###
(1.8.09 - Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday said an economic stimulus package should include building a new electricity “smart grid.
“Smart grid” describes a more efficient, cost-saving method of moving electricity along major long-distance transmission lines to local distribution power lines and disparate end-users in homes, businesses and schools.
The estimated cost of creating a nationwide “smart grid” by investor-owned utilities in the United States is $50 billion over 10 to 20 years, said Ed Legge, an analyst with the Edison Electric Institute, a power industry lobbyist. Adding federally and locally owned utilities, the full cost would be about $65 billion.
Smart grid advocates say utilities and customers will realize cost savings in the long run, despite the high roll-out costs.
In a smart grid, computers and sensors, installed at power plants, substations and along power lines, would signal control centers that would better manage the flow of electricity. For instance, computers would detect transmission bottlenecks and direct power around them.
Power outages are now monitored as customers call local utilities to report them. Smart grid computers would discover outages automatically.
“Smart meters” would be installed to replace conventional electricity meters. These would facilitate communication between utilities and their customers, letting them curb power use when demand peaks and prices are high.
Cutting demand during peak hours would reduce the need for capital spending on more power plants, substations and power lines. Proponents say it also will cut greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.
The meters combined with smart appliances would make it possible to control and regulate appliances remotely.
Proponents say “smart” technology also will help renewable power sources like solar panels and solar power plants and wind farms integrate into the overall transmission system.
Conventional power grids have difficulty with the intermittent nature of solar and wind power.
Smart grid technology is in various forms of planning and implementation depending on the utility or state jurisdiction.
Investor-owned utilities account for about 70 percent of U.S. electricity use. Several utility companies have begun replacing conventional electricity meters with “smart meters” that receive signals from the grid and send signals back to grid operators.
After year-long study of smart grid technologies in the Pacific Northwest, U.S. officials and IBM estimated customers saved 10 percent on monthly power bills and cut power use by 15 percent.
If those figures could be realized nationwide, it could save between $70 billion and $120 billion in spending on new power plants and transmission lines, the study found.
###
The competition and fight for the strategic control of oil vs. the cooperative and independence inherent in renewable energy is an interesting comparison.
With this in mind… Anne Korin is a conservative worth listening too. She is the Co-Director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. She points out a few key questions that are missing from many discussions about climate change, oil, coal, nukes, drilling, etc.
-Does America have the time to wait for the market to provide to solutions for energy independence?
-Are there times when government should intervene, like cap and trade?
-Why are we fighting wars that we are supporting both sides of?
-What real solutions can we do right now?
–Here is part one of seven…
And so…
-Will coal become less attractive because the Supreme Court has agreed CO2 is a pollutant and must be regulated by the EPA to mitigate climate change? Cick Here
-Will government step in with Cap and Trade to give renewable more advantage over fossil fuels?
As Obama has mentioned. Click Here
-Or will new innovations come forward that are more competitive than fossil fuels?
Like this study from Ausra about how Solar thermal power could supply over 90 percent of US Grid Plus new electric vehile auto fleet.
Three initiatives to dramatically decrease reliance on oil at Automotive News Green Car Conference in Detroit
Rocky Mountain Institute to convene a summit to bring together high-profile “off-oil” plans, launch “Project Get Ready” a 20-city initiative created at RMI’s Smart Garage Summit, and establish a clean mobility project in India.
Rocky Mountain Institute announced three initiatives today, including a summit to find common ground among the best features of several plans and foster consensus on national policy recommendations. Other initiatives will help lead the automotive industry’s transition towards lightweighting and electrification.
In his keynote address to the Automotive News Green Car Conference in Detroit, RMI Vice President and Practice Leader of RMI’s MOVE team, Michael Brylawski described the automotive industry as being on the verge of its fourth major shift—a shift toward lightweighting, electrification, and advanced digital technology that will fundamentally change the industry.
“The automobile industry dramatically shifted to mass production in Henry Ford’s day and then dramatically shifted again to manufacture tanks, planes, and other materiel during World War II,” Brylawski noted. “Later, in response to oil shocks and global competition, the industry shifted toward smaller cars—despite a brief SUV respite in the 1990s. The auto industry is about to witness another dramatic shift—to lightweighting and electrification. This shift, though, is fundamentally different for the industry because it will involve other large industrial sectors, notably our utilities and our buildings.”
Brylawski told conference attendees that this fourth shift is being driven by high oil prices and carbon dioxide emissions—two looming challenges that he said are pushing harder on the auto industry than any other sector. The outcome, he suggested, will include lighter products (for greater fuel efficiency) and electrified or partially electrified vehicles that will connect to the grid via homes and offices.
