Energy Exchange

Demand Response: Power For The Grid Starts With The People

By Marita Mirzatuny / Published: June 24, 2013

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to speak on a panel entitled, Resource Adequacy & Demand Response: Ensuring Texas’ Future Reliability at the 7^th Annual Platts Texas Energy Markets Conference in Houston, TX. Following fellow panelists, “Trip” Doggett, CEO of ERCOT; Milton L. Holloway, President and COO of the Center for the Commercialization of Electric Technologies; and John W. Fainter, Jr. President and CEO of the Association of Electric Companies of Texas, I spoke about EDF’s work with the Pecan Street Research Institute (Pecan Street) to test and deploy various smart grid consumer products.

One of the many cutting-edge research projects being conducted by Pecan Street is an examination of consumer behavior with regards to energy usage. Trends in the data show that giving people the ability to control their energy use, and their energy generation, generally results in cost-effective, environmentally-conscious decisions. These shrewd decisions are becoming increasingly important as Texas faces a lack of energy resources to meet the state’s increasing need for more electricity.

With July just around the corner, the summer heat is ramping up in Texas, and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is preparing for extreme temperatures to push the electric grid to its limits. State regulators and ERCOT stakeholders are urgently seeking a solution to the looming Texas Energy Crunch. The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) has already raised the maximum price in the electricity market a number of times, but this is a band-aid for the problem, not a long-term solution. Read More »

Posted in Demand Response, General, Grid Modernization, Texas, Utility Business Models / Comments are closed

Strong Federal Air Measures Still Needed

By EDF Blogs / Published: June 21, 2013

This blog post was written by Tomás Carbonell, Attorney in EDFs Climate and Air Program. Jack Nelson, a legal intern in EDF’s Washington, D.C. office, assisted in the preparation of this post.

Source: EPA

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency put in place last year important standards to protect public health and reduce emissions of harmful air pollutants from oil and gas storage tanks and related equipment. EPA wisely issued those standards after thousands of comments were provided by concerned public advocates for cleaner air. With oil and gas production expanding quickly, tough standards are needed now more than ever to assure air quality protections for people living near oil and gas producing areas.

Recently, EPA proposed changes to standards for storage tanks in the oil and gas sector — a major source of pollutants that contribute to smog, climate change, and other threats to public health and the environment. These changes would undermine the progress made thus far and would lead to significant and unnecessary increases in emissions of volatile organic compounds, methane, and other pollutants. EDF is urging EPA not to finalize the proposed revisions in comments filed together with Clean Air Council, Clean Air Task Force, Environmental Integrity Project, Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club.

Proposed Changes to the Storage Tank Standards

Last fall, oil and gas industry groups petitioned EPA for changes to the storage tank standards, arguing that less stringent standards are needed because these tanks are even more numerous and emit at higher levels than EPA predicted when it was developing the current standards. If anything, this new information indicates the need to maintain or strengthen health-protective standards for storage tanks. EPA’s proposed changes would instead: Read More »

Posted in Methane, Natural Gas, Washington, DC / Comments are closed

NYC’s Storm Preparedness Means Rethinking How We Make And Use Energy

By Andy Darrell / Published: June 20, 2013

Source: Metamatic/Flickr

This commentary, authored by Andy Darrell, originally appeared on EDF Voices.

Last Tuesday, I caught a ferry from the lower Manhattan waterfront (just south of the substation that shorted out so dramatically in the midst of Hurricane Sandy) to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. There, Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled his vision of a New York that will be far better able to withstand the battering from giant storms that, thanks to climate change, are likely to arrive with increased frequency and fury.

The Mayor began by noting some stark facts:

“We expect that by mid-century up to one quarter of all of New York City’s land area, where 800,000 residents live today, will be in the floodplain.”
“[Wi]ithin FEMA’s new 100-year flood maps there are more than 500million square feet of New York City buildings – equivalent to the entire city of Minneapolis.”
“About two-thirds of our major substations and nearly all the city’s power plants are in flood plains today.”
“A day without power can cost New York City more than a billion dollars.”

