Energy Exchange

High tech entrepreneurs here repeatedly tell you that Israel is a small market, so if you hope to have your idea become a commercial success, from the start it must be designed and developed with other countries and cultures in mind.  What is true for software is also true for innovative ideas for sustainable living.  The Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, a program of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev was established in 1974 to facilitate the sustainable development of the Negev desert – an area comprising 60% of Israel’s total land mass – but quickly established itself as one of the world’s leading research institutions on the challenges of living sustainably on the world’s many dry lands.  Professor Pedro Berliner, the director of the Institute tells the story of how they discovered that planting acacia trees in close proximity to crops like wheat or maize produces better results for both trees and crop than if planted apart.  The idea was piloted in Kenya and is now being brought to Botswana, where the Blaustein Institute hopes to develop a permanent presence in partnership with one of Botswana’s existing universities.  This is a good reminder that simple, low-tech solutions can often make a big difference to both people and the planet.

Credit: Zazzle

Of course, when it comes to energy, things are rarely ever simple.  Professor David Faiman, Chair of the Department of Solar Energy & Environmental Physics at the Blaustein Institute, spent the rest of the morning explaining the challenges of bringing solar energy to scale.  For over 30 years, Dr. Faiman has pioneered research into concentrated solar, and a commercial product based on his research, manufactured and marketed by Zenith Solar, shows tremendous promise for raising efficiency, lowering cost, and greatly reducing the physical footprint of commercially meaningful quantities of solar electricity.  Dr. Faiman would surely be both embarrassed and amused to be called a solar energy rock star, but I’ll call him that all the same. 

Equally exciting is the work Dr. Faiman has been doing to conceptualize what would be required to transition Israel’s electric grid to renewable energy.  Dr. Faiman, like many Israelis I’ve met on this trip, is both a visionary and a realist.  On the one hand, he believes it is possible for Israel to get to 90 percent renewable energy based on solar, energy storage, and natural gas-fired generation, but on the other hand, he believes it could take 60 years to get there.  His primary point is that Israel needs to start the transition now for there to be any hope of making even a 60 year deadline.  This means phasing out coal (which Israel continues to depend on quite a bit) and staying away from nuclear, both of which are too inflexible for a renewable-centric world.  Investments in natural-gas fired generation might be ok, as some of these facilities would likely be required to recharge the energy storage systems that would perform the lion’s share of the work in-filling where solar output is unavailable or varies.  His overarching concern is that Israel will continue to make short-term decisions that lead to the construction of conventional energy infrastructure, such as new coal plants (a proposal for a new plant was only narrowly defeated two years ago)  that all but lock the nation into a long-term future of fossil fuel dependence and high carbon pollution.

After a short visit to the research facility of Brightsource, a concentrating solar energy provider active in the United States, we began our hour and a half journey back to Tel Aviv.  As the bus rumbled along, I reflected on the irony that in a land of all this energy technology innovation, so little of it is actually deployed in Israel.  Indeed, practically the only place you see solar photovoltaic panels deployed in Israel are on the ramshackle homes of the Bedouin, who for a variety of reasons, are not otherwise connected to Israel’s electric grid.  Tel Aviv may be a sophisticated, high tech capital, but it is the agrarian, socially-traditional Bedouin, who is light years ahead when it comes to embracing advanced energy technology.

I’ve now asked several Israelis why this is, and two answers stick out in my mind.  The first is that Israel is a place where everyone focuses on the near term, because the future is so unpredictable.  Random rocket attacks (a rocket slammed into Beersheva this morning about a half hour after we checked out of our hotel there) and sudden outbreaks of serious fighting certainly contribute to a “live for this moment” attitude.   The second answer is tied to the first.  As one Israeli explained to me, after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israel, like the rest of the world suffered the consequences of high oil prices and invested in renewable energy, but as oil prices fell, the government came to view renewable deployment as expensive and unnecessary.   The recent experience of the oil embargo notwithstanding, the energy minister at the time concluded that Israel’s energy requirements will always be so small in the general scheme of things that even in times of global shortage there will always be fossil fuels available somewhere, albeit at a price.  In short, Israel did not have an energy supply problem, it had a money problem, and the only challenge was to find the cheapest of available options.

