News
Biopower = jobs, energy in Hamilton County
By Bill CotterellJASPER, Fla. — Building a giant biopower plant in Hamilton County will generate the two things rural North Florida needs most — jobs and clean energy — executives of a new power consortium told county officials today.
ADAGE, a joint venture between Duke Energy and the global power firm AREVA, plans to start construction of the plant near Interstate 75 and State Road 6 in the spring.
At the peak of construction, in mid 2011, contractors will have about 500 workers at the site and, although regular operation of the power plant will take only 24 fulltime employees, the project is expected to generate hundreds of jobs in forestry, trucking and related trades.
“This will be great for the county and it will put a little more market pressure on timber up here in North Florida,” said State Rep. Leonard Bembry, D-Madison. “Right now, timber is at about a 25- or 30-year low.”
County Commissioner Lewis Vaughn noted that PCS, a 900-employee potash plant that is the county’s largest employer, is laying off 168 workers. He said Hamilton has 9.6 percent unemployment, a bit below the statewide 11 percent average but still high.
“We need the jobs and we need the affordable energy,” said state Sen. Charlie Dean, R-Inverness, whose legislative district includes the county.
Reed Willis, president of ADAGE, and Rob Parrett, the company’s director of business development, said the plant will have a $105 million economic impact initially. They said about 100 trucks a day, each hauling 25 tons of logs, will service the plant and hundreds of jobs will be produced in clearing stumps, limbs and treetops, chips and residue, and other scraps now left on the forest floor.
Biodiesel and other energy initiatives touted as “green” have met with resistance in some areas. A plant planned in Tallahassee was recently cancelled in the face of vocal local opposition.
But Eric Draper, policy director of the Audubon Society, said the Big Bend plant was planned in an urban area where air quality would be harmed. Contacted in Tallahassee, he said the Hamilton County plant might be appropriate for the region.
“They can’t strip-mine the forests,” he said. “But clean, renewable energy is the source of the future and if they can do it in a way that doesn’t harm the forests, that would be worth pursuing.”
WaPo: Transforming Clean-Energy Industry Into a Local One
WILLMAR, Minn. — From his desk at the local electricity cooperative, Bruce Gomm can see the looming black smokestacks of the city’s aging coal-fired power plant. He can also see, on his office wall, framed photographs of sleek new wind turbines. Together, they are a changing world foretold.
Gomm is placing a major bet on wind to produce the electrons that will power his customers’ lights and run their dishwashers. He is at the forefront of a movement called community power, the idea that neighborhoods and towns can install their own renewable power sources and rely less on electricity that flows from distant realms.
Photo Courtesy of Washington Post
As costs of solar and wind come down, the concept’s popularity is looking up, though challenges remain for an industry in its infancy.
Willmar Municipal Utilities invested nearly $10 million in a pair of 256-foot towers to capture the prairie wind here, about 100 miles west of Minneapolis. Gomm calculates that the wind power will cost less than the equivalent in coal-powered energy and, when the debt has been paid in 12 years or so, the electricity will come virtually free for as long as the turbines are standing.
Along the way, Willmar will have reduced carbon emissions and made progress toward reaching a state requirement that Minnesota generate 25 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2025. Gomm, who estimates the turbines will produce 3 to 5 percent of the town’s energy, aims to build more.
“This is the biggest investment Willmar Municipal Utilities has ever made,” engineer Wes Hompe said, standing beneath a huge new turbine outside town. “What makes it worthwhile? This is the future.”
Although most analysts consider it unlikely that neighborhoods or towns will one day exist entirely off the grid, believers in small-scale power see a growing role for local renewables, ranging from individual windmills and solar panels atop homes and big-box stores to larger clusters of turbines and panels wherever they will fit. In Rock Port, Mo., spinning turbines already are producing more than 100 percent of the town’s annual energy requirements.
While Rock Port, and the state of Minnesota, are focused on wind, other states and communities are emphasizing solar. The technology is more compact and less obtrusive, especially in urban and suburban areas. California is spending millions on a “Million Solar Roofs” project to help property owners install solar arrays, while Gainesville, Fla., and several states are experimenting with special tariffs and incentives to promote solar.
Federal authorities are investing billions through grants and tax breaks to promote alternative power. President Obama predicted this year that renewable fuel capacity will double in “the next few years.”
Amory B. Lovins, a Colorado-based renewable power advocate, refers to the transformation of the energy industry as “reinventing fire” and contends the wind, solar and hydropower industries have gone from alternative to mainstream. He cites figures from London-based New Energy Finance to estimate that they represent “probably half of all new electricity. Renewables are getting less expensive, often rather dramatically.”
Within the renewables world, Lovins suspects economics will increasingly favor small and medium-sized projects in place of vast wind and solar farms located on remote mountain ridges or desert floors far from population centers. Transmission is costly and, as utilities across the country have learned, the routing of new power lines often generates opposition and lawsuits.
