durable alternatives to coal

Renewables and Efficiency:Durable Alternatives to Coal

for Powering Iowa

Four Season HarvestRenewables and Efficiency:Durable Alternatives to Coal for Powering Iowa

Grinnell College - March, 2008By Lawrence A. Gamble, P.E.

[email protected]

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Kilowatt Ours excerpt

US Energy Sources and Uses

Where our electricity comes from

Coal• Coal pollutes when it is mined, transported to the power plant, stored,

and burned. Burning coal is the major contributor to global warming, rising levels of mercury in fresh water fish, acid rain, and accounts for 72,000 asthma attacks and 2200 hospital admissions per year in Iowa alone. Coal power plants are the major source of mercury pollution. Over 300,000 babies nationwide have unsafe levels of mercury.

• Union of Concerned Scientists,

Some Statistics About the Proposed Coal PlantLocation: MarshalltownDevelopers: Alliant Energy, REC coalitionCapacity: 660 Mw Energy: 3.8 Billion kwh/year

8.5% of Iowa consumption (400,000 homes)Capacity Factor (what % of full output is utilized): 65%(only operates the equivalent of 7.8 months/yr)Cost: 1.5 billion Financing Terms: ????Energy Price: 4.5 cents per kwh ?????Excluding cost of environmental externalitiesEfficiency: Peak 44%, Overall 35% (56-65% of the energy on the fuel thrown away at the plant)Location: Waterloo Developers: LS Power (Merchant Plant) Capacity: 770 Mw

The Case Against CoalEnvironmentalEconomicJustice and Equity issuesOpportunity

Environmental

Makeup of Coal and Ash

Coal is one of the most impure of fuels. Its impurities range from trace quantities of many metals, including uranium and thorium, to much larger quantities of aluminum and iron to still larger quantities of impurities such as sulfur. Products of coal combustion include the oxides of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur; carcinogenic and mutagenic substances; and recoverable minerals of commercial value, including nuclear fuels naturally occurring in coal.

Environmental: Combustion

Greenhouse gases: Taken together, the proposed coal plants will emit as much greenhouse gas as all the existing cars in Iowa.

Coal Ash: 15 % of the original volume of coal is ash Mercury: Coal plants are the largest emitter of Mercury Nuclear: Coal-fired power plants throughout the world are the major

source of radioactive materials released to the environment. If radiation emissions from coal plants were regulated, their capital and operating costs would increase, making coal-fired power less economically competitive*

Particulates: 72,000 asthma attacks and 2200 hospital admissions per year in Iowa alone (UCS report)

Science, December 1978 - "Radiological Impact of Airborne Effluents of Coal and Nuclear Plants” J. P. McBride, R. E. Moore, J. P. Witherspoon, and R. E. Blanco

Justice and Equity

Studies show that African Americans and other minorities are far more likely than white Americans to live within a distance of coal-fired power plants at which health impacts are the worst. Coal combustion is also one of the biggest drivers of global warming, which also impacts indigenous, minority, and impoverished communities disproportionately.

Air of Injustice: African Americans and Power Plant Pollution - Clean Air Task Force, 2002

Economic: Alternatives are cheaper, even if environmental externalities not included

Union of Concerned Scientists http://go.ucsusa.org/just_the_facts/50.html

Lovins on Opportunity Cost

Fine Homebuilding, Spring 1991

Will you have a dead-end job because someone bought the wrong light bulbs?

Fuel to Light at 3%

Light Bulb Technologies

Incandescent Compact Flourescent LED

10 2.5 1

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"If every U.S. household participates in the campaign and makes their next light an ENERGY STAR, the nation will save up to $800 million in energy bills, and the reduction in air pollution will be equal to removing 1.2 million cars from the road for one year.” - EPA Administrator Christie Whitman.

