they helped instigate.

Chinese financing

State-owned China Development Bank has offered at least $47.3 billion in financing since 2010 to support the country’s wind and solar manufacturers, though credit lines were only been partially tapped, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Employment in Germany’s clean energy industry probably will “stagnate” this year after creating about 31,600 jobs a year since 2004, Claudia Kemfert, a senior energy analyst at the DIW economic institute in Berlin, said in April.

Unemployment in Saxony-Anhalt dropped from about 20.5 percent in 2003 to 11.6 percent last year. That’s still more than Germany’s 6.8 percent national average. The state’s Economy Ministry estimates that as many as 6,000 positions at local suppliers, including glass makers, are dependent on the solar industry.

All not lost

Rainer Haseloff, the governor of Saxony-Anhalt, and state Economy Minister Birgitta Wolff traveled to South Korea on Aug. 29 to meet with potential investors, Beate Hagen, an economy ministry spokeswoman, said.

“The solar industry is very important for Saxony-Anhalt and for eastern Germany as a whole,” Hagen said by phone on Aug. 28. “We have the entire solar value chain in our region and we’re doing everything possible so that it stays here.”

Still, all is not lost. Hanergy, a Chinese renewable-energy operator, agreed in June to buy Solibro, a thin-film unit of Q-Cells, pledging to raise production at its plant in Germany’s Solar Valley to 100 megawatts.

The Fraunhofer Center for Silicon Photovoltaics CSP in nearby Halle is conducting research into new technologies, and Calyxo GmbH, a maker of thin-film solar panels, plans to more than triple its output to 80 megawatts by the end of this year.

Thin-film technology

“Thin-film has a very attractive future,” because the technology’s costs will continuously fall, Florian Holzapfel, the company’s chief executive officer, said in an interview with Photovoltaics International.

Thin-film panels are made by depositing semiconducting material such as cadmium telluride onto metal or glass. While cheaper, they’re less efficient at converting sunlight to power than traditional, polysilicon-based panels. The falling cost of polysilicon has narrowed the price gap between the technologies.

The creditors of Q-Cells on Aug. 29 backed a takeover bid from Hanwha, which pledged to keep manufacturing and research in the Solar Valley and keep 1,250 of the company’s 1,550 global jobs.

“We’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel for Solar Valley,” Hagen said.

Behling, who operated and monitored Sovello’s machines for the past six years, is optimistic he can start working elsewhere by October. While three local companies contacted him after he sent around applications, none of his potential new employers works in the renewable energy industry, he said.

“In life, you have to move on,” he said.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/china-price-war-drains-jobs-in-germanys-solar-valley-20120908-25kp4.html#ixzz25udzAbSU

US bets on cogeneration as Europe lags behind

http://eamobi.com/medias/websites/5/articles/514662

The cogeneration industry praised Obama for issuing an executive order - a non-legislative directive - on 31 August that would see the number of cogeneration plants double by 2020.

Cogeneration (also called combined heat and power, or CHP) is seen as a promising and efficient technology that captures the heat generated in the production of electricity and uses it to produce hot water or other thermal energy. It can achieve energy savings of up to 90% at a manufacturing plant.

Obama's order was aimed at accelerating investments in industrial energy efficiency to help manufacturers. This could result in the US reducing 150 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually while generating up to 40GW - nearly the total volume of power supplied by photovoltaic panels in Europe - by 2020, government figures show.

"What is interesting about the USA's approach is that it is especially targeting barrier removal. For industry this is a key element of what is needed," said Fiona Riddoch of COGEN Europe.

Europe lagging behind

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) ranks Europe much higher than the US on energy efficiency progress. However, when it comes to cogeneration, Europe is lagging behind. The level of CHP penetration in European markets is 11%.

In its Impact Assessment for the Energy Efficiency Plan 2011, the European Commission identified an additional economic potential for CHP of around 350 TWh of electricity, representing 15-20 Mtoe of primary energy savings per year.

Obama's initiative will make the USA an even more attractive market for CHP, Riddoch said, adding that Europe has substantial CHP expertise and must maintain its lead in energy efficiency.

The EU had a chance to strengthen its CHP laws in 2012, when member states , after assiduous rounds of negotiations, to adopt the Energy Efficiency Directive, or EED. But the CHP industry called the directive a for combined heat and power in Europe.

"What the USA has done is give a strong signal to their own industry to keep up with energy efficiency opportunities," Riddoch said. "The target and the clear signal of concern from the federal government is a wake up call."

That signal in Europe is weaker. EU countries are not bound by a binding target, but they must carry out cost-benefit analyses for the installation of CHP when new electricity or district heating plants are being considered.

"Obama's executive order is judged by many " as having more of an impact than the EED, and actually increasing the number of cogeneration plants in the US by 50% by 2020," energy expert Randall Bowie of the Rockwool International consulting firm said.

Riddoch agreed, saying the CHP industry "was least well served by the new EED and this at a time where Europe needs to put extra efforts into supporting and growing the industrial base."

Using Obama's action as a blueprint for Europe doesn't have universal support.

