Waxman-Markey: electric cars, smart grids, rising I.Q.

The Waxman-Markey energy bill would put the power of the federal government behind electric vehicles, in part by requiring utilities to begin planning how to recharge them.

Hawai'i is already making some moves on the electric vehicle front, including discussions with Project Better Place, which envisions a major move with plenty of recharging stations powered by renewable energy.

The bill, as passed by the U.S. House, concludes that electric cars are coming, and it requires utilities to make plans for such things as home charging, fast charging, electric filling stations and so forth.

New power facilities must be able to handle all the different models of electric cars.

This is the fourth in RaisingIslands' series on what's in the legislation, which is alternatively called Waxman-Markey, HR2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, or ACES. The bill is now being considered by the Senate.

One neat feature, which requires a smart grid, is for every charging station to recognize your car. This way, you'd be properly billed wherever you fill up. And you'd be credited any time the utility needed to borrow some power from your battery bank.

The bill envisions federal financial help for the establishment of pilot or demonstration grids as well as aid for electric vehicle manufacturers.

In other transportation arenas, the bill would require an “open fuel standard,” which says that when car companies build liquid fuel cars, they make sure they can use a range of liquid fuels—including gasoline, but also methanol and ethanol.

There's the famous “cash for clunkers” program, which would let auto buyers get a credit on a new fuel efficient car if they turn in an old inefficient car for disposal. Vouchers for the trade-in would be worth $3,500, or up to $4,500 if the new car is dramatically more fuel efficient than the one being junked.

It would have states establish offices to manage emissions allowances. The offices go by the acronym SEED, for State Energy and Environmental Development Accounts.

To support state energy programs, the bill calls for the federal government to issue emission allowances to states, based on population and energy use. The money would be used to support efficiency and renewable energy programs.

UP THE GRID'S I.Q.

The nation's utility grids would get lots smarter under Waxman-Markey. Most folks think of the power grid as a one-way thing. The utility makes electricity over there, ships it one-way over wires, and you use it over here.

The term “Smart Grid” is evolving, but in essence, it means that both information and power move across the grid.

Power can go both ways—you can produce and ship it to neighbors, or you can use it, seamlessly. Meanwhile, the utility can readily determine who's using power when, and may even be able to manage systems in homes. As an example, in a crisis, instead of having to crash the system in case of a spike in load, the utility could quickly turn off all the water heaters, creating an immediate drop in load.

Waxman-Markey not only supports smart grids, but supports the development of products that are “smart appliances” and can talk to the grid. There would be rebates and other incentives to move these products into American homes.

An intelligent grid, in theory, is one capable of handling a range of kinds of energy generations, including intermittent sources like wind and solar photovoltaic. Waxman-Markey strongly supports those kinds of renewable energy developments.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Waxman-Markey on coal: Hawai'i utilities will need to find ways to geologically sequester coal-fired emissions

Much of the criticism of the Waxman-Markey climate bill surrounds its approach to coal.

Coal is hard to ignore in this country. We as a nation have a lot of it, and we produce a lot of our cheap power from it. It's also very dirty from a carbon perspective.

This is the third in RaisingIslands' series on the legislation, which is alternatively called Waxman-Markey, HR2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, or ACES.

Why do we care about coal in Hawai'i? Because it's in our mix of fuels to produce electricity. Both HECO in Honolulu and HELCO on the Big Island use coal for a portion of the generation capacity.

One approach to fossil fuels from a climate change perspective is to find a way to lock up the carbon dioxide emissions before they get into the atmosphere: carbon sequestration.

The essence of the carbon sequestration argument in the Waxman-Markey energy bill is that you can continue to make electricity with fossil fuels (mainly oil and coal) as long as you can figure a way to sequester the carbon dioxide they produce.

Subtitle B of Waxman-Market is Carbon Capture and Sequestration. It orders federal officials to develop a sequestration strategy, and it favors geologic sequestration. That means pumping the emissions underground, where they will be prevented from leaking into the atmosphere.

