Wind Energy Weekly #690
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LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
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* from the *
* AMERICAN WIND ENERGY ASSOCIATION *
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July 12, 1996
CLEAN ENERGY PROGRAMS IN JEOPARDY!
House To Vote Soon On Schaefer-Klug Amendment To Restore
Renewable Energy Programs
Representatives Schaefer, Klug, Minge, Thurman and Salmon
have agreed to offer a bi-partisan amendment on the House floor
to restore renewable energy funding and stop Congress from
terminating several leading clean-energy programs. The amendment
will be taken up when the House considers the FY97 Energy and
Water Appropriations Bill as early as next week (July 14-20).
The House Energy and Water bill as approved by
Subcommittee would cut DOE's renewable energy programs by roughly
20% -- on top of last year's cut of roughly 30%. This would
devastate DOE's efforts to help American industry develop and
deploy clean energy technologies. The Subcommittee also targeted
several programs for immediate termination, including wind energy
-- a leading renewable technology that is booming in world
markets. The Subcommittee's proposal to terminate wind energy
programs would not only set back clean energy efforts, but would
also cripple the American wind industry's ability to compete in
fast-paced global markets.
The Schaefer-Klug amendment will restore funding for all
renewable energy programs to their current year levels (FY96)
without adding to the deficit or jeopardizing other programs in
the bill. Grassroots support is vital to its success.
YOUR HELP IS URGENTLY NEEDED!
CALL OR WRITE YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TODAY, AND URGE
THEM TO SUPPORT THE SCHAEFER-KLUG AMENDMENT TO RESTORE
RENEWABLE ENERGY FUNDING.
You can contact your Representative by writing:
Representative _______________
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
or by calling the Capitol Switchboard at 202-225-3121.
For More Information Contact:
Karl Gawell or Sheila McNamara
The American Wind Energy Association
202-383-2500
The following is the electronic edition of WIND ENERGY WEEKLY,
Vol. 15, #690, 25 March 1996, published by the American Wind
Energy Association. The full text of the WEEKLY is available
in hardcopy form for $595/year and is recommended for those with
a serious commercial interest in wind (the electronic edition
contains only excerpts). A monthly hardcopy publication, the
WINDLETTER, more suitable for those interested in residential
wind systems is included with a $50/year individual membership in
the Association. AWEA's goal is to promote wind energy as a
clean and environmentally superior source of electricity. Anyone
sharing this goal is invited to become a member. For more
information on the Association, contact AWEA, 122 C Street, NW,
4th Floor, Washington, DC 20001, USA, phone (202) 383-2500, fax
(202) 383-2505, email windmail@mcimail.com. Or visit our World
Wide Web site at http://www.econet.org/awea.
ENERGY OUTLOOK
Australian green pricing experiment hits a snag
Pollution seen causing collapse of U.S. forests
Public supports environment in new national poll
TRADE NEWS
Snohomish PUD to consider dedicating funds to renewables
SNOHOMISH PUD MAY DEDICATE FUNDS
TO RENEWABLES, GREEN PRODUCTS
In the aftermath of its decision against purchasing power
from the 31.25-MW wind plant planned for the Columbia Hills of
Washington (see WIND ENERGY WEEKLY #688, March 11, 1996), the
Snohomish County (Wash.) Public Utility District (PUD) is
exploring other renewables options to meet its stated goals of
encouraging environmentally-friendly projects. One possibility
is dedicating part of its budget to renewables development and
"green" programs.
At a March 12 meeting, the PUD was presented with several
options for encouraging renewables, including surcharges to fund
such programs, green solicitations, and marketing strategies to
sell renewables to customers. By the end of the meeting, the
Commissioners had ordered its staff to explore the possibility of
asking customers to decide whether $2.75 million from the PUD's
annual budget--about $1 per customer per month--should be
reserved for renewable energy and "green" projects over a five-
year period. "It's only a point of discussion right now," said
David Aldredge of the PUD staff. The Commission will consider
its options again at a meeting this week.
According to Nancy Holbrook of Northwest Environmental
Advocates (NEA), the PUD is being purposefully vague in its
description of the type of projects it would pursue because it
wants to meet its goal to develop environmentally beneficial
projects, but is fearful of the uncertainties that utility
deregulation creates. "They say they want to develop renewables
of projects with an environmentally beneficial effect--this could
mean they will buy an electric vehicle or plant trees," Holbrook
pointed out. NEA is working with the Renewable Northwest Project
(RNP), however, to encourage the PUD to stick with wind power.
"We are still hoping that under this green program we can
get the utility to commit to some renewables development," said
Pete West of RNP. "Although this is not what we asked for
[originally], it is still an opportunity to develop renewables."
AUSTRALIA GREEN PRICING RUNS
AFOUL OF CONSUMER PROTECTION
Six months after the launch of a "green tariff" program by
Australian utility CitiPower (see WIND ENERGY WEEKLY #673,
November 20, 1995), the innovative but ill-starred scheme appears
to have hit rough waters. While CitiPower--an electricity
distributor operating in Melbourne--has not formally announced
the initiative's withdrawal, the company doesn't seem to be
putting much effort into its success.
