Uniting the clean energy army

Posted by Tom Casten on April 3rd, 2008 |

The clean energy community suffers from typical poor-relative bickering, and has yet to offer anything remotely resembling a united front. The enemy is the 75% of US power produced centrally with 33% efficient conversion of fossil fuel. The tragedy is a climate change debate obscured for years by tobacco-industry-like studies that challenge the science, and by the vast bulk of the economic/business/media who insist reducing GHG will cost economic growth. (I guess this is because our 40-year-old coal plants are so close to Immaculate Conception – damn near perfect.)

The disarray of the clean energy community is partially to blame:

1. Enviros banded together in 2001 to stop the Democratic-led Senate Energy Panel from introducing a bill that would mandate clean energy, including recycled energy. We worked to cut a deal with Billy Tauzin, then Republican head of the House Commerce Committee, who had insisted that an RPS would be ‘Dead on Arrival’ at the House until we showed him that Louisiana, although short on good solar or wind prospects, had lots of waste heat that could be recycled and lots of CHP opportunities. The collective group of environmentalists, stupidly seeing energy recycling and CHP as the enemy, persuaded Senator Jeffords to threaten to pull his support for the Senate energy bill if it included all forms of clean energy. No bill. Aaargh!
    
2. We worked to build a coalition to get the best possible bill through the House last year, given our good luck at having a real friend of and believer in clean energy in the general counsel position to the Subcommittee on Energy and ended up with fights within USCHA, with EPA, and with the Renewable advocates. We are collectively the Edison Electric Dream Team for an opposition. Engine and turbine manufacturers feared using the term ‘recycled energy’ because they only were interested in legislation that helped create a market for their machines. EPA feared they would lose a line item on their budget if we strayed away from CHP. The climate change leader of one of the major environmental organizations told the others he could not wait for the ‘bastards to get out of the process’ referring to those of us seeking to broaden the clean energy definition to include CHP and industrial waste recycling. In the end, we lacked the cohesion and the economic arguments to gain enough Republican defections. We ended up with no clean energy standard provision (Called RPS) and no tax package.
    
3. The ethanol community takes serious criticism for net fossil fuel reduction, but ignores the fact that good CHP could raise the net fossil gain from 16,000 Btu per gallon to 51,000 Btu’s per gallon. 

Do we unite and promote all clean energy, or do we keep fighting over who shares the few scraps not covered by monopoly protected generation? 

We, who produce or promote clean energy, with any method, need each other.

• Renewables: Solar and wind are easy to understand as clean and have broad public sex appeal. Seven windy states and sunny southwestern states are supportive, but the rust belt states see added costs and wealth transfer to windy states. Geothermal has friends in good resource states, but offers little in the way of electric power in a majority of the states. As long as clean energy only includes renewables, clean energy legislation is vulnerable to some powerful arguments including cost for everyone and load factor for wind and solar. Yeah, there are technical dreams but we need votes now.
   
• CHP is less sexy, not as obviously clean, since it often starts burning fossil fuel, but has very wide applicability and is competitive against today’s average retail prices. It avoids half of the CO2, eases wire congestion, and helps balance load with wind. It seldom receives much over half of the value it creates and thus has not boomed. But the CHP community, with a concerted effort, could round up a vast amount of support from the industrial states, from educational and medical institutions and from beleaguered manufacturing facilities that are being squeezed by high energy costs, and who, nearly to a person, fear renewables impact on their electric prices. These folks vote.
   
• Recycling industrial waste energy is the sleeper. It faces the most severe resource limitations – perhaps a maximum of 65,000 megawatts with current technology – but has no incremental carbon, no incremental wires, and pencils at the lowest current cost per kWh. Bundle recycled energy with CHP and other renewables in a national clean energy portfolio standard and we can at least neutralize the chamber of commerce and manufacturing associations, and get some of them to weigh in with support. There is nothing to object to about extracting energy from industrial waste streams, but the public is unaware of the benefits and there is no clear manufacturing community that benefits from deployment, as is the case with all other clean energy. The climate does not have time to wait for us to educate everyone about this form of clean energy.

So I suggest we assemble the clean energy leaders from all three sectors and seek agreement on a goal of total clean energy, form a council, and then make a united attack on every regulation that prevents clean energy or promotes more forced warming of our climate. Perhaps the Climate Institute could provide adult supervision.  Recycled Energy and CHP could swing their weight on the economics of clean energy, Renewables could swing their weight on the sex appeal of clean energy and the long term promise of a carbon free world, and we attack the load factor argument with the robustness of a grid with multiple local generators. We all concentrate on removing the regulatory barriers and extracting more of the value we create. Grants, tax credits or subsidies have to be renewed again and again, but once barriers are gone, they stay gone. We work together to make sure the emerging carbon emission rules allocate allowances based on delivered electricity and thermal output. We make job one the mitigation of climate change and stop blocking good ideas because they might help nuclear, which does help reduce carbon. We ask for an output based allowance standard for all six criteria pollutants and for CO2 to replace the present system of individual operating permits and NSPS. Let every plant invest in efficiency without losing its operating permit, but give everyone an allowance of each pollutant for every MWh they deliver that is equal to the average pollution for all MWh in the country, and then schedule reduced allowances. Let the dirty plants purchase the allowances they need from the clean energy folks. As we start receiving more of the value we create, we will lose our reliance on annually renewing subsidies and all of the clean energy industries will boom. 

This alliance could deliver a huge message and transform the climate change debate. We enlist all of the grass-roots environmental organizations to gain support by explaining the benefits of deploying all possible clean energy. We enlist manufacturing support by explaining how the regulations prevent them from capturing value from their waste streams, or from benefiting from local CHP. We enlist help from all who manufacture any component used in clean energy production. We work together with a clear understanding that the enemy is anyone who produces dirty energy.

Consider the alternative. If the clean energy community cannot get together and compromise, how can we ever expect intelligent national clean energy legislation?

The time has come for action, but we must start by uniting the clean-energy army.