Friday Five: July 25, 2014

We hear politicians rail against regulation and how much it can harm business. I think we forget that we are a "nation of laws, not men" and that regulations play an important role in expressing our communal desires. We organize businesses to get things done with the least risk possible, and having an equally robust definition of what we will accept as a country and society does nothing to impair that...in fact, without it, business will not always do what is in the best interest of the people.
Proposed oil train safety rules include lower speeds, improved braking
"In any case, the outcome is likely to force the retirement of at least 35,000 of the nation’s estimated 98,000 tank cars that haul flammable liquids, according to Brigham McCown, former chief of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
In addition to the tank-car standards, the regulations would impose new speed restrictions on trains carrying crude. One option would reduce oil train speeds to 40 mph nationwide, while two others would impose limits only in certain urban areas. The speed limits could broadly affect all freight movements because the oil trains would effectively hold back other traffic, rail experts have said."

No one would accuse Germany - with all of its regulation and popular expression of the role of business and government - of being an inefficient economy that delivers a low quality of life. In fact, with the same global economic constraints, it has pushed forward on both improved quality of life and improved economic footing.
Study ranks Germany as the world's most energy efficient economy
"On a more serious note, Ackermann added that Germany is proud of its efforts to improve energy efficiency and lower its carbon footprint – all while growing its economy. "We all agree, I think – the cheapest energy in the energy you don’t have to produce in the first place. Our long term goal is to fully decouple economic growth from energy use," he said."

We see the worst of this clash of business and community will play out in the small towns most hit by the franking boom. Through every manner of pandering and strong-arming, companies are trying to work their way around the will of the people to not have fracking fields in their backyard. If government were not available as a tool to help give these people voice, how would they defend themselves?
Living next to natural gas wells is no fun
"Colorado has relatively stringent requirements for air quality reporting, but they rely on companies to do the reporting themselves. There is also the issue of access to the wells, which of course the gas companies do not grant to independent researchers. Nonetheless, a 2012 study by the University of Colorado-Denver School of Public Health found VOCs in Garfield County five times above the EPA’s Hazard Index level."

The only time we really understand the benefit of robust, enforced, and reasonable regulation is when a disaster strikes. Do we need another Texas chemical factory to explode, or another North Dakota train derailment, or a Three Mile Island failure to remind us that oversight that has both the capability and the strength to match up with business actually makes our lives...and business for that matter...better.
US nuclear power agency still playing with fire
"Beginning in the early 1990s, studies revealed that some types of material used for electric cable insulation, called fire wraps, did not meet the 1980 standard's requirement to withstand a fire lasting as long as three hours. To compensate, many plant owners began to use measures -- particularly what the industry calls 'manual actions' -- that the NRC had not approved or authorized. For example, if a fire damaged primary and backup system cables, the plant would dispatch workers to manually turn on pumps, close valves, or take whatever steps necessary to control the situation. NRC regulations permit manual actions, but only when they have been formally reviewed and approved on a case-by-case basis."

Now is the time to have a debate about the role energy will play in our lives, and specifically the institutions we have enshrined in law to deliver energy to our lives. They have outlived their usefulness in the current model, and if we do not act soon, we will be left behind in the world economy.
Dismantling the utility model is the fastest path to a cleaner electricity infrastructure
"Utilities have come under increasing pressure from constituents, customers, and politicians in recent decades. Grueling battles are fought over how fast to reduce the industry’s air pollution, how much to spend to reduce water use, what generation plants should be built, and how progressive utility rates should be. Many of these issues have migrated from the states to Washington for resolution, and national politicians find themselves in increasingly uncomfortable and untenable positions."

Happy Friday!

Scott Morgan/AP

Friday Five: July 18, 2014

This week has seen a great number of stories about increased numbers of earthquakes, water shortages, and fracking chemical disclosure. With my birthday coming up, I am using my author's prerogative to focus on the positive and forward-thinking...it also helps that almost every one of these supports statements I have been making for several years now.

