Unfortunately, there’s very little evidence that cleaner energy technology will take hold without mandates and incentives. Suppliers and consumers are comfortable with the status-quo of fossil fuel dependency when the alternative would mean a large upfront cost. The near-sighted vision prevails that places more importance on next quarter’s bottom line over long-term cost savings with an investment in more efficient operations and energy choice.
Where the true cost of energy is factored in, including environmental impacts, then there is progress. Slapping fines on emissions or taxing high-emission fuels provides the necessary incentive to make better choices for the long term.
It’s hard to fathom how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce can make claims that mandates and incentives “distort the market,” when they provide an across-the-board incentive for more efficient operations and provide real business opportunity for countless suppliers and service companies. When all companies share the burden, then the move to more efficient operations stands to stimulate the markets while driving down operations cost.
It’s the nature of shared burdens that makes good business sense here, as no one company or region is singled out with higher burdens, thus evening the playing field for all to make the necessary changes. In businesses where change would harm operations, they can choose to pay fines or transfer their impact through such mechanisms as cap and trade. The choice is up to the business, with options that stand to benefit all.
While in the U.S. the states have set standards for a certain percentage of renewable energy by a specific date (20% by 2020 in Colorado where I live), it makes the most sense to have a national standard. The push for energy companies to buy energy from consumers greatly stimulates the local market with solar and wind installers working with home owners and driving down the cost of these alternatives due the increasing demand.
Mandates and incentives on energy have far-reaching positive impacts — mitigating global warming, saving individuals and corporations money by reducing energy costs, and increasing global security by reducing the reliance on foreign oil. Let’s bring on more mandates and incentives for quicker green rewards.
A new version of EnergyPlus Energy Simulation Software has been released. The software is created by the U.S. Department of Energy and is used to model heating, cooling, lighting, ventilating, and other energy flows as well as water in buildings.
This product also interfaces OpenStudio, a product that links to Google SketchUp software which is used for 3D building design.
ApacheSim enables calculation of building energy for a number of different parameters based on thermal performance. Driven by real weather data, it simulates thermal performance as modelled and is available from Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) in th UK.
“ApacheSim also enables you to perform carbon emissions calculations for compliance with UK Building Regs Part L and Part J. ApacheSim is based on first-principles models of heat transfer processes and is driven by real weather data.”
Intelligent metering is a European project that was focused upon building capacity about the use and application of intelligent metering across Europe. While it ended in 2006, several useful resources are available on the site. The “objective of the project was to maximize the energy savings available across Europe through the use of intelligent metering and behavioral changes of building occupants. This project has aimed to demonstrate and promote the savings available from the use of intelligent metering and training occupants in public buildings and to show that these savings can be achieved at little, or no, additional cost.”
Currently, an Intelligent Metering Initiative in the UK involves a broad range of industry partners. The European Union also covers Intelligent Metering through the European Intelligent Energy portal. Several Management Tools for INtelligent Metering are also available via Energy Europe.
The Alternative Energy Design Toolkit originated in Australia and it’s purpose is to enable better energy design. The website includes educational materials fo running the models and explains how to connect to the most appropriate model for evaluating a design.
The motivation behind the work is discussed and the thoughts behind the development of the toolkit are also expressed.
There’s growing sentiment in the United States that countries across the world are getting the jump on renewable energy innovation. Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times has written repeatedly of the need to go green, and he warns in a recent column that China’s decision to go green should be seen as, “The New Sputnik“. There’s also a recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle that extols that the “U.S. Must Take the Lead In Renewable Energy.” While the sense of urgency is compelling in light of energy’s role in climate change, what else is at stake regarding this new global competition for renewable energy dominance?
Economics of Innovation
America has long been on the global forefront of innovation, leading the way in developing automobiles, electricity, computers, and information technology. While a great deal of early renewable energy innovation took place here in the 1970’s during that oil crisis, the world has largely passed us by in developing renewable energy technologies and harnessing clean power.
There’s a pride of innovation here as well as the distinct potential for China’s large-scale renewable production efforts to make it become the number one global economy. America has largely gone from a producing to a consuming nation, which works when the technology that we buy is owned by U.S. companies, but manufactured elsewhere. Without American companies innovating in the renewable energy sector we stand to suffer a large economic impact as global change continues to force us to go green.
Energy Independence
The fossil fuel dependence in the United States is largely blamed as the impetus for our involvement in the conflicts in the Middle East. This dependence on foreign oil leads to dramatic economic imbalances when oil prices spike, harming the viability of a number of oil-dependent businesses.
The global security implications of this dependence has spurred the U.S. military to make sweeping commitments to renewable energy to power their bases. It’s interesting that the Pentagon has embraced renewable energy far in advance of our political leaders.
Without more federal leadership in the shift to go green, Americans will be surpassed by other countries, regions and companies. Energy technology is the next great emerging market, and no country can afford to lag in innovation.
The European Union has embarked upon the discovery of new tools and technologies for determining progress, wealth and growth in nations. Current measurement of GDP alone is highly focused upon economic factors. However, as most energy producers and energy efficiency industries know, environmental factors and non-economic indicators are considerable contributors toward progress and growth.
The idea is not new, many people have thought about this for quite some time. However, bringing it to action has been a sticking point that has avoided the pursuit of this information more diligently and the development of tools and technologies for assessing efficiency and progress.
The so called ‘new approach‘ has direct implications for many energy producers and energy products, since, they can be further assessed for non-tangible contributions to society, some of which, are often over-looked.
The process of developing energy includes the development of technologies and processes throughout the planning stages that contribute toward an understanding of regional water tables, climates, geology, distribution factors and a host of other information. Some of this information is held in a proprietary sense, however, cases can be made for the contributions of certain types of energy related information to regional policy and understanding. Many of these avenues have not often been explored, but identify valuable contributions toward wider regional development and policy making.
