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No. 9: Big solar vs. the environment
The extension of a federal tax grant program will give the solar energy industry a boost in 2011, and predictions call for growth, the International Business Times reports.
But large-scale installations will face an increasing challenge as they bump up against environmental concerns, Robert Glennon and Andrew M. Reeves say in “Solar Energy's Cloudy Future.”
'Large land and water requirements for utility-scale solar technologies, the arduous permitting process required for proposed sites on public lands, disincentives created by a preference for agriculture, and stringent objections from politicians and environmentalists toward actually siting utility-scale solar projects better explain the state of solar power in the United States,” the authors write in The Arizona Journal of Environmental Law and Policy.
Solar is hardly alone in the nexus between renewable and the environment - witness public opposition to the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts - but it offers a telling example.
“The idea that we can pave over large sections of the Mojave desert to build solar plants is probably not viable long term,” says Dan Zimmerle, of the Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory at Colorado State University. “In renewable energies, there's going to be more integration with the environment. That's going to change the way utilities operate.”
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No. 10: Water shortages on tap
Our nation's growing water shortage is the story people keep telling - but one that largely has been ignored.
“Even under normal conditions, water managers in 36 states anticipate shortages in localities, regions, or statewide in the next 10 years,” according to a 2003 U.S. General Accounting Office report. “Drought conditions will exacerbate shortage impacts. When water shortages occur, economic impacts to sectors such as agriculture can be in the billions of dollars.”
In a study released last year, the National Resources Defense Council reported that 1,100 counties in the U.S., one third of all counties in the lower 48 states - will face higher risks of water shortages by the middle of the century due to global warming conditions
And the biggest use of water is not to drink or bathe - but to produce energy.
“Energy production is the largest consumer of water in the United States,” writes Susan Marks, author of “Aqua Shock: The Water Crisis in America.” Power plants fueled by coal, oil and nuclear use 195.5 billion gallons of water daily to create power or for cooling, she reports. (Agriculture is the second largest user of water.) - 09
No. 8: Green building is here to stay
When the real estate market finally rises from the slump, expect the landscape to remain green.
Driven by federal and corporate mandates to embrace LEED - leadership in energy and environmental design - as well as tax incentives, sustainable building is becoming a mainstream practice.
The value of green building starts rose 50 percent over the past two years despite the recession, from $41 billion to $72 billion and represented 25 percent of all new construction in 2010, according to a report from McGraw-Hill Construction.
But focusing solely on new construction leaves out a big piece of the picture: retrofitting existing buildings to make them more energy efficient, in part through the use of renewable energy.
“Depending upon what statistic you look at, 80 to 90 percent of the built environment that we're going to have 25 years from now already exists,” said attorney Carolynne White, who leads the green building practice for Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber & Schreck in Denver.
White's firm is doing pro-bono work for Living City Block, a not-for-profit working on new financing structures to help owners shoulder the risks associated with making their commercial buildings more sustainable. (It's working on projects in Denver, Washington, D.C. and New York.) - 08
No. 7: Meet the new champion of sustainability - the U.S. military
When did gun-toting soldiers compete with peace-loving tree huggers in the sustainability movement?
In a recent column in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman recounted how the Navy and the Marines are working to “out-green” the Taliban. He cited a study “from 2007 data that found that the military loses one person, killed or wounded, for every 24 fuel convoys it runs in Afghanistan.”
Ray Mabus, President Obama's secretary of the Navy and the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said the Navy and Marines could better secure the safety of its warriors by replacing fossil-fueled generators and air-conditioners on bases in Afghanistan with renewable sources and keep vulnerable fuel trucks off the road, Friedman wrote.
Mabus wants 50 percent of the power for the Navy and Marines to come from renewable energy sources by 2020. The Department of Defense is the single largest consumer of energy in the United States and consumes more power than many nations, according to The Daily Energy Report.
The military also has embraced Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards: Starting in 2013, all new buildings on military bases must attain standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council for LEED Silver. - 07
No. 6: Coal remains king - for now
Ontario is on a path to be coal-free by 2030. In its place: an increasing reliance on nuclear and hydro-electric power.
“The province came together with industry leaders and various levels of government to look at the electricity grid because back in 2003 there were a lot of problems,” says Andrew Bowerbank of EC3 Initiative. “We were importing a lot of electricity from the U.S.”
Expect a longer transition in the United States, where coal generates about 40 percent of our electricity.
“Depending on whose estimate you believe, we have 200, 300, 400 years worth of coal,” Dick Kelly, CEO of Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy said during a 2008 interview. “It's foolish not to be able to use that.”
Rolling Stone reporter Jeff Goodall, author of “Big Coal,” bristled when that coal figure was repeated to him during the “Covering the Green Economy” seminar.
“If you wanted to disembowel the entire United States and you didn't care, yes, there are 250 years of coal,” he said. “But if you look at it with any kind of economic or environmental sophistication, you begin to think: What will it take to get that out of the ground?” - 06
No. 5: Natural gas spoken here
When former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter began touting the “new energy economy” in 2008, he was referring to solar, wind and other non-fossil fuel sources.
Ritter quickly added natural gas to that mix - and one of the crowning achievements of his administration was to pass legislation forcing the state's largest utility to retire older coal plants and convert them to run on cleaner-burning natural gas
T. Boone Pickens, who says he's spent $80 million promoting the “Pickens Plan” for the past two years, has dropped wind from his plan and is focusing solely on natural gas. The billionaire Texan is lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would provide incentives to convert tractor-trailers and fleet vehicles to run on compressed natural gas. (Pickens owns a major stake in Clean Energy Fuels, a California company that builds natural gas-filling stations for buses and fleet vehicles.)
