Energy Exchange

Fact: Clean Energy is Working in Ohio

By Dick Munson / Published: May 19, 2014

Chris Prandoni certainly is welcome to his own opinions, but not his own facts. As the Director of Energy and Environmental Policy at Americans for Tax Reform, Prandoni may favor coal-fired power plants and dislike energy efficiency and renewables, but there’s no doubt Ohio’s clean energy standards are saving consumers money and bringing huge investments into the state.

Prandoni supports S.B. 310, which has already passed the Ohio Senate and is expected to enter the House within the next week, and promises to kill the state’s renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and energy efficiency directives. If Prandoni has his way, and as he points out in his misinformed Forbes op-ed, Ohio would be the first state in the nation to “pare back” its clean energy mandates, but this is not something Ohioans should be proud of. Read More »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Energy Efficiency, Ohio, Renewable Energy / Tagged SB310 | Read 1 Response

The Energy-Water Nexus Faces an Up-Hill Battle…But at Least it’s on ‘The Hill’

By Kate Zerrenner / Published: May 15, 2014

Source: Argonne National Library

The energy-water nexus has been gaining traction around the globe, including serving as the theme to this year’s World Water Day, and now we are finally seeing some movement on Capitol Hill.

In January, Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) introduced S. 1971, the Nexus of Energy and Water for Sustainability Act of 2014, or NEWS Act of 2014. Foremost, the bill would establish an interagency coordination committee focused on the nexus between energy and water production, use, and efficiency. The NEWS Act of 2014 also proposes a cross-cutting budget mechanism to allow policymakers to see where funding is needed across various energy-water initiatives.

While the bill faces a particularly steep slope to passage (7% compared to an average overall 11% passage rate, according to GovTrack, a government transparency tracker), that it has been introduced at all is the first sign of a more comprehensive approach to the energy-water nexus at the highest levels. Read More »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Climate, Energy-Water Nexus, Renewable Energy / Read 1 Response

Nest’s Promising Results for Reducing Peak Electricity Demand

By Jamie Fine / Published: May 15, 2014

Back in January when Google announced it would spend $3.2 billion to purchase Nest, EDF knew this was a company to watch. The results of three new reports, released today, confirm that controllable thermostats like the Nest Learning Thermostat are both customer-friendly and useful for energy system planners. Moreover, the reports signal that smart devices, such as those Nest manufactures, have potential for generating marked savings for utility customers.

The reports analyze 2012-2013 energy use data gathered from four major utilities across the U.S. that offer Nest energy services programs: Austin Energy, Reliant Energy, Green Mountain Energy, and Southern California Edison.

The first report evaluates the results of Rush Hour Rewards, a demand response service that changes the temperature of the homes of Nest users during energy “rush hours”, or times when demand on the grid is highest. The second examines Seasonal Savings, a program that runs for three weeks and slowly modifies the temperature according to the customer’s behavior (which this smart thermostat is able to ‘learn’ via its built-in motion sensor and understanding of its owner’s temperature preferences). Both operate during times of heavy usage, namely winter and summer. The third report analyzes home energy data of Nest customers more broadly, comparing energy use before and after the installation of a Nest Thermostat. Read More »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Demand Response, Energy Efficiency, Grid Modernization / Tagged Nest | Read 1 Response

Germany is Revolutionizing how we Use Energy…and the U.S. could Learn a Thing or Two

By Peter Sopher / Published: May 14, 2014

“Green Power, not nuclear energy.” Germany will fully transition off nuclear by 2022.

As the academic breeding ground of Einstein, Freud, and many other internationally-known scholars, it should come as no surprise that Germany is at the forefront of modernizing an industry as complex as energy. Over the last two decades, Germany has been revamping its electricity sector with the ambitious goal of powering its economy almost entirely on renewable energy by 2050. And last Sunday, the country broke a new record by acquiring nearly 75 percent of its total energy demand from renewable sources (mostly wind and solar). Even the European Union’s recent announcement that it will begin divesting in renewable energy by 2017 hasn’t shaken Germany’s ambition to forge ahead in its quest to phase out fossil fuels.

Energiewende (the German term for ‘energy transition’) is by far the most aggressive clean energy effort among the G20 and could be as beneficial for other countries as it is for Germany. The German Institute for International and Security Affairs argues, “If the [German] energy transition succeeds, it will serve as an international model… The allure of the German energy transition represents an important foreign policy resource, of which full use should be made.”

At the moment, Energiewende is the closest thing the world has to a renewables-integration pilot on a national scale. If successful, this blueprint will expedite the broad scale integration of technologies that will be necessary to wean the world off fossil fuels and combat climate change. Read More »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Climate, Grid Modernization, Renewable Energy / Tagged Germany | Comments are closed

Utilities: Your Monopoly Days are Numbered. (Yes, We’ve Heard this Before, but this Time…)

By Dick Munson / Published: May 7, 2014

Source: S. Sepp, Wikimedia Commons

Competition from new players will drive innovation in the changing electric utility market

The blogosphere is abuzz with plans to create a new electric utility business model, one that reduces energy costs and pollution. The power company of the future, many experts say, will feature new electricity rate structures that reward efficiency, finance and integrate local, on-site power generation (like rooftop solar), and put more smart meters in the system to help us better understand and control our energy use.

Such changes could indeed help reduce consumer costs and pollution, yet they ignore larger opportunities to advance innovation and efficiency. Missing in most Utility 2.0 discussions is any real debate about the emerging electricity-services market, filled with hundreds of innovative entrepreneurs who want to profitably provide consumer services that revolutionize how we use and interact with electricity. Instead, most experts simply assume the monopoly structure of the past several decades will continue. The introduction of new players into the electricity market, however, challenges that assumption. Read More »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Demand Response, Electric Vehicles, Energy Efficiency, Grid Modernization, Renewable Energy / Comments are closed

Energy Efficiency Saves Billions – That’s Why Ohio Utilities and Big Business Want to Kill It

By John Finnigan / Published: May 1, 2014

Source: Chris Chan Flickr

Energy efficiency is a proven value. In Ohio alone, energy efficiency programs have saved people a total of $1 billion since 2009. What’s more is that these savings far outweigh the costs to implement Ohio’s energy efficiency programs, which amount to less than half of the total savings. Yet Ohio utilities, particularly FirstEnergy, and large industrial companies want to kill it. Why? Because they lose when customers use energy efficiency programs.

One would think that the billions in customer energy savings would easily trump the utilities’ and large industrial companies’ efforts to kill energy efficiency. But we live in challenging times. The utilities and large industrial companies are spending big money on this issue, and they might win the day unless we can convince our elected leaders to save energy efficiency. Read More »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy / Read 1 Response