Here’s an NPR spot on Bellingham, WA and their new rail terminal that will facilitate the shipment of enormous quantities of coal from Montana and Wyoming to China. Understandably, locals are not happy. Though some folks are salivating over the jobs that will be directly associated with building and operating the terminal, others fear a loss of tourism, as this historically pristine and eco-conscious spot loses its charm and becomes a temporary home to trains of coal cars, each one over a mile long, running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Proponents assure community activists that all sorts of high technology will be deployed to minimize the coal dust that would otherwise coat the landscape and nearby Puget Sound. But most Bellinghamians aren’t thrilled to see their town become noisier, and associated with the dirtiest of all forms of energy.

It certainly does seem a shame that mankind can’t find a better way to conduct itself than mining coal out of the middle of the United States, shipping it by rail to Bellingham, and putting it on barges bound for China, where it will be burned in plants that belch forth their deadly fumes.

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I’ve been preparing to make a few videos for newcomers to the subject of clean energy that answer basic questions on renewable energy, fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and the energy-related challenges we face.  I’ll be recording a series of short talks, aided by graphics, that point out that all our energy sources go back to the Big Bang, and come forward through time to us as follows:

Solar power is nuclear, of course, as all that hydrogen that became our sun billions of years ago undergoes fusion and emits enormous amounts of energy. That which we accumulated over hundreds of millions of years as fossil fuels (ancient biomass) we extract and burn as oil, coal, and natural gas. That which we receive right now, or in the very recent past, we have the potential to harvest as renewables: photovoltaics, concentrated solar power, wind, new biomass, run-of-river hydro, ocean current, and wave.

Tidal and geothermal are two energy-related products of the Big Bang that don’t derive from the sun. Tides are caused largely by the moon, which was created by a huge collision shortly after the formation of the Earth. Geothermal energy actually has four different causes (the energy of impacts, friction from heavier elements migrating toward the core, radioactive decay and compression due to gravity) — all of which stem, however indirectly, from the mass and energy released in the Big Bang.

Nuclear energy comes from splitting some large atoms that resulted as simpler elements combined after the Big Bang. Here, I’ll point out that nuclear reactions are perfectly safe when they occur 93 million miles from us – on the sun, where they belong.  Though, as we’re slowly learning, this is not necessarily the case down here where we live.

Coincidentally, Bill Paul, our renewable energy finance guru, has been working along a similar vein, and sent me this masterpiece, a site on environmentalism for kids. I hope you’ll check it out.

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Do you have a clean energy story that you’d like to tell the world?

One day each month, I shoot a series of short television shows called the “2GreenEnergy Video Report” in which I interview folks with interesting stories to tell at a television studio. The shows air throughout the month on a local channel here in Southern California — but, perhaps more important, we host the videos on YouTube and this website where they get some really good, longer-term exposure.

If you’re interested in being a part of this process, please check out the sample below, and let me know if you’d like to participate.

Here’s the first in a series of interview snipets that I conducted with Paul Scott, vice president and co-founder of Plug-In America. Here, we discuss the concept of “internalizing the externalities” associated with fossil fuels, i.e., requiring producers and consumers of oil, coal, etc. to pay the true and comprehensive costs associated with these ecologically harmful forms of energy.

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Here’s a piece from Kentucky-based consulting engineer and frequent commenter John Robbins, who provides some sobering remarks on the truth behind our current push for renewables.

Last week, I was one of 3 teaching a professional seminar about Passivhaus.  In case you don’t know, that program (from Germany) actually sets serious (aka “difficult to achieve”) limits on heating, cooling and overall annual energy, also on how much HVAC heating and cooling capacity which can be installed.  All that WITHOUT offsets from RE grid-tied storage-free energy.  Only main negative about Passivhaus is that it gives certification based on design and construction, like LEED and EnergyStar.  None of these popular programs actually require post-occupancy data to verify that designs work as estimated.

