Maryland counties are increasingly signing on to an unorthodox program that makes it easier for owners of large office buildings and warehouses to pay for green energy projects.
Under recently enacted ordinances, companies in Baltimore, Harford, Howard counties and Baltimore City can agree to pay more in property taxes to finance solar panels, for example, or energy-efficient heating and cooling systems. The governments would pass the payments along to lenders that front the costs for the improvements.
Known as PACE — which stands for Property-Assessed Clean Energy financing — such programs have spurred $280 million in clean and efficient energy improvement projects around the country. Anne Arundel County was among the first of what are now 11 Maryland jurisdictions that have authorized PACE, and Maryland is among 19 states and the District of Columbia that have active PACE lending programs.
The arrangement aims to encourage energy-saving investments that otherwise wouldn’t happen because the loans are considered too risky by lenders or charge interest rates too high for borrowers to handle. Folding project costs into property tax bills gives lenders much stronger legal footing to go after delinquent borrowers, and that security allows them to charge lower interest rates over longer periods — about 6 percent over 20 years, for example.
Read more (The Baltimore Sun)
The Obama administration’s energy efficiency efforts are saving billions of dollars each year and could save trillions by 2040. The projected savings by then are far more than what consumers now spend on phones and the Internet, combined.
Even as President Barack Obama has made energy efficiency a top priority, it’s remarkable that federal agencies have achieved these savings over the last eight years by implementing bipartisan laws passed before he entered the Oval Office. Our new analysis reveals how much the United States has saved and still can in the future. If President-elect Donald Trump does not want to shut off a huge moneymaker for the US economy, he should continue these policies.
As shown in the graph below, a few recent energy efficiency policies are helping Americans save about 2 quadrillion Btu (quads) of energy this year, or about 2% of all US energy use. These energy savings are worth about $30 billion this year. But that is just a small advance.
The real benefits should arrive long after Obama, and even after Trump, leaves the Oval Office. In the years to come, as people buy new cars and equipment and we hope as states implement more programs, the savings from policies already put in place will blossom. By 2030, we project these actions will save 10-14 quads of energy a year (10-14% of all energy use), worth $250-290 billion a year. By 2040, the savings continue to increase to 13-17 quads and $370-410 billion a year. They could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as a billion tons a year. We estimate the present value of the energy savings through 2040 at $2.5-2.9 trillion. (This does not count the investment needed, but that will be much smaller).
Read more (ACEEE)
Somewhere long ago and far away, someone decided that the value proposition for energy efficiency was saving money. “Everybody loves to save money,” these energy efficiency marketers likely thought, “and since efficient products use less energy than conventional ones, we should lead with it!”
You all know the drill, though. Most Americans don’t actually see the savings. Utility rates go up sometimes and negate the savings, bad behavior happens (they use the efficient products as a reason to behave in inefficient ways) and/or extreme weather happens and utility bills appear higher, not lower, than they did before the efficient products were purchased. And, in truth, for most folks to see significant savings, they’d have to really spend some money for a deep retrofit. Although the monthly utility bill savings may be noticeable, the cash outlay upfront would be so high that it would take years for the savings to offset the investment.
Read more (Shelton Grp)
The California Energy Commission has passed sweeping energy-efficiency standards for computers and monitors in an effort to reduce power costs, becoming the first state in the nation to adopt such rules.
The regulations promise to reduce energy consumed by computers by about one-third, saving ratepayers about $373 million in utility bills by 2027, and figure to have effects far beyond California’s state lines.
Computers and computer monitors in the state use an estimated 5,610 gigawatt-hours of electricity, representing up to 3% of residential electricity use and 7% of commercial use.
“Such efficiency improvements are good for consumers, good for the electric system, good for the environment and frankly good for the green credentials of the manufacturers,” said Andrew McAllister, a commission member who helped guide the new rules through a four-year process of consultations with industry that culminated in Wednesday’s 5-0 vote in Sacramento.
Read more (Los Angeles Times)
In December 1989, Clark Griswold’s impressive lighting display caused a peaking power plant to come on-line somewhere in Illinois.
Fast-forward to 2016, however, and the Clark Griswolds of the world (or at least of New York state) have switched to LED string lights in droves. The technology revolution of this seasonal staple has resulted in a substantial drop in energy use.
New York’s grid operator reported on Monday that holiday-light energy use has declined by about one-third from 2010, largely due to the switch to LEDs. This year, holiday lighting will add about 750 megawatts of load, down from about 1,150 megawatts in 2010.
Of course, the peaking power plant in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation was a Hollywood contrivance, as most regions of the U.S. have ample electricity supply in wintertime In New York, for example, this winter’s peak demand will only require about half of the available electricity resources in the state.
The move to LEDs is not limited to holiday season, however. (According to GE Lighting market research, that season begins around Veterans Day.) LEDs are now cost-competitive with compact fluorescent bulbs and often provide superior performance. People are also starting to understand that LEDs do not only come in the harsh white light that was the only option just a few years ago.
As for Christmas lights, the advantages of the low-powered bulbs are considerable. The minimal power needs — about 75 percent less than incandescent — mean that the lights can run off of battery packs, eliminating annoying cords for everything from window candlestick lights to outdoor displays. Some exterior holiday lights even run on solar power. Also, Energy Star-certified string lights can last about 10 times longer than traditional light strands, and they don’t heat up.
