Green Wombat

Arizona’s $4 billion solar deal

Arizona Public Service, Arizona’s largest utility, announced plans Thursday for a 280-megawatt solar power plant to be built 70 miles southwest of Phoenix by Spanish company Abengoa Solar. What’s striking about the deal is that it offers a rare glimpse inside the economics of Big Solar. And as the renewable energy industry pushes Congress to extend crucial green tax credits, the jobs that will be spawned by the Solana Generating Station and the economic ripple effect of the huge construction project is Exhibit A in why fighting global warming can be a win-win when it comes to the economy and the environment.

All the previous contracts for 100+ megawatt solar power plants have been in California, where utilities PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) have shrouded power purchase agreements in secrecy.

APS (PNW), on the other hand, has lifted the green veil a bit, giving some indication of the current cost of producing utility-scale solar electricity and the larger economic impact. According to APS, the utility will pay around $4 billion over 30 years for the greenhouse gas-free electricity generated by Solana that will light 70,000 homes. That comes to about $133 million a year for the life of the power purchase agreement.

Abengoa spokesman Peter Kelley told Green Wombat that the exact kilowatt per hour rate the company is paying APS is confidential. No doubt though that the utility will pay a premium per kilowatt/hour for its first large-scale solar energy deal compared to electricity produced by a coal or natural-gas fired power plant. That cost disparity is likely to evaporate when the United States moves to price carbon — either through a carbon tax (unlikely) or a cap-and-trade system that requires fossil-fuel power plants to pay if they exceed limits on CO2 emissions. And the cost of financing carbon-spewing power plants will grow in coming years as Wall Street shies way from projects that carry climate change risks. And as solar power plant components and systems go from being one-off prototypes to mass-produced commodities, the cost of solar electricity is expected to drop even further.

Abengoa and APS are not revealing the construction cost of Solana but solar power plants of that size can run half a billion dollars or more. Of course, once built their operating costs are significantly lower than conventional power plants; the fuel — the sun — after all is free.

In the meantime, the Solana Generation Station is expected to inject about $1 billion into the Arizona economy as Abengoa hired 1,500 workers to build the power station and 85 others to operate it, according to APS. The utility estimates that the ripple affect will create another 11,000 to 15,000 jobs.

Abengoa is using a solar trough design for the plant. A tried and true technology, solar trough plants deploy long rows of parabolic mirrors to heat liquid-filled tubes to produce steam that drives electricity-generating turbines. The Solana plant will also store heat in silos of molten salt. The heat can be released when the sun is not shining to run the turbines. “The molten storage will extend the operating hours of the plant both during cloud cover and when sun goes down,” Kelley says. That means Solana can continue to generate electricty as long as six hours after sunset.

The big “if” for Solana is the 30 percent investment tax credit that expires at the end of 2008. If Congress fails to extend the credit, the cost of such solar power plants will jump, jeopardizing their economic viability

Solana is likely to be just the first big solar power plant in Arizona. Utilities there must obtain 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025 and with little wind or geothermal available in Arizona, the state is likely to place a big bet on Big Solar.

A green-collar recession?

It's all about the green economy, stupid.

The United States could lose more than 116,000 green collar jobs and forgo $19 billion in green tech investment in 2009 if Congress fails to extend two tax credits crucial to the renewable energy industry, according to a new study.

One red flag about this report: It was commissioned by the American Wind Energy Association and released by the Solar Energy Industries Association -- two trade groups pressing for extension of the investment tax credit and the production tax credit. Green Wombat tends to look askance at studies paid for by business and whose conclusions support the sponsors' political agenda. But a review of the research conducted by Navigant Consulting indicates that it is solid, based on federal labor data and employment models as well as Navigant's own market analysis.

Some background. The ITC provides a 30 percent tax credit for the installation of solar arrays and other equipment. Homeowners can claim a 30 percent tax credit for solar arrays up to a maximum of $2,000. There's no cap for commercial solar arrays and the tax credit has been a key to attracting financing for large solar installations that can cost millions of dollars. (Several states, most notably California, offer even more lucrative incentives, which should help prop up demand.) The production tax credit provides a subsidy for the generation of electricity by solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable energy systems and has driven the construction of massive megawatt wind farms.

Both credits expire at the end of 2008 and the renewable energy industry and their allies in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street are pressing Congress for a long-term extension -- five to eight years -- to provide a stable investment climate for green projects. (Last week, executives from Google (GOOG), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Applied Materials (AMAT) and Credit Suisse (CS) were among those that signed a letter urging Congress to take action by March 1.)

The Navigant study projects that without the investment tax credit installations of solar arrays will fall from a projected 790 megawatts to 325 megawatts in 2009, eliminating 39,400 potential new jobs.

A couple of points to consider about those numbers. Navigant only considered the impact on the photovoltaic industry that manufactures and installs rooftop solar arrays. It did not calculate the consequences for the solar thermal business, which builds large-scale solar power plants that use mirrors to focus the sun's rays on liquid-filled tubes or boilers to create steam to drive electricity-generating turbines. The solar thermal industry is in its infancy but utilities like PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) have signed several contracts for solar power plants and negotiations for gigawatts more of solar electricity are ongoing.

The first solar power plants in California won't go online until around 2010 but the construction and operation of those projects are expected to create thousands of jobs. Like the PV industry, solar thermal companies are dependent on the investment tax credit to attract the big money it takes to finance the construction of billion-dollar power plants. The loss of the investment tax credit would hit California particularly hard.

While rooftop solar companies worry about losing business in the future if the investment tax credit is not renewed, the more immediate concern among solar execs Green Wombat has talked to recently is finding enough workers to keep up with demand, especially in California.

Navigant projects an even bigger crash for the wind industry should the production tax credit expire, with installations falling from 6,500 megawatts to 500 megawatts in 2009 with the lose of 76,800 jobs. The wind industry has been continuously buffeted in recent years as Congress has allowed the production tax credit to expire repeatedly only to resuscitate it. In the past, the expiration of the tax credit has resulted in a 73% to 93% drop in the wind market, according to Navigant.