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Big is beautiful if it breaks our dead-dinosaur addiction

I've heard arguments lately for local photovoltaic solar power (PV) from rooftops, roadways, and parking lots as a primary source of electric energy, mostly accompanied by arguments against long distance high-voltage transmission lines (HVDC). I keep picturing a revised Treasure of the Sierra Madre with bandits telling Humphrey Bogart: "Transmission lines? We don't need no stinking transmission lines!"

I think the key to this argument is whether you are satisfied with slow incremental growth in renewable energy that gradually rises to providing 20 percent of electricity use, or if you want renewable electricity use to grow large enough to displace coal, natural gas for electricity, and even natural gas for heating and oil for transport (via ground source heat pumps and electrified transport).

Let's look at data from the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center for one [PDF] PV system for one day in Prescott Arizona.

click image to zoom

New site to teach students about green vehicle technology

When you’ve got a spare moment for some mechanical learning, or know a student who does, take a look at the nifty new FuelOurFutureNow.com. The interactive knowledge center is designed to help K-12 students learn about vehicle technology, energy efficiency, climate change, alternative fuels, and the science, technology, engineering, and math that underlie fuel-efficient vehicle […]

Non-OPEC production has likely peaked, oil output could fall by 30 million bpd by 2015

You might think that the recent collapse in oil demand would put off the peak. But the price collapse and global credit crunch mean the reverse is true:

Non-OPEC crude oil production may have already peaked and international oil companies faced the prospect of both younger and older oil fields declining steeply, the firm said in the report released on Wednesday.

Merrill said "the cumulative decline of global oil production from today could amount to 30 million barrels per day by 2015." What does world need to do going forward?

Steep falls in oil production means the world now needed to replace an amount of oil output equivalent to Saudi Arabia's production every two years, Merrill Lynch said in a research report.

This matches what the normally conservative and staid International Energy Agency has been saying in recent months (see "Science/IEA: World oil crunch looming? Not if we can find six Saudi Arabias!" and "IEA says oil will peak in 2020").

The global economic recession has cut funding for investment in oil production around the globe. Ironically -- or tragically -- the only thing that can save the world from a return to soaring oil prices by 2010 or 2011 is if economic slowdown turns into "a multi-year event where global oil demand was pushed down structurally for the next five years."

Integrating science with management and policy at the Puget Sound Georgia Basin Ecosystem Conference

"I would like to tell our Canadian friends that science is back in the United States of America."

Considering the room was full of scientists -- and the morning's coffee was just kicking in -- perhaps it's no surprise that Puget Sound Partnership Director David Dicks' statement was greeted by thunderous applause. But it also seemed to set the tone for the Puget Sound Georgia Basin Ecosystem Conference in Seattle this week, eliciting a sense of anticipation and optimism that many had been holding back for almost a decade.

Dicks followed his bold assertion about science's big comeback with four key strategies for improving the health of the Salish Sea:

Two more coal plants won't be built, another will switch to biomass

• NV Energy, Inc. announced that it is postponing plans to build a "clean coal" plant in eastern Nevada, citing "environmental and economic uncertainties." This bit is worth noting:

The company will not move forward with construction of the coal plant until the technologies that will capture and store greenhouse gasses are commercially feasible, which is not likely before the end of the next decade.

Meanwhile, they're still building the high-voltage transmission lines that were part of the original plan -- they're just going to use them to carry renewable energy.

• In Ohio, American Electric Power has put plans for an IGCC coal plant on hold, citing the lack of sufficient subsidies "state of the economy." Oh yeah, and the assessment that construction costs will top $2 billion.

Plans for the project have been placed on hold repeatedly, due to cost recovery issues, construction costs and regulatory issues. However, Celona said, AEP has not changed its plans, and still hopes to build here.

I'll hold my breath.

• The University of Wisconsin's Charter Street heating plant, long a target for enviros, has announced that it will no longer be burning coal. It's switching to biomass, mainly wood and agricultural products.

"[It's] taking … heating from the 19th century into the 21st century," [UW Associate Vice Chancellor Alan] Fish said. "It's a more than $200 million investment by the state, and will eliminate the burning of over 100 tons of coal and have the potential to burn 250,000 tons of biomass."

Yes, all the usual criticisms of biomass apply, but at least it's creating electricity and not fueling cars. It's a step.

I could do a post like this every few weeks. Coal is on the ropes in the U.S. Next up: shutting down existing plants!

Senate Foreign Relations Committee leaders urge action to avoid deforestation

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on Monday for action to prevent deforestation and thereby slow down climate change. Clearing and burning forests accounts for 20 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. “There’s no point in words. It’s time for action,” Kerry told the crowd […]

The NYT magazine doesn't understand renewables, efficiency, energy prices, or green jobs

Reporting on the economics of climate change in this country is terrible, as made clear in the searing new report by leading journalist Eric Pooley.