We start with the electric car revolution, and how it will not only change transportation, but also the ways we produce and use power at home. Combined with smart-grid communications technology, it will also change the way grid operators manage distributed resources. We have heard so much about the cost of battery storage for solar, and assumed it had to be a stand-alone battery system in the basement. What if the battery is sitting in your driveway surrounded by soft, bucket seats and an eight-CD sound system?
Electric cars will change the way you power your home
"The most striking data was from EV owners who also had solar panels. From 7 a.m. to midnight, they used about one-fourth as much power from the grid as the typical household, because they were getting power from their rooftops and often selling power back to the grid. In other words, they took very little from the grid when demand was high — at times even helping to increase supply — and took much more from the grid when demand was low. They helped smooth out demand."

Of course, in the future I see, there isn't a car in every driveway...but maybe we can adapt the plan a little bit to store cars around the city so they can balance out the grid and provide the same benefit as if they were parked right outside ones house.
Helsinki's ambitious plan to make car ownership pointless in 10 years
"Subscribers would specify an origin and a destination, and perhaps a few preferences. The app would then function as both journey planner and universal payment platform, knitting everything from driverless cars and nimble little buses to shared bikes and ferries into a single, supple mesh of mobility. Imagine the popular transit planner Citymapper fused to a cycle hire service and a taxi app such as Hailo or Uber, with only one payment required, and the whole thing run as a public utility, and you begin to understand the scale of ambition here."

Creating a space like this, powered by low-to-no cost renewable energy, with ubiquitous, low-cost public transportation, and full of the culture and activity that urban areas provide...it might just bring back a whole host of cities that we had left for dead.
What's the key to turning around Rust Belt cities?
"Some cities effectively prepared for this change, Piiparinen said. Pittsburgh’s educational institutions, for example, produced developers with strong tech skills who could create start-ups in Pittsburgh, especially in the areas of robotics. Buffalo just completed a clinical sciences building, part of $4.4 billion of medicine-related development announced in 2012. Cleveland’s new strengths are rooted in medical device companies, largely because of the Cleveland Clinic, which started doing heart research and married manufacturing and health sciences."

We can even look past carbon to other destructive forms of energy extraction, and if we trust our ingenuity, we can make sure that when we use energy to improve our quality of life, we do not threaten anyone's life or quality of life in the process.
As more nuclear plants shut down can distributed energy fill the gap?
"In the last couple of years, five nuclear power plants in the U.S. have been put on the list for closure. These plants are getting challenged from two sides: competitive natural gas and renewables are eroding the economics of merchant projects, while technical challenges associated with age are making the plants more expensive to operate. In this week's show, we'll look at whether renewables and efficiency are capable of filling the gap left by retired nuclear plants, including the SONGS plant in southern California."

As I predicted, utilities are at the crossroads: either get behind distributed renewables and energy efficiency, or go down fighting - but you will go down. We are already seeing that play out. We cannot life in a country based upon liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then tell someone they have to support a monopolistic business enterprise if it does not make sense to them. Those enterprises do not have to exist in that fashion...and the successful ones are already changing their business model willingly.
Green Mountain is a perfect example of how utilities can embrace distributed renewables
"Enter, Green Mountain Power, the leading electricity provider in the state of Vermont. Rather than simply working against the (likely inevitable) spread of distributed generation, the utility has been transforming itself a company with a business model that puts renewable energy and distributed generation at its core."
In Iowa, solar is fighting back against utilities, and winning
"IPL, the local utility, noticed the solar panels going up, and promptly complained to the Dubuque City Council. The local utility board agreed with IPL in March 2012, but Eagle Point appealed, and in April of last year, the Polk County District Court overturned the utility board’s decision, partly because, as the ruling put it, “The customer will still be connected to the grid, will still be an IPL customer, and must continue to purchase energy and capacity from IPL. Eagle Point is neither attempting to replace or sever the link between IPL and the city. it is simply allowing the city to decrease its demand for electricity from the grid.” In other words, the solar panels weren’t any more illegal than an energy-efficient appliance would be."

Happy Friday!

Flashes: May 7, 2014

Stanford's divestment of coal seems like a groundbreaking environmental moment until you realize Goldman Sachs' long-term outlook for coal is bleak.

Mitch McConnell says carbon hypocrites should stop using climate change as a political tool.  By that logic, does that mean rich politicians will stop pretending they know about poverty?