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Using Energy Wisely = New Source of Energy

Negawatts vs Megawatts

Negawatt Power:The simplest solution to global warming Reed McManus, Sierra Magazine, Jan 2007

Negawatt Example: Lighting

60 watt incandescent replace with CFCF bulb cost: $1.00CF bulb power requirements: 25 wattsPower savings: 75 wattsBulb lifetime: 10,000 hoursSaved Energy: 750 kw-hours(Enough to run my home for 3 years)Cost/kwh for saved energy: 1/10 of a cent per kwhTime to install: ImmediateGreenhouse gases saved/bulb: 700 lbs of CO2

Replacing Coal With Efficiency

Coal plant Kwh: 3.8 Billion/yearEnergy Saved Per Bulb: 750 kwh# of bulbs needed: 5,011,000Households in Iowa: 1,230,000*

Bulbs per household: 4.1Cost per bulb: $1.00Total cost for 3.8 billion kwh: $5,011,00

New Coal Plant Cost: $1,500,000

*Census Bureau, ACS, 2003

The "2,000-Watt Society" program promoted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology claims it's feasible to reduce average continuous per-capita power use in industrialized countries to 2,000 watts per day--that's a two-thirds reduction in energy use for Europeans and a five-sixths decrease for spendthrift Americans--without crimping anyone's standard of living.

Sierra Club, 2007

Critiques of Efficiency

Wise Use of Energy

Efficiency PlusEffectiveness

A bright future for Iowa

EfficiencyRenewablesNo New Coal Plants

Energy and Community Wealth:Fairfield

EfficiencyBiomass CogenerationWind PowerSolar Hot WaterCity Design

Jefferson County StatisticsPopulation: 16,181Households: 6649

Energy Use Assumptions:Gasoline/Diesel: $50/household/wkHome heating: $1000/yrHot Water: $30/moElectricity: $100/mo

Annual Energy Consumption:Gasoline/Diesel: $38,000,000Home Heating: $16,181,000Hot Water: $ 5,825,160Electricity $19,417,200TOTAL $80,257,760 (Residential Only!)20 Year Total: $1.6 BILLION DOLLARS

Statewide Residential Energy Costs:

Iowa Annual total: $6 billion

Iowa 20 yr total: $1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS

If Jefferson Co replicated Osage…

Cost: $1,120,000Savings: $5,400,000 Per Year# of residents: 16,18120 yr total savings: $107,000,00020 yr savings per resident: $6600

"I don't see any difference between a dollar brought in by a new business and a dollar that's saved due to energy conservation," Wes Birdsall, Supervisor, Osage Municipal Utilities

If Poweshiek County Copied Osage…….

Cost: $1,320,000 one time costSavings: $ 6,300,000 per Year20 yr total: 127,000,00020 yr total per person: $6,66620 yr total per houshold:$17,100Population: 19,000Households: 7,400

Biomass Cogeneration

Cogeneration:Combined heat and power (CHP)

100 Units ofEnergy in Fuel

Power Plant

66 unitsWaste Heat

33 unitsElectricity

2/3 of the energy going into conventional power plants is wasted

Jefferson County Cogen Co Jefferson Co residential use: 75 million KWH

Plant Size: 10 MW Annual KWH production: 74 million KWH Fuel: Baled switchgrass Acres required: 5,200 Acres in Jefferson co: 261,000 Payments to Farmers: $2-3 Million Cost electricity: 6 cents/kwh Waste heat available: equiv to 5,000,000 gallons of oil - could heat 12,000 not-

efficient homes Plant cost: $15-20 Million Current Jefferson Co electricity costs: $19 Million

Jefferson Co Community Wind

Residential electrical use: 75,000,000 kwh/yr # of Turbines required: 18

– If we spent $5,000,000 on energy conservation projects: 5– If every home used energy like ecovillage homes: 1.8

Turbine size: 1.6 MW NEG/Micon Electricity cost: 4-6 cents/kwh Project Cost: $35 Million County residential electricity costs: $19 Million/yr

Solar Hot Water

Berwynn, Illinois Laundry Solar saves $2000/Month

Jefferson Co Community Solar Utility (Hot Water)

90% of households: 6,000 systems Cost/system: $3000 Project Cost: $18,000,000 Annual Savings: $4.5 million/yr Simple Payback: 4.5 years Next 20 years of savings: $90 million dollars

-13,500 per household Finance through revolving loan fund If installed over 5 years, would require 30-50 people working full

time just in installation Build them here?