The best part of Passivhaus is it separates “reducing demand and use” from achieving net-zero by offsets like grid-tied storage-free RE as is permitted in LEED.  I’ve seen new LEED homes in Cincinnati which are merely minimum-code designs with PV on the roof for offsets.  With Cincinnati now offering a 15-yr property tax abatement for LEED structures and the local electric utility paying sRECs for grid-tied RE, homebuyers, their designers and builders are pretty much avoiding energy reductions and heading straight to RE offsets.  There’s even new “creative” marketing lingo to describe the economics, “net-zero energy cost” – net-zero cost achieved by offsetting actual energy costs with sRECs and tax abatements.  None of this would fly in Passivhaus.  More importantly, these situations do not represent much reduction in demand for conventional energy, since Cincinnati is a 50% cloudy location, with windy winters but stagnant-air summers.  Solar and wind can work here, but certainly not full-time, so structures with grid-tied RE have their un-reduced energy loads carried by conventional energy much of the time, maybe as much as 80% of the time.

We are seeing so much morphing of RE advocacy into marketing.  I guess the 1st wave was for/by us who were educated and motivated prior to or away from the current subsidy hoopla.  The massive current subsidies seem to attract folks who aren’t really much interested in the traditional movement (aka “less coal, oil and nuke”) but instead need heavy financial incentives to act.  Regardless of why or what, as a very aware member of Assn of Energy Engineers where real energy matters are known and discussed regularly, I worry we are seeing so much money, marketing and reporting about nonrealities in our energy world.  Even tracking %RE is the wrong thing to track.

As I wrote in an op-ed in SOLAR TODAY a half-dozen years ago, implementers should be tracking how much less conventional energy they demand and use, not how much of what solutions we buy or apply.  I wish we tracked how much energy use and when it is used, separately from how much and when we have RE.  The net-energy approach has simplified the process for consumers but made the education process more complicated.  A utility company rep whose company was co-sponsoring a workshop I taught last year in south-central KY took offense when I told my students about this.  All my students rated my class very good to excellent, but the utility rated it poor to very poor, adding that it would never sponsor any of my events in the future.  Similarly, a solar installer I know in central KY told me last year that when he mentions efficiency to his callers interested in a solar bid, the most common result is a lost sale or lost opportunity to bid.  So while my message is correct, very similar indeed to what we’ve heard for decades from Amory Lovins, it is a message very unpopular with many consumers and utilities, also many of our governments.

I include governments because of an experience I had in Ohio where I proposed how to cut residential energy use by a whopping %, but got no positive responses from the panel representing Ohio government.  A professor of economics from Miami University of Ohio pulled me aside after my presentation and told me that Ohio historically forms energy policies not as much based on consumers or energy as how much potential for tax collection.  Like most states, Ohio collects a lot of taxes on conventional energy.  Also like most states, Ohio’s income tax rates are progressive, going up as incomes rise.  The professor said insulators’, caulkers’ and window installers’ wages are tiny compared to union coal miners, utility workers, geothermal and solar installers.  He said this is why Ohio incentive plans subsidize the most expensive (higher sales taxes) and most high-wage energy systems.  He said this is also why we never see energy-use reduction targets and timelines.

So we cannot be naive and think we are currently implementing or describing THE ENERGY SOLUTIONS which will substantially cut coal and nuke reliance.  The current round of RE seems most abt promoting and expanding the RE retail and manufacturing sectors, which is certainly needed.  But that is not the same as solving our reliance on conventional energies, especially coal, oil and nuke.  As said before, I and my most committed 1st-wave customers and contacts are focused mostly on reducing reliance on coal, oil and nuke.  The failure of RE’s “new wave” to understand and address this, especially to accomplish any real conventional reductions, will one day come back to haunt, maybe to backlash.

