Wednesday, February 1, 2006

Hunter Lovins, President of Natural Capitalism (and former CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute), met recently with a small gathering of energy consultants in Boulder, Colorado. An advantage of living in Colorado, aside from sunshine (300 days a year) and great skiing, is access to talent like Hunter and her colleagues, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Western Resource Advocates and Interwest Energy Alliance, among many others.

In Colorado, we have leading marketers of renewable energy credits (Renewable Choice Energy, Clean & Green, NativeWind). We are home to WhiteWave Foods (Silk and Horizon Organic) one of the nation’s top 25 green power purchasers. New Belgium Brewery in Ft. Collins is on the forefront of sustainable industrial practices (and even has on staff a Sustainability Goddess). In 2004, Colorado voters made history by passing the only voter-mandated renewable energy portfolio standard, overcoming opposition from utilities and coal companies.

Yet, progress toward the next industrial revolution is molasses-slow in Colorado, even with all of our talent and significant milestones…despite rosy reports of clean energy’s dawning over Red Rocks in the Rocky Mountain News. At the gathering at D’Napoli Ristorante, Hunter asked how many of us had read the article by Briton James Lovelock, an independent environmental scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society. (“The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years; each nation must find the best use of its resources to sustain civilisation for as long as they can.”) Hunter asked, what are you – you with expertise in energy – going to do about it?

Building public awareness is front and center for market transformation – a market in which, to quote from “Natural Capitalism,” “business and environmental interests increasingly overlap, in which businesses can better satisfy their customers’ needs, increase profits, and help solve environmental problems all at the same time.”

For cleantech products and services to gain traction, the public needs to know about them, to believe that they work, to know how and where to buy them – and how to finance them if necessary. Competitive pricing, favorable regulations and legislation matter, too, but public awareness, education and marketing are critical for the next industrial revolution to take hold.

“It’s here. It’s real. It’s working. Clean Energy. Let’s Make More.”

SmartPower based in Hartford, Connecticut, gets public awareness, education and marketing. It is a non-profit marketing campaign that promotes clean energy (their tagline: “leading the effort to market clean energy”). SmartPower used “innovative and traditional marketing techniques to identify and create effective messages that resonate with the general consumer, aiming to capture attention, create customers and cultivate a mainstream market for clean energy;” it conducted market research around messaging to find consistent nomenclature (such as “clean energy”), core messages, and branding with emotional hooks.

SmartPower collaborated with the Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) on public education. “In 2003, as part of the Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA), several state clean energy funds joined resources to develop a public education approach to clean energy. These states (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania) faced similar market issues: despite consistently reported research findings that showed consumer preference for clean energy over fossil fuels, even at higher prices, market activity failed to materialize. Clean energy has remained a low interest, low purchase commodity that has yet to penetrate at meaningful levels.”

Far from doom and gloom, SmartPower created insightful, uplifting material. Its advertising agency, Gardner Nelson & Partners out of New York City, first conducted focus groups with consumers, businesses and opinion leaders. Participants were asked to: 1) write an obituary for fossil fuels; 2) draw a picture of their clean energy world, name it and date it; 3) review concept ads that reflected a range of potential messaging themes; and 4) select those messages that most resonated.

Gardner Nelson’s findings can explain why people say they want clean energy, but don’t buy it: “Our focus group participants understood that clean energies such as solar and wind would possibly take [the place of fossil fuels], but these energies were described as ‘quirky’ and possibly not up to the task.”

To demonstrate clean energy’s viability, SmartPower produced dynamic tv, radio and outdoor advertising – as well as a streamlined website that provides resources for taking action (options, costs, suppliers). The organization also puts out a newsletter, “The Monthly Charge” to deliver news on clean energy adoption in the CESA. Businesses, faith-based institutions, governments, educational institutions and other organizations that purchase clean energy get their names listed on the website (that’s smart marketing to give recognition where it’s due).

SmartPower plans to expand its message nationwide….and we sure could use it in Colorado. Take a look, and spread the word.

One of the most confusing aspects of the alternative energy industry has to be the story about ethanol. Simply put, is ethanol good or bad? Does it help or harm the environment?

The confusion and controversy stems from evaluating the net effect on CO2 emissions of ethanol production and use, relative to the production and use of the incumbent fuel, gasoline. Largely, this is driven by questions concerning the energy balance of ethanol — how much energy is really required to fertilize, grow, harvest and process the ethanol, and what are the CO2 emissions associated with these steps. The proper quantification of these factors has seemingly been a matter of dispute between those who favor ethanol and those who see ethanol promotion as merely a means of subsidizing the agricultural sector.

A Reuters summary of an article in the January 2006 issue of the journal Science, written by several researchers from UC Berkeley, indicates that the current corn-based means of producing ethanol is in fact a dubious environmental proposition. However, the use of emerging technologies to convert cellulosic matter — the tougher fibers as found in trees, bark, woody wastes, etc. — in ethanol should be net environmentally positive.