Originally, we couldn't switch to renewables because they cost more.  Now they cost the same.
But now we can't switch because they are intermittent.  Except, this past winter proved conventionals are intermittent.
Now we have to make whole those who have invested in sunk, fossil fuel technologies before we can move forward?
When did the energy field move from capitalism to socialism?

I love the Jon Stewart commentary on government picking winners and losers:  (paraphrase)
"You say the government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers, they should be focusing on building roads, rails and bridges....except that's the government picking winners and losers!  That's the government picking cars, trucks and trains over other modes of transportation."

Enjoy the journey!

Friday Five: May 2, 2014

This week we learned a great lesson of economics: it is not a predictive field of study, only a reactive one.  As much as we like to think we can foretell the future, when it comes to basing our quality of life on the availability of limited commodities, we build our houses on sand instead of rock.
Factbox: Energy Future Holdings' road to bankruptcy
"Energy Future Holdings filed for Chapter 11 protection on Tuesday, seven years after it was taken private in the largest-ever leveraged buyout. Over the last five years, the company used a number of financial maneuvers to manage a significant debt load, but ultimately could not convince its many and disparate creditors to restructure its balance sheet outside of bankruptcy court."

Case in point...six years ago when several of us were talking about the looming horizon of grid-parity for solar, the vast majority did not believe. Now, it is a reality. Next up: buildings that need no outside energy source other than what's available on site. They will be so widely available that they will be a code requirement within 10 years.
When it comes to solar power, the market is finally making environmentalism easy
"Little Sun is a good example of how the market and environmentalism don’t have to compete: Both the company and its evangelists are motivated to propagate an affordable form of non-polluting energy. The economics are working in concert with solar’s advantages of sustainability and independence over traditional power sources. And, suddenly, that intersection of efficacy and impact is making solar power as a whole more desirable than it’s ever been before."

One of the greatest challenges to a clean energy economy has come from unchecked conservatism. Conservatism that demands proof before implementation provides great value to society; conservatism that in the face of science, economics, and law holds onto a harmful status quo has no place in our society.
WSJ overruled by Supreme Court on clean air laws
"The regulations of smog and soot pollution will yield up to $280 billion in health benefits nationwide by preventing hospital visits and avoiding lost work days, according to the EPA's cost-benefit analysis. The human benefits are just as stark, with The American Thoracic Society estimating the new transfer rule could prevent upwards of 40,000 premature deaths annually."

I believe this in large part because of the bad business decisions that such extreme conservatism begets. Utilities can play a strong and stabilizing role in the transition to a clean energy future. However, as long as their leaders cling to the entitlement that they deserve guaranteed return on bad investments, we will continue to threaten the quality of our existence.
What future role for today's utilities
"Maybe our current utilities will provide enabling infrastructure, or maybe they will become insignificantly small players – or disappear. After all, the grid as enabling infrastructure might get smaller, and communities can own the grid and provide other enabling services – storage comes to mind. In the end, what is at stake in the energy transition is not just a choice between various low-carbon sources of electricity. It is also a choice between 1) corporations promising consumers low energy prices (and you can go to hell if you don’t want the giant project near your home) and 2) local renewables that may look more expensive, but you pay those higher prices back to you and your neighbors – and you have input into what gets built in your community."

Sound business thinking not only recognizes and accepts, but fully embraces, the limitations of the natural systems that underpin our entire existence. Requiring business leaders to act responsibly when it comes to protecting our quality of life does not place unreasonable obstacles in the way of progress any more than requiring a credit check places an unreasonable restriction on borrowing money. We need to mandate a minimum amount of protection to continue our existence, and not allow irresponsible behavior to jeopardize our future.
The one thing every business dies without
"So take a day this week to think hard about how the planet underpins the business, and how your company and sector should deal with that reality. Consider three steps. First, ask some leading questions: What do climate change and extreme weather mean for your business, your customers, and your supply chain? How do growing resource constraints like water shortages, or rising commodity prices, affect your value chain and your margins?"

Happy Friday!

(Photo: raulbaenacasado/Shutterstock)