Earl Mason, Habitat for Humanity, Mason City Iowa

1400 sq feetOccupied by a Family of 4$175 annual heating and cooling

High insulation levels allowBuilding to be heated with the water heater. Furnace elimination paid for extra insulation

RMI clip



What would it take to make Fairfield the Amsterdam of America?

What would it take to make Portland (Oregon) (or Grinnell Iowa) the Amsterdam of America?

That is, with relation to bicycles

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This is a question recently asked by the Portland Office of Transportation, as a part of their update to the citywide Bicycle Master Plan.

1) User fees for cars: - Introduction of European-style gas taxes that raise the cost per gallon of gasoline to above $5. - Congestion pricing in congested areas, following Ken Livingstone's London example, that allows

bicycles free entrance but charges cars.

2) Creation of expanded bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. In areas of high congestion, remove the least-efficient use: automobiles. Use the additional space to provide facilities dedicated to bicycles, so they can zip by pedestrians and streetcars on their own paths.

- In Downtown Portland, for instance, this might mean taking a lane of 3-lane one-way streets and making it into a Class 1 bicycle facility. This bikeway would fit between the existing sidewalk and the parking lane.

- In neighborhood commercial districts, when over-crowding causes congestion, automobile traffic needs to be the first thing to go, and bicycle facilities should be the first thing installed to take its place.

- In the neighborhoods, this would mean the creation of bicycle routes where bikes can travel as far as possible, unhindered by vehicles. All stop signs on bicycle boulevards should be replaced by traffic circles. Stop lights should act like the one at 39th & SE Clinton, permitting bikes but stopping cars.

- Bicycle "freeways" like the Springwater Corridor should be built in as many places as possible: Sullivan's Gulch, the North Portland Waterfront, along the SE Portland RR ROW that extends from the river to Crystal Springs Gardens/Golf Course, etc.

3) Bicycle rental facilities should be widely dispersed throughout the city that provide bikes for little or no charge for those who need to use them for a quick trip.

4) Bicycle parking should be provided in mass quantities at popular destinations. There are already complaints about a shortage of bicycle parking opportunities in downtown Portland. This needs to be resolved ASAP, and bicycle parking lots need to be fitted into the infrastructure where demand requires them. Outside of the Amsterdam rail station, for instance, is a sea of hundreds of bikes, all locked up right next to one another. I've also seen stacked bicycle parking. Whatever it takes to fit the bikes into the real estate available.

5) Commuter rail systems need to bring people into the central city from neighboring cities, and provide plenty of room for secure bicycle parking at their stations, as well as plenty of room on board for bicycle hooks. Part of bicycle mobility is the ability to extend the range of your bicycle by hopping on a fast, efficient train to get to places slightly further afoot.

6) Development density within the city needs to increase, so that more people are living closer to more destinations, making the bicycle just inherently a more sensible option for making more trips.

7) Automobile parking needs to be regulated to make it just a little less easy to park everywhere for free. Charging for parking in most commercial districts would be a good start. Taxing every surface parking space would be another good start -- say, $5 per space per month? This would make people and businesses seriously consider exactly how many car parking spaces they really need and are willing to pay for.

Paris Velib Project20,000 bikes1451 stations (In contrast, Paris Metro = 297 stations)

Months in operation - 4Registered users - over 3,000,000Daily trips - 350,0006,000,000 miles traveled400 employess

Velib cont’d

Paid for by ad revenue and run by an ad company (JC Decaux pays 4.3 million plus turns in all proceeds to the city - expected to net $30,000,000)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDBfwU6zni8

Cost to User: 1 euro the day, 5 euros per week, 29 euros per year for an unlimited number of journeys of less than one half hour

Local economy - examples

Navarre, Spain - Energy Cuba - Organic Agriculture Curitiba - Urban Design Paris - Velib http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=hDBfwU6zni8 Denmark/Northern Germany wind

– NEG/Micon research division Vedic City, Maharishi University of Management- four

season vegetable production Cedar Falls Buy Fresh/Buy Local Clipper Wind - 300 people employed in Cedar Rapids

Navarre• Population: 593,000• Capital City: Pamploma, 300,000 in metro area• Next largest city: 32,000• Size: 70 miles square

Navarre Energy Sources• Energy from Renewables: 60% (2004)

– 43.6% from 28 wind farms– 12% from over 100 small-scale water turbines– 5.3% from 2 biomass and 2 biogas plants.