Read more (Greentech Media)
President-elect Trump should look to clean energy and energy efficiency if he wants to make good on his jobs promise to Americans. Energy efficiency already accounts for nearly 1.9 million U.S. jobs—ten times more than oil and gas drilling, and 30 times more than coal mining.
Energy efficiency has long been touted—rightly—as the easiest and cheapest way to cut climate-changing pollution, while saving customers money on their utility bills. And there’s plenty of evidence that it packs a really big punch—energy efficiency has contributed more to meeting growing U.S. energy needs in the last four decades than oil, gas, and nuclear combined.
But it also is a significant job creator as a new analysis by the nonpartisan groups Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) and E4TheFuture shows, with 245,000 more jobs projected to be added over the coming year alone. That’s a 13 percent growth rate!
And the United States could create even more clean energy jobs. The analysis released last week shows that strengthened local, state, and federal efficiency policies, as well as increased utility investment in efficiency programs, could create many additional energy efficiency jobs–and further reduce harmful pollution from power plant generation, strengthen the electricity grid, and lower energy costs for everybody.
Read more (NRDC)
Billionaire philanthropist and investor Bill Gates is launching a $1 billion fund, called Breakthrough Energy Ventures, to invest in new forms of clean energy.
Gates has gathered a group of about 20 like-minded investors, including Silicon Valley venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, former hedge manager John Arnold, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, Bloomberg LP founder and former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, and a handful of others to join him in the fund.
In a post on his Gates Notes blog, Gates said the fund will invest in “scientific breakthroughs that have the potential to deliver cheap and reliable clean energy to the world.”
“We need affordable and reliable energy that doesn’t emit greenhouse gas to power the future—and to get it, we need a different model for investing in good ideas and moving them from the lab to the market,” Gates said in his post.
Read more (Forbes)
Gwendolyn Christon, the 61-year-old owner of the IGA grocery store in Isom, Kentucky, has been working at the store since she graduated high school in 1973. This fact—plus her honeyed voice and warm nature—goes a long way toward explaining the effortless rapport she has with her customers. From her store’s local produce to its fresh fried chicken—the kitchen crew starts cooking every day at 5:30 a.m.—Christon’s IGA is a community hub: It serves 5,500 customers a week and employs 25 people. Christon considers these workers family, and she takes seriously her role in helping them make a living. She also saw jobs in the area disappearing, and that fewer jobs meant lower sales. So when she began looking closely at her profit-and-loss reports for a way to stay viable as sales shrank, her eyes went straight to the store’s $11,000 monthly electric bill.
To solve the problem, she met with Les Roll, the enterprise development project specialist at the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED), a 40-year-old Appalachian advocacy group based a couple hours away in Berea. She had learned about a MACED program, Energy Efficient Enterprises, that does energy-efficiency retrofits on commercial buildings. Roll told Christon they could loan her the money to do the upgrade. Christon was incredulous that such a good deal was possible, but sure enough, with a $418,000 loan from MACED, she retrofitted her lighting system in 2015 and the HVAC this year, tasks that involve energy-saving changes like swapping in high-performance lighting and installing programmable thermostats. When the loan is paid off—she’s aiming to have it done in 10 years—Christon will clear an extra $3,300 in profit each month.
Read more (Fast Company)
NRDC filed a “friend of the court” brief on December 9th to support New York State in defending against a legal challenge that could have an impact on the right of New York and other states to adopt policies to promote clean energy.
Several fossil fuel power companies and related trade associations filed a lawsuit in October challenging a controversial part of the state’s groundbreaking new Clean Energy Standard: the contentious Zero Emissions Credit (ZEC) program to help keep several nuclear plants alive in order to preserve their low-carbon emissions.
They argue that under a federal law called the Federal Power Act, New York State does not have the authority to make decisions about the state’s electricity mix and that such decisions must be made instead by a federal agency—the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). NRDC doesn’t support the ZEC program, but we wholeheartedly disagree with this legal claim. Although their lawsuit is aimed only at the ZEC program, the fossil fuel generators’ argument, if successful, could create uncertainty for scores of state renewable energy policies in states across the country. With President-elect Trump considering climate skeptics to head key federal agencies, we need to make sure that states like New York can continue to lead on clean energy and climate.
The background
Thanks to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s leadership, New York has recently made quantum leaps forward on climate and clean energy policy. A key part of this progress is the state’s Clean Energy Standard, adopted by the state’s Public Service Commission in August, which requires that 50 percent of the electricity consumed in the state come from renewable sources like wind and solar by 2030. New Yorkers have expressed resounding support for that “50 by ’30” renewables goal.
Read more (NRDC)
Nine years ago the Commonwealth of Virginia produced a state energy plan that included among its objectives the cutting of electricity usage by 10% over ten years. That directive landed on the desk of Phil Powell, planning director for Dominion Virginia Power, Virginia’s largest electric utility.
After surveying a host of energy efficiency strategies, Powell focused on one called Conservation Voltage Reduction (CVR). The idea behind CVR is to save energy by reducing the voltage on electric lines.
Electric companies must maintain their tap lines between 114 volts and 126 volts. Keeping within the low side of that range saves electricity, but power companies err on the side of caution. Voltage varies by distance from the sub-station and local fluctuations in the electric load; dropping below 114 volts can cause damage to machines, appliances and other devices. If it were possible to measure voltage on the grid with greater precision, Powell knew, Dominion could eke out a meaningful reduction in electricity consumption.
Read more (Bacon’s Rebellion)