Fast forward to today.  The Egyptian natural gas pipeline that carried 40 percent of Israel’s natural gas supply was blown up this spring.  And, what is the response?  The Israel Electric Company simply switched to purchasing fuel oil and coal while it waits for the nation’s significant new offshore gas reserves to come on line.  A triumph for short term thinking in a nation that sells its visionary clean energy technologies to the rest of the world.

The 24-hour news cycle has prompted a higher quantity of topics brought to viewer’s and reader’s attention.  However, with sound bites and the brevity of social media, rarely are topics reported with a balanced level of quality.  Film documentaries are evolving as a more sophisticated medium to explore issues in expanded formats with interviews, commentary and a wider perspective.  But are some of these documentaries more fiction than fact?

An Inconvenient Truth advocated common sense about climate issues.  The Academy-Award nominated Gasland sparked much controversy about exploration and production of natural gas.  Its sequel, Gasland II, is scheduled to air on HBO this summer.  This week, a film Truthland debuted on YouTube (not in theaters) with more splash than substance.

Of EDF’s core strategies of sound science, market-based solutions, non-partisan policy and unlikely partnerships – a most unlikely partnership was mischaracterized by the producers of Truthland.  My words in an interview in the documentary are accurate, but the context in which they were presented — implying that EDF agrees with the rhetoric presented in the film — is misleading.  When interviewing for this film over a year ago, I was not told that the film would be subsequently sold to Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and Energy In Depth (EID), and used a promotional tool for the natural gas industry.  In hindsight, I should have demanded more limitations on my interview – but the producers were very convincing when pitching the film as a presenting a “balanced perspective” on the natural gas debate.

Rather than promoting Truthland, I suggest a more impartial documentary choice where EDF’s Senior Energy Policy Advisor Scott Anderson is interviewed as demonstration of how EDF’s efforts can decrease the adverse effects of natural gas development.  The SWITCH Energy Project offers a more sound approach to reviewing the past, present and future of energy solutions for the U.S. and globally.  University of Texas’ Bureau of Economic Geology’s Director Dr. Scott Tinker explores the world’s leading energy sites, from coal to solar, oil to biofuels, with interviews of international leaders of government, industry and academia experts, plus a voice  in the environmental community.

Scott Anderson’s interview in the film describes the natural gas drilling method of hydraulic fracturing and the regulatory atmosphere of improving environmental aspects pertaining to water, land and air quality issues.

Source: Trekkie Gal

A lumber yard in the middle of Tel Aviv is an unlikely place to discover innovative new technology to transform ocean waves into energy, but there I was watching a demonstration of wave-to-energy technology in a makeshift wave tank constructed by Shmuel Ovadia.  Ovadia is a talented engineer passionate about harnessing the power of the ocean when he is not otherwise engaged in running his successful high-end lumber business.  See for yourself at:  http://www.sde.co.il/.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.  I am on the first day of a seven trip for U.S. energy leaders sponsored by Project Interchange, an educational institute of the American Jewish Committee, and by the time I arrived at Ovadia’s lumber yard in the late afternoon, I had already seen tremendous creativity in the unlikeliest places.  Our morning was spent walking down Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, Israel’s equivalent of Silicon Valley, dropping by several of the technology incubators that are a large part of the reason why Israel is known as the “start-up nation.”  

Here, 20-somethings only a few years out of Israel’s army – where technology and project management skills are acquired and honed – are developing innovative software at a furious pace.  The aging, somewhat decrepit buildings dating back to Israel’s socialist early years, are brimming with entrepreneurial drive and youthful spirit.  Most interesting to me was a visit to the IDC Elevator, where Shmuel Chafets, Director of Business Development for Giza Venture Capital, described a recent investment in a start-up that is applying sophisticated software and smart grid technology to improve the efficiency of water delivery systems, which – among other things – anticipates leaks before they happen. 

In Israel, a nation increasingly reliant on energy-intensive desalination, saving water is also saving energy, a lesson at the heart of our report two years ago on the Energy-Water Nexus in Texas.  This visit got me wondering whether this same technology might be helpful in EDF’s efforts to partner with gas utilities to reduce methane leaks along their distribution systems.  Surely such smart grid ingenuity can be used to help fight the causes of global warming and not just the fresh water scarcity that is one of its many symptoms?

While software companies in Israel do well in attracting venture capital from the United States, Europe and, more recently, Southeast Asia, guys like Shmuel Ovadia struggle to attract capital to their bright ideas.  Even venture capitalists like to see commercial scale prototypes before investing major dollars, and good-old fashioned mechanical technologies are a whole lot more physically difficult and expensive to get to commercial scale than software solutions.  So it takes a special type of investor to risk the serious capital it takes to bring a hardware solution to market. 