• Commitment to renewables: 100% by 2010 (2004)• Photovoltaic installations: Spain’s largest at 1.2 mw, with

hundreds of smaller ones

• # of jobs in Navarre in wind: 3,600• # of jobs in Spain in wind: 100,000

• Danish and German examples

Navarre Wind• Home to Accionia Energy, world’s

largest wind developer

Iowa connection

• Acciona recently started construction on its first wind turbine manufacturing plant in the United States, located in West Branch, Iowa. Upon its completion in late 2007, the 200,190 square-foot plant will supply turbines for Acciona wind farms throughout North America and will utilize Acciona's proprietary technology to produce its AWP 1.5-77 and AWP 1.5-82 models. The West Branch facility will be Acciona's fourth wind turbine assembly plant; two currently operate in Spain and one in China.

• "It is fair to say that we are talking about hundreds if not thousands of new jobs in the next couple of years just related to wind energy," Culver says. Culver has been making the case to Europeans that Iowa not only sits near the geographic center of the country, making it a transportation hub, but Iowa also sits on a major wind ridge in the U.S.

• "Arguably Iowa has more opportunities related to renewable energy than any state in the nation and so we're here rolling up our sleeves and working hard to tap that potential," Culver says. There are about eight-hundred different parts that go into a wind turbine and Culver says his effort is shifting to get the companies that make those parts to open facilities in Iowa.”

Governor Culver on Wind

• "The first challenge was to get the turbine and the blade manufacturers to our state...but the next phase will clearly be on the gear boxes, for example, that power the turbine," Culver says. "There is a concern about not having enough of those components and (it's) the same with bearings and a couple of other key components." Culver's visiting Germany, Denmark and Spain this week. At the end of his tour, Culver will have visited with 18 different companies that either build wind turbines or make the components for wind turbines.

• Monday in Denmark, Culver visited Seimens, which is operating a blade manufacturing plant in Fort Madison. He'll visit Acciona in Spain tomorrow. That's the company opening a turbine plant in West Branch. Culver's also met with a number of the companies that supply Clipper, the company which is opening a blade manufacturing plant in Cedar Rapids. Culver attended a wind energy conference in Germany and was invited to speak at the event which attracted people from 30 different countries.

Governor Culver on Wind

Navarre - Solar

• Home to Spain’s largest PV array (1.2 mw)

• Hundreds of smaller installations• Working to become world leader in PV

production• Community development model

Navarre - Organization

• The community is governed as an autonomous region, with its own parliament (Parlamento de Navarra) and government (Gobierno de Navarra). As in other autonomous regions in Spain, health, employment, education and social services, together with housing, urban development, environment protection policies are under the responsibility of its own institutions. Unlike other regions (and like the Basque Country), it has almost full responsibility for collecting taxes, which must follow the overall guidelines established by the Spanish government but may have some minor differences.

Global Warming Strategy for Iowa

EfficiencyRenewablesNo New Coal

Missouri Cooperative Abandons New Coal Plant In Favor of Clean Energy

Kansas City, March 3, 2008Today, Associated Electric Cooperative, one of the nation’s largest and most respected rural electric cooperatives announced they are “postponing indefinitely” their plans to build a massive new coal-fired power plant near Norborne in Northwest Missouri. Associated Electric will pursue wind, energy efficiency and clean-burning natural gas instead.

Associated Electric is owned by, and provides wholesale power to, six regional and 51 local electric cooperative systems in Missouri, northeast Oklahoma and southeast Iowa that serve more than 850,000 customers. In the past two years Associated Electric has become the wind energy leader in Missouri among all electric providers, including municipal and investor owned utilities.