I asked a colleague attending the midwest USGBC conference last week in Cincinnati how many coal and nuke powerplants will be running if all homes and buildings are net-zero by 2030?  He did not respond quickly.  So I said, maybe most that are running right now, maybe even more.   Nobody really knows, but what we know for sure is that net-zero is a merely a marketing term applied usually to part-time intermittent mostly-daytime RE surpluses applied as offsets against full-time 24-hr-per-day power use.  Baseload powerplants like nukes and large coal-fired generators cannot be turned on and off quickly.  Even coal-fired needs 10 hrs or more to shutdown and restart.  Nukes need days.  That’s why they are used for baseloads.  To reduce baseload generation, we need aggressive full-time load reduction.

The positive thing is this is possible, already demonstrated, even well written about.  We just need leadership and education to keep the information in front of governments, consumers and businesses as they consider the issues and options.  As a once-home-designer who now has very little design work in this continuing recession, I’m developing new workshops and writings to educate consumers, designers, contractors, teachers and anybody else who is interested.  However, I must report that I do not get or hear much interest from younger people and companies in the RE sector.  I suspect that’s because they are busy.  After all, there are huge amounts of subsidies in my region going to RE retailers and contractors.  That sector is certainly not in recession.

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This morning, someone asked me about the importance of energy storage. “Renewables provide intermittent energy. Don’t we need some way to store the energy overnight, to deliver it when it’s needed?” he asked.

“No, not right now, “ I explained. “The penetration of renewables is under 2% in the US. When we get to 15% – 20%, if we live long enough to see it, we’ll need storage. Until that point, the discussion is of academic importance only.”

Here’s another viewpoint on the interplay between renewables and traditional energy sources, in which the author suggests that energy demand is growing so rapidly that clean energy is really not cutting into the consumption of use of fossil fuels at all.  Kentucky-based consulting engineer and frequent commenter John Robbins writes:

Craig:

In my region, growth in energy demand is advancing far faster than either conventional energy or renewable energy can keep pace. Electricity use in KY, for example, is down only in industrial sector, due to recession. Commercial and residential electricity use is up, even during the recession, even with record-breaking implementations of efficiency and renewables. Who was it that recently reported that new so-called DVR-type “set-top boxes” atop modern cable TVs have increased electricity use by same as was used annually by the entire state of Maryland only 10 yrs ago?

And a recent poll of electric utility representatives shows they expect a 7% or so increase in electricity use just associated with electric vehicles in the coming decade. Imagine the increase in electricity usage if/when the recession ends! Our new-wave renewable energy sector has dropped the ball carried by its 1st wave predecessors who always included very strong “demand/use less” messages as part of any/all renewable energy conversions.

As example, the director of Green Energy Ohio, who once pushed Ohio as head of Ohio Consumer Council to implement demand-side management (DSM) and efficiency programs to avoid new conventional electricity generation by Ohio utilities, now says absolutely nothing abt that because he’s head of Ohio’s largest renewable energy group. He now measures progress by how much RE is sold and installed. He exemplifies what I now describe to students is the “new wave” of renewable energy, where the goal is more about increasing RE than decreasing conventional.

Is it possible to increase RE at a record-breaking pace while not reducing conventional? You bet! It’s happening right now. ASES and SEIA both admitted on NPR that storage-free grid-tied RE is having little or no effect on coal-fired and nuclear generation. Yet many of us in the first-wave of RE actually sought to move us away from coal-fired and nuclear generation. All our strategies revolved around that goal. Yet new wave advocacy for more storage-free grid-tied RE without reduced electric loads (kW) and less electricity usage (kWh) is causing a situation in which demand for our most hated conventional energy generation (coal and nukes) is actually increasing!