It is a challenge, but not impossible, as our visit to Better Place’s Tel Aviv showroom demonstrated.  Here, we were treated to a test drive of the Renault Fluence ZE, an all-electric four passenger sedan, that has a range of approximately 100 miles and a battery that can either be recharged at home or our work or swapped out in a 5-minute visit to a Better Place ‘refueling’ station.  When you buy the car (and had we been Israelis, sales people were there ready to take our order), you buy a contract for miles to go with it.  Included in that contract are up to two charging stations, the electricity they supply, and access to any of Better Place’s battery swapping stations now being constructed throughout Israel. 

In short, the Better Place’s Renault Fluence is like the cell phone I have carried with me to Israel.  It is my phone, but I purchase the international sym card and the corresponding minutes of voice and data from Orange, a local carrier, which is easily slipped into the phone and recharged with new minutes as needed. 

Tomorrow we head down south to the Negev to see what is brewing in the world of solar energy.  I can only imagine what surprises await us.  I’ll keep you posted.

Ohio Governor John Kasich showed real leadership earlier this month when he introduced energy bill with the most comprehensive rules in the country for chemical disclosure during oil and gas operations. The Governor’s bill would have required disclosure of not only the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing – as a number of other states have done – but also the full range of chemicals used throughout the lifecycle of a well. Hydraulic fracturing gets all the attention, but the Governor and his team understand that dangerous chemicals are also used in drilling, producing, servicing and shutting down wells. The entire process should be transparent from beginning to end — “from spud to plug,” as it’s called.

This was smart policy when the Governor proposed it. And it’s smart policy today. Unfortunately, the energy bill passed yesterday by the Ohio General Assembly fails to fully deliver on that vision. In the face of intense industry opposition, lawmakers eliminated many of the reporting requirements contained in the original bill. EDF is disappointed the final bill does not live up to what Governor Kasich proposed, but we give the Governor credit for putting the idea forward and expanding the terms of the debate – both in Ohio and nationally.

To be fair, even in its scaled-back version, the Ohio disclosure policy breaks new ground. It requires disclosure of the chemicals used in stimulating a well. This includes not just hydraulic fracturing but also other kinds of stimulation techniques – something most states have missed in their disclosure rules.

Additionally, companies will be required to disclose the chemicals used in a well until the surface casing is set in place. As we testified in the Ohio House, this still leaves the public in the dark about a lot of dangerous chemicals that are used to drill and operate a well. But again, it’s a step forward compared to what other states have done.

We’re disappointed, though, by changes the House made to the trade secret provisions in the bill. In the original version, companies would have been required to report trade secret information to the Department of Natural Resources. This would have ensured that the agency had quick access to chemical information it might need to respond to a spill, initiate an investigation or respond to a complaint.  Under industry pressure, the Assembly caved on that language, and companies will now be allowed to withhold trade secret information from the regulators. 

The bill establishes an unqualified right for certain land owners to challenge trade secret claims in court. So, there’s at least a mechanism in place to police the system and make sure companies aren’t hiding behind bogus trade secret claims. But it would have been far better to have trade secrets turned over to the state – not only in cases where this information is needed to protect public health and safety, but also because it would have given anyone, not just the land owners, a right to challenge trade secrets under the Ohio Public Records Act.

This is a big bill. It addresses a wide range of issues – not just oil and gas – and includes far too much to cover here. It has some good provisions, such as new requirements for companies to report where they’re getting their water from and how much they’re using, and requirements for companies to test the baseline water quality in nearby water wells before they start drilling. The bill also has some really bad provisions – like an egregious one that strips citizens of the right to appeal permits issued to oil and gas operators.

The passage of the energy bill is not the end of the process: the agency rules implementing this bill will be written in the months ahead, and EDF will be working to make sure they are as strong as possible. And we’ll be working on other rules to reduce the risks oil and gas operations pose to communities and the environment.

This includes improving Ohio’s rules for air pollution from oil and gas operations. It means making sure we have tough standards in place to manage the huge waste streams these operations produce. It means putting smart planning in place to preserve landscapes and protect the fabric of local communities. And sooner rather than later, it’s going to mean coming back to the General Assembly and fixing what didn’t get done right the first time.