The NYT economics reporter, David Leonhardt, made a big splash last week with his big piece on the stimulus, "The Big Fix." But like many economics reporters, he is both poorly informed and thoroughly confused about clean energy -- and most every other aspect of energy, as his extended discussion of green jobs makes clear:

Sometimes a project can give an economy a lift and also lead to transformation, but sometimes the goals are at odds, at least in the short term. Nothing demonstrates this quandary quite so well as green jobs, which are often cited as the single best hope for driving the post-bubble economy. Obama himself makes this case. Consumer spending has been the economic engine of the past two decades, he has said. Alternative energy will supposedly be the engine of the future -- a way to save the planet, reduce the amount of money flowing to hostile oil-producing countries and revive the American economy, all at once. Put in these terms, green jobs sounds like a free lunch.

Green jobs can certainly provide stimulus. Obama's proposal includes subsidies for companies that make wind turbines, solar power and other alternative energy sources, and these subsidies will create some jobs. But the subsidies will not be nearly enough to eliminate the gap between the cost of dirty, carbon-based energy and clean energy. Dirty-energy sources -- oil, gas and coal -- are cheap. That's why we have become so dependent on them.

The only way to create huge numbers of clean-energy jobs would be to raise the cost of dirty-energy sources, as Obama's proposed cap-and-trade carbon-reduction program would do, to make them more expensive than clean energy. This is where the green-jobs dream gets complicated.

No, no, and no. Leonhardt would seem to be completely unaware of the fact that in 2008 U.S. wind energy grew by record 8,300 MW. It was responsible for 42 percent of all new U.S. electricity generation installed last year. In fact, two weeks ago, Fortune reported:

Obama talks tough on energy in first prime-time press conference

President Obama had some firm words for critics of his economic stimulus plan in his first presidential news conference on Monday night, using some of his most forceful comments to defend the green energy investments in the plan. “Why would that be a waste of federal money?” asked Obama. “We’re creating jobs immediately by weatherizing […]

Today's leftovers

A couple of notable things today that I won't be able to give the time they deserve:

• Brad at the Wonk Room notes that the self-styled Senate "centrists" who carved $100 billion 600,000 jobs out of the stimulus bill -- under the guise of "cutting the fat" -- managed to protect a $50 billion boondoggle for nuclear power, water down loan guarantees for renewable energy and grid projects, and boost subsidies to dirty energy. Nice work, "centrists."
• Amory Lovins has a guest post on the NYT's Freakonomics blog, making his familiar case that small and smart beats big and powerful when it comes to electricity generation. The comments reflect all the usual misunderstandings Lovins encounters, including the comical demand that he supply statistics to back his case. Whatever Lovins' faults, lack of statistics isn't one of them. He's even quantified the number of hidden economic benefits of micropower: there are exactly 207!
• Huzzah to Keith Johnson at the WSJ's energy blog for making a point that is too-little understood by the broader body politic: dirty power is "cheaper" than clean power because dirty power doesn't pay for its full costs. This seems incredibly basic and obvious to people who have been studying and writing about energy for a while, but it still hasn't really penetrated the public conversation. Witness the outbreak of dumbassery in the WSJ comments.
• David Sirota makes a good point: if you tax energy companies to fund good things, you make those good things dependent on energy companies -- perversely, you strengthen the political hand energy companies can play. Careful how you use tax revenue.

And that was just from today!

McKinstry Company to hire about 500 people in next two to three years

Innovation -- a business model we can believe in.

McKinstry Company is perhaps the most dynamic and interesting company in the Northwest right now. They're earning high-profile attention from President Barack Obama. And even in this economy, they're adding jobs and expanding.

Check it out:

SEATTLE -- Mayor Greg Nickels today presented McKinstry Company with a permit and approved plans for an expansion of its Georgetown facility in south Seattle. The company expects to hire an additional 500 people, a combination of professional and union craftsman, in the next two to three years.

But how can anyone prosper right now?

Well, a big part of the reason for McKinstry's success is that they get it. They get that the current energy economy is broken. They get that we're facing a climate crisis of alarming severity. And they get that a state like Washington shoveled $16 billion out the door in 2008 to pay for fossil-fuel imports.

Consider what David Allen of McKinstry Company said yesterday to the Washington legislature. In testimony before the House Ecology and Parks Committee, he fielded a hostile question about some businesses objecting to the governor's cap-and-invest bill. (Video is here, starting at about 43:15.)

Allen said flatly that McKinstry will be regulated. But he doesn't fear putting a cap on climate pollution.

Allen: "We need to suck it up and get innovative."