Madison, Kenosha County and Milwaukee sewer district join in 25x25 goal

From a news release issued by Govenor Doyle:

MADISON – Governor Jim Doyle announced today that the City of Madison, Kenosha County and the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) have joined the Wisconsin Energy Independent Community Partnership. They have pledged to work toward Governor Doyle’s “25x25” goal of generating 25 percent of the state’s electricity and transportation fuels from renewable resources by the year 2025. . . .

“I welcome Madison, Kenosha County and MMSD as new partners in working toward energy independence that keeps energy dollars in our state, creates good jobs and cleans our air and water,” Governor Doyle said. “Every year, we send $16 billion out of state to power our homes and businesses and fuel our cars. Building a clean energy economy is not only an enormous opportunity to capture those dollars, but also create good jobs here in Wisconsin.”

Last month, Governor Doyle launched the Clean Energy Jobs Act, a landmark legislative package to accelerate the state’s green economy and create jobs. The package calls for updating renewable portfolio standards to generate 25 percent of Wisconsin’s fuel from renewable sources by 2025 and sets a realistic goal of a 2 percent annual reduction in energy consumption by 2015. A comprehensive economic assessment of the package found that it would directly create at least 15,000 green jobs in Wisconsin by 2025.

Clean Energy Jobs Act bill includes low carbon fuel standard

From a question-and-answer summary of the Low Carbon Fuels Standard included in the Clean Energy Jobs Act bill written by Peter Taglia, Staff Scientist, for Clean Wisconsin:

The Clean Energy Jobs Act (SB 450 and AB 649), announced recently by Governor Doyle, has been introduced by both houses of the Wisconsin legislature. The bill incorporates many of the recommendations made by the governor's Climate Change Task Force. The Clean Energy Jobs Act, if adopted, will increase Wisconsin's use of renewable energy, energy efficiency, cleaner fuels and cleaner cars. The Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) in the bill would be established based on recommendations currently under development by a broad stakeholder group of the Midwestern Governors Association (MGA).

Below are a series of answers to frequently asked question about how an LCFS will impact biofuels and oil sands (compiled by Pete Taglia of Clean Wisconsin and member of the Midwestern Governors Association’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard Advisory Group). If you have questions about the LCFS you can contact Pete Taglia at ptaglia@cleanwisconsin.org.

Question: What is a Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS)?

A LCFS is a fuel policy that will help break our dependence on foreign sources of oil and promote energy independence by gradually moving Wisconsin toward the cleanest and most efficient sources of transportation fuels. A LCFS rates different types of transportation fuels by their efficiency and carbon footprint and allows fuel providers to choose what mix of fuels will be used to meet the requirement.

Question: What types of fuels qualify for an LCFS?

An LCFS policy is unique in that all transportation fuels are able to compete in the fuel market, including the following resources:
• Ethanol: Alcohol fuel made from corn or cellulose (wood, plant stalks, harvest residues, etc.). Wisconsin has 8 corn ethanol plants producing almost 500 million gallons per year.
• Biodiesel: A diesel substitute (mono alkl ester) made from vegetable and animal oils that is then mixed with petroleum diesel (e.g., B20 is 20% biodiesel). Wisconsin has 8 biodiesel plants that use soybean oil, waste animal fats, and waste grease feedstocks.
• Renewable diesel: A fuel chemically similar to petroleum diesel (a hydrocarbon fuel) but made with renewable resources such as wood waste. Flambeau River Biofuels in Park Falls and New Page in Wisconsin Rapids both received Department of Energy grants to produce renewable diesel from wood waste.
• Compressed Natural Gas (CNG): Wisconsin has approximately 20 CNG fueling stations and two school district bus systems that use natural gas. ANGI Energy Systems of Milton is a leading manufacturer of CNG fueling systems and Wisconsin leads the nation in the production of biogas from dairy manure and food wastes.
• Electricity: Wisconsin has numerous electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles as part of state, utility and private car fleets. Wisconsin’s largest corporation, Johnson Controls, is a leading battery manufacturer that won a recent contract to supply batteries to Ford’s new electric van and Columbia Parcar of Reedsburg manufacturers a line of electric utility vehicles in WI.