There are a slew of government incentives to subsidize renewable energy development. These incentives go a long way toward making the investment in renewable energy a practical choice. It can be hard to justify an investment when the math might indicate a 10 to 20 year timeline to receive a return on that investment, but incentives drive those return times down with a more practical ‘big picture’ perspective.
The savings from renewable energy include environmental costs, security costs and economic costs. However, in a down economy it’s tough to pull together funds for capital improvements that have long-term returns, especially when the costs for traditional fossil fuel energy sources are low due to complex market forces. Governments have a big role to play toward encouraging capital expenditure on renewables that factor in the long-term benefits that make these choices very beneficial for our global sustainability.
Aggressive Targets
There are increasingly high targets for percentage of renewable energy being passed into law on both federal and regional levels. The government of Australia just passed a target of 20% contribution to electricity production from renewables by 2020, which matches the aggressive goal set by the European Union. The United States doesn’t have a federal mandate, but many states have a goal of 15 to 20 percent renewable energy by 2020.
These aggressive goals create a considerable market for renewable energy action that likely wouldn’t have come about without established targets. The targets provide a sense of urgency and mandate movements from energy providers and large energy consumers.
Taxes Now and Future
Several local entities waive the sales tax on any solar hardware sales for home-based systems. Savings of three to six percent can add up considerably when a whole-home system cost reaches into the tens of thousands of doallars. Similarly, for utility-scale plants the value of the plants are often assessed at a much lower level of property tax than comparable traditional energy plants.
Carbon tax and trade is a growing possibility for power companies and large energy consumers. The incentive to make renewable energy choices now, in order to avoid carbon taxes in the future, is growing. Where carbon cap and trade schemes already exist, there are increasing incentives for companies to drive down their emissions in order to sell their credits for polluting less. Here, the threat of future taxes on emissions provides a powerful incentive for large greenhouse gas emitters to make a change.
Loans, Grants and Rebates
The use of loans, grants and rebates provide a means to incentivize the installation of renewable energy in homes and businesses. There are a great number of creative solutions that have been devised in order to make these investments attainable and practical for all income levels and business sizes.
There’s a growing movement for the creation of third party leasing agents that cover the full cost of the installation of solar panels on a home, and then charge the homeowner a monthly fee to recoup the install cost. The homeowner gets to use the energy generated by the new system, which draws down their utility bill, and they gradually pay off the capital improvement cost of the new system. Here, the monthly bill can equal the cost of the savings, so it provides a good incentive to help quickly proliferate these systems.
Several municipalities have set up special renewable energy grant programs that help to fund the installation of solar water heaters and photovoltaicarrays for low-income or nonprofit entities. The funding mechanism for these grants are often the taxes that would have been collected from their sale and use. Instead of going into the general tax coffers, these funds are instead funneled into a program fund to be disbursed.
One of the most typical incentives provided by power companies is a rebate program that reimburses the homeowner for grid-connected utility installations. The power companies are often saddled with deadlines to meet a specific target of renewable energy generation, and the cost of creating plants is far more expensive than getting homeowners to install their own systems. The power company gains an ally by providing guidance through the installation process, reimbursing the homeowner after the system is online and performing to a set standard.
Through renewable energy quotas, tax credits, rebates and other incentives, the government is going a long way in spurring renewable energy investments for long term benefits for all.
The transfer of knowledge from research to applications is a challenge for many organisations. ProRETT was funded by the EU with the purpose of transferring knowledge about developing energy related technologies for renewable energies.
The ProRETT training manual assists by providing information about commercialising research technologies.
Another aspect of technology transfer addresses the cycle of innovation and how research proceeds, and what factors stimulate renewable energy developments. A slide presentation is available that provides a wealth of information on this topic.
Energy storage is an increasingly important tool for improving the efficiency of power distribution networks and transportation options. While energy generation is fixed to our means to create it, the demand can fluctuate wildly. Energy storage provides a means to meet the demand and flatten out the need to rapidly generate power on demand.
Utilities Explore Local Storage
Generating power on demand requires a rapid spike in power generation, and the systems in place to meet the quick demand are our least efficient and most expensive options. Using gas-powered generators at an electric utility to quickly meet the demands of users is a much more expensive and wasteful option than simply having energy stored on the grid locally for quick response to that demand.
The Department of Energy has several projects underway to study the effectiveness and efficiency of local energy storage. Utilities are exploring various battery technologies as well as flywheels, supercapacitors, and compressed air or energy stored in water towers to meet storage demands. In each of these technology solutions the storage device is meant to store energy when generation exceeds load, and to discharge energy when loads exceed generation capacity.
Instead of trying to constantly adjust energy generation, storage has proven to be technically viable, cost-effective and an applicable solution to increase the reliability and efficiency of electrical systems. Increasingly, utilities are investing in energy storage as well as smart grid solutions as the investments have a high and almost immediate return by leveling off the need to quickly meet power demands.
Charge for Better Batteries
There are a great deal of research and development dollars going into the discovery of better battery technologies for electric vehicles. The interest to create more efficient storage systems for lighter and longer lasting batteries for electric cars will translate into better batteries for other purposes, including local storage.
Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power are reliant on intermittent energy sources. In order for these sources to work well when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining they need to incorporate reliable energy storage.
Energy storage is an increasingly important element for more efficient energy transmission and distribution. Research into more efficient means to store energy will result in more efficient and affordable systems, including making renewable and clean energy solutions much more viable.
LINKS
U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Storage
Basic Research Needs for Electrical Energy Storage
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Matt Ball is editor of Americas/Asia Pacific for V1 Energy and V1 Magazine. This column alternates weekly.