Incentives for natural gas - which has been suffering from low prices of late due to ample supply - would be a boon for major natural gas-rich states like Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming. - 05
No. 4: With a lid on cap-and-trade, look to state changes
With little chance climate-change legislation will garner support from a divided Congress - and conservatives vowing to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing carbon-reduction initiatives through regulatory action - expect states to continuing shouldering the responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
A cap-and-trade plan would create a mandatory limit on greenhouse gas emissions and a system in which businesses could trade their pollution allowances to other companies as they reduce their carbon footprints.
States have been taking action instead largely through renewable energy portfolio standards, which set minimum standards for how much solar, wind and other alternative forms of energy utility companies must obtain as part of their power mix.
California leads the way, requiring utilities to make renewable sources 33 percent of their portfolio by 2020, following by Colorado, which approved legislation last year to increase its standard to 30 percent by 2020.
Five states - North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and Vermont - have nonbinding goals. (See where you state stacks up at the Department of Energy website) - 04
No. 3: Overcoming “range anxiety”
The success of electric vehicles will hinge on several factors, including the price of gasoline, how the vehicles perform - anyone for zero to 60 in three seconds? - and how far they can travel on a single charge.
“Depending upon gas prices, the use of electric vehicles could explode,” says Dan Zimmerle, power system R&D manager at the Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory at Colorado State University. “In some regions of country, electric prices are relatively low and fuel prices are relatively locked at the national price, so it could become very financially attractive for people to move to electric vehicles.”
The Toyota Prius hybrid has become the green generation's Volkswagen Beetle, but it will face increasing competition in the coming year as Ford, General Motors, Daimler and Nissan roll out all-electric models.
Advances in battery technology - lithium ion and the lighter lithium-air and zinc-air batteries - are allowing electric cars to travel much farther before they need to reconnect to the grid. Tesla Motors set a record in late 2009 when one of its battery-powered cars traveled 311 miles on a single charge.
“Automotive manufacturers are actually saying that electric vehicle technology is a better technology than IC (internal combustion) engines,” says Andrew Bowerbank of EC3 Initiative, a Toronto-based sustainability and energy consulting firm. “The last time we saw that was in the '80s when we went from carburetor to fuel injection.” - 03
No. 2: Who stole the electric car?
The 2006 documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” made conspiracy theorists salivate.
Five years later, the mad dash to conquer the burgeoning market for electrics and hybrids has added a new cloak-and-dagger twist: accusations of spying at an electric-car program under development by French automaker Renault.
Consider the electric car resurrected.
The Toyota Prius hybrid has become the green generation's Volkswagen Beetle, but it will face increasing competition in the coming year as Ford, General Motors, Daimler and Nissan roll out all-electric models.
The Ford Focus Electric, a modest sedan, which in its combustion-engine version retails from $16,000 to $19,000, is expected to sell for about $30,000 when it hits the market late in 2011 or early 2012. (Here's a test drive.) The Nissan Leaf (about $32,800) and the Chevy Volt ($41,000) already have been making their way to dealers in some states.
Priming the pump is a $7,500 federal income tax credit as well as subsidies in various states.
Auto writer Jim Motavalli, who presented a talk on electric cars during the Reynolds Institute's inaugural “Covering the Green Economy” seminar last year in Phoenix, reviews the new electric models in this Daily Green slideshow. - 12
Meet Mike Cote
Mike Cote is the editor of ColoradoBiz, a statewide business publication. ColoradoBiz publishes stories about the issues, people and trends affecting Colorado businesses.
Cote joined the magazine in February 2007, after nine years with the Daily Camera in Boulder, where he served as business editor and city editor respectively. He also teaches reporting and editing in the journalism school at the University of Colorado. Cote previously spent a decade working for newspapers in Florida.
At ColoradoBiz, Cote has directed coverage of the magazine’s quarterly Planet-Profit Report, a special section devoted to renewable energy and sustainable business practices. - 02
No. 1: The clean-tech funding scramble
Renewable energy projects abound, but money to fund them is tough to find.
Solar, wind and biofuel projects may be getting a big boost from the federal government - including the extension of renewable energy credits in President Obama's tax-cut compromise with Republicans - but venture capital for clean -tech companies has become more difficult to secure, thanks in large part to the longer timelines to profitability for these technologies and uncertainty about the future of federal support.
U.S. venture capital investments in cleantech companies fell in the third quarter of 2010 to $575.6 million - a 55 percent decrease in capital and a 22 percent decrease in deals compared to the third quarter of 2009, according to a report released by Ernst and Young LLP and based on data from Dow Jones VentureSource. Energy-efficiency projects attracted the most activity, Ernst & Young reported.
Financing also remains a major roadblock for renewable energy installations, says Angelina Pramatarova, manager of business development for the Fort Collins, Colo. office Wirsol Solar AG, a German company that develops solar plants. - 01
Ten tips for covering energy and sustainability
By Mike Cote
If you think covering the green economy means chasing the latest solar, wind and biofuels projects; keeping up with sustainable building trends; and test-driving the latest electric car, you're only partially correct. As the hoopla over climate change and global warming accelerates, it's bumping up against the status quo.
Thus, President Obama can't find the political support to provide incentives for renewable energy without keeping them in place for oil and gas exploration. And coal and nuclear have nudged their way onto the “clean” energy list.
“You can have renewables -- you should have renewables -- but you can't abandon the traditional parts of the industry,” says Martin Frost, a former Democratic congressman from Texas who works as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., for the law firm Polsinelli Shughart.
While those developments might cause renewable energy advocates to wince, the big picture here is that oil and gas companies and utilities now see renewable sources as part of the foreseeable energy future.
Click through these 10 tips on covering the “new energy economy” in 2011. They are by no means exhaustive but provide a blueprint for the issues that will continue to command attention this year and beyond.
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