Energy Exchange

Energy Innovation Series Feature #3: Smart Grid Consortium From Pecan Street Inc.

By Jim Marston / Published: April 24, 2012

Throughout 2012, EDF’s Energy Innovation Series will highlight more than 20 innovations across a broad range of energy categories, including smart grid and renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency financing, and progressive utilities, to name a few. This series will demonstrate that cost-effective, clean energy solutions are available now and imperative to lowering our dependence on fossil fuels.

For more information on this featured innovation, please view this video on Pecan Street Inc.

The last few years have been somewhat of a blur for most of the people involved in Austin-based Pecan Street Inc. (Pecan Street).

“In 2008, this was an idea on a napkin in a coffee shop,” says Brewster McCracken, the holder of the napkin and now executive director of Pecan Street. “In 2010 we secured funding to launch a smart grid demonstration project. In 2011 we established the most robust collection of consumer energy use data on the planet. We want to see how people interact with new technology options. What works, what people like, what impact it has on their energy use and the grid itself.”

The organization strives to ‘re-imagine’ how we make, move and use energy on our existing system rather than reinvent the system itself. It has been tagged by the smart grid industry press as one of the hottest efforts in the country.

Pecan Street, which was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in 2009, is an research and development consortium headquartered at the University of Texas at Austin. Its team consists of nearly a dozen staff and a web of researchers from the University of Texas and more than 10 member companies like Best Buy, Sony, Intel, Oncor, Texas Gas Service and Whirlpool Corporation. The Pecan Street board is comprised of members from the City of Austin, the Austin Chamber of Commerce, the University of Texas, the UT Clean Energy Incubator, Austin Energy and Environmental Defense Fund.

Source: Pecan Street Inc.

The deployment of 100 Volts in one square mile will be among the densest concentrations of plug-in vehicles in the country.

Pecan Street was initially funded through a $10 million grant from the Department of Energy, which was matched locally with another $14 million to conduct detailed research on the consumer energy usage and the smart grid. The organization also received funding by the Doris Duke Foundation to collect “energy lifestyle” data at 15-second intervals on a disaggregated level (measures 6 circuits) on 200 homes.

Its test bed is the Mueller community, a green-built redevelopment of the city’s former airport. Just two miles from downtown Austin, Mueller is one of the hottest zip codes in town for people looking for clean, green urban living. Over the course of the five-year demonstration project, Pecan Street will deploy smart grid technology — home energy management systems, solar panels, electric vehicles, new pricing models and more — in up to 1,000 homes in and around Mueller. And did we mention that Pecan Street is the world’s largest LEED-ND certified community?

So far, Pecan Street has loaded up Mueller with some remarkable smart grid stats: a third of the homes have solar panels and, by this summer, 100 Chevy Volts will be tooling around town and parking (and recharging) within Mueller’s one-square-mile radius.

Greentech Media calls Pecan Street “the most ambitious EV-solar-smart-grid integration project in the United States.”

And this spring, the organization broke ground on the country’s first smart grid commercialization lab, located among the homes and retail in Mueller, that will serve as a testing facility with nationally unique opportunities for commercialization, research and education.

Guest Blog: The Devil In The Design – Energy And Climate Policy Design Matters More Than You Might Think

By EDF Blogs / Published: April 23, 2012

By: Guest Blogger Joe Indvik, ICF International

Policy design matters. But all too often, this notion is ignored by political pundits and belittled by policymakers in favor of flashy claims about the morality of a policy type. Like the latest sports car, a policy is usually touted as either a gem or a dud based on its superficial image, with only marginal public interest in looking at what’s actually under the hood. On the contrary, data-driven analysis of the inner workings of policy design will be the key to smart solutions on the road ahead for climate and energy policy the U.S.

The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill of 2009 is a prime example. Claims about this former centerpiece of the American climate policy debate ran the gamut of dramatic generalization. They ranged from accusations of a job-killing socialist scheme that “would hurt families, business and farmers—basically anyone who drives a car and flips a light switch” to claims from hopeful environmentalists that any cap would be better than nothing. Discussion on the actual design of the bill was all but absent from the limelight. Energy policy discourse is often dominated by these combative back-and-forths, which focus on oversimplified notions of whether a policy would be good for the country while glossing over the practical nuances that make all the difference. Read More »

Posted in Climate, Renewable Energy / Tagged FIT, Renewables, RPS, Solar, Solar Energy, Solar PV, Wind, Wind Energy | Read 4 Responses

More Good News to Celebrate this Earth Day

By Tim O'Connor / Published: April 20, 2012

We blogged yesterday about the latest Next 10 report that analyzes the economic impacts of policies designed to help California reduce its climate pollution. It notes California’s record-breaking pace on clean energy funding and innovation, while reducing pollution and growing its economy. Since 1990, California’s gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 16 percent while carbon emissions per capita fell.

