Los Angeles Hits Its Clean Energy Goal

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Los Angeles, it would seem, is taking an aggressive stance on cleaning up its smoggy reputation. First, we received word that L.A. Metro had retired its last diesel bus, in favor of a cleaner-burning compressed natural gas fleet. Now, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has announced a major green milestone for the City of Angels: in 2010, L.A. drew nearly 20% of its electricity from renewable sources.

This, the Mayor notes, is no small feat, as the city has managed to quadruple its renewable energy portfolio in just six years, in pursuit of the 20% by 2010 goal set by Villaraigosa when he became mayor. He notes that this announcement illustrates that L.A. Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is a national leader in cost-effective, environmentally-responsible energy. “We went from worst to first,” he said, in a statement, ”while also keeping our rates lower than other major utilities.”

The 20% by 2010 goal has been achieved through a combination of major projects and power agreements, including the LADWP’s Pine Tree Wind Power Plant, which is currently the nation’s largest wind farm owned by a municipal utility and located in the Tehachapi Mountains. Wind power comprised nearly 50% of all LADWP’s renewable energy in 2010, with small hydro-electric contributing 30%, geothermal/biofuels 22%, and solar 1%.

It is said that this amount of renewable power provided to customers — 4,500 gigawatt-hours (GWh) — is equivalent to annually removing 750,000 homes from the power grid, preventing 2.5 million metric tons of CO2 emissions, or removing nearly to 490,000 cars from the road. In addition to achieving nearly 20% renewable energy in 2010, LADWP said it has reduced its carbon emissions to 22% below 1990 levels through “a combination of expanding renewable energy; replacing old generators with efficient and ultra-clean power plants; and promoting energy efficiency among its customers.”

In going forward, LADWP said it is in the process of divesting of the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona by 2014, which will reduce carbon emissions by an additional 26%. It will also continue to develop new wind and solar projects close to existing transmission lines and other infrastructure. This includes local in-basin solar and a feed-in tariff program which would allow private parties to sell power to LADWP for distribution on the grid.

Danish PM promises EU push for energy efficiency

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Denmark’s Prime MInister Helle Thorning-Schmidt has promised to push energy efficiency initiatives while the Danes are running the EU.

She said: “It’s good for Europe, it’s good for European technologies and it’s good for European jobs. Even though we have a crisis now, we have to focus on greener technology, energy efficiency. This is good for the environment, it’s good for the climate and it’s also good for the energy security that so many of our member states are concerned about.”

She continued: “We will work for a greener Europe. The EU has developed an ambitious policy of energy and climate issues. We are leader on the global stage but to maintain our position and encourage others we need new initiatives in areas such as energy efficiency and renewable energy,” she said.

“More than 20 million jobs are linked to the environment in one way or another. There is a huge potential here but we face a real risk that high-tech research and knowledge-intensive jobs will move out of Europe to more attractive regions. The Danish Presidency will work hard to ensure that a sense of green research and green jobs stays in Europe in the future.”

Largest Offshore Wind Farm Is Opened Off the British Coast

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A coalition of European companies today opened a 367-megawatt wind farm off the British coast, a massive project that developers say will power as many as 320,000 households annually and is the world’s largest offshore wind project to date. The Walney Wind Farm, located nine miles (15 kilometers) off Cumbria in the Irish Sea, is comprised of 102 wind turbines, each with a capacity of 3.6 megawatts. The £1 billion ($1.58 billion) project was developed by some European utility giants — including British power company SSE and Denmark’s Dong Energy — and financial service companies. According to developers, it was built more cheaply and quickly than previous offshore wind projects, with its turbines and cables installed in less than six months. While Britain’s new energy secretary, Ed Davey, called the project the “newest, biggest, and fastest built jewel” in the UK’s offshore wind sector, the project will be dwarfed by the 630-turbine London Array off Kent, which is expected to be online by the end of the year. Overall, Britain has more than 1.5 gigawatts of installed offshore wind energy, and plans to raise that capacity to 18 gigawatts by 2020.

Glaciers, Ice Caps Losing 150 Billion Tons of Ice Annually

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A new analysis of global satellite data has found that the world’s glaciers and ice caps — excluding Antarctica and Greenland — lost about 150 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2010, adding about 0.4 millimeters to global sea rise annually. Using data from the twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder compiled what they say is the most comprehensive data on planetary ice loss. The satellites, which are part of a joint project between NASA and Germany, travel around Earth in tandem 16 times a day and are capable of sensing subtle variations in the planet’s mass and gravitational pull. While the new calculations are significantly lower than earlier land-based studies, the researchers say the findings still show that the planet’s ice is melting and causing sea levels to rise. “The Earth is losing an incredible amount of ice to the oceans annually, and these new results will help us answer important questions in terms of both sea rise and how the planet’s cold regions are responding to global change,” said John Wahr, a physics professor at CU-Boulder and lead author of the study, published in the journal Nature. During the same time period, ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland, including their peripheral ice caps and glaciers, was about 385 billion tons of ice annually.