Peter Botschek, director Energy for the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC), said new regulations would drive industry out of Europe.

"Plants will not be necessarily built here, but outside Europe - and this will cost jobs. That could be the consequence of [setting] ambitious targets beyond the local possibility," he said. "We could have a binding target - but it's one thing to have high-flying targets and another one to have concrete measures which are balanced and supportive."

Buy a new energy car and save 100,000 yuan

By Hu Xiaocen  |   2012-9-8
Shanghai Daily

CONSUMERS who buy fuel-saving and new energy cars in Shanghai can save around 100,000 yuan (US$15,760) in total, as the government plans to introduce more measures to boost the sales of such cars, officials said yesterday.

"China will expand the use of energy-saving cars," Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology, said in Beijing. "Other policies may include exemption for users from license plate auction and lottery."

Shanghai was named the country's first pilot city for electric vehicle development in April last year. 

"The Shanghai government will subsidize 40,000 yuan for each purchase of electronic car," Shou Ziqi, director of the Shanghai Science and Technology Commission, said. "And buyers can have specially numbered license plates for the cars, without going through the plate auction process."

The average price for a car plate in Shanghai surged to 62,559 yuan in August, 4,288 yuan more than in July.

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/nsp/Metro/2012/09/08/Buy%2Ba%2Bnew%2Benergy%2Bcar%2Band%2Bsave%2B100000%2Byuan/

Life Without Indian Point, Redux

By MATTHEW L. WALD

NY Times

9/7/12

The consequences of running the Indian Point nuclear reactors or shutting them down run from easy-to-spot to hard-to-calculate.

Is a serious accident plausible? Would retiring the reactors open the way for alternative sources of electricity that pose a lower safety risk? Or simply ensure an economic blow?

Two Westchester County business groups have sponsored a study, released on Friday, that takes the latter view — a counterpoint a 2011 study by opponentsthat argued that there was nothing indispensable about the reactors.

The new report, by Howard J. Axelrod, a longtime economics consultant, predicts payroll and tax payment losses (which seem pretty certain) and takes a stab at predicting electricity rate increases and a general decline in economic activity. The study was sponsored by the Business Council of Westchester (of which Entergy, Indian Point’s owner, is a member), and the Westchester Business Alliance

The report updates a version commissioned by Westchester business interests four years ago.

Some of the numbers are straightforward. Indian Point has 1,200 employees and uses another 200 contractors. The employee payroll is $130 million, and the plant pays $75 million in property taxes plus additional taxes to New York State.

The study quotes an earlier estimate that the plant contributes $363 million to local purchases. (Some fraction of the payroll and property taxes would continue during the decommissioning of the plant’s reactors.) A high-efficiency natural gas plant of the same capacity might employ only 20 workers, the study said.

It’s a little harder to estimate the effect on electric rates.

New York State’s electricity system relies on a complicated auction method whereby utilities like Con Edison say how much electricity they think they will need and generating companies say what price they need to produce electricity.

A computer tallies up the demand and ranks the suppliers by price, from lowest to highest. It then decides which generators will run, beginning with the lowest-priced and continuing until demand is met, with the last megawatt-hour being the priciest. Yet all generators get paid the price demanded by the last supplier.

Indian Point is a relatively low-cost supplier. If it disappears, the computer will have to reach higher into the stack of generation offers to match supply to demand, and that last megawatt-hour will be more expensive. So all generators will receive more income, and all consumers will pay more.

Mr. Axelrod’s study puts Indian Point’s energy costs at $44 to $53 per megawatt-hour. He says that the least costly alternative would be a plant burning natural gas at high efficiency, which would cost $76 to $109 per megawatt-hour. He estimates an increase in electricity rates of 6.3 percent, or $374 million a year.

Of the two functioning Indian Point reactors (Unit 1 closed down in 1974), Unit 2’s license expires in 2013, and Unit 3’s in 2015. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has yet to turn down a request for a license extension, although it wants some steps to be taken on safety at the plant.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants the plant retired, and while the state has no jurisdiction over safety, it is trying to deny a vital water-use permit. Under the commission’s rules, the plant’s existing licenses are valid beyond their expiration dates if an application for a renewal is still under consideration.

The debate over the effects of shutting down the plant will surely drag on.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/life-without-indian-point-redux/

California's solar energy passes a milestone

Friday, Sep. 7, 2012 - 12:00 am | Page 6B

Sacramento Bee

California surpassed a major milestone during a recent heat wave, hitting more than 1,000 megawatts of solar power generation. That's equal to the production of two large gas-firedpower plants.

The threshold was surpassed several times, according to the Folsom-based California Independent System Operator Corp., which operates the state's wholesale transmission grid.

California energy officials celebrated the solar-generation milestone this week at ISO's annual Stakeholder Symposium at the Sacramento Convention Center.

ISO officials were joined by representatives of the California Energy Commission and California Public Utilities Commission.

Steve Berberich, president and CEO of California ISO, said ISO currently has an installed solar capacity of 1,160 megawatts.

