Green Wombat

California Looks to Neighbors for Green Energy

photo: green wombat
California is looking to tap green energy projects in bordering states to meet its ambitious renewable energy targets. The California Public Utilities Commission last week approved a $6 million study to consider the feasibility of building new transmission lines to transmit green electricity from solar power stations and wind farms that could be built in isolated areas of the state as well as in Nevada and Arizona. The move is good news for solar entrepreneurs hoping to develop power plants in the sunny triangle of Arizona, California and Nevada.

The region boosts some of the best solar resource in the country but faces the conundrum that renewable energy-rich areas often are far off the grid. By locating such projects across the California border, developers can avoid the state's intensive regulatory process while reaping the benefits of selling it green power. California utilities are under the gun to obtain 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010 and 33 percent by 2030. Adding to the pressure, regulators earlier this year barred utilities from signing long-term contracts with out-of-state coal-fired power plants, which provide about 20 percent of California's electricity.

"Many renewable resource areas are located far from the grid and load centers and often require extensive and expensive transmission upgrades," the commission stated.

The CPUC is a member of California Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative, a consortium of state energy agencies. "Meeting California’s renewable policy goals will require rapid development of renewable resource areas throughout the state and possibly in adjoining states,"  states the group. "It will also require the construction of new transmission infrastructure to deliver energy from those renewable resource areas to the electric grid."

Southern California Edison (EIX) lead the study, which is backed by the state's other big utilities, PG&E (PCG) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE). Also on board are renewable energy companies like BrightSource Energy and Solel, both of which are set to build large-scale solar power plants for PG&E.

Feds Boost Green Energy Entrepreneurs

photo: runs brooklyn

California utilities' appetite renewable energy has spawned big opportunities for solar startups, wind farm operators and other green power providers. But those companies face a huge hurdle: the best sun and wind are often in areas away from transmission lines, and the high cost of connecting a renewable energy plant to the grid can strangle a startup.  But yesterday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, approved California's plan to spread those connection costs among the state's utilities until a green power station is up and running and generating revenue as well as electricity. That ruling should speed the development of renewable energy in California - and elsewhere - as well as make it easier for green power startups to obtain financing for their projects so they can secure renewable energy contracts with PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE).  "Growing concerns about losing ground toward a goal of U.S. energy independence, environmental sustainability, and climate change have heightened interest in harnessing renewable energy resources as a response to there critical issues," said FERC commissioner Suedeen Kelly in a statement. "The successful integration of renewable energy generation into large power systems if fundamental to successfully addressing energy independence, environmental sustainability and climate change concerns."

Green Power: The U.S.'s Top 10 Cities

oakland photo: in2jazz

Which of the United State's 50 biggest cities is the greenest when it comes to using renewable energy?  Portland, Oregon? San Francisco, perhaps? Seattle?  Nope. The top spot goes to Oakland, the city across the Bay  from San Francisco whose gritty reputation belies its crunchy environmental policies. Oakland gets 17 percent of its electricity from renewable sources such as geothermal, solar and wind, according to SustainLane, a San Francisco firm that compiles data on government sustainability initiatives.  Three other California cities tied for second place with 12 percent of their electricity generated from renewable sources: San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento.

Here's the rest of the list:

• Portland, Oregon: 10 percent
• Boston: 8.6 percent
• San Diego: 8 percent
• Austin: 6 percent
• Los Angeles: 5 percent
• Minneapolis: 4.5 percent
• Seattle: 3.5 percent
• Chicago: 2.5 percent

It's no accident that six of the top cities are in California. The Golden State has set aggressive renewable energy portfolio standards for its three big investor-owned utilities - PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE). And city-owned utilities like the Sacramento Municipal Utility District have been green-energy pioneers. One city to watch is Austin. The Texas capital's government has committed itself to going carbon neutral by 2020, and its municipal owned utility - Austin Energy, a leader in renewable energy - has been given a mandate to generate 100 megawatts of solar power and make all new plants zero emission.