Yorkshire Water starts work on £30m ‘poo-power’ scheme

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Bradford, UK – Yorkshire Water has started work on a £30-million project to install the UK’s first BioThelys sludge treatment plant. The facility will create energy from human waste and effluent.

The project is located at the 750-acre Esholt sewage works on the outskirts of Bradford – one of Yorkshire Water’s largest facilities, receiving up to 300 litres of waste water a second which it treats before discharging it into the River Aire.

The creation of the UK’s first BioThelys thermal hydrolysis plant will enable Yorkshire Water to save around £1.3 million a year at the Esholt site alone, the company said.
The Yorkshire works produces around 26,000 tonnes of sludge as a byproduct each year. This is currently disposed of mainly through incineration or landfill.

The new plant will employ Veolia’s thermal hydrolysis system (Biothelys) combined with anaerobic digestion (AD) to dispose of the sludge. It will take around 18 months to complete and is expected to be commissioned in early 2013.

The process uses heat and pressure to break down sewage sludge prior to treatment by AD, which creates energy-rich biogas. This can then be burned to produce electricity, which in turn will be used to power much of the plant.

The digested sludge generated following thermal hydrolysis is classified as ’enhanced treated’. This can be legally used as a fertiliser or soil conditioner for agricultural crops and for horticulture.

Yorkshire Water’s annual electricity bill is around £45 million with 70% of its carbon footprint – 453,000 tonnes of CO2e – coming from electricity, according to Ben Roche, manager of energy and carbon.

“At the moment we already generate a third of the energy we use on site at Esholt through renewable energy technologies, but our aim is for this huge facility to become fully energy self-sufficient by 2015.”

Yorkshire Water has awarded the £28m contract for the design and build of a pioneering new energy scheme to a JV between engineering specialists Morgan Sindall, and Grontmij.

The contract, worth £25m to Morgan Sindall, is part of Yorkshire Water’s AMP5 large projects framework, to which the JV was appointed in September 2010.

Solar subsidy cuts spark job fears

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The Government recently unveiled plans for further cuts to solar subsidies, sparking concerns over the future of the industry and thousands of clean-tech jobs.

Energy Minister Greg Barker claimed the reforms to payments for small-scale solar would mean a bigger scheme that could deliver an “extraordinarily ambitious” 22GW of panels – the equivalent of 3.3 million installations for homes and businesses.

He insisted the changes would mean that the payments tracked the falling costs of solar technology, delivering value for money for consumers who pay for the scheme on energy bills and preventing another “bubble” in the industry.

But campaigners said the proposals to cut subsidies further, announced as the Government said it was pressing ahead with plans to halve the payments, would leave the solar industry “dead in a ditch”, putting thousands of jobs at risk.

Ministers have previously warned the falling costs of technology made the payments too generous, causing too rapid a take-up of solar panels.

As a result, the feed-in tariffs scheme, which pays householders, organisations and businesses for electricity from small-scale renewables, has spiralled over budget.

Today the Department of Energy and Climate Change revealed the popularity of solar panels meant the £1 billion budget for the current spending period had been blown, and £1.7 billion was already committed to payments.

Mr Barker said the changes were about creating a scheme “for the many”, which would deliver better value for consumers who pay for the subsidies on their bills and put solar on course to be a competitive alternative to fossil fuels.

He said the solar industry should “get real” over subsidies, adding: “I fully expect the industry to expand this year, and continue to expand, but on a sustainable basis not in short bursts of temporary workers.”

He warned: “Never again must we have a fixed-price tariff that allows a bubble to grow.”

Instead of letting the industry set its prices according to the subsidies, the new regime will track the falling costs of solar technology, he said.

Under the proposals, the already-planned halving of solar payments for new installations from March – or from last December if the Government wins a Supreme Court challenge over the issue – will be followed by further cuts in July.

Subsequent reductions which reflect falls in solar costs will be brought in every six months.

Decc estimates that the new system will deliver 620,000 new installations up until 2015 for £500 million, far less than the £1.7 billion cost of the 250,000 solar projects already installed.