Today, a new report released by Environment America finds that the 10 Northeastern states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) have seen similar results. The states cut per capita carbon emissions 20 percent faster than the rest of the nation from 2000-2009 while regional per capital GDP grew 87 percent faster.

Add this good news to the findings of a report released last November—which estimated that investments made by RGGI states in its first three years of operation added economic value worth more than $1.6 billion (nearly $33 per person) and 16,000 jobs—and you have further proof that strong environmental policies deliver economic benefits to states that lead on climate change. That is worth celebrating on Earth Day.

Posted in General / Comments are closed

California sets pace on clean energy funding, patents and adoption, while cutting pollution

By Tim O'Connor / Published: April 19, 2012

California continues setting the pace in the clean economy and is reaping tangible economic and environmental benefits from doing so. These are two of the key takeaways from a report released today by Next 10, which found that clean technology is fueling the state’s economic rebound and driving its efforts to cut climate pollution.

The 2012 California Green Innovation Index compiled by Collaborative Economics is the fourth annual report that tracks the “economic impacts of policies that help reduce state carbon emissions.” California’s Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) was among the policies cited as helping to drive the state’s economic growth.

According to the report, clean tech investments in California rose 24% between 2010 and 2011 to $3.5 billion. This represents 57% of all the venture capital (VC) funding in the country and 40% in the world. Additionally, California clean tech companies filed the most patents: 910 between 2008 and 2010. New York came in a distant second with companies filing 475.

Our solar industry did exceptionally well, attracting $1.2 billion, 62% of all U.S. VC funding in 2011. In part because of this investment, the Golden State reached a major milestone by installing 1,000 megawatts of solar capacity. Only five other countries in the world have hit this mark. Between January 1995 and January 2010, 1,503 solar businesses were founded here, an increase of 171%.

While this economic news is impressive, equally important were findings related to the environmental benefit: climate pollution fell even as the state’s population was rapidly expanding. By 2009, for every dollar of gross domestic product (GDP), California was producing 28% less carbon emissions than it did in 1990. These reductions happened as the population grew by 8 million residents. Specifically, since 1990, California’s per capita GDP expanded 16% while carbon emissions per capita fell. This is particularly encouraging as California prepares to launch a carbon market that will limit overall pollution in the state to 1990 levels by 2020.

This latest report further demonstrates that environmental policies lead to economic growth. We wholeheartedly agree with Doug Henton, CEO of Collaborative Economics, who said that by “setting the market rather than chasing it,” California’s leadership is “paying off in the form of investment, innovation, and growth.”

Posted in General / Comments are closed

Strong Clean Air Standards For Natural Gas Leaks A Trifecta For America

By Peter Zalzal / Published: April 18, 2012

Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized important clean air measures to reduce harmful pollutants discharged from a variety of oil and natural gas activities. Leaks, venting and flaring of natural gas from oil and gas activities contribute to ground-level ozone (“smog”), toxic air pollution such as benzene, and destabilizes the climate. The limited federal standards that existed prior to these clean air measures covered only natural gas processing plants, and were most recently updated in part 13 years ago; other aspects of the air standards for the oil and gas industry are more than a quarter-century old.

These standards represent an important first step toward fulfilling the President’s commitment, in his State of the Union Address, to develop natural gas responsibly: “We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years. (Applause.) And my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy . . . . Because America will develop this resource without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk.” (emphasis added) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/01/24/remarks-president-state-union-address

Likewise, at the President’s direction, Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu convened the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) Natural Gas Subcommittee, which included a diverse array of members with experience in the industry, government, and non-profit sectors. The Subcommittee was tasked with identifying “immediate steps that can be taken to improve the safety and environmental performance of fracking and to develop, within six months, consensus recommended advice to the agencies on practices for shale extraction to ensure the protection of public health and the environment.” In its 90-day Report, the Subcommittee noted that it “supports adoption of emission standards for both new and existing sources for methane, air toxics, ozone-forming pollutants, and other major airborne contaminants resulting from natural gas exploration, production, transportation and distribution activities.”

Public health groups, including the American Lung Association, the American Thoracic Association, and others have support these common sense standards as these EPA clean air measures make important reductions in pollutants linked to asthma, cancer, and other illnesses. In a recent letter to the President, these groups noted that “we see irrefutable evidence of serious damage to human health from air pollutants emitted during oil and natural gas production, including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including air toxics such as benzene and formaldehyde, as well as increasing levels of ozone and particulate matter.” As a result, the groups urged that “[t]he standards must be strengthened to keep up with the expansions and the new technology in the oil and gas industry.”

EPA’s clean air measures achieve these health protective reductions by, in many cases, plugging leaks across the system. One of the key protections under these national emission standards is the requirement to perform a reduced emission completion or “green completion.” This, along with other standards in the rule, will reduce ozone-forming volatile organic compounds by an estimated 190,000 to 290,000 tons; reduce hazardous air pollutants like benzene by an estimated 12,000 to 20.000 tons; and reduce methane, a potent climate forcer by an estimated 1.0 to 1.7 million short tons [about 19 to 33 million tons of CO2 equivalent]. This results in saving both a domestic energy resource and saving producers money. In fact, EPA estimates that the combined rules will yield a cost savings of $11 to $19 million in 2015, because the value of natural gas and condensate that will be recovered and sold will offset costs.