 

Bidding War for Green Energy

photo: ririchen06

The corporate headquarters of a state-regulated utility would seem to be an unlikely place for green tech entrepreneurs to strike gold. But as global warming worries grow and regulators require utilities to obtain more electricity from renewable sources, the industry is turning to startups to meet those mandates. And so the scene this week at PG&E (PCG) in San Francisco, where California’s largest utility held a bidder’s conference for companies wanting to make offers to provide between 80 and 800 megawatts of clean, green energy. Like the other investor-owned California utilities – Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) - PG&E must get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. The quote rises to 30 percent by 2030. What’s more, California regulators - laying the groundwork for the state’s coming cap on greenhouse gas emissions - have barred the utilities from signing long-term contracts for the purchase of “dirty power” from out-of-state coal-fired plants. That means another 20 percent of California’s electricity will have to be replaced. No surprise there’s a land rush on to lock up solar, wind, biomass and geothermal resources.

“We’re open to any and all offers,” a PG&E exec told about 60 people from a host of renewable energy companies who gathered in the utility’s auditorium on Tuesday to hear the opportunities – and not insignificant hurdles – to winning a contract. Want to build a solar power plant in Arizona and ship the electrons to Northern California? Not a problem. PG&E will also consider signing long-term power purchase agreements with the option to buy your wind farm, solar power station or biomass plant. It will also accept proposals for “turn-key ownership” – you build it, the utility buys it. Got a good piece of land for a renewable energy project? PG&E might purchase the development rights.

This is PG&E fourth annual request for offers – last year it signed a 500-megawatt solar power plant deal with Bright Source Energy – and it will finalize contracts by the end of 2007 after narrowing applicants to a short list this summer. The upside for green tech startups: a guaranteed price for the electricity produced over the term of a 10-to-20 year contract. The downside: the time and cost of securing approval for a wind farm or solar power plant from an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies – the CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission, the CEC (California Energy Commission) and FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)- to name a but a few.  Not to mention the penalties you’ll incur from the utility if your technology doesn’t deliver the power as promised.

Still, there appears to be no shortage of interest from green power companies in doing business with your local monolithic utility. Green Wombat recognized a few faces in the San Francisco audience from a renewable energy bidder’s conference utility Arizona Public Service (PNW) held in Phoenix last month. APS was looking to contract out only about 10 megawatts of green energy but it attracted a standing-room-only crowd.

Got Biogas? Cow Power to Light Up 50,000 California Homes

photo originally uploaded by troymckaskle

A California startup founded by a dairyman turned entrepreneur has signed an agreement to supply up to 3 billion cubic feet of bovine biogas - methane extracted from cow manure - to utility PG&E (PCG). That's enough cow power - 30 to 50 megawatts - to light up about 50,000 homes and keep a small natural gas plant running for a year. The deal between Bakersfield-based BioEnergy Solutions and PG&E of San Francisco highlights the win-win-win potential of renewable energy - and how global warming laws are creating opportunities for relatively low-tech solutions by companies far outside the Silicon Valley orbit.

In this case, cow power is good for the environment, the economy and entrepreneurs like BioEnergy's David Albers. California is home to nearly 2 million cows and more than 2,000 dairies. Unlike the coastal cows enjoying the ocean view in the photo above, most California cows live on industrial-scale dairies in the Central Valley. Those operations produce enormous quantities of manure and thus methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases.  The resulting air and water pollution and other environmental impacts have resulted in stricter state regulations on dairying in recent years. Albers, who also is an attorney, has represented his fellow dairy owners in their tangles with regulators and environmentalists.

California, meanwhile, has imposed a mandate that 20 percent of electricity sold by investor-owned utilities like PG&E, Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) come from renewable energy sources by 2010. That's making cow poop look profitable as source of really natural gas. "We found the perfect storm of opportunity," Albers told Green Wombat. "It’s such a great solution on so many levels, given the air quality problems in the Central Valley and the renewable energy mandate." Albers started BioEnergy Solutions last year and began negotiating with PG&E, which had just signed a cow power deal with a company called Microgy. Like its competitor, BioEnergy Solutions will install methane digesters at dairies, where manure will be pumped into covered lagoons. As methane is released from the decomposing manure, the digester will remove the carbon dioxide and impurities before piping the gas to a PG&E plant to be burned to produce greenhouse gas-free electricity. Albers says BioEnergy will install and operate the digesters at no cost to dairy owners while giving them a share of the gas sales (he wouldn't say how much) and any renewable energy credits that result. "Even though there’s been a lot of digester technology out there, there's never been a situation where the dairyman can share in the profits," Albers says.