At the conference, Brylawski also announced three Rocky Mountain Institute projects aimed at reducing U.S. dependence on oil: The RMI/Brookings Oil Solutions Initiative, Project Get Ready, and RMI’s India Initiative.
The RMI/Brookings Oil Solutions Initiative is an effort to find common ground among the best features of several plans and foster consensus on national policy recommendations. “Project Get Ready” will work with a number of cities to break the barriers and build the alliances necessary to accelerate the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), and create an electrified, grid-tied infrastructure. RMI’s India Initiative is an effort to work with stakeholders in India to address the next generation of mobility problems with innovative design-based solutions—which would be ultimately applicable in the United States.
“The important thing to remember about this fourth shift in the U.S. auto industry is that it’s going to have some truly positive outcomes—reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, reducing dependence on foreign oil, and creating an entirely new American industry: green cars,” Brylawski added. “Americans are watching Detroit go downhill at the moment, but there could be a very bright lining to this economic crisis if the American auto industry can make the fourth shift.”
This is a very interesting article that is addressing exactly the same issues we are facing here in the US with moving toward decentralized energy distribution. Note the bold text below. It is exactly what Rob, myself and others have been saying about decentralized renewable energy.
In-joy,
Bruce
excerpts from:
### Will Renewables Trump Nuclear in Ontario?
by Stephen Lacey, Staff Writer and Lily Riahi, Correspondent
Ontario, Canada [RenewableEnergyWorld.com] July 2, 2008
In Canada these days, it’s almost impossible to talk about renewable energy without talking about nuclear power. With the recent freezing of Ontario’s Renewable Energy Payment (REP) system and a proposal from the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) to procure 14,000 megawatts (MW) of nuclear power over the coming decades, many in the industry question whether politicians and regulators in the province are serious about developing renewable energy.
Now Ontario — considered Canada’s most progressive renewable energy market — has become a staging ground for a philosophical war over how to develop the future energy market. The battle cry from the renewable energy industry was sounded at the World Wind Energy Conference in Kingston, Ontario last week, as advocates and businesses called on the OPA and government officials to make distributed generation a priority over centralized generation.
To illustrate that nuclear does not have to play such a prominent role, OSEA has rolled out a Green Energy Act campaign to raise awareness about the possibility of Ontario meeting 100 percent of its electricity demand from renewable resources within the same time frame proposed in the recent IPSP. But only when renewables are made a priority over nuclear can the province achieve such an ambitious goal, say advocates of the Green Energy Act.
“The government priorities are a bit puzzling. You wonder why renewable energy acquisition is put on hold while at the same time big announcements are made about nuclear energy,” said CANREA’s Peters. “It’s a bit difficult to understand how the government can say that renewable energy is the cornerstone of a good policy, while at the same time make such big investments in nuclear.”
Here are a few new discussions on Renewable Energy & Peak Oil…. very interesting.
Keep in mind the whole point of identifying the Peak OIl situation is to motivate us toward taking action with solutions. Debating and getting mired in the problem solves nothing
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. - Albert Einstein
Peace,
Bruce
###
With Amory Lovins, Randy Udall, Marvin Odum. Moderated by Jack Riggs. The Aspen Institute and National Geographic magazine host the first ever Aspen Environment Forum, in Aspen, Colorado—a powerful, three-day exchange examining the future of our shared environment.
In my recent television interview I mentioned a video of an advocacy group on Vashon Island in Washington State asking the question to their community…. “Would we be willing to become energy independent.” The parallels to Nantucket Island are numerous. This video provides a wonderful resource fot asking the same question to residents of Nantucket Island as well as the rest of the nation!
Peak Moment #29: Rita Schenck and Deirdre Grace of Vashon Island advocate forming a Vashon Island public utility district to produce electricity locally from renewable resources, starting with an aggressive voluntary conservation program to improve building efficiencies.
Bruce Marshall-Jones being interviewed on The Jamie Ranney Show, TV 17, talking about Earth Day Nantucket 2008 and the shift in the solar energy industry with The Citizenre Corporation. A new company offering a solar rental program to give power back to the home owner, save money and green the planet all at the same time… all for no upfront cost.
——————————–
Part Two
Here is a sampling of some of the organizations presenting at Earth Day Nantucket 2008. Many thanks to all those wonderful folks who helped make this community celebration, fun, memorable and educational.
It is critical that we as a nation upgrade to solar power now! Imagine our country moving toward energy independence with benefits so deep it will change the environmental, economic and political landscape. It crucial that we as humans evolve into the stewardship of this planet and to look after the quality of all life and species… we are the only species who can.
-Special Thanks to Geno Geng of GenoTV.com for the filming!