Social marketing workshop, Sept. 18

A workshop from the Wisconsin Public Utility Institute:

Understanding, Using and Measuring Peoples’ Attitudes Towards…

Do you know (and can you reach) customers:

•Who will participate in a government program? It might surprise you.
•Who will (or won’t) use Eco-Driving to increase fuel economy? This might surprise you too.
•Who believe that global warming is real and are willing to make changes in their lives?

How willing are customers to conserve, and can you find them with accuracy or only with a shotgun? Are you interested in knowing the expected length of time you can count on change to be supported? This presentation will review the uses of segmentation and report on some recent evaluation work. This will be an interactive workshop and is open to anyone interested in how we can cost-effectively engage different attitudes regarding energy efficiency.

Getting a (plug-in) charge in Madison

From a story by Bob Hague on the Wisconsin Radio Network:

Drivers of plug in electric vehicles will soon be able to charge up on the streets of Wisconsin's capital city. Madison Gas and Electric is the first utility in the nation to make electric vehicle charging stations publicly available, with the purchase of six such stations to be installed around the city, according to MG&E's Steve Krause.

"One of the disadvantages (to electric vehicles) now is when you don't have a public charging station, is you have to either charge the car at your home, or you have to charge it a prearranged location," said Krause. "People that want to use electric cars all day long, either in town or even town to town, need a place to refuel that vehicle, and these charging stations will do that. We also have an additional bonus. All of the power that will be used to power these cars will come from renewable sources, and it will be primarily wind energy."

This is a demonstration project and for now, electric vehicle drivers won't be charged for the juice. MG&E's Don Peterson said the utility sees this as a business opportunity eventually, so they'll be collecting data. For example, how many electric vehicles are out there in the Madison area? "We really don't know how many electric vehicles are out there," said Peterson. "The estimates go to anywhere from 25 to 75 vehicles." That's a number that could be increasing fairly rapidly: Peterson noted that a Madison area car dealership is already doing a brisk trade, converting Toyota Prius hybrids into all electric plug ins.

"We see this is as a business opportunity, but right now each charging station, installed, is costing somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000," said Peterson. "We're exploring avenues for grants and additional research money, but right now this is an MG&E funded program."

AT&T will buy 8,000 CNG-powered vehicles

From a news release issued by AT&T:

Through an initiative that highlights the growing demand for cleaner domestic vehicles, AT&T today announced plans to invest up to $565 million as part of a long-term strategy to deploy more than 15,000 alternative-fuel vehicles over the next 10 years. AT&T expects to spend an estimated $350 million to purchase about 8,000 Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) vehicles and approximately $215 million to begin replacing its passenger cars with alternative-fuel models.

AT&T's investment represents the largest U.S. corporate commitment to CNG vehicles to date. The new deployments will bring AT&T's alternative-fuel fleet to more than 15,000 vehicles by 2019.

"AT&T and other U.S. corporations have a unique opportunity to partner with the new administration as it works to lead the country out of this economic downturn," said Randall Stephenson, chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T Inc. "While there are no easy solutions to the challenges facing our nation, this investment is a first step on our part to help boost other industries while at the same time encouraging wider use and production of efficient vehicles and domestic fuel alternatives."

The Center for Automotive Research (CAR) in Ann Arbor, Mich., estimates that the new vehicles will save 49 million gallons of gasoline and reduce carbon emissions by 211,000 metric tons over the 10-year deployment period. That is equivalent to removing the emissions from more than 38,600 traditional passenger vehicles for a year.

Over the next five years, AT&T will replace about 8,000 gasoline-powered service vehicles with vehicles powered by domestically available CNG. CNG vehicles are expected to emit approximately 25 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than those traditionally powered by gasoline.