David W. Mohler, a Duke Energy strategist, sees both the promise and limits of community power. He predicts local energy sources, sometimes called distributed generation, will be a “small but meaningful part” of the nation’s energy portfolio. His North Carolina home is equipped with solar panels and a storage battery, he said, but “it’s really tough to think about thousands and thousands of megawatts. It’s like thinking about using AAA batteries for your car.”
As it has grown, the renewables industry also has benefited from state rules requiring utilities to draw more power from such sources. But the challenges have also multiplied. The increased quantities of electricity from alternative fuels are competing for transmission space, while utilities and distributors are sometimes reluctant to disturb their existing networks of suppliers.
On another front, utilities must account for customers who generate more wind and solar power than they use and want to sell the extra to the power company, an arrangement called net metering. The result, as Mohler put it, is “that we’ll have some business model issues to address.”
Traditional energy companies, particularly coal producers and users, will see renewables as a threat to their profits and fight back, predicts Beth Soholt, director of Wind on the Wires, a St. Paul, Minn., advocacy group. She said the wind industry will need help changing the payment and transmission structure if it expects to compete, meaning that legislators and regulators must show they are “serious about the goals they have set.”
“Now we’re not just a gleam in somebody’s eye,” Soholt said. “We’re real.”
Thanks in part to state incentives, turbines have been sprouting in Minnesota locations where local investors or a government entity has cobbled together financing. The owners have sold much of the resulting electricity to utilities, notably Xcel Energy, the nation’s No. 1 wind user, which purchases 1,200 megawatts in the state and expects to build its own wind farms.
Small-power advocates took heart from the first phase of a Minnesota Energy Department study, released last year, which concluded that 600 megawatts of power in small increments could be added to the grid with minimal need for new lines.
The second phase of the report, released in September, carried a caveat. It showed that the land close to existing lines had mostly been snapped up and that small projects, when grouped together, add stress to the grid. If the analysis is correct, renewables will not be able to continue to expand without transmission upgrades, raising complex questions about who will pay.
Transmission costs played a role in Willmar’s decision not to import wind-fueled energy from the Dakotas or Buffalo Ridge, located in southwest Minnesota.
“The more local we are, the more confident we feel,” Gomm said.
Looking ahead, the cooperative also conducted an experiment with the power plant outside Gomm’s window, burning 100 tons of corncobs for several days in place of 60 tons of Montana-mined coal.
“We’re trying to experiment,” Gomm said. “Renewable energy is going to be more and more of the mix of our energy future.”
One recent afternoon a few miles from Gomm’s office, 20 utility executives, energy advocates and local citizens sat around a conference table at Kandiyohi Power Cooperative and discussed another experiment, one that would help 100 customers adopt solar or wind technology along with a menu of efficiency upgrades.
As the group discussed a dizzying array of government programs and technological options, members noted how quickly the field is shifting. They adjourned to study a Colorado city’s experiences with solar investments and the latest incentives and regulations from Washington and St. Paul.
“It’s not so much a train that’s coming. It’s here. We have to deal with it,” said David J. George, Kandiyohi’s chief executive. Preparing last winter for a community meeting called “Turbine Talk” in rural Minnesota, George expected 25 people to show up. The crowd neared 100.
As Lovins sees it, the long-term trends show a shift from traditional energy sources toward renewables — the more local, the better.
Renewable fuels “will continue to take over the market because they have lower costs and lower financial risks than central thermal,” predicted Lovins, chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado think tank. “It’s driven by economics and its driven by climate and security concerns. And all three are going in the same direction.”
Energy crisis is postponed as new gas rescues the world
NOTE: The commentary below appeared in the UK’s Telegraph but the topic–new sources of natural gas–has worldwide impact.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
America is not going to bleed its wealth importing fuel. Russia’s grip on Europe’s gas will weaken. Improvident Britain may avoid paralysing blackouts by mid-decade after all.
The World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected.
Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, said proven natural gas reserves around the world have risen to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, enough for 60 years’ supply – and rising fast.
“There has been a revolution in the gas fields of North America. Reserve estimates are rising sharply as technology unlocks unconventional resources,” he said.
This is almost unknown to the public, despite the efforts of Nick Grealy at “No Hot Air” who has been arguing for some time that Britain’s shale reserves could replace declining North Sea output.
Rune Bjornson from Norway’s StatoilHydro said exploitable reserves are much greater than supposed just three years ago and may meet global gas needs for generations.
”The common wisdom was that unconventional gas was too difficult, too expensive and too demanding,” he said, according to Petroleum Economist. “This has changed. If we ever doubted that gas was the fuel of the future – in many ways there’s the answer.”
The breakthrough has been to combine 3-D seismic imaging with new technologies to free “tight gas” by smashing rocks, known as hydro-fracturing or “fracking” in the trade.
