One issue that the right and left agreed upon in the 2016 election? Infrastructure. The country’s roads, bridges, highways, hospitals, railways, and water systems need immediate attention. President Trump promised to spend $1 trillion to improve the situation; so far, no comprehensive plan has been released–but the president is implementing policy that will impact how these projects are designed and built. And according to environmentalists and architects, it might make infrastructure weaker, not stronger.
On August 15, Trump signed an executive order that shortened the permitting process for federal infrastructure projects by overhauling the environmental review process, which he believes has slowed the pace of infrastructure construction and repair. Trump also revoked an Obama-era rule mandating extra flood protections for all federal infrastructure projects–designed to build resilience and mitigate damage from climate change. As the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Texas government assess the damage from Hurricane Harvey and its flood waters, and begin to rebuild, this policy change will impact how new infrastructure is designed and to what specifications.
Read more (Fast Company)
Hurricane Harvey’s path of destruction has left hundreds of thousands of Texans without power, and the state’s utilities are facing days, or even weeks, before the floodwaters recede and they can begin to repair the damage.
As of Monday afternoon, about 290,000 customers were without power in the southeastern parts of Texas, as the hurricane that ripped into the coast on Saturday lingered on as a rain-dumping tropical storm for its third day. The outage numbers are bit lower than the 300,000-plus without power as of Sunday afternoon, but just barely, according to Department of Energy storm updates.
The DOE’s assessment from the Texas utilities in the storm’s path was simple, but grim. “Impacted utilities have issued statements that they are expecting power outages to last several days. Restoration efforts cannot begin until weather conditions are safe. High rainfall total and flooding could extend restoration times in many affected areas.”
Read more (Greentech Media)
The giant natural gas leak that hit California’s Aliso Canyon reserve in late 2015 led to a massive quantity of methane being released into the environment, contributing to man-made climate change and raising health concerns for nearby residents.
But the leak of more than 100,000 tons of methane also served as a critical test for a demand response, a practice in which electric utility companies push customers to reduce consumption in times of high demand or limited supply. Faced with the shutdown of one of the largest natural gas storage facilities in the U.S., utilities needed to find a way to ensure a steady electricity supply to more than 10 million people in the Los Angeles region without being able to simply build more power plants.
Demand response offered a solution. Southern California Edison, the local utility company, put millions of dollars into programs that would reduce demand during summer days when there might have been blackouts. Thanks to the effort, they were able to give rebates to customers who cut their energy use during time peak demand and pay customers to install a thermostat that communicates with the company, among other initiatives.
Even if you couldn’t step outside to watch the solar eclipse take place today, it was still possible to participate in this historic event. No, not just by watching the NASA livestream — but by curbing your electricity usage.
The eclipse will affect around 1,900 utility-scale solar PV power plants across the U.S. today, causing an estimated 9,000 megawatts of solar capacity to go offline as the moon passes in front of the sun. California alone was projected to lose 6,000 megawatts of solar capacity. Generation profiles from the California Independent System Operator show a roughly 5,000-megawatt drop shortly before 12 noon.
All of this generation had to be made up for somehow. The data shows that hydropower and natural-gas-powered turbines largely carried the burden of compensating for lost solar output. Energy storage may have also played a role.
While these large-scale, high-tech responses are critical, the influence of the individual electricity consumer cannot be underestimated, said Michael Picker, president of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). In fact, consumers have to start thinking more about how their energy use fits into a larger system due to the grid needs even on non-eclipse days.
Read more (Greentech Media)
Residential PACE has been the best financing solution for the roughly 160,000 homeowners who have used it for energy, water, and safety related projects that they wanted or needed to make; projects that made their homes more comfortable, healthier, safer, less expensive to heat and cool, and more valuable. State and local government partners also appreciate the tens of thousands of local jobs that R-PACE has helped create and sustain. PACE financing for commercial, industrial, agricultural and non-profit owned properties is now available widely throughout the United States, a success story the Journal has ignored.
There is a great story to tell. But instead, the Wall Street Journal, yesterday, ran another in a series of misleading stories about PACE. Yesterday’s, again, includes many ill drawn conclusions and seems to reflect the author’s clear bias for sensationalism.
There is simply no evidence to suggest that PACE is a looming crisis for the banking industry or homeowners. None. Zero. There is no data to suggest that PACE homes are delinquent or likely to default at rates higher than those for the broader housing market in PACE served communities. With more than 60,000 new homes using PACE over the previous year, it is not surprising that the number of defaults has increased. But there is absolutely no indication that the PACE assessment has been the direct cause of the delinquencies or defaults in any but the tiny number of anecdotal cases that the Journal has reported on.
Read more (PACENation)
Southeastern residents currently face historically high poverty rates, and low-income households spend an average of three times as much on energy bills, as a portion of their monthly income, than other families. Energy efficiency investments could help lower energy bills, but low-income residents in the region often lack access to energy-saving upgrades.
In two recent surveys of large electric utilities, ACEEE found that most utilities in the Southeast spend less on targeted low-income efficiency programs per residential customer and see fewer savings than those in other parts of the country. This lack of investments means that Important economic development and poverty reduction strategies are underutilized. But it’s not too late. States can help their low-income residents get a leg up by emphasizing smart programs and policies crafted for them. Our new series of Southeastern state fact sheets shows how.