Mr Barker said: “Our new plans will see almost two-and-a-half times more installations than originally projected by 2015 which is good news for the sustainable growth of the industry.

“We are proposing a more predictable and transparent scheme as the costs of technologies fall, ensuring a long-term, predictable rate of return that will closely track changes in prices and deployment.”

But Howard Johns, spokesman for the Cut Don’t Kill coalition of solar businesses and environmental campaigners, said: “The Government’s initial cut to the tariff was brutal, and this further cut will be utterly devastating for the UK solar sector.

“The hard facts are that a cut on this scale will leave the solar industry dead in a ditch, destroying tens of thousands of jobs and cutting off a green, high-tech British industry just as it starts to flourish.

“In their rhetoric, ministers claim to want a renewable future, but they are destroying the very businesses that can make that future happen.

“This whole proposal has been rushed and chaotic, and while ministers try to force it through arbitrarily, hard-working people are losing their livelihoods.”

Decc said improvements had been made to the proposals for the subsidies in the future, including lowering the level of energy efficiency housing must have to qualify for payments, as the previous tougher proposals were “impractical”.

And officials would be examining whether community and housing association projects should be exempt from a reduced rate for schemes which claim the tariffs for a series of installations.

The reduced rate aims to take account of the lower costs of bigger projects and curb excess profits made by companies who install panels on people’s homes and then claim the payments while the householders see a reduction in bills.

Under the new plans unveiled today the rate will apply only to schemes with 25 or more sets of solar panels.

The Department also said the overspend on the budget will be met by money from underspending on large-scale renewable subsidies, for example for offshore wind.

Mr Barker, responding to a move this week by Conservative colleagues urging David Cameron to cut subsidies for onshore wind power, said while there were concerns about turbines in some locations, the Tories were enthusiastic about solar and decentralised energy.

But while a new consultation on other types of small-scale renewable, also published today, proposes raising the payments for micro-combined heat and power boilers, it also sets out plans to cut small-scale wind and hydro scheme payments.

Green MP Caroline Lucas said the new Lib Dem Energy Secretary Ed Davey should have delayed the solar policy change and got it right, warning that the proposals could see tariffs reduced as often as every two months.

“But today’s announcement once again leaves the industry reeling, with tariff cuts going far deeper than the falling costs of installation warrant.

“While the Government sounds ambitious in its aims, the actual policy looks weak – with ministers giving themselves the option of changing the tariff every two months.

“The one thing that business needs is certainty, yet these Government cuts are being made so fast that it is destabilising the industry. The proposed tariff cuts also go deeper than the falling costs of installation should warrant.”

IKEA adds ECOtality charging to California store

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Swedish furniture giant IKEA has added four ECOtality electric vehicle (EV) charging stations to its store in East Palo Alto, California.

This is the eighth store in the US to which IKEA has added charging systems and the company said it plans to add to units to at least one more West Coast location.

Jill Matherson, store manager at the East Palo Alto IKEA, said, ‘IKEA has a never-ending job of asking what we can do today for a better tomorrow. Hosting EV charging stations at IKEA East Palo Alto is one way to help accomplish this goal – and we could not have done it without the support of our partners ECOtality and PG&E.’

Jason Smith, ECOtality’s San Francisco Bay Area Manager, added, ‘The Blink Network is about making the EV lifestyle fit the lifestyle of drivers nationwide. We are excited to install Blink charging stations at the East Palo Alto IKEA as this is ideally suited to offer EV drivers the opportunity to charge at a highly desirable destination location.’

Last November, IKEA added EV charging to its store in Bay-area city Emeryville and in November to a shop in Carson, Los Angeles.

U.S. approves first new nuclear plant in a generation

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ROCKVILLE, Maryland (Reuters) – U.S. regulators on Thursday approved plans to build the first new nuclear power plant in more than 30 years in spite of objections of the panel’s chairman who cited safety concerns stemming from Japan’s disastrous 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 4-1 to allow Atlanta-based Southern Co to build and operate two new nuclear power reactors at its existing Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. The units will cost Southern and partners about $14 billion and enter service as soon as 2016 and 2017.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko cast an extraordinary dissenting vote, citing the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March 2011 that spurred the NRC to review whether existing and new U.S. reactors could withstand natural disasters like earthquakes and floods.

“I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima never happened.” Jaczko said. “I believe it requires some type of binding commitment that the Fukushima enhancements that are currently projected and currently planned to be made would be made before the operation of the facility.”

The Obama administration has offered Southern and its partners $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees as an incentive.