From: The Rocky Mountian Institute
- Amory B. Lovins, Imran Sheikh, and Alex Markevich
“Nuclear power, we’re told, is a vibrant industry that’s dramatically reviving because it’s proven, necessary, competitive, reliable, safe, secure, widely used, increasingly popular, and carbon-free—a perfect replacement for carbon-spewing coal power. New nuclear plants thus sound vital for climate protection, energy security, and powering a growing economy. There’s a catch, though: the private capitalmarket isn’t investing in new nuclear plants, and without financing, capitalist utilities aren’t buying. The few purchases, nearly all in Asia, are all made by central planners with a draw on the public purse. In the United States, even government subsidies approaching or exceeding new nuclear power’s total cost have failed to entice Wall Street.
This non-technical summary article compares the cost, climate protection potential, reliability, financial risk, market success, deployment speed, and energy contribution of new nuclear power with those of its low- or no-carbon competitors. It explains why soaring taxpayer subsidies aren’t attracting investors. Capitalists instead favor climate-protecting competitors with less cost, construction time, and financial risk. The nuclear industry claims it has no serious rivals, let alone those competitors—which, however, already outproduce nuclear power worldwide and are growing enormously faster.
Most remarkably, comparing all options’ ability to protect the earth’s climate and enhance energy security reveals why nuclear power could never deliver these promised benefits even if it could find free-market buyers—while its carbon-free rivals, which won $71 billion of private investment in 2007 alone, do offer highly effective climate and security solutions, sooner, with greater confidence.”
Conclusion
So why do otherwise well-informed people still consider nuclear power a key element of a sound climate strategy? Not because that belief can withstand analytic scrutiny. Rather, it seems, because of a superficially attractive story, an immensely powerful and effective lobby, a new generation who forgot or never knew why nuclear power failed previously (almost nothing has changed), sympathetic leaders of nearly all main governments, deeply rooted habits and rules that favor giant power plants over distributed solutions and enlarged supply over efficient use, the market winners’ absence from many official databases (which often count only big plants owned by utilities), and lazy reporting by an unduly credulous press.
Isn’t it time we forgot about nuclear power? Informed capitalists have. Politicians and pundits should too. After more than half a century of devoted effort and a half-trillion dollars of public subsidies, nuclear power still can’t make its way in the market. If we accept that unequivocal verdict, we can at last get on with the best buys first: proven and ample ways to save more carbon per dollar, faster, more surely, more securely, and with wider consensus. As often before, the biggest key to a sound climate and security strategy is to take market economics seriously.
###
RMI -The Pursuit of Interconnections A Solution to One Problem May Lead to Solutions For Others
“A feature that distinguishes RMI from almost every other organization is its unceasing search for interconnections between issues normally viewed as unrelated. The following story illustrates why we believe so strongly in the importance of a “vision across boundaries.”
In the early 1950s, the Dayak people of Borneo suffered from malaria. The World Health Organization (WHO) had a solution: it sprayed large amounts of DDT to kill the mosquitoes that carried the malaria. The mosquitoes died; the malaria declined; so far, so good. But there were side effects. Among the first was that the roofs of people’s houses began to fall down on their heads. It seemed that the DDT was also killing a parasitic wasp that had previously controlled thatch-eating caterpillars. Worse, the DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckos, which were eaten by cats. The cats started to die, the rats flourished, and the people were threatened by potential outbreaks of typhus and plague. To cope with these problems, which it had itself created, the World Health Organization was obliged to parachute 14,000 live cats into Borneo (See: “How Not to Parachute More Cats”).
The true story of Operation Cat Drop — now nearly forgotten at WHO — illustrates that if you don’t know how things are interconnected, then often the cause of problems is solutions. On the other hand, if you understand the hidden connections between energy, climate, water, agriculture, transportation, security, commerce, and economic and social development, then you can often devise a solution to one problem (such as energy) that will also create solutions to many other problems at no extra cost. Crafting solutions so that they multiply is RMI’s credo and the basis of its success.”
###
“I have summarized my discovery of the option of humanity to become omnieconomically and sustainably successful on our planet while phasing out forever all use of fossil fuels and atomic energy generation other than the Sun. I have presented my plan for using our increasing technical ability to construct high-voltage, superconductive transmission lines and implement an around-the-world electrical energy grid integrating the daytime and nighttime hemispheres, thus swiftly increasing the operating capacity of the world’s electrical energy system and, concomitantly, living standard in an unprecedented feat of international cooperation.”
“When Buckminster Fuller was asked by a 12 year old boy, “How would you suggest solving international problems without violence?” he answered: “I always try to solve problems by some artifact, some tool or invention that makes what people are doing obsolete, so that it makes this particular kind of problem no longer relevant. My answer would be to develop a world energy grid, an electric grid where everybody is on the same grid.