Run cars on green electricity, not natural gas

From an analysis of natural gas for vehicle fuel by Jonathan G. Dorn posted on Earth Island Institute:

On economics, driving with electricity is far cheaper than driving with gasoline or natural gas. The average new U.S. car can travel roughly 30 miles on a gallon of gasoline, which cost $3.91 in July 2008 (the latest date for which comparable price data for natural gas is available). Traveling the same distance with natural gas cost around $2.51, while with electricity, using the existing electrical generation mix, it cost around 73¢. . . .

Just like oil, natural gas is a finite, nonrenewable resource. This means that switching to a fleet of NGVs would be at best a short-term fix. As natural gas becomes more difficult to obtain and more costly, a fleet of NGVs and the 20,000 or so natural gas refueling stations that would be required to support them would simply be abandoned. . . .

Choosing natural gas to power our vehicles would send the United States down the same expensive and inefficient path that created our addiction to foreign oil and our dependence on a resource that will ultimately run out. Choosing green electricity can take us in a new direction—one that leads to improved energy security and a stabilizing climate.

Wisconsin utilities would consider buying electric cars

From an article by Rebecca Smith in the Wall Street Journal:

The auto industry's quest to launch a new generation of electric cars may get a big boost from a sector with much to gain from getting advanced vehicles on the road: U.S. electric utilities.

Top executives at several utilities are mulling the possibility of ordering thousands of the vehicles -- known as plug-in electric cars -- as an expression of support for the technology they fear could be derailed by the auto industry's financial traumas. The cars would run primarily on electricity, with gasoline to extend their range, and would recharge by plugging into standard electrical outlets.

Utilities stand to gain by selling the electricity needed to power the cars. Because power companies own tens of thousands of cars for their own company fleets, the idea under discussion involves putting in a substantial order to put weight behind development and, perhaps, persuade Congress to give the auto industry the assistance it needs.

"Our industry is interested in reducing carbon-dioxide emissions, and it seems like a good idea for auto makers and us to pull together," says Bill Johnson, chief executive of Progress Energy Inc., Raleigh, N.C.

Another reason the sector is keenly interested is that it has excess generating capacity at night when power plants mostly go to sleep because demand drops. A study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a federal energy lab, found that 73% of the nation's light vehicles could be recharged with the existing utility infrastructure if the vehicles were plugged in overnight. Such a shift from gasoline to electricity as a primary transportation fuel could displace an estimated 6.2 million barrels of oil a day, about 52% of current oil imports.

Another report, by the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility-funded research group, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, concluded that if 60% of U.S. light vehicles were electrified by 2050, it would increase national electricity consumption by less than 8%. But it would cut total U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions by 450 million metric tons annually, equivalent to taking 82 million cars off the road. . . .

Utilities would take possession of vehicles when they debut, likely in 2010 or 2011 if development efforts stay on track for cars such as the Chevy Volt, Saturn Vue or Ford Escape.

"If we get enough of us together, we could put in a very large order and maybe a big down payment," says Dick Kelly, chief executive of Xcel Energy in Minneapolis.

"I would do it," says Gale Klappa, CEO of Wisconsin Energy, adding that his utility has about 3,000 vehicles in its fleet and replaces 20% each year.

Palin's Folly

by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
October 7, 2008
What three things do Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela have in common? The first commonality is that they are among the top 10 leading exporters of petroleum worldwide, which is another way of saying that they are the biggest accumulators of foreign cash on the planet.

Commonality No. 2: Gasoline prices in those nations are lower than they are in the United States. The swollen river of revenues that flows into their national treasuries enables these governments to subsidize the price of motor fuel sold to their citizens. In Iran, the portion of federal revenues spent on maintaining price caps on gasoline approaches an astonishing 40%. . . .

Considering the finite nature of their chief exports, these nations would do well to reinvest their windfalls into domestically developable sources of wind and solar energy, to name two energy sources that do not have decline curves associated with them. However, that brings up Commonality No. 3, which is their shared aversion to all energy sources that have the capacity to displace oil and natural gas in some capacity. Renewable energy sources like wind and solar certainly figure prominently in that category.