Bob Foster, ISO board chairman, said ISO's board of governors has approved enough new transmission investment to enable California utilities to reach a state goal of a 33 percent renewable power mix by 2020.

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/09/07/4796127/californias-solar-energy-passes.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/09/07/4796127/californias-solar-energy-passes.html#storylink=cpy

'Envision: Charlotte' program a model for urban-area energy use

John Downey

Senior Staff Writer- Charlotte Business Journal

The meter is running on the Envision: Charlotte effort to cut electricity use in uptown Charlotte 20%, but Duke Energy Carolinas says it’s too early to have any useful statistics from the program.

Vincent Davis, director of Smart Energy Now, says it will be September or October before meaningful figures can be derived from the technology designed to track and report electricity use in 64 of uptown’s largest buildings.

The technology is designed to provide hard numbers on how much power is being used and to quantify how much is saved. Duke also intends to adjust the raw figures to reflect unseasonable weather, building vacancies and other factors.

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” says Tom Shircliff, chairman of the board for the nonprofit Envision: Charlotte. The organization has expanded the project from focusing on energy efficiency to include sustainable practices for water consumption, waste disposal and air quality.

The work on the energy-savings element of the project is the farthest along. Smart Energy Now, set up by Duke to deliver the energy savings promised when the project was announced in 2010, is organized under Duke’s Save-A-Watt program. It must demonstrate energy savings to qualify for compensation from the utility’s ratepayers.

Realizing the program’s goals involves changing the behavior of office tenants and landlords. So while Davis doesn’t have firm numbers to demonstrate any achievements, the work on changing behavior is well under way.

From the Mecklenburg County jail to Johnson & Wales University and the Bank of America Corporate Center, Duke has held training sessions for 600 uptown workers designated by their companies as “energy champions.” It’s their job to come up with creative ways to encourage fellow employees to save energy.

Rob Phocas, energy and sustainability manager for the city of Charlotte, says the city has trained almost 200 employees as part of its participation in the program. Programming has ranged from straightforward efforts to figure out what percentage of lights are turned off when rooms are empty to efforts such as “Crab, You’re It!” That involves designating energy wasters by leaving a plastic crab — crabs move toward light — at their work stations.

The city has boosted the percentage of lights turned off to 90% from 50% at the start of the program.

Envision: Charlotte also is working with building owners and operators. But that effort will become more involved once the organization has firm figures to analyze.

Most uptown buildings already are using many of the best practices and advanced equipment to conserve resources. “Changing behavior doesn’t require a capital investment, and that is a lot of what we are concentrating on,” Shircliff says.

The Carillon building, owned by Houston-based Hines, participated in one of the energy audits Smart Energy Now offered. Hines’ general manager at Carillon, Mike Delev, says the audit confirmed the company’s equipment programs are delivering the efficiencies they expected. But he expects to be able to learn additional ways to use energy more efficiently from the practices of other participants.

“We will do our utmost to continue our program of saving energy and looking for additional ways to save,” Delev says. “A lot of things will be learned from this experience and will be valuable from understanding the consumption patterns of buildings and how to promote savings to stakeholders in the market.”

That will come down the road as Duke, the Envision: Charlotte team and the participants are able to evaluate the hard data.

Smart Energy Now recently conducted a breakfast session aimed mainly at building owners and facilities managers. At that session, the group addressed some technical issues on energy accounting, rate structures and what data the owners and operators can assess to guide decisions on energy use and equipment purchases.

“That’s a different conversation than we are having with the employees,” Davis says, although he considers both approaches important.

And Envision: Charlotte will move more into that technical side going forward.

“We’re still in the early stages,” Davis says. “When we have nine months or so of operating under our belt, we can strip out the weather anomalies and normalize the data. Then we will be able to take a better look at patterns.”

RATING DUKE'S EFFORTS

Duke Energy Carolinas’ efficiency program saved more energy at a lower cost last year than any other investor-owned utility in the Southeast, says an analysis by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

The environmental group issued a brief study that shows Duke saved more than 500 gigawatt hours of electricity through its Save-A-Watt efficiency programs in 2011. That amounts to 0.7% of its sales last year.

“This is significantly more than any of the other utilities in the Southeast,” the alliance says in a report, Energy Efficiency: The New Energy Superhero of the Southeast.

“Much of the savings from Duke Energy’s program came from lighting programs,” SACE’s Natalie Mims notes in her report. “Moving forward, Duke Energy is working on diversifying its programs to achieve more non-lighting savings.”

Duke has given away compact fluorescent bulbs to encourage residential customers to use efficient lighting.

The report notes Duke also exceeded its own energy-efficiency goals in 2010 and 2011. The 2011 total was about twice the gigawatt-hour savings Duke had set for itself in filings with regulators in the Carolinas.

And Duke achieved those savings at a cost of less than a penny per kilowatt hour, SACE estimates. That is about half of what efficiency programs cost Progress Energy Carolinas last year per kilowatt hour and well below the nearly 9 cents paid by Florida Power & Light.

http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/print-edition/2012/08/31/envision-program-a-model-for.html?page=all