And it cannot be ignored that new electric loads from countless new portable consumer electronics, plug-in electric vehicles, cable-TV set-top boxes and cable phone modems are increasing overall electric demand faster than the implementation rate of RE. Couple that with the part-time nature of most RE and we are heading into an almost certain future of increased demand for more non-RE energy. If only we focused our energy programs and investments on verified reductions in demand (kW) and use (kWh)…

We should be measuring and reporting our progress not by how much RE we can install, but by how much conventional energy we can reduce or avoid. If we at least implemented RE at the same pace as we reduced demand and use, we’d double the % RE compared to total energy.

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I often think about how the energy industry’s financial analysts view the fundamentals that apply to market valuations. Just now, I was reading some of the discussion at SeekingAlpha.com on ExxonMobil that attempts to get to the underlying buy/sell recommendations, and I note that the conversation is fairly bullish across the board.

In particular, though there is widespread agreement that the “easy oil is gone,” there is almost no recognition of a concerted move to get off of oil as a civilization. Moreover, the concept of “peak oil” (i.e., that the supply of oil will soon start to diminish) means that the price will soar, and that only companies with the scale of ExxonMobil (vs. the wildcatters of yore) will have the capability to play effectively. But there is precious little talk of the impact of electric transportation, or renewable energy in any of its forms.

I’m trying to figure out what that means. Here are a few points of speculation:

*  Clearly, the oil industry has done a good job at convincing both the legislators and the voting populace that a steady-as-she-goes approach is appropriate for the energy industry.

*  Though renewables continues to make inroads, relatively few people challenge the legitimacy of fossil fuels as the predominant source of energy.

*  The subsidies that are in place (12 times the size of those given to renewables) are clearly not going away; that discussion is not even on the table. This, of course, creates an environment of cheap oil and coal — thus affordable gasoline, thus no real demand for a replacement.

*  The US foreign policy of protecting the incoming flow of oil from the Middle East – even at the expense of ongoing military conflicts (not to mention sending them $1billion per day of US wealth) – raises the eyebrows of only a few, who are quickly written off as weirdos.

*  As we saw in our midterm elections, the conservative faction has successful convinced voters that progressive views in this space are radical — frighteningly out of touch and recklessly extravagant, that global climate change is a back-burner issue, and that rightwing politics is the best medicine for the country’s ailments.

I suppose all we can do is continue to tell the story.  We need to hope that masses of people realize the imperative to migrate to clean energy, and lean on their elected representatives to help great an environment in which this can happen. 

Looking for an effective starting point?  Pull all the energy-related subsidies and force all producers and consumers of energy to pay the comprehensive costs.  You’ll have renewable energy in a wicked hurry.

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At 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, Steven Kemp had to move his size 14 shoes to avoid tripping toddlers at his pediatrician’s office in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. “It’s kind of awkward, but we’re good friends,” says Mr. Kemp, now 19 years old and a student at Butler University, still looking for a doctor he likes as much and still consults his pediatrician occasionally….These days, more and more are staying with their pediatricians through their college years,” says the past president of the American College of Pediatrics.

Here’s a wonderful example of the WSJ telling you exactly what they want you to believe. Yes, they’re serious; they want you to accept the idea that you’re better off with a doctor of some sort walking around with you every day of every year of your life – through your childhood, then through your college days—and, of course, until the day you die.

How roped and tied to you have to be to believe this, though? If I asked you – and a thousand randomly chosen people like you — to choose which of the following two statements you thought better approximated the truth, what would you say:

A) It’s good for your children to become associated with modern medicine and its associated practices (pharmacology, psychiatry, etc.) — and remaining so from the time they’re born, or

B) If your kids eat well and play outdoors, you’re much better off with a very infrequent relationship with these practices.

Which would you choose? I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest you’d choose B). In fact, I’ll go further and tell you that I could take this proposition into the Upper East Side of Manhattan, over to the plains of South Dakota, and then out to the beaches of Southern California — and I’d have a huge majority voting for B) every time.

This is just another example of some group’s attempt to convince you of something that’s good for them, but not at all good for you.

But what’s the relevance to renewable energy? To the degree that people can’t see through things like this, we’re done. To the degree that we’re sheep, with no power to see where we’re being led, we’re mutton. 

