Monthly Archives: November 2013

EDF Energy Innovation Series Feature: Treehouse’s One-Stop Shop for Solar

By Jim Marston / Published: November 12, 2013

EDF’s Energy Innovation Series highlights innovations across a broad range of energy categories, including smart grid and renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency financing and progressive utilities, to name a few. This Series helps illustrate that cost-effective, clean energy solutions are available now and imperative to lowering our dependence on fossil fuels.

Find more information on this featured innovation here.

Few people walk into a car dealership and ask to see all of the 2.0 liter engines or only the 200 horsepower cars. Those technical specs are important, but most people shop by model, price or features.

Yet homeowners that want to install solar panels often find themselves buried in a mound of technical details that are not only confusing, but intimidating. And expensive. Austin-based sustainable living retailer Treehouse is changing that and proving that energy innovation is sometimes less about technology and policy and more about thinking like customers.

“The solar industry has done a great job educating people about the benefits of solar energy,” said Treehouse founder and president Jason Ballard. “But it’s done a bad job of making solar easy to buy.” Read More »

Posted in Energy Innovation, Texas / Read 1 Response

Wyoming Raises the Bar on Air Quality for Oil & Gas

By Jon Goldstein / Published: November 7, 2013

Source: Evolving ITSM

When it comes to willingness to show leadership in the critical field of air quality, Wyoming is once again first out of the gate with important new requirements to reduce harmful emissions from leaking oil and gas equipment — a major source of air pollution that can create serious air quality problems.

A Wyoming program finalized last week requires operators that are requesting permits for new and modified sources, such as wells or tanks, in the state’s most active oil and gas fields to find and fix leaking equipment under required Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR) programs.  Companies are required to inspect their operations quarterly utilizing reliable, technologically-precise detection methods at those sites most likely to leak.

This sort of leadership is not new to the Cowboy State. Wyoming has a tradition of being a first mover on air pollution reduction requirements, including pioneering the so-called “green completion” rules to reduce emissions from new wells that have since become the federal standard.

Wyoming’s LDAR program is a smart step forward on sensible, effective air quality regulations for the oil and gas industry. Tightening systems so that leaks are plugged will both protect the air we breathe and reduce the waste of a precious natural resource. In fact, strong LDAR programs may be the best, most cost-effective way to fix leaks and minimize pollution.

EDF, the Wyoming Outdoor Council (WOC) and Citizens United for Responsible Energy Development (CURED) offered their strong support for the state’s proposed LDAR program in joint comments, while also suggesting key improvements – chiefly, that the state  ensure these programs use readily-available, cost-effective technologies (like infrared cameras) to detect pollution.

We are pleased that this improvement was included in the final requirements and it shows the state’s willingness to work collaboratively in addressing Wyoming’s air issues.

Next up, the state should consider making these strong requirements apply to existing sources, such as previously drilled wells already in production, and on a statewide basis. But in the meantime, other states, including Colorado, should take note. On protecting the air we breathe, Wyoming just raised the bar.

 

Posted in Colorado, Natural Gas, Wyoming / Tagged , , | Comments are closed

Don’t Miss Three Important, Upcoming Webinars from EDF’s Investor Confidence Project

By EDF Blogs / Published: November 6, 2013

By: Matt Golden, Senior Energy Finance Consultant, Environmental Defense Fund

 

Nearly 40% of U.S. energy is consumed by both residential and commercial buildings, which emit more than a third of our country’s greenhouse gases. Realizing all of the available cost-effective energy efficiency savings would require roughly $279 billion of investment, resulting in more than $1 trillion in energy savings over ten years.

Environmental Defense Fund’s Investor Confidence Project (ICP) opens up energy efficiency to investment markets by laying the foundation necessary to enable organizations to tap into this vast potential. This means turning energy efficiency upgrades in the commercial building sector into an asset that can be bought and traded, much like stocks and bonds.  By developing a straightforward set of protocols that define a clear road-map for upgrades, ICP creates an investment-quality asset class whose risks and returns are transparent. Ultimately, large-scale adoption of the ICP framework will reduce transaction costs and engineering overhead, while increasing the reliability and consistency of savings.

ICP will be hosting a series of webinars targeted at specific stakeholders in the energy efficiency sector, and strongly encourage individuals and organizations interested in the future of the energy efficiency industry to attend.  With the assistance and feedback of industry leaders, investors and programs, ICP has developed a range of Energy Performance Protocols tailored to market needs and project types that will reduce transaction costs, manage performance risk and increase deal flow.  Our webinar schedule this fall will focus on how these protocols can create value for individual projects, organizations and the energy efficiency industry as a whole.

Read More »

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Investor Confidence Project / Tagged , , | Comments are closed

Methane: a Key to Dealing With Carbon Pollution?

By Steven Hamburg / Published: November 5, 2013

Carbon is typically considered enemy number one in the context of climate-altering pollution. There is good reason why. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from power plants is the leading source of U.S. greenhouse (GHG) emissions. Beyond our borders, the historic level of 400 parts per million of GHGs entering into our earth’s atmosphere was passed just five months ago – an indication of the rapid rise in human-produced emissions.

And while reducing carbon pollution is the primary goal of EDF’s climate agenda, so is minimizing methane emissions from natural gas development. That’s because methane, the main ingredient in natural gas, is a powerful GHG that can cause major climate damage in the short term. In fact, a recent analysis by many of the world’s top experts on evolving climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), reports methane to be at least 84 times more potent than CO2 over the first two decades. On a 100-year timeframe, methane is at least 28 times more potent. These are noticeable changes in methane’s Global Warming Potential (GWP) from the IPCC’s last assessment in 2007, with values raised from 72 to 84 and 25 to 28, roughly a 17 percent increase on a 20-year time horizon and a 12 percent increase on a 100-year basis.

IPCC’s fifth assessment (AR5) also quantitatively discusses two additional indirect effects that further increase, albeit modestly, methane’s GWP. First, IPCC considers climate-carbon feedbacks and reports two sets of GWP values: one that accounts for the feedbacks and another that excludes them (they conclude that including this effect is “likely” to give a more accurate estimate of climate impacts from emissions of greenhouse gases like methane or CH4). The 20-year GWP for methane with feedbacks increases from 84 to 86, with the 100-year GWP up from 28 to 34. The explanation for this feedback is diminishing ability of oceans and soils to absorb carbon dioxide as the climate warms. As a result, as methane emissions warm the climate, more CO2 that would have historically been absorbed by the land and ocean remains in the atmosphere, causing additional warming. The second effect now quantified by the IPCC is the production of additional CO2 as CH4 is oxidized in the atmosphere, which adds another point or two to methane’s GWP.

Read More »

Posted in Climate, Natural Gas / Tagged , , | Read 1 Response