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Unlikely Allies in North Carolina Clean-Energy Fight

With North Carolina’s renewable energy mandate under assault from Republican legislators, green groups seeking to save it have found an unlikely ally: the state’s hog industry.

Smithfield Foods Inc. and other companies that raise and slaughter pigs have put aside decades of disagreements and united — for the moment — with environmentalists to defend the only state law in the nation that lists swine manure as a renewable resource.

Smithfield has been the target of lawsuits, petitions and political campaigns for stashing hog manure in football-field size lagoons or spraying it on farm fields. Now the company says it has found a way to green its process: capturing the biogas rising off the manure and using it to make electricity.

Unless, that is, a Republican-led drive succeeds to rescind tax incentives and requirements for utilities to use renewable energy.

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Listen Up: Utilities Agree That Fossil Fuels Can’t Compete Against Renewables

According to Doc Brown, Marty McFly’s DeLorean needed 1.21 gigawatts to travel back in time. To put this in perspective, new gas power plants are about 0.5 gigawatts, typical large utility scale solar power plants are 0.1 gigawatts, and the average rooftop solar system is 0.000005 gigawatts (5,000 watts). Although it takes a lot of solar panels to generate the power our society needs, solar is now one of the cheapest and cleanest sources. And “clean and cheap” is now the world’s preferred power source: in 2013 the world added 143 gigawatts of new renewable energy generating capacity compared to 141 in new plants that burn coal, natural gas, or oil.

Fossil-fueled power plants have not just taken a temporary back seat to renewables – we are witnessing a long term transition in the world’s energy sources. The price of wind and solar power is on par or less than fossil fuel electricity. Renewable energy prices are on a steady pace to get cheaper, while gas and oil will inevitably go up as supplies are constrained and climate change effects are considered. Coal plants are being decommissioned, and new nuclear plants are effectively doomed — it took 36 years from  start to finish for the last nuclear plant to come on line. Compare that to 45 days for a new solar power plant on your home’s roof, or three years for a utility-scale solar project.

Utilities are installing solar power plants to generate electricity for their customers because solar is cheaper.

 But this change in our energy sources will take many years, just as the complete transition from “horse and buggy” transportation to gas-powered cars took 50 years. As with other large-scale technological changes, customer economics will force the current incumbent energy providers to change (unlikely), or go out of business (more likely). It’s a virtuous cycle as more customers are satisfied with renewable power generation, and more people are employed in these industries. For more on this inexorable, economics-driven transition to a clean energy economy — and what we need to do to accelerate the transition — please Listen Up to this week’s Energy Show on Renewable Energy World.

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Uncategorized

Listen Up: Utilities Agree That Fossil Fuels Can’t Compete Against Renewables

According to Doc Brown, Marty McFly’s DeLorean needed 1.21 gigawatts to travel back in time. To put this in perspective, new gas power plants are about 0.5 gigawatts, typical large utility scale solar power plants are 0.1 gigawatts, and the average rooftop solar system is 0.000005 gigawatts (5,000 watts). Although it takes a lot of solar panels to generate the power our society needs, solar is now one of the cheapest and cleanest sources. And “clean and cheap” is now the world’s preferred power source: in 2013 the world added 143 gigawatts of new renewable energy generating capacity compared to 141 in new plants that burn coal, natural gas, or oil.

Fossil-fueled power plants have not just taken a temporary back seat to renewables – we are witnessing a long term transition in the world’s energy sources. The price of wind and solar power is on par or less than fossil fuel electricity. Renewable energy prices are on a steady pace to get cheaper, while gas and oil will inevitably go up as supplies are constrained and climate change effects are considered. Coal plants are being decommissioned, and new nuclear plants are effectively doomed — it took 36 years from  start to finish for the last nuclear plant to come on line. Compare that to 45 days for a new solar power plant on your home’s roof, or three years for a utility-scale solar project.

Utilities are installing solar power plants to generate electricity for their customers because solar is cheaper.

 But this change in our energy sources will take many years, just as the complete transition from “horse and buggy” transportation to gas-powered cars took 50 years. As with other large-scale technological changes, customer economics will force the current incumbent energy providers to change (unlikely), or go out of business (more likely). It’s a virtuous cycle as more customers are satisfied with renewable power generation, and more people are employed in these industries. For more on this inexorable, economics-driven transition to a clean energy economy — and what we need to do to accelerate the transition — please Listen Up to this week’s Energy Show on Renewable Energy World.

Read More
NewsUncategorized

Don’t Like Obama’s Clean Power Plan? Fine, Here’s Cap and Trade

Republican governors who boycott the Obama administration’s new power-plant regulations may instead get an offer they can’t refuse: a cap-and-trade system many of them also oppose.

Five years after Republicans in Congress shot down President Barack Obama’s plan for carbon trading, his administration unveiled rules to combat climate change. They include a provision for carbon trading, which Republicans had criticized as a government intrusion in the workings of the free market.

“It’s clear that what they’re trying to do — without establishing a federal cap-and-trade program — is set up a plan that has a very strong likelihood of becoming a de facto federal cap-and-trade program,” said Andre Templeman, managing director of the carbon-markets consultancy Alpha Inception LLC.

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Uncategorized

Don’t Like Obama’s Clean Power Plan? Fine, Here’s Cap and Trade

Republican governors who boycott the Obama administration’s new power-plant regulations may instead get an offer they can’t refuse: a cap-and-trade system many of them also oppose.

Five years after Republicans in Congress shot down President Barack Obama’s plan for carbon trading, his administration unveiled rules to combat climate change. They include a provision for carbon trading, which Republicans had criticized as a government intrusion in the workings of the free market.

“It’s clear that what they’re trying to do — without establishing a federal cap-and-trade program — is set up a plan that has a very strong likelihood of becoming a de facto federal cap-and-trade program,” said Andre Templeman, managing director of the carbon-markets consultancy Alpha Inception LLC.

Read More
Uncategorized

Don’t Like Obama’s Clean Power Plan? Fine, Here’s Cap and Trade

Republican governors who boycott the Obama administration’s new power-plant regulations may instead get an offer they can’t refuse: a cap-and-trade system many of them also oppose.

Five years after Republicans in Congress shot down President Barack Obama’s plan for carbon trading, his administration unveiled rules to combat climate change. They include a provision for carbon trading, which Republicans had criticized as a government intrusion in the workings of the free market.

“It’s clear that what they’re trying to do — without establishing a federal cap-and-trade program — is set up a plan that has a very strong likelihood of becoming a de facto federal cap-and-trade program,” said Andre Templeman, managing director of the carbon-markets consultancy Alpha Inception LLC.

Read More