HP, Other Fortune 500 Companies to Increase Use of Renewable Energy

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) this morning pledged to double its purchase of renewable energy to 25 million kilowatt-hours over the next year as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "Fortune 500 Green Power Challenge."  The goal: Get Corporate America to buy 5 billion kilowatt hours of renewable energy to jump-start demand for solar, wind and other green power and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. HP's move is the equivalent of taking 3,100 carbon-dioxide emitting cars off the road or eliminating electricity use from 1,800 households a year, according to the EPA. Cisco (CSCO), Starbucks (SBUX), Wells Fargo (WFC) and other companies made make similar pledges at a press conference in San Francisco later this morning.

A New Renewable Energy Source: Generating Electricity from Vibrations

  Sydney Harbour Bridge 
  Originally uploaded by theFijian.

Here’s a potential source of electricity to help Wal-Mart (WMT) achieve its goal of using 100 percent renewable energy in its stores: its customers. Each step a person takes produces 64 watts of dissipated energy and scientists at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation are developing technology to “harvest” vibrational energy and feed it to the power grid or store it in batteries. For instance, CSIRO scientist Sam Behrens estimates that car and train traffic over the Sydney Harbour Bridge generates 6.6 megawatts of vibrational energy. “We could get enough power for 200 homes if we could capture just 10 percent of that energy,” Behrens told me during a visit this week to CSIRO’s Energy Centre in Newcastle. Transducers could be built into the bridge or attached to the exterior of skyscrapers to capture energy. Behrens has made a working model of how the technology works in a hallway at the Energy Centre. A strip of piezoelectric ceramic material has been laid under the floor. When I walk over that patch of floor, the energy from my feet is captured by the piezo, causing a needle to jump on a meter attached to the wall. Behrens also has coated a metal strip with piezoelectric material and when you move the strip the vibrational energy produced powers a small light. This is all early stage research and the key will be reducing the cost of materials like piezoelectric materials and developing the technology to connect vibrational energy to the power grid or store it. Behrens sees potential uses of vibration harvesting in everything from powering heavily trafficked places like airports and train stations to replacing batteries in mobile phones and laptops.

The Limits of Silicon Valley's Green Power

Election Day was green day for the most part. Environmentalists helped oust California Congressman Richard Pombo, a Republican property rights advocate who spent his seven terms trying to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act and other enviro laws. Pombo was defeated, appropriately enough, by a wind energy consultant. Voters in Washington, meanwhile, passed Initiative 937, which requires the state's utilities by 2020 to produce at least 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources or meet that target by purchasing renewable energy credits. But Californians, ever the contrarians, voted down a ballot measure backed by Silicon Valley heavyweights that would have taxed oil companies $4 billion to fund alternative energy research and programs. Big-time venture capitalists and green tech evangelists Vinod Khosla and John Doerr along with Google co-founder Larry Page spent millions to promote Proposition 87. Big Oil spent more, however, and in California elections are essentially fought on television screens. Heavy rotation of endorsements from former President Bill Clinton and Hollywood celebrities couldn't overcome political ads like this one from anti-Prop 87 forces. (Sorry, I can't show it to you on Green Wombat as the embed function has been disabled.) Still, with Democrats now in control of the House - and maybe the Senate - expect more action on global warming and other environmental issues. Businesses already surfing the green wave will be ahead of the game; those who are not need to get in the water.

Cow Power

I look at the face of renewable energy and it looks back at me with big brown eyes and says, "Moo."