• “Today’s announcement is the latest breaking news in a tidal wave of progress as our nation transitions from nineteenth century coal technology to a modern and clean 21st century clean energy economy,” said Bruce Nilles, Director of Sierra Club National Coal Campaign. Four years ago the country was considering plans to build as many as 160 new coal-fired power plants and today AECI brings the total number of plants abandoned or defeated to 63. And all indications are that this trend is accelerating as costs of coal skyrocket and the nation focuses its attention on global warming solutions.

• In the past month three major Wall Street Banks announced they were turning against new coal plant investments because of global warming concerns and the federal government abandoned plans to build a prototype clean coal plant because of skyrocketing costs.

Press release, Sierra Club Coal Campaign

• Ontario (the jursdiction in North America with Feed in Tariffs like Germany and Japan) has committed to close down it’s coal plants by 2015.

• Its political leaders simply concluded that the health and environmental costs of coal burning are too high. Jack Gibbons, Director of the Ontario Clear Air Alliance, calls coal "a nineteenth century fuel that has no place in twenty-first century Ontario."

Public Policy

Feed in tariffs– Feed laws have enabled tremendous growth in

renewable energy and stunningly high local ownership rates for renewable energy: 45% local ownership of German wind projects and 83% of Danish ones. These gains have come at a lower cost to produce electricity than under renewable standards in other European nations and have supported a greater diversity of energy sources, such as solar photovoltaic.

Minnesota Feed-In Tariff Could Lower Cost, Boost Renewables and Expand Local Ownership - John Farrell, Institute for Local Self Reliance, 2007

In Germany, the massive expansion of renewable capacity has cost average ratepayers less than $2.00 per month.

Feed in tariff cost in Minnesota:0.3 cents per kwh out of 10 cent /kwh total

price

We need a different on-ramp for people from disadvantaged communities The leaders of the climate establishment came in through one door and now they want to squeeze everyone through that same door. It’s not going to work. If we want to have a broad-based environmental movement, we need more entry points. ...

You can’t take a building you want to weatherize, put it on a ship to China and then have them do it and send it back. So we are going to have to put people to work in this country—weatherizing millions of buildings, putting up solar panels, constructing wind farms. Those green-collar jobs can provide a pathway out of poverty for someone who has not gone to college.

If we can get these youth in on the ground floor of the solar industry now, where they can be installers today, they’ll become managers in five years and owners in 10. And then they become inventors. The green economy has the power to deliver new sources of work, wealth and health to low-income people—while honoring the Earth. If you can do that, you just wiped out a whole bunch of problems. We can make what is good for poor black kids good for the polar bears and good for the country."

- Van Jones, 2007 NYT

The Great Work of GenerationsMINE: - Mall of America and suburbia“Greatest misallocation of resources in Human history” - James Howard Kuntsler

UPCOMING: - Really good urban/village design: Make dense human settlements the most attractive places to live- Solar powered Ecocities - Co-exist with Otherness

The Next Generation

Apollo

Paris Velib Project20,000 bikes1451 stations (In contrast, Paris Metro = 297 stations)

Months in operation - 4Registered users - over 3,000,000Daily trips - 350,0006,000,000 miles traveled400 employess

Velib cont’d

Paid for by ad revenue and run by an ad company (JC Decaux pays 4.3 million plus turns in all proceeds to the city - expected to net $30,000,000)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDBfwU6zni8

Cost to User: 1 euro the day, 5 euros per week, 29 euros per year for an unlimited number of journeys of less than one half hour

Biomass Cogeneration

Cogeneration:Combined heat and power (CHP)

100 Units ofEnergy in Fuel

Power Plant

66 unitsWaste Heat

33 unitsElectricity

2/3 of the energy going into conventional power plants is wasted

The Stone Age Didn’t End Because We Ran Out of Stones….

Other issues with oil….

Peak OilGlobal Warming Oil Wars

Peak Oil

Oil prices, profits, politics

Electricity Flow 2002(Quadrillion Btu)

EIA Annual Energy Review 2002

Coal

Nat GasOil

NukeRenewables

Conversion Loss

ResidentialCommercial

Industrial

"If every U.S. household participates in the campaign and makes their next light an ENERGY STAR, the nation will save up to $800 million in energy bills, and the reduction in air pollution will be equal to removing 1.2 million cars from the road for one year.” - EPA Administrator Christie Whitman.