There would be lots of studies, and pilot projects, lots of grants and contracts. Some of this work would be paid for through assessments paid by utilities that burn fossil fuels. The ACES bills would run like this:

Fuel type Rate of assessment

per kilowatt hour

Coal ........................................................................ $0.00043

Natural Gas .......................................................... $0.00022

Oil .......................................................................... $0.00032.

Utilities bill consumers in the range of $.10 to (last year on Kauai) $.50 per kilowatt/hour. This could add a buck or two to an average family's monthly utility bill. The rates would be reduced if the federal agency generates more than than $1.1 billion annually.

Utilities will be expected to start putting geologic sequestration systems into place within a couple of years, and will get credits for doing so. The better the system works, the more credits.

In general, coal plants will be required to cut their CO2 emissions in half or better by 2020.

All in all, that doesn't seem like a very aggressive standard for the dirtiest of fuels, from a carbon perspective. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says: “Coal is the most carbon intensive of the major fossil fuels.”

And coal is a huge player. More than 92 percent of the coal in this country is used to make electricity. And half the electricity in the U.S. is made from coal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

For the amount of energy it produces, coal creates 1.7 times more carbon than natural gas and 1.25 more than oil. If you can cut emissions in half, then it's a little better than natural gas, which is still a carbon dioxide-producing fossil fuel.

On coal, Waxman-Markey is in that tender political middle ground. Its strongest opponents on the right say it's way too aggressive and will destroy the economy. Its staunchest opponents on the left argue it's too weak—that it doesn't do nearly enough to clean up our coal emissions dilemma.

All in all, from our view, Waxman-Markey on coal isn't a very aggressive standard. But supporters will argue that it's a step in the right direction and better than no standard at all.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Waxman-Markey renewable standards: Hawai'i's way ahead of them

The first title of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, is about efficiency, as it should be. Also about developing renewable energy.

Unfortunately, ACES, as it's being called, doesn't require much efficiency or much renewable energy. Indeed, Hawai'i's electric utilities have already been beyond the proposed initial standards for years.

This post is part of our continuing series on the ACES legislation.

The bill's goal, as stated on its opening page, is; “To create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.”

And as folks who install expensive solar photovoltaic systems know, the first thing you do before spending the cash is to get a handle on your demand. That's because watts you save through efficiency and conservation are far cheaper—often free—than the $5 to $10 you're spending per watt on a solar array.

Waxman-Markey ostensibly pushes utilities to do both: improve the performance of their existing systems and develop new renewable energy production. It's called the Combined Efficiency and Renewable Electricity Standard (CERES).

Any utility that sells more than 4 million megawatt hours during a year needs to comply with a strict step-up in its performance. It can apply either savings or renewable energy production toward a reduction of its overall energy oproduction.

Kaua'i's electric utility, the Kaua'i Island Utility Cooperative, does not sell enough power to meet the minimum sales standard, and thus is not regulated under the CERES language. Hawaiian Electric easily surpasses the minimum, and would be regulated.

But what does that regulation mean? Waxman-Markey was so diluted in late negotiations in the House of Representatives, that both KIUC and HECO easily already meet the standard through 2015. Both are already in excess of 10 percent renewable, and the CERES standards don't get past 9.5 percent until 2016.

Those standards eventually get up to 20 percent by 2020.

Well, shucks.

Hawai'i's Clean Energy Initiative commits to 70 percent efficiency and renwables by 2030—or 350 percent of the proposed federal standard. HECO has signed the HCEI pact.

Kauai Island Utility Co-op, which is not yet a signatory, has committed on its own to achieve 50 percent of its power from renewables by 2023. That's 250 percent of the Waxman-Markey standard.

John D. Wilson, Research Director, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, summarized his reaction, at the blog CleanEnergy.org, this way: “The American Clean Energy and Security Act has many good provisions... But the CERES is a flawed compromise that urgently requires review and repair.”