Not surprisingly, the downside is that cellulosic technologies are now on the costly side. But, perhaps with additional clarification of the type on the net environmental benefit (along with the energy supply benefit) that can be generated by cellulosic ethanol, this controversy can be put to bed. With the concerns more definitively allayed, more effort and capital might flow to this potentially important source of energy.

California has a large and broad energy usage, and a very diverse energy mix. We also have one of the best energy tech funding programs in the country, as fitting with our status. A bit on both.

A few of our California energy statistics to think about:

We get 42% of our oil from our own wells (these amounts and the percentages have been declining for 20 years, it was 60% in 1980), 22% from Alaska, and 36% from overseas (the big suppliers are Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Ecuador).

We get only 15% of our natural gas from instate, the rest coming from Canada and other Western US states. Maybe Californians really should enter the debate about an Alaskan North Slope gas pipeline.

We generate 80% of our electricty instate with that same natural gas the largest source, at 40%, with the rest split between coal, rewewables (mainly wind and biomass), hydro, and nuclear, with coal the largest of those sources.

California Energy Commission has a number of programs running to fund and promote new and clean energy technologies in the state. Full details here.

The big ones include:

PIER – Small business R&D grants that in the past have included programs in new generation technologies, energy efficiency, and demand response. At $60 mm per year, PIER is one of, if not the largest government R&D funding program of any non-federal agency. The key funding areas are:

Buildings End-Use Energy Efficiency
Energy Innovations Small Grant Program
Energy-Related Environmental Research
Energy Systems Integration
Environmentally-Preferred Advanced Generation
Industrial/Agricultural/Water End-Use Energy Efficiency
Renewable Energy Technologies

Renewable Energy Funding – CEC runs ths solar rebate programs, to the tune of $135 mm/year. This is one of the largest in the US. Keep in mind, this is state money set aside by the legislature. The new solar news is about the recent PUC solar program – that’s ratepayer money mandated and overseen by the PUC (see earlier Cleantechblog post) . Though if I understand correctly, it is a close partnership as CEC has earmarked some of its funds for some allied programming related to new construction.

I know a lot of Californian’s don’t know exactly where we get our energy, and what we as a state are paying to improve that energy use and demand in the future, but as far as I’m concerned, kudos to the CEC and the people who keep it going.

If you’re not on the CEC listserv, check it out. The mailing list includes information on all upcoming RFPs as well as energy news.

I’ve heard some feedback from people asking why superconductivity is given a voice in a cleantech blog. This is a good question. There are a few reasons.

In one area in particular–power quality–superconductors are directly related to renewable energy. Advanced, flywheels, superconducting magnetic energy storage, superconducting fault current limiters, etc. are all being proposed as technologies that will allow for erratic, geographically distributed generation sources such as wind and solar to be brought onto power grids more effectively. Basically, superconducting power systems developers believe without some way of balancing load versus supply, electric utilities have a difficult time matching load with supply, and all the resulting economic and technical problems that come with it. Also, add-on generation grids such as wind farms are prone to introducing fault currents to the main grid, or require VAR compensation—both of which increase the cost of using that energy. Superconductors are being used in the development of solutions for all three of these problems. Siemens, GE, Sumitomo Electric, IGC SuperPower, American Superconductor, SC Power, CAS in China, KEPRI in Korea, and a bunch more are, or have been, working in this area, and their technologies and businesses have been reported on in some detail.

Perhaps more speculative, developers of high temperature superconducting (HTS) generators are looking to put them in wind turbines. The main reasons for this have to do with the electrical properties of AC superconducting machines, an also because such machines would be dramatically lighter and smaller than conventional generators. There is also some improvement in generation efficiency.

The cost of cooling superconductors is not necessarily a significant hurdle, and refrigerators that cool superconducting devices to their 30 to 65 degrees Kelvin operating temperature are commercially available. Admittedly, the technical challenges of integrating the cooling systems within the device are sometime daunting.

One last reason why superconductors may be considered by some to be “clean tech” is because they may, in fact, provide a cleaner alternative to conventional technology.

For example: in a story we are preparing in Superconductor Week, we look into the massive transformers that are used in substations to take power from transmission voltages to distribution voltages. These devices are inefficient, dangerous, and environmentally hazardous. One company researching the topic concluded that existing conventional 26MVA transformers contain seven tons of copper winding, 16 tons of iron, and 14,000 liters of highly flammable oil. In contrast, an equivalent HTS transformer could contain just 200kg of superconductor in its windings, which are immersed in non-flammable and environmentally benign liquid nitrogen.

In addition, this research concluded that operating at full load, such a HTS transformer would provide an annual abatement of 1,500 ton of CO2 and save $900,000 in electricity over its lifetime. The study concluded “that by including the installation of HTS transformers as part of their national abatement strategy… countries could meet a significant proportion of their Kyoto protocol targets.”

The question of whether superconductors are “clean tech” is semantic. The real question is, can developers make HTS devices that work, and can utilities be persuaded to buy them?

For more information, visit: www.superconductorweek.com