The new plant will use AP1000 reactors built by Westinghouse Electric, a standardized design approved by the NRC in December that will be the foundation for several other proposed nuclear plants. Westinghouse is majority owned by Japanese multinational Toshiba Corp.

SLOW NUCLEAR “RENAISSANCE”

There have been no nuclear power plants in the United States since the partial meltdown of the reactor core of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, which caused construction costs for nuclear plants to skyrocket and stopped dozens of planned plants in their tracks.

Southern’s Vogtle project is the first in a queue of permits filed by U.S. utilities, like Scana Corp, that were once predicted to usher in a “renaissance” of nuclear power. Nuclear power accounts for about 20 percent of U.S. electric generation.

Interest in building new nuclear plants had risen about a decade ago when natural gas prices were soaring and experts thought the U.S. Congress would place first-ever limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

But the case for widespread U.S. nuclear plant construction has eroded due to abundant natural gas supplies, slow electricity demand in a weak U.S. economy, lack of financing and uncertainty following the Fukushima disaster.

New nuclear plants are “more questionable because there are economic factors right now which favor gas-fueled power plants and the fact that the economy is only growing slowly means that nationally the need for new generation is lower than people were expecting in 2007,” said Michael Golay, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A 1,000-megawatt natural gas plant takes a few years to permit and build and costs up to $1 billion for the most efficient, combined-cycle model. A similar-sized nuclear reactor however could take five to 10 years to develop and build and cost in excess of $5 billion.

Industry experts say building interest is centered in Southeast states like Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Alabama and Florida, where land is plentiful and a population shift from northern states has boosted electricity demand.

UK retailers fail to meet food and packaging waste pledges

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British retailers have failed to meet a pledge to cut back on supply chain food and packaging waste, with thousands of tonnes of fruit and vegetables, milk and yogurt thrown away every year, after being rejected for being the wrong shape, size or standard.

The disclosure is embarrassing for the British Retail Consortium (BRC), which has successfully met or exceeded a host of other Government and voluntary targets which aim to slash the sector’s carbon footprint, such as diverting more waste from landfill and helping to reduce domestic food waste.

In its annual green progress report published on Tuesday, the BRC says that reducing waste, energy and water usage makes good business sense and claims that much of the progress made to date is the result of successful collaboration.

The BRC estimates that the retail sector is directly responsible for around 3.5 per cent of UK greenhouse gas emissions – with emissions from corporate buildings, refrigeration and transport accounting for over three-quarters of this figure.

The report admits that retailers have not yet met Phase Two of the voluntary Courtauld Commitment, which pledged to reduce product and packaging waste in the grocery supply chain by five per cent – having trimmed it by only 0.4 per cent,the equivalent of 10,000 tonnes, since the pledge was made in 2010.

The latest figures from the Government’s waste adviser, WRAP, reveal that food, drink and packaging waste in the UK supply chain is about 6.6 million tonnes a year and costs £5 billion.

WRAP said in a statement: “There has been a pronounced diversion of waste away from landfill and other disposal methods towards recovery and recycling routes. While this is extremely encouraging, it does not directly contribute to the Courtauld target which aims to drive waste prevention behaviour.”

Bob Gordon, head of environment at the BRC, said there had been the additional impact of a year-on-year increase in sales of 1.4 per cent. He said: “This is a relatively new target and while it is disappointing that we have not met it, it needs more time because it is not a straightforward issue. We could reduce packaging, for example, but that could increase food waste.”

Among the positive initiatives it has highlighted are those from supermarket chain Morrisons – which sells smaller potatoes as baby roasters, and those with skin blemishes or odd shapes in value packs.

The report shows that the sector has already exceeded key targets to reduce waste and to cut transport emissions. Retailers committed to reducing waste sent to landfill to below 15 per cent by 2013, for example, and signatories beat that target two years early, sending just 14 per cent of waste to landfill last year. On transport, retailers committed to reducing delivery emissions by 15 per cent by 2013 compared with 2005 levels, and by 2011 these emissions were down by 20 per cent.

Gordon added: “Despite current economic difficulties, retailers are continuing to work with their suppliers to meet tougher sustainability goals. This BRC assessment shows that the UK has the most progressive retail sector in the world and, crucially, that work with consumers and environmental groups is driving standards up. Some previous targets have been met ahead of schedule but investment continues, protecting consumers’ wallets and the planets.”

The environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, said she believed reducing customer impact would continue to be a key challenge for retailers, adding: “It’s important all concerned build on this and work to create a green economy, by finding innovative ways to minimise waste, introduce resource efficiency measures, use water and raw materials more sparingly.”