Of course, the kneejerk opponents of climate legislation are raising CERES up as some kind of monster. Here's what Ben Lieberman, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, had to say:

“The Waxman-Markey proposal requires that more electricity come from so-called renewable sources, chiefly wind energy but also others like biomass and solar. This renewable electricity standard (previous bills called it a renewable portfolio standard) is nothing more than a mandate for higher electricity bills.”

Well, of course, no. The efficiency side of the standard—reducing use through conservation and efficiency—is actually cheaper than burning oil and coal. And some of the renewables might be more expensive, but others would be cheaper. Particularly if oil goes back up to where it was last summer.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Waxman-Markey: a coursebook in modern energy issues

The intensely controversial federal climate bill, aka Waxman-Markey, which just passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is moving to the Senate, is a coursebook on energy issues.

A long coursebook. It has 1,092 pages. If you want it, it's here.

RaisingIslands downloaded the whole thing, and is diving in. Haven't read the actual text yet—more on that in later posts—but just the table of contents hits all the hot topics.

Keep in mind that this document is still dynamic. It will change with further legislative action. President Obama is pushing for its passage, but it's not clear whether it will make it through the Senate and in what form.

In the version we're reviewing, it covers electric cars, smart grids, performance standards for coal-fired power plants, carbon sequestration, whole sections on energy efficiency, and green jobs.

Hmm, there's some nuclear, some greenhouse gas regulation, and a carbon market stuff.

And lots more.

Have you wondered just what the feds are considering renewable energy to be? Here's the list:

“(18) RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCE.—The term ‘renewable energy resource’ means each of the following:

(A) Wind energy.

(B) Solar energy.

(C) Geothermal energy.

(D) Renewable biomass.

(E) Biogas derived exclusively from renewable biomass.

(F) Biofuels derived exclusively from renewable biomass.

(G) Qualified hydropower.

(H) Marine and hydrokinetic renewable energy...”

And if you're wondering what that final marine power section means, you need to refer to a different document, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 , which defines it like this:

“the term ‘‘marine and hydrokinetic renewable energy’’ means electrical energy from—

(1) waves, tides, and currents in oceans, estuaries, and

tidal areas;

(2) free flowing water in rivers, lakes, and streams;

(3) free flowing water in man-made channels; and

(4) differentials in ocean temperature (ocean thermal

energy conversion).

The term ‘‘marine and hydrokinetic renewable energy’’ does not

include energy from any source that uses a dam, diversionary

structure, or impoundment for electric power purposes.”

In short, waves, currents and OTEC are included.

We'll be reporting more on this as time goes on.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

The latest NASA moon shot, LRO, has Hawai'i cred

Each of three of the pieces of equipment aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter—which is swinging around the Moon as this is written—has hibiscus tucked behind its ear.

Well, not really. But they have legitimate Hawai'i credentials.

(Image: A shot taken Dec. 12, 1972, during the Apollo 17 mission, shows orange soil near Shorty Crater. The color, later examination showed, came from orange volcanic glass particles. Credit: NASA.)

Three University of Hawai'i scientists, B. Ray Hawke, Jeffey Gillis-Davis and Paul Lucey, all of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, are contributing scientists for the LRO mission, which is designed to gather data for the 2020 mission to put humans back on the Moon.

Hawke will help process data from the orbiter's camera, which will collect high-definition images of the lunar surface, in part to locate landing sites but also to gather more information about the Moon's surface.

Gillis-Davis is part of a team working with radio frequency to seek evidence of ice on the poles of the moon. They will use a Miniature Radio Frequency instrument, to try to extract new information about what's inside the Moon.

Lucey will help use the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter to create a detailed three-dimensional map of the lunar surface. The laser will help get images of permanently shadowed portions of polar regions. The laser will assist in identifying the abundance—on both the dark and light sides of the Moon—of minerals whose color changes with temperature.

The LRO is kind of like a scout, sent out in advance of the main party, to gather information.

For more information about the LRO, look here.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009