There was an article in another paper today that accused the developers of the large solar thermal plant in California of greenwashing – of pretending to be green merely to gain public support, recklessly endangering the desert tortoise. As long as we can have a real argument that solar thermal farms in the southwestern desert are in the same class in terms of the environmental devastation that are wreaked by oil and coal, we’re dead. But that’s where PR takes us. That’s where this article by our beloved WSJ – funded by God knows whom – would have taken us.

Beware.

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For pretty-much everyone associated with this industry — and certainly for me — it’s clear that there are indeed Tough Realities faced by those working to drive the migration to clean energy. Nobody who studies this with any level of depth could possibly see this as a walk in the park, where the key players in energy are saying to one another, “May the best man win.” This is a complex story of big money, back-room politics, secrecy, and betrayal. You don’t find multi-trillion dollar industries unfolding without a heavy dose of the worst of cheesey human misbehavior. Now add in the disruptive element, i.e., the fact that “new energy” is a direct threat to “old energy.” For every kiloWatt-hour of solar, we need one fewer kiloWatt-hour from oil and coal.

Hold on to your hats. Sorry to say it, but we haven’t even begun to see the tough realities hit those battling it out in the energy industry.

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The movie in question, “The Road Not Taken,” is a documentary centering around President Jimmy Carter’s having a series of solar panels installed on the roof of the White House. At the time, he told the crowd gathered to mark the installation of the new units:

“A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people – harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”

A few years later, President Ronald Reagan famously had the solar panels removed.

I wrote back:

In my mind, there is no doubt that the conversation, mute as it is in the US, has already added luster to Carter’s star and, I suppose, some tarnish to Reagan’s. But I’m more interested to know what this means in terms of the future. We’re still subsidizing fossil fuels. There are still 7000 lobbyists cruising around the Beltway influencing lawmakers to ensure that that oil, coal, and gas remain at the core of our energy future until the last drop of crude is sucked out of the Earth, we’ve ripped the top off the last mountain, and fracked the planet’s crust to smithereens.

Having said that, there are hundreds of lively discussions in the blogosphere every day about the R&D for clean energy. Bill Gates’ 2010 TED talk is getting some very good distribution. Perhaps this stark dichotomy between these two US presidents and the concept of the “road not taken” will be viewed as an iconic piece of US history — and perhaps it can be spun into the idea that “it’s not too late to get back on the right road.”

We can hope.

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As part of the research for my upcoming book, I include a complete analysis of the subsidies to all forms of energy. This took a lot of work. In today’s Globe, there is an editorial page article about the subsidies to coal, oil and gas which is now over a half  trillion dollars each year. Four international organizations – the International Energy Agency, the OECD, the WTO, and, remarkably, OPEC – are collaborating on a study of these subsidies to be presented at the G20.

No wonder most alternative energy and conservation solutions have a hard time entering the marketplace in controlled or supposed free market economies.

In the specific case of NH3, with equal treatment, it would be less than 35% the price of hydrocarbons, including all applicable taxes.

With full cost accounting principles applied, if Environmental, Health and Trade costs were included and a carbon tax or Cap amd Trade, then NH3 would be less than 20%.  The research also shows that using domestic feedstocks to make NH3 would create 5 times the net employment and tax revenue to governements.

Talk about a global solution. Food, energy, jobs and opportunity for all. Only a dream you might think, not so, in the next few months we will release definite proof for all.

Keep the faith people, the solution is coming soon.

Thanks, Greg.  Your thoughts and echoed here, to be sure, where we ceaselessly repeat our demand for a level playing field for renewables.  As suggested in my article linked above, I see this as inextricably linked to campaign finance reform and getting a grip on the bloat and corruption that permeates our governement.

Thanks for raising your voice so eloquently, and good luck on your book project. Please let us know when it becomes available.

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