These common sense clean air measures are a win-win-win for a healthier environment, for our economy and for our energy security. While there are additional opportunities remain to encourage safe, clean development of natural gas, EPA’s clean air measures are an important first step along this path.

Posted in Natural Gas / Read 9 Responses

What Will It Take To Get Sustained Benefits From Natural Gas?

By Ramon Alvarez, Ph.D. / Published: April 10, 2012

Natural gas is reshaping our energy landscape. Though the potential energy security and economic benefits are compelling, the challenge is that natural gas comes with its own set of risks to public health and the environment, including exposure to toxic chemicals and waste products, faulty well construction and design, local and regional air quality issues and land use and community impacts.

There has also been much confusion about the impacts of increased natural gas use on the climate. While natural gas burns cleaner than other fossil fuels when combusted, methane leakage from the production and transportation of natural gas has the potential to remove some or all of those benefits, depending on the leakage rate. Methane is the main ingredient in natural gas and a greenhouse gas (GHG) pollutant many times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal contributor to man-made climate change.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Paper

EDF has teamed up with several respected scientists to find a better way to examine the climatic impacts of increased use of natural gas and compare it in place of other fossil fuels in a paper titled “Greater Focus Needed on Methane Leakage from Natural Gas Infrastructure” published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). While methane absorbs more heat energy than CO2, making it a much more potent GHG, it also – luckily – has a shorter duration in the atmosphere. The combination of these factors makes it difficult to compare methane emissions to other GHGs using conventional methods.

Instead, in the PNAS paper, we propose the use of an enhanced scientific method: Technology Warming Potentials (TWPs). Specifically, this approach reveals the inherent climatic trade-offs of different policy and investment choices involving electricity and transportation. It illustrates the importance of accounting for methane leakage across the value chain of natural gas (i.e. production, processing and delivery) when considering fuel-switching scenarios from gasoline, diesel fuel and coal to natural gas. TWPs allow researchers, policy makers and business leaders to make fuel and technology choices while better accounting for their climate impacts.

PNAS Paper Key Findings

We illustrated the new approach by analyzing commonly discussed policy options. Using the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) best available estimated leakage rate of 2.1% of gas produced (through long-distance transmission pipelines but excluding local distribution pipelines), generating electricity from natural gas in new combined cycle power plants decreases our contribution to climate change, compared to new coal-fired plants. This is true as long as methane leakage rates stay under 3.2%.

Natural gas powered cars, in contrast, do not reduce climate impacts unless leakage rates are reduced to 1.6% (compared to our estimate of current “well-to-wheels” leakage of 3.0%). In heavy trucks, the reduction would need to be even more pronounced—converting a fleet of heavy duty trucks to natural gas damages the climate unless leakage is reduced below 1.0%.

The PNAS paper only provides illustrative calculations with EPA’s current estimate of the methane leakage rate and better data is needed to more accurately determine leak rates. Measuring how much gas is lost to the atmosphere and where the leaks are occurring will help to further target leak reduction opportunities to ensure that natural gas will help mitigate climate change. EDF is working to obtain extensive empirical data on methane released to the atmosphere across the natural gas supply chain, since the climatic bottom line of fuel switching scenarios involving natural gas is very sensitive to this parameter.

Not only is the data on methane leakage far from definitive, but climate impacts from leakage – and other key public health and environmental risks – could be reduced by strong standards and improved industry practices. There are many practices and technologies already being used in states such as Colorado and Wyoming, and elsewhere by natural gas companies to reduce gas losses, which results in greater recovery and sale of natural gas, and thus increased economic gains. The return on the initial investment for many of these practices is sometimes as short as a few months and almost always less than two years. In these tough economic times, it would seem wise to eliminate waste, save money and reduce environmental impact.

In sum, the paper’s results suggest that methane leakage rates matter: they can materially affect the relative climate impacts of natural gas over coal and oil. While the paper does not draw hard and fast conclusions about the future implications of fuel switching, it does provide guidance in terms of the leak rates necessary for fuel switching to produce climate benefits at all points in time.

EDF Methane Leakage Model

We also released a new methane leakage model, based on the science described in the PNAS paper, which allows anyone to test a range of scenarios to quantify the climate benefits, or damages, of natural gas production and usage given specific methane leakage rates. Users can vary the key system attributes independently to see how they affect net radiative forcing (the primary index used to quantify the effect of greenhouse gases [GHGs] on global temperatures) from U.S. emissions over time. Visit http://www.edf.org/methaneleakage to plug in different variables and observe the outcome.

For more information, visit http://www.edf.org/methaneleakage.

Posted in Methane, Natural Gas / Read 1 Response