The US is leading the charge. Operations in Pennsylvania and Texas have already been sufficient to cut US imports of liquefied natural gas (LGN) from Trinidad and Qatar to almost nil, with knock-on effects for the global gas market – and crude oil. It is one reason why spot prices for some LNG deliveries have dropped to 50pc of pipeline contracts.
Energy bulls gambling that the world economy will soon resume its bubble trajectory need to remember two facts: industrial production over the last year is still down 19pc in Japan, 18pc in Italy, 17pc in Germany, 15pc in Canada, 13pc in France and Russia. 11pc in the US and the UK and 10pc in Brazil. A 12pc rise in China does not offset this.
OPEC states are cheating on quota cuts. Non-compliance has fallen to 62pc from 82pc in March. Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela et al face a budget crunch. Why comply when non-OPEC Russia is pumping at breakneck speed?
The US Energy Department expects shale to meet half of US gas demand within 20 years, if not earlier. Projects are cranking up in eastern France and Poland. Exploration is under way in Australia, India and China.
Texas A&M University said US methods could increase global gas reserves by nine times to 16,000 TCF (trillion cubic feet). Almost a quarter is in China but it may lack the water resources to harness the technology given the depletion of the North China water basin.
Needless to say, the Kremlin is irked. “There’s a lot of myths about shale production,” said Gazprom’s Alexander Medvedev.
If the new forecasts are accurate, Gazprom is not going to be the perennial cash cow funding Russia’s great power resurgence. Russia’s budget may be in structural deficit.
As for the US, we may soon be looking at an era when gas, wind and solar power, combined with a smarter grid and a switch to electric cars returns the country to near energy self-sufficiency.
This has currency implications. If you strip out the energy deficit, America’s vaulting savings rate may soon bring the current account back into surplus – and that is going to come at somebody else’s expense, chiefly Japan, Germany and, up to a point, China.
Shale gas is undoubtedly messy. Millions of gallons of water mixed with sand, hydrochloric acid and toxic chemicals are blasted at rocks. This is supposed to happen below the water basins but accidents have been common. Pennsylvania’s eco-police have shut down a Cabot Oil & Gas operation after 8,000 gallons of chemicals spilled into a stream.
Nor is it exactly green. Natural gas has much lower CO2 emissions than coal, even from shale – which is why the Sierra Club is backing it as the lesser of evils against “clean coal” (not yet a reality). The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said America may not need any new coal or nuclear plants “ever” again.
I am not qualified to judge where gas excitement crosses into hyperbole. I pass on the story because the claims of BP and Statoil are so extraordinary that we may need to rewrite the geo-strategy textbooks for the next half century.
Florida Energy-Efficient Company Looks to Expand Operations
From the Daytona Beach News Journal: Council to discuss incentives in exchange for more West Volusia jobs
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “It’s a lot of jobs for West Volusia — good paying jobs. And, green technology. You can’t get much better than that. I think it’s a real win for everybody.” –County Council member Pat Northey.
As unemployment continues to take its toll on area residents, the Volusia County Council will decide Thursday whether to offer up to $150,000 in incentives to a company hoping to add 250 jobs in the DeBary area.
THE COMPANY: Lake Mary-based Southeast Fabricators Inc. manufactures steel sign structures. In fact, the company made most of the sign structures along I-4, according to Philip Ehlinger, interim economic director for Volusia County. The company also recently developed a proprietary solar energy system for the telecommunication industry that will make some of the industry’s structures ‘energy neutral’ by providing 40-80 percent of the energy required to operate them, Ehrlinger said.
Company officials said expansion to accommodate the new product line requires a larger facility than the current Tavares location. The location also must have good customer access, freight transportation availability and be in close proximity to a qualified workforce, officials said. As a result, the company plans to move its manufacturing operations to a leased 70,000-square-foot building on Springview Commerce Drive in DeBary with plans to create a minimum of 250 high skill, high wage jobs over three years, county officials said.
THE RECOMMENDATION: The county’s economic development department staff is recommending the council approve an incentive package that would pay Southeast Fabricators $600 for each job the company creates to a maximum of $150,000. The company currently employs 20 people full time and the additional 230 jobs expected to be added will pay an average $35,644 annually, officials said.
COMPETITION: County officials have said that in addition to Volusia County, Southeast Fabricators considered Seminole and Orange Counties for the expansion plans.
Old Ford plant gets new lease on life in Wixom, Mich.
From the St. Pete Times’ Fueling Station blog:
Photo courtesy of the St. Pete Times
Here’s a lesson in green. An abandoned Ford plant is being converted into a renewable energy park, where solar panels and efficient batteries will be manufactured, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The $725-million conversion of the former Ford Motor Co. Wixom plant will create 4,000 new low-carbon economy jobs. The Wixom plant closed in 2007 after 50 years of assembling Lincoln products. It will now produce new wafer-film solar panels by Clairvoyant Energy of California, and large storage batteries by Xtreme Power.