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Earl Mason, Habitat for Humanity, Mason City Iowa

1400 sq feetOccupied by a Family of 4$175 annual heating and cooling

High insulation levels allowBuilding to be heated with the water heater. Furnace elimination paid for extra insulation

Top of Iowa Wind Farm

Ecosystem Services: The Economy of Nature

Guerilla Solar from “power to the people”



HypercarBut each Hypercar® vehicle then becomes a 30- to 40-kilowatt power station on wheels. It's parked about 96 percent of the time, usually in habitual places. Someone will gladly pay an annual lease fee of about $4,000 to 5,000 for the privilege of driving the "power plant" the other 4 percent of the time.

Suppose that someone is you. You drive your Hypercar® vehicle to work. By a funny coincidence, you happen to work at a building powered by a fuel cell—leased to the landlord by the same utility that leased you your car. As you park your car, you plug it in both to the electricity grid and to a little snap-on pipe that brings surplus hydrogen out from the reformer in the building (since that's not kept fully occupied all the time, it makes a little extra, avoiding the need to set up a whole new infrastructure of reformers dedicated purely to cars).

But you're not plugging in to recharge your car: quite the contrary, while you sit at your desk, your power-plant-on-wheels is silently sending kilowatts back to the grid. You're automatically getting credited for that production at the real-time price (which is pretty high during the daytime). Thus your second-biggest, but previously idle, household asset is earning you enough money to pay almost half your lease fee.

If the entire U.S. light vehicle fleet consisted of Hypercar® vehicles, it would collectively have about five times the generating capacity of the national grid.

Jones told The New York Times:

“The green economy has the power to deliver new sources of work, wealth and health to low-income people — while honoring the Earth. If you can do that, you just wiped out a whole bunch of problems. We can make what is good for poor black kids good for the polar bears and good for the country.”

30

U.S. Total Energy Consumption by Source

(Quadrillion BTU)

10

20

40

1800

1900

Coal

Wood

Oil

NuclearElectric

HydroNatGas

Energy

Former ORNL researchers J. P. McBride, R. E. Moore, J. P. Witherspoon, and R. E. Blanco made this point in their article "Radiological Impact of Airborne Effluents of Coal and Nuclear Plants" in the December 8, 1978, issue of Science magazine. They concluded that Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations. This ironic situation remains true today and is addressed in this article.The fact that coal-fired power plants throughout the world are the major sources of radioactive materials released to the environment has several implications. It suggests that coal combustion is more hazardous to health than nuclear power and that it adds to the background radiation burden even more than does nuclear power. It also suggests that if radiation emissions from coal plants were regulated, their capital and operating costs would increase, making coal-fired power less economically competitive

In Ontario, Canada's most populous province, the three major political parties agreed early this year on the phase out of that province's five large coal-fired power plants by 2015. This bold plan accelerated with the early October election of Premier Dalton McGuinty, who has pledged to close all the coal-fired power plants by 2007, eight years ahead of the earlier deadline.

The goal is to clean up the air locally and help stabilize climate globally. In terms of cutting carbon emissions, shutting down just the huge Nanticoke power station on the shore of Lake Erie would be equal to taking 4 million cars off Canadian roads.

Ontario is the first Canadian province to turn its back on coal. Its political leaders simply concluded that the health and environmental costs of coal burning are too high. Jack Gibbons, Director of the Ontario Clear Air Alliance, calls coal "a nineteenth century fuel that has no place in twenty-first century Ontario." Other East Canadian provinces including Nova Scotia and New Brunswick may soon follow its lead.

Several leading industrial countries are turning away from coal including the United Kingdom and Germany. The United Kingdom, which used coal to launch the Industrial Revolution more than two centuries ago, cut coal use by 40 percent between 1990 and 2001 mainly by substituting natural gas. (See data.)

Germany, Europe's largest industrial economy, cut coal use by a comparable 41 percent from 1990 to 2001. Reduced subsidies, gains in energy productivity, and the massive harnessing of wind energy means the use of coal may be on its way out in Germany as well.