Energy Exchange

Resiliency+: Distributed Generation and Microgrids Can Keep Lights On During the Next Storm

By Michael Panfil / Published: May 22, 2014

Resiliency+ is a new blog series, which highlights the ways in which different clean energy resources and technologies can play an important part in increasing energy resiliency in New Jersey and around the country. Check back every two weeks, or sign up to receive Energy Exchange blog posts via email.

Source: Postdlf

Unlike large, centralized power plants, distributed generation and microgrids create electricity on or near the premises where it can be primarily used. Solar panels on rooftops, for example, are a form of distributed generation: they create electricity that can be used in the same location where the renewable energy is generated. Microgrids are similar – systems that serve a specific energy consumer, such as university campuses, with on-site energy generation that can operate both independently from (i.e. ‘islanded’) and connected to the larger energy grid.

A National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) study found that distributed generation and microgrids, “are integral to energy resiliency.” With the right enabling technology, distributed generation and microgrids have the potential to ‘island’, meaning that they can function separately from the main electricity grid. In other words, in the aftermath of a storm or during a blackout, distributed generation and microgrids are able to keep power running. The importance of this technology cannot be understated. Without it, electricity that has the potential to work during a system-wide blackout – like solar power or energy storage – will be rendered powerless. Distributed generation and microgrids provide the pathway for these clean energy resources to function during and after a natural disaster. Read More »

Posted in Clean Energy, Climate, Demand Response, Energy Efficiency, Grid Modernization, Renewable Energy / Tagged Energy Storage, Resiliency + | Read 3 Responses

Commercial Demand Response – An Untapped Resource for the Congested Grid

By Guest Author / Published: May 22, 2014

By: John Gruss, Vice President and General Manager of Enerliance

According to the recently released National Climate Assessment, 2012 was the hottest year on record for the continental United States, and experts predict that temperatures are only going to rise. Couple this with an energy grid that is already under severe strain, and there can be no denying we’ve got a serious problem on our hands.

Every year an overstressed electric grid faces increasing challenges to cool and operate homes and buildings. As we approach summer, with heat waves that are growing longer in duration, this crisis could result in energy shortages and blackouts that are not merely a matter of disrupted comfort and lost productivity but are a serious threat to national security and human health. Read More »

Posted in Clean Energy, Demand Response, Energy Efficiency, Grid Modernization, Renewable Energy, Utility Business Models / Comments are closed

New Study: California Climate Law Cuts Billions in Health, Pollution Costs

By Tim O'Connor / Published: May 21, 2014

California drivers don’t have much choice when it comes to what fuel they fill their cars with, or how dirty it is. As recently as five years ago, nearly 97 percent of the energy used for transportation in the Golden State came from gas and diesel – over half of which was made from imported oil.

This basic lack of consumer choice means that California drivers like myself are stuck with a high-priced product that is made from dirty crude and controlled by a few major multinational oil companies.

What’s more, our transportation system has a direct effect on our health – in addition to contributing to climate change and energy insecurity.

And it’s not a pretty picture.

A study just out from the Environmental Defense Fund and the American Lung Association, with modeling by Tetra Tech, finds that the negative impacts of California’s transportation system cost us a staggering $25 billion per year. It also shows that the benefits of policies aimed at supporting the use of cleaner fuels can significantly reduce such costs.

25 million drivers, worst air pollution in the U.S.

I’m probably similar to many other drivers around here. Last year I drove some 15,000 miles, paying about $2,400 for gas – a sizeable portion of my disposable income. This gas is always more expensive in the summer than in winter, and it won’t matter if I fill up my car at the Shell station on the corner or from Chevron at the freeway on-ramp.

My 15,000 miles of driving last year released about 5 tons of greenhouse gas pollution and other air contaminants. When combined with the pollution released from California’s other 25 million drivers, I have, unfortunately, helped give California the nation’s worst air pollution.