Meet the cows of Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport, Vermont. Each of the 2,000 cows produces not only milk but 200 watts of power a day. Cow manure is fed into a anaerobic digester on the farm, where bacteria strip away pathogens and produce methane gas. The gas powers a generator that produces electricity, which is fed into the grid operated by Central Central Public Service, the local utility. Cows are king in Vermont and about 75 percent of the state's agricultural revenue come from dairies. But cow poop releases methane, a particularly powerful greenhouse gas, and creates a huge waste management headache for dairies like Blue Spruce Farm, owned by the Audets family.  "We weren't thinking of global warming when we dd this, we needed to do deal with the waste problem," says Marie Audets, a no-nonsense woman who has worked on farms most of her life, as she showed me and a group of environmental journalists around Blue Spruce Farm.

Vermont is not the only state experimenting with cow power - California is home to some 2 million cows and this month Pacific Gas & Electric signed a deal to buy methane gas from Microgy, a company that will build four digesters on Big Ag dairy farms. What's different about Vermont cow power is that it's connecting consumers to family farms that are struggling to cut costs as milk prices fall. CVPS customers who sign up for cow power pay a 4 cent kilowatt-hour premium, or about $5 to $20 more a month for their bovine-sourced electricity.

The Audets financed the methane digester shown above. It captures the methane that would be released into the atmosphere and turns it into electricity that Blue Spruce sells to CVPS, effectively reducing the farm's net power costs to zero. The digester's byproduct is sterilized manure (shown at right), which is used as cow bedding instead of increasingly expensive sawdust. That saves the dairy as much as $100,000 annually. Cow power is another example of what's good for the environment is often also good for the bottom line. The effort got a big boost Thursday when a local environmental liberal arts school, Green Mountain College, agreed to power its campus with cows. CVPS is working with four other farms to install methane digesters.

Silicon Valley's Green Politics

With the election a few weeks away, a Who's Who of Silicon Valley's executive class is convening a "CEO Summit on Alternative Energy" Monday in San Jose. The confab is part of a campaign by a group called Silicon Valley Business Leaders for Alternative Energy to lobby Congress to reduce the United States' dependence on imported oil.

Here's what the group wants: federal incentives - read subsidies - to companies developing renewable energy technologies; policies to shield alt energy businesses from oil price flucations of the type that doomed the solar biz in the 1980s; promotion of flex-fuel cars capable of running on both gasoline and ethanol; and policies to encourage the development of plug-in flex-fuel hybrid electric cars and "practical" all-electric cars.

So far about 30 Silicon Valley CEOs - including the chiefs of Advanced Micro Devices, Juniper Networks, Palm and SanDisk - have signed the group's open letter calling for such an agenda. Of course it goes without saying that Silicon Valley is experiencing a green energy boom, with big investments in biofuels and solar power on the line. Fair enough, given that Big Oil has certainly played the politics-and-tax-break game to its multibillion-dollar advantage for well high on a century.

Monday's event at Novellus Systems will feature about 200 execs, academics, policy wonks and politicos like California Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Green Power Goes Corporate

Pop quiz: What company is the biggest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the United States? a. Toyota b. Whole Foods c. Wells Fargo d. Halliburton.

And the green smiley face goes to .... Wells Fargo. The banking goliath has purchased 550 million kilowatt hours of electricity generated from renewable sources, according to a quarterly list released Tuesday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Partnership program. Actually, Wells Fargo bought renewable energy certificates that will pay for 550 million kilowatt hours of wind energy, representing 42 percent of the bank's electricity needs.

Green grocer Whole Foods came next, generating 463 million killowatt hours and 100 percent of its electricity needs from renewable energy sources like biomass, geothermal, small-hydro, solar and wind.

Given Whole Food's alt corporate bent, that might not be too much of a shocker. But get this: The number one buyer of green energy in the nation are those hippies at the U.S. Airforce, which bought a billion kilowatt hours of electricity produced by biomass, geothermal and wind.

The EPA itself ranked No. 4, buying 100 percent of its electricity - representing about 330 million kilowatt hours - from renewable energy sources. The list of the top 25 green power buyers is here.