It is nothing short of amazing to watch these nations squander their colossal fortunes on ephemeral social control measures that only hasten the drawdown of their most economically valuable resource. Subsidizing gasoline is simply a wealth distribution scheme that discounts the future for the present. Its legacy will be to leave billions of people without the capital to invest in building up a sustainable energy future.

Under more enlightened regimes, these nations would be plowing their retained earnings into technologies that harvest locally available self-replenishing energy sources to serve future citizens. They would make it a point of emulating Germany, a nation bereft of native oil and gas reserves but certainly not lacking in foresight and political will. Cloudy skies and weak winds notwithstanding, Germany is deploying considerable amounts of social and financial capital to retool its energy infrastructure so that it can take full advantage of its modest solar ration.

In contrast to Germany, there is not a single commercial wind turbine operating in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela and Russia. While Mexico and Iran look like go-getters by comparison, their efforts to date amount to less than one-half of Wisconsin’s current wind generating capacity. Moreover, even at this late date, oil-exporting nations have invested only a piddling amount of their capital investments in solar energy.

To demonstrate the aversion that oil-exporting jurisdictions have towards renewable energy, consider the example of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. According to Michael T. Klare, who covers defense and foreign policy for The Nation, Alaska is a “classic petrostate,” featuring a political system that is “geared toward the maximization of oil ‘rents’--royalties and other income derived from energy firms--to the neglect of other economic activities.”

Among the economic activities neglected is renewable energy development. Like Russia, with which Alaska shares a “narrow maritime border,” Alaska does not have a single utility-scale wind turbine in operation, a rather remarkable statistic given its sprawling size and a wind resource that in certain locations can be accurately described as “screaming.” But as long oil revenues are sufficient to allow Alaska to dispense with a state income tax, renewable energy development will remain in a deep freeze.

In a recent article, Klare recounts a talk Palin gave at a February 2008 meeting of the National Governors Association, where she said that “the conventional resources we have can fill the gap between now and when new technologies become economically competitive and don’t require subsidies.”

When asked to elaborate on that point, Palin’s antipathy towards renewable energy was revealed. “I just don’t want things to get out of hand with incentives for renewables, particularly since they imply subsidies, while ignoring the fuels we already have on hand,” Palin said.

Had those words been uttered by the Secretary General of OPEC, they would have been forgotten in a matter of seconds. Coming from someone who could become the next vice president, however, is cause for consternation, in that she is clearly recommending a course of action that would invariably lead to greater dependency on oil.

Certainly, the Palin prescription would reverse the decline in oil revenues propping up Alaska’s state government. But the amount of petroleum that could be extracted in 2020 from Alaska and the Outer Continental Shelf is trifling compared with current U.S. imports of Mexican crude. Even if a mini-surge of petroleum materialized as a result of a McCain-Palin energy policy that put Alaska’s wishes above the best interests of the other 49 states, it wouldn’t even compensate for the declining yields from such aging oilfields as Cantarell or Prudhoe Bay, let alone achieve the chimerical goal of energy independence.

Like the other petrostates of the world, Alaska has no Plan B to fall back on when its endowment of fossil fuels is no longer sufficient to support a state government in the style to which it is accustomed. Let us hope and pray that the voters of the other 49 states see the “drill, baby, drill” mantra for the folly it is, and reject it out of hand in favor of an energy policy that stresses energy security through conservation and renewable energy development.

Sources and complete article here.

RENEW Wisconsin's summer/fall newsletter online

RENEW Wisconsin's summer/fall edition of Wisconsin Renewable Quarterly is now online, including the following articles:

Peak Oil Spices Meeting with Cong. Baldwin
Countdown to Solar Tour
Solar H2O on Madison Fire Stations
Global Warming Task Force Report
Wisconsin’s Newest Wind Projects
PHEV+Wind=Clean Air
Small Wind Conference Wrap-up