Not only is our state home to the top five most polluted cities in the United States, but countless Californians suffer from lung and heart problems, and even risk early death, from pollution-related health impacts cause by transportation. Read More »

Posted in General / Comments are closed

Recruiting Tech Innovators to Find Climate Solutions

By Steven Hamburg / Published: May 21, 2014

America is in the midst of two booms: one in sensor technology and another in natural gas. Recent innovations—specifically advancements in drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies—have dramatically increased the nation’s access to reserves of natural gas. While this influx of new technology has altered the energy industry, the resulting large-scale development has brought with it some real environmental and climate risks. Now is the time for the same ingenuity that transformed America’s energy landscape to help identify solutions to reduce the impacts caused by increasing supplies of natural gas.

Just this last month, two innovator programs were announced – one led by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and another from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) – both are focused on developing new technologies capable of minimizing methane emissions from the natural gas supply chain. The programs are different but complementary and together signal there is momentum building to engage the best and brightest innovators to help address a consequential component of the climate issue. Read More »

Posted in Climate, Methane, Natural Gas / Tagged Climate, energy, Methane Leakage, Natural Gas, technology | Read 2 Responses

EDF Climate Corps Heads Overseas: Next Stop China

By EDF Blogs / Published: May 20, 2014

By: Liz Delaney, Senior Manager, EDF Climate Corps Operations

Reinhard Krause / Reuters

China is, in many ways, the epicenter of the world’s efforts to curb climate change. The rapidly growing nation’s need for energy is soaring – demand is expected to double by 2020 – and China has surpassed the United States to become the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

So it makes total sense for the Environmental Defense Fund to expand its unique fellowship program, Climate Corps, to China this summer to help leading global brands there find energy efficiency and sustainability solutions that help them thrive. EDF is partnering with Apple, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Cummins and Legrand in China, initially placing six graduate students to work with the companies. Read More »

Posted in Air Quality, Clean Energy, Climate, Energy Efficiency / Tagged China, climate corps; | Comments are closed

EDF Calls on BLM to Minimize Waste of Natural Gas on Federal Lands

By Tomas Carbonell / Published: May 20, 2014

This post was co-authored by Tomás Carbonell, EDF Attorney, and Brian Korpics, EDF Legal Fellow

Last Thursday, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) hosted a public forum in Washington, D.C. on venting and flaring of natural gas from oil and gas operations occurring on federal lands. This was the third in a series in which BLM received public comments on various options aimed at addressing the extensive and unnecessary loss of gas from onshore federal oil and gas leases. EDF is encouraged to see BLM taking on this vital issue, and we delivered testimony urging BLM to take strong and timely action to uphold its responsibility to minimize waste of our nation’s natural resources and ensure oil and gas development minimizes impacts to our climate and public health.

Reducing waste of natural gas on federal lands is a core element of the President’s strategy to reduce methane emissions, and for good reason. BLM is tasked with managing 700 million acres of federal lands – making it the largest single land management agency in the federal government – and it has broad responsibilities for the significant oil and gas resources located on those lands. Almost 40 million acres of BLM lands have already been leased for oil and gas production, accounting for approximately 14 percent of all onshore natural gas production and 8.5 percent of all onshore oil production in the United States.

Despite the scale of oil and gas production on federal lands, BLM’s policies covering venting, flaring, and other losses of natural gas are over three decades old. These obsolete regulations allow producers to waste significant amounts of natural gas that could be cost-effectively captured using today’s technology. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in 2010 that between 4.2 and 5 percent of all natural gas produced onshore on federal lands was vented, flared, or lost in fugitive emissions — enough gas to heat about 1.7 million homes each year. A more recent study by the Western Values Project found that vented and flared methane could cost taxpayers nearly $800 million in coming years.

Posted in Air Quality, BLM Methane, Methane, Natural Gas / Tagged Flaring, Methane, Natural Gas | Comments are closed