Energy Exchange

EDF Is Going to Court to Secure Healthier Air for Millions of Texans

By Tomas Carbonell / Published: January 28, 2014

This commentary originally appeared on our Texas Clean Air Matters blog.

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

Source: Texas Tribune
Haze over Dallas Area

Last week, EDF took one more step toward protecting Texans from harmful levels of ozone pollution that have afflicted the state for far too long.

Ozone pollution, better known as “smog,” is one of the most severe and persistent public health problems affecting Texans. Smog causes a range of health issues — including aggravation of asthma and other respiratory illnesses, decreased lung function, increased hospital and emergency room visits for respiratory conditions — and it is associated with premature mortality in urban areas.

According to the American Lung Association (ALA), Dallas-Fort Worth is the eighth most affected area in the country for smog. ALA estimates the city is home to millions of people who are sensitive to ozone-related health problems — including 1.6 million people suffering cardiovascular disease; nearly 1.9 million children; nearly 650,000 elderly residents; and over 520,000 people with asthma.

EDF and its dedicated staff in Texas have long worked to protect Texans from unhealthy levels of smog by reducing the pollution that leads to harmful ozone levels. Most recently, we have been litigating in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to secure important Clean Air Act protections in all areas that are contributing to the serious ozone problems in Dallas-Fort Worth. Read More »

Posted in Air Quality, Climate, Natural Gas, Texas / Comments are closed

Scaling NYC Clean Heat’s Unique Public-Private Partnership for Energy Efficiency

By Abbey Brown / Published: January 27, 2014

Recently, New Yorkers bid farewell to our Mayor of twelve years, Mike Bloomberg. Under Bloomberg’s prevue, EDF helped catalyze the NYC Clean Heat program – which led to the cleanest air the City has seen in the last fifty years. Through NYC Clean Heat’s efforts over the past few years to phase out the use of highly-polluting No. 6 heating oil in more than 3,000 buildings across NYC, sulfur pollution fell by more than two-thirds while soot pollution dropped by a quarter.

NYC Clean Heat has made great strides in helping buildings become cleaner and more efficient, but there is still much work to be done. EDF is wasting no time in capitalizing on the effective public-private partnership we helped assemble of community and union leaders, policymakers and leaders in the utility, real estate and finance sectors to bring more environmental and public health gains to the City. Our next target: All that energy wasted by old and inefficient buildings.

Nearly 40% of U.S. energy is consumed by residential and commercial buildings, which are responsible for more than a third of our country’s greenhouse gases. The building sector presents one of the greatest untapped opportunities for major gains in energy savings and pollution reductions over the next several years. Read More »

Posted in Energy Efficiency, New York / Tagged NYC Clean Heat | Comments are closed

PACE 2.0: California Leading the Next Evolution in Clean Energy Finance

By EDF Blogs / Published: January 23, 2014

Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) is an innovative financing technique for clean energy retrofits that was first developed in Berkeley in 2008, giving energy efficiency projects a huge boost throughout the U.S.

Here’s how it works: Property owners agree to a long-term tax assessment on their home or building in exchange for the upfront funding to pay for a retrofit. What’s great about the program is its ability to essentially eliminate one of the biggest barriers to energy efficiency retrofits: up-front costs.

And, just as with any other property tax assessment, the obligation transfers to the new owner upon a sale of the property. This transferability allows property owners to consider projects with longer payback periods as the obligation does not become immediately due upon sale. Read More »

Posted in California, Clean Energy, Energy Financing, State / Tagged PACE, PACE 2.0 | Comments are closed

Innovative Strategies for Utilities in the Face of Increased On-Site, Distributed Generation

By Brad Copithorne / Published: January 22, 2014

Last year, the trade association for the utility industry, the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), published a whitepaper on the disruptive challenges facing the utility industry. In summary, EEI’s thesis was that the existing utility business model (centralized, fossil-fuel based generation) is under threat from on-site, distributed generation as more customers switch to cleaner, and often cheaper, solar power. The white paper poses an important question: How can utilities acquire the revenue needed to keep the electric grid humming and provide reliable power to all customers if a growing number of people are producing their own electricity?

In business, one of the most difficult problems that companies face is how to adapt a successful business model to technological or social changes that threaten that business model. Wang, Unisys, DEC and Amdahl were all big computer companies in the 1970’s that clung to an obsolete business model in the face of distributed computing. IBM and HP, on the other hand, adapted their business models and generally thrived.

Over the past year, we have seen several utilities tackling this challenge head-on by investing in distributed, renewable energy projects. In September, I wrote about how NextEra and NRG were voluntarily developing solar investments and how Direct Energy and Viridian were investing in solar installations developed by SolarCity. Read More »

Posted in Demand Response, Grid Modernization, On-bill repayment, Renewable Energy / Tagged Clean Energy, Hawaii, Utility Business Models | Read 3 Responses

What LEED Did for Buildings, This Could do for Shale Gas Production

By Matt Watson / Published: January 21, 2014

Matt Watson Photo This commentary originally appeared on our EDF Voices blog.

The Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD) put out the Open For Business sign today – a key milestone in this innovative effort to up the game on environmental protection in shale gas development. The question now is, will energy companies step up?

We hope so.

CSSD is an unprecedented collaboration – bringing together environmental groups, philanthropic organizations and energy companies to develop performance standards for reducing environmental impacts from shale gas production, and setting up a system so gas producers can have their operations audited and certified against those standards.

CSSD isn’t a substitute for effective regulation. Strong rules and robust oversight is a nonnegotiable bottom line. But we like the idea of upping the ante. Why not have a program that recognizes companies for going beyond the regulatory minimums and doing more to protect communities and the environment? These companies are tough competitors – so let’s make environmental performance part of what they compete on. Read More »

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

New York Public Service Commission Signals Big Changes to Prioritize Clean Energy

By Elizabeth B. Stein / Published: January 17, 2014

In the last week of December, the New York Public Service Commission issued an Order that signals big changes coming soon to New York’s electric utility landscape. The Commission made it clear that it wants clean energy resources, including on-site, distributed power generation (such as solar PV), energy efficiency and energy load management strategies, to play a central role in how the energy system brings value to customers. In contrast to the peripheral role clean energy resources have played in the past, the Commission is now ready to make them a priority, signaling a willingness to transform the regulatory landscape.

The Order was one of a trilogy arising from three intertwined proceedings, all of which were considered by the Commission on December 19, 2013. One of those three – perhaps the most concrete and immediate – was a proceeding concerning the initial capitalization of New York’s Green Bank, a new entity that aims to advance clean energy funding in New York State. That proceeding addresses a proposal to leverage ratepayer funds and private investment to systematically address market barriers to private financing of distributed generation, energy efficiency and demand management projects, with an ultimate goal of building a clean energy marketplace that can stand on its own. The other related proceedings concerned two New York State programs that draw on the same funding sources that are now being made available for the initial capitalization of the Green Bank: New York’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and the Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (EEPS).

This Order concerns various proposals to improve and streamline the EEPS programs. Some of these changes are effective immediately, such as the elimination of duplicative reporting requirements. Other, more substantive program modifications – such as the changes to the structure of EEPS and other clean energy programs, as well as the responsibilities of various entities (including the Commission’s Staff, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the utilities themselves) – are to be addressed through a new “E² working group,” which is to be formed by February 1, 2014. This new working group is tasked with “sharing and developing concepts for an optimized E² portfolio that supports a scale-up of energy efficiency and overall system efficiency,” for a program launch by the end of 2015. Read More »

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Grid Modernization, New York, Renewable Energy / Tagged Green Bank | Read 1 Response