All of a sudden there would be no problems any more, no international troubles. Our new economic basis wouldn’t be gold or dollars; it would be kilowatt hours.”
Fuller’s Earth, 1983, Richard Brenneman
“Because energy is wealth, the integrating world industrial networks promise ultimate access of all humanity everywhere to the total operative commonwealth of earth.”
Utopia or Oblivion, 1969, Fuller
“This now feasible, intercontinental network would integrate America, Asia and Europe, and integrate the night-and-day, spherically shadow-and-light zones of Planet Earth. And this would occasion the 24-hour use of the now only fifty per cent of the time used world-around standby generator capacity, whose fifty per cent unused capacities heretofore were mandatorily required only for peakload servicing of local non-interconnected energy users. Such intercontinental network integration would overnight double the already-installed and in-use, electric power generating capacity of our Planet.”
Telegram to Senator Edmund Muskie, Earth, Inc., 1973, Fuller.
Two decades
ago, the late R. Buckminster Fuller
proposed interconnecting regional power
systems into a single continuous global electrical
energy grid. • While this vision is still years away, tech-
nological advances have made the linking of international and
inter regional energy networks practicable today. • Transmission
lines allow utilities to level the peaks and valleys of demand. This is
accomplished between East-West time zones, as well as North-South
seasonal variations in demand. • The origin of the energy grid initiative
emerged as the highest priority of the World Game™. Its stated purpose
is “to make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible
time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or the
disadvantage of anyone.” Research reveals that these major benefits will
result from expanding electrical networks. • Increase in everyone’s stan-
dard of living • Reduction of fossil fuel demand and the resultant pollu-
tion • Relief of the population explosion • Reduction of world hunger
• Enhancement of world trade • Promotion of international
cooperation and peace • The purpose of GENI, Global
Energy Network Institute, is to educate all people,
especially world leaders, to the potential
benefits of this global
solution. •
THE CASE AGAINST NEW NUKES as a CURE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE
Debunking the ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ (Jan.2008)
Michael Mariotte, Executive Director of the Washington, D.C. based Nuclear Information Resource service ( http://www.nirs.org/ ), talks about the many reasons that the claim - made by such pundits as James Lovelock and Stewart Brand - that a crash buildout of a new generation of nuclear power plants is a rational and necessary response to global climate change is a dangerous fallacy. He ticks off the list of counter-arguements - including waste storage, cost overruns, terrorism and nuclear weapons proliferation - and builds the cast for using our dwindling resources to develop renewable energy sources, rather than squander them on a ‘nuclear power renaissance’ which is doomed to fail.
The reason I started this thread was to forget nuclear and ReThink Solar. Or in other words… support our solar industry and allow the nuclear industry get out of our way.
No matter what the debate is about nuclear the fact is that if congress continues to pour good money after bad into a failed technology such as nuclear they are NOT helping our baby Citizenre walk or eventually to fly.
The real solution is all the renewables and conservation.
I am all for looking at as many solutions to the energy crisis as possible. Nuclear has played out it’s role and it is time for it to fade away. We have new and better technologies that will FAR out shine the toxic, unsafe and mushrooming expense of nuclear energy. (funny analogy huh?)
In it’s current incarnation or anytime soon… I don’t see nuclear as a viable part of our future… it does not make sense or cents.
Below is a five part educational program on “Good Nukes.” Well worth your time if you want to know more about the nuclear energy industry’s propaganda. It an older piece of anti-nuke propaganda that is full of facts still valid today…. in fact even more so.
They are eye openers not only on why more nukes would be a mistake on their own… but most importantly… why we need to focus on renewables NOW!
This exciting new technology has the potential to revolutionize national electircal grids using the simple principle of hot air rising.
The concept is simple…. use the sun to provide air movement which pushes turbines that create electricity and do it with a design that makes no impact on the quality of our air, water or soil…. what’s not to love?
I have provided a number of the videos detailing existing test installations and projects hoping to go forward.
Enviro-Mission - Roger Davy’s Solar Power Tower…
1800′ - 3100′ tall
a base of glass 6 times larger than New York’s central park.
Powering over 100,000 - 200,000 homes with no fossil fuel burning.
This would be the equivalent of taking over 90,000 cars off the road.
The Enviro-Mission proposed project in Mildura, Austraila desert 3281ft tall!
When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer. — Dave Barry, post-petroleum guzzler
SolarEnurgy.net is powered completely by solar, wind and renewable energy to the tune of 130% of the data center power consumption, so we're not only neutralizing our carbon footprint, but also pumping an extra 30% of green energy back into the power grid! A light footprint.
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