A lot of media attention in the wake of the speech focused on Bloomberg’s call for levees and seawalls to keep rising waters at bay. But embedded in the address was also an ambitious but practical rethinking of how New York City makes and uses energy. The plan frames a future in which solar, wind and microgrids play a much larger role in the city: Read More »

Posted in Climate, Energy Efficiency, New York, On-bill repayment / Tagged Superstorm Sandy | Comments are closed

How Policy Can Drive Progress In The Energy Efficiency Market

By Kate Zerrenner / Published: June 20, 2013

Energy efficiency is one of the fastest and most affordable ways to reduce harmful pollution. Why, then, aren’t we financing more energy efficiency upgrades?

Well, simply put, there are quite a few barriers that must be addressed and broken down before energy efficiency skyrockets. Yes, there are already many buildings that have set the bar high for others to follow, but some investor and lender hesitancies still exist that we need to overcome.

Furthermore, the efficiency market cannot create itself. And it is currently stifled, despite investors’ eagerness to take part.

The problem, as the investment community sees it, is that there is no secondary market for energy efficiency loans. In other words, the pool of loans is currently not large enough to make these investments worthwhile for institutional investors. Furthermore, there is a lack of uniform standards for energy efficiency loans, limited data on loan and project performance and an insufficient pipeline of projects. There are also challenges to bringing efficiency to scale, namely:

the split incentive—disconnect between the building owner and the residents, who actually pay the utility bill;
utility disincentives—utilities generally make money by selling more energy, not by reducing wasted energy; and
limited information available to consumers on their energy use.

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Investor Confidence Project, On-bill repayment / Comments are closed

Investor Confidence Project Releases Enhanced Energy Efficiency Protocols

By EDF Blogs / Published: June 14, 2013

This blog post was written by guest blogger Matt Golden, Senior Energy Finance Consultant.

Source: City-Data.com

The EDF Investor Confidence Project (ICP) is a multi-year initiative to help spur growth in the commercial energy efficiency retrofit market by reducing transaction costs and engineering overhead, and increasing the reliability and consistency of savings. EDF has worked with a cross-functional team of industry experts to assemble existing technical standards and best practices into a straightforward Energy Performance Protocol (EPP) that defines a standard investment quality energy efficiency project to enable deal-flow and investment.

In November of 2012, we released the initial version of the Energy Performance Protocol for Large Commercial (EPP-LC). We received encouraging reviews from industry allies and many industry leaders have committed to join our growing ICP Ally program, a broad based network of organizations that helps us develop, test, and implement the ICP Protocols.

New Release: Large Commercial – Version 1.1

Building on our initial success and market feedback, ICP is now releasing a new and updated version 1.1 of the EPP-LC, which incorporates a wide array of important improvements that will streamline the project development process and improve results.

Our ICP team is incredibly grateful to all individuals that contributed their time and energy to this process resulting in a more streamlined protocol, especially our committed team of experts who dedicated untold hours and contributed a wide array of industry, research, and public sector experience.

Energy From The Sea: Closer Than You Think

By EDF Blogs / Published: June 12, 2013

This commentary, authored by Rod Fujita, originally appeared on EDF Voices.

The ocean absorbs energy from the sun, stores it, and then releases it slowly. Sounds like a prescription for meeting the world’s energy needs, since the ocean is the largest feature of our planet. But can ocean energy be tapped in a way that doesn’t create more problems than it solves?

That’s the promise behind a recently announced deal between Lockheed Martin and Reignwood Group, a resort developer based in Beijing. The two companies will develop a 10-megawatt power plant using ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) technology in waters off southern China’s Hainan Island. Construction is expected to be completed in 2017.

The process

Scientists have long been interested in the potential for generating energy from the difference in temperature between warm surface waters and deep water. When this difference is large – for example, in tropical locations with narrow continental shelves – the warm water can be used to convert a liquid (like ammonia) into steam. The steam drives a turbine, producing electricity, and then is recondensed into a liquid using cold water pumped up from the deep ocean so that the cycle can be repeated.

Benefits

The OTEC process can produce a number of benefits in addition to clean electricity. The large volumes of cold water pumped through the system can be used to cool buildings, saving on air conditioning (and associated greenhouse gas emissions from this major energy consumer). Lots of freshwater condenses on the cold water pipes, especially in humid tropical environments – so much that it can become a viable supplement to local water supplies or even the major water source for local communities. Read More »

Posted in Renewable Energy / Comments are closed