Steps for serving low-income households in the Southeast
Our new fact sheets use ACEEE and Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance data to offer a quick overview of current utility low-income energy efficiency efforts. We also provide strategies that states can use to scale up resources for this population. Our research shows that utilities, regulators, and policymakers in Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia have many options to reduce the energy burden of low-income households.
Read more (ACEEE)
Weather and geography is also a big factor in energy consumption. In Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota, cold winters ensure high heating demand, while big empty stretches mean residents burn a lot of gasoline to get around.
On the other end of the spectrum, states like New York, Rhode Island, California, Hawaii and Florida consume the least energy per capita.
New York’s large population makes it rank as one of the highest consuming states in the nation, but its energy intensity and per capita consumption are remarkably low. “The state’s energy efficiency results in part from the New York City metropolitan region’s widely used mass transportation systems,” the EIA explains. “More than half of New York City workers use public transit, and more than one-fourth of state residents do, which is five times the U.S. average.”
Similarly, California is the most populous state in the union and supports energy intensive industries, but has one the lowest per capita total energy consumption levels in the country. The state’s intensive efforts to promote energy efficiency have paid off but the state also has its mild climate to thank for its low consumption levels. More than two-fifths of state households do not have or do not use air conditioning, making residential energy use per person in California lower than every other state except Hawaii.
Read on to find out where your state lands on the list.
Read More. (Forbes)
How have your community’s energy efficiency initiatives also increased its resilience? Our (ACEEE’s) new paper, Indicators for Local Energy Resilience, gives municipal leaders a unique set of tools to answer this question. We explore local energy resilience, our new term for the interconnection of community resilience and various aspects of energy supply and consumption. We look at different aspects of this concept — like thermal building performance and transportation connectivity — and methods communities can use to assess them. By applying these lessons, municipalities can get a better sense of their own local energy resilience.
Tracking local energy resilience
We’ve spent the last few years drawing the connection between energy efficiency and community resilience (see here and here). In our research, we take a broad approach to the concept of community resilience by including both physical factors like energy reliability and socioeconomic ones such as the strength of the local economy. This broader concept is also used by many urban planners and local policymakers (see here, here, here, and here for examples) because community resilience is not just about keeping the lights on during a big storm. It’s also about strengthening communities by making energy affordable and reliable for all.
So how can communities track their progress toward local energy resilience? Identifying indicators to monitor progress is complex because community resilience is cross-cutting. Considering all aspects of local energy resilience and the linkages among those aspects can become a brainteaser.
Just about every plan to achieve a clean-energy, low-carbon future includes a large helping of energy efficiency. But while it’s true that efficiency is generally much cheaper than generation, energy efficiency as we know it faces an existential challenge.
The rate at which we’re deploying efficiency is simply not keeping pace with utility and grid needs. But even if we were able to achieve scale, in the current construct, it’s unclear how we would pay for the massive investment required.
Fortunately, there is another way. We now have the data, market and financing in place to procure energy savings to solve time- and location-specific grid problems. Bundling projects into portfolios turns efficiency into an investor- and procurement-friendly product that has manageable and predictable yields.
By treating efficiency as a genuine distributed energy resource (DER), we can stop relying on ratepayer charges and programs and instead unleash private markets and project financing to deploy and fund energy-efficiency projects in the same way we do solar, wind and other energy resources — through long-term contracts, creating cash flows that can be financed like grid infrastructure through project finance rather than consumer credit.
Read more (Greentech Media)
Energy efficiency investments occur in virtually every sector of the economy. When combined, their total number is substantial — estimates range from about $60 to $115 billion a year in the United States. In this post, we look at some recent estimates of energy efficiency spending, updating and expanding information we compiled earlier this year so that we may better understand the magnitude of these investments and where they occur. These findings provide a foundation for two subsequent posts we will publish in the next month on “Who invests in energy efficiency and why?” and “How can we increase energy efficiency investments?”
IEA World Energy Investment Report
Last week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released its World Energy Investment report, covering 2016 global energy investments. IEA estimates that $231 billion was invested in energy efficiency products and services worldwide, a 9% increase from its 2015 estimate. For the first time, the agency provides an estimate of efficiency spending in just the United States: $41 billion. IEA does not provide a sector breakout for the United States, but worldwide, it estimates about 58% of these investments is in buildings, about 26% is in transportation, and 16% is in industry. While IEA includes the full cost of building envelope retrofits in its estimates, it includes only the incremental costs for high-efficiency equipment and industrial processes. For example, if a high-efficiency air conditioner costs 10% more than a conventional air conditioner, IEA counts only 10% of the total cost.
AEE Market Report
Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) publishes an annual Market Report that estimates annual revenues in “advanced energy” in the United States, including energy efficiency, advanced vehicles, renewable energy, biofuels, the electricity grid, and natural gas fueling stations. Investments in building and industrial energy efficiency and plug-in and hybrid vehicles came to $94 billion in 2016, an 8% increase relative to its 2015 report. AEE includes only specific market segments for where it has data. For example, for industrial efficiency, it includes only industrial energy management and combined heat and power systems, so some forms of efficiency investment are left out. On the other hand, for efficient equipment and vehicles, AEE includes the full cost of these products and not just the incremental cost relative to the standard products. AEE provides a detailed breakdown of these investments, which we used to prepare the pie chart below. Buildings constitute 73% of the investments, transportation 18%, and industry is only 9% due to the limited categories it included.
Read more (ACEEE)