Some 52 per cent of the retail sector by value have signed up to the commitments – some from Government and others self-imposed – while additional signatories as third-party commentators to the 60-page report include environmental groups Friends of the Earth, WWF and Green Alliance.

The BRC is the lead trade association representing the whole range of retailers in the UK, from the large multiples and department stores through to independents, selling a wide selection of products through centre-of-town, out-of-town, rural and virutal stores.

The BRC-led project, ‘A Better Retailing Climate’ was launched in 2008, reporting back annually, and committing businesses to sector-wide environmental ambitions.

Build eco friendly homes and save money

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Mark Edwards has turned into more than just an eco fan. It started when he became frustrated by the soaring fuel bills in his draughty Georgian house in the village of Shrawley in Worcestershire, tired of piling on the extra jumpers. He and his wife Lucy felt fuel-poor. Their elder son Jacob joined his school’s eco-action committee and urged his parents to think green. The family, including younger son Nathaniel, lit upon the idea of building a new house in the garden which would incorporate all the latest green technology.

Like many great plans, it didn’t work out exactly as they had hoped. There were huge delays, they lost their builder, Mark had to take on managing the project and it took four years to finish.

By this time Lucy wanted their existing house retrofitted with as much similar eco-technology as possible. Mark, exhausted and now cash-poor, put his eco creation, Valley Views, on the market at £550,000. “My family is proud really. Nathaniel has now joined the eco-action committee at school too.”

Mark’s boundless enthusiasm may have cost him dear but it is infectious and he has become a bit of an expert along the way – the Channel 4 television series Grand Designs invited him on board as an adviser on its roadshow tour.

He was first inspired by Lord Foster’s “Gherkin” in London. “I wanted a Gherkin-in-the-country but in the end I had to have something the planners would pass,” he says. The house has wonderful rural views, an unusual curved wall – a reference to the Gherkin – and state-of-the-art energy-saving capacity.

The four-bedroom house, which costs just £3 a day to heat, has novel skirting-board radiators, space-rocket paint finishes, sheep’s wool insulation, a warm and cold air filtering system, and a kitchen range that can recover energy and control the heating system. There is no need for kettles as a tap provides instant hot water at just under boiling point. Valley Views is for sale through Estates Direct (08456 313131).

Much of the expertise had to come from abroad. “I flew to Germany to meet a man who could tell me about how to match the latest German technologies with British houses and British weather, which is much more variable and damp than German weather,” says Mark. Some of these ideas have now been incorporated into the family’s old house, reducing its carbon footprint by 47 per cent.

Around the country, forward- thinking people like Mark are experimenting with green building, going to great lengths to source products and urging more conventional builders and architects to incorporate them.

“Eco features are growing in appeal with buyers,” says Charlie Wells of Prime Purchase, the buying agents. Country dwellers and buyers of rural estates are increasingly keen to have them, he adds. But, much as we like the idea of being green, it isn’t necessarily something we want to pay for and it isn’t yet the wow factor that will sell a mid-range house. Price, position and appearance attract us more.

At Capelaw View, in the village of Colinton on the edge of Edinburgh, Bob Adams, an architect-developer who has built a group of 10 eco houses with underfloor heating and extremely high thermal insulation, has offered two years’ free heating to buyers as an incentive. Knight Frank (0131 222 9600) is asking £585,000 to £649,000 for three-to-four and four-to-five bedrooms.

“They have geothermal heating so there are 100m-deep boreholes, one for each house,” says Bob. “The capital outlay is all upfront and the buyer gets the payback over the years. The houses are insulated on the outside so the whole structure gets warmed and the temperature is kept stable.” Four of the 10 have already sold.

In a sense, the mainstream housing market is catching up with what alternative communities have been working on for years. Andrew Yeates of Architects Eco Arc began building groundbreaking carbon neutral houses at Findhorn in Scotland in 1986. “Now our clients are much more mainstream,” he says. “We have the National Trust, the Royal Horticultural Society, doctors’ surgeries, and individuals building homes with budgets from £1.75m to £450,000 to £180,000.”

Eco Arc is currently working on the Lancaster Cohousing Project, creating 41 not-for-profit homes on the River Lune with a shared Common House which has a communal kitchen, dining area, guest bedrooms, laundry, playroom and workshops. Energy will come from photovoltaics, solar panels and a biomass boiler which will provide one pocket-sized radiator for each house (all that is needed). Energy bills are predicted to be low, with the average annual cost for space at £50, hot water £25 and electricity £300.

 

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