Initially CitiPower planned a green tariff at a premium of
20%. Results from an extensive customer survey process indicated
this would lead to 10% of customers opting for the package in
3-5 years. This in turn would have resulted in at least 50 MW of
grid-connected renewables.
Unfortunately the tariff concept ran afoul, somewhat
ironically, of consumer protection regulation. Under maximum
uniform tariff regulations designed to guard customers from
price-gouging after privatization, the Regulator-General, Robin
Davies, ruled that the 20% premium was unacceptable. Jim
Plowman, the Minister for Energy, has refused to comment when
asked whether these regulations should apply to electricity
supplied from renewable sources at the customer's request.
CitiPower hastily moved to offer 'EcoUnits' for A$10 each, a
price which corresponds to the extra cost of producing 400 kWh
annually of power from wind and solar. This scheme has been
criticized as difficult to understand for the majority of
electricity customers. As Alan Pears, the doyen of local energy
and environment consultants, says, "EcoUnits are not so simple
as the green tariff, so they will be more difficult to market. A
green tariff is a simple, integrated option with a clear
outcome."
Another problem for the initiative is the lack of any clear
commitment from CitiPower's new owners. Entergy, a large American
utility active in several southern states--purchased CitiPower
late in 1995. This led to the rapid departure of CEO Shane
Breheny and his replacement with an American appointee, Tom
Wright. While Breheny had made public statements in support of
renewables, the new owners have as yet shown no such interest.
CitiPower has modest renewable generation capacity,
consisting of 70 kW of wind-turbines and around 20 kW of
photovoltaic panels. This small amount is enough to provide
electricity for around 30 homes out of CitiPower's 240,000+
customers. Unfortunately, the company hasn't been marketing the
scheme and doesn't plan to add any significant quantity of
generation plant. Indeed, at the rate of generation capacity
addition achieved over the last 12 months, reaching the 20 MW of
renewable capacity announced at the press launch last September
will take CitiPower over 1,000 years.
Despite all these problems the basic idea of user-pay renewables still
looks sound in terms of its appeal to the community. CitiPower has had so
much interest in the scheme that they are only allowing each customer to
purchase two EcoUnits!
The other existing Australian green power scheme seems to be
on firmer ground. Energy Australia (EA)--the rather
grandiloquent name chosen for the company formed by the merger of
Orion Energy and Sydney Electricity in New South Wales--is
ramping up the "GreenPower" scheme. EA plans to offer commercial,
industrial, and domestic green tariffs at a premium of up to 40%
to the 1.2 million accounts serviced by the new organization. Ian
Nichols, manager of Sustainable Technologies for EA, says that
details of the initial market trial of the scheme are currently
before the new board.
Assuming board members give their assent, Nichols will call
for expressions of interest in the 1-2 MW of generation capacity
to be offered in the trial. Once this begins in May Nichols hopes
the level of demand will be enough to allow full scale
implementation of the plan starting towards the end of 1996.
Nichols is still confident the scheme will result in 50 MW of
renewables added to the grid in the next 5 years. This will
build on Sydney Electricity's already active program of adding PV
installations around Sydney.
When asked why the scheme is moving more slowly than
previously planned, Nichols said that this was due to the merger
process and the normal delays associated with a new product. He's
comfortable working with the new board, saying that they have
already approved the GreenPower concept and the market trial.
The board see GreenPower as "a major part of the environment
strategy." He says there is some concern over what he calls the
"chicken and egg" nature of a green tariff--a company can't
attract customers without generation capacity but financiers are
reluctant to approve expenditure for plant without demonstrated
customer support.
Nichols says EA has begun a wind monitoring program on 40-
meter towers at the site of a proposed 5-MW windfarm in its
service area. He hopes this will reveal a wind regime similar to
the 7.5-m/s (17 mph) average at a weather station 2 km distant.
[Editor's Note: David Coote is a free-lance writer residing in
Australia.]
@copyright David Coote 1996
POLLUTION, OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL
IMPACTS HARMING U.S. FORESTS
Air pollution and a variety of other human impacts are
causing serious damage to U.S. forests, according to a THE DYING
OF THE TREES: THE PANDEMIC IN AMERICA'S FORESTS, a new book by
environmental policy analyst and journalist Charles Little.
The Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency reported March 14
that Little's book "blames tree deaths on acid rain as is the
case in New England, North Carolina and Indiana, or killer smog
in the case of California," and elsewhere on pesticides, heavy
metals produced by burning fossil fuels, and other causes.
"Some argue that the progression of tree death and forest
decline in this century, and especially since World War II, is
either coincidence or a matter of selective reporting," Little
writes in "America's Trees Are Dying," an article based on his
book and adapted for the environmental magazine EARTH ISLAND
JOURNAL. "Everything is all right; it is just the natural ebb
and flow of nature. But that is not what I have learned from the
scores of scientific scholars I have interviewed, and the
mountain of papers I have studied. They say something else.
What these distinguished sources are describing is a pandemic--an
epidemic that is everywhere."
Fossil fuels rank high on Little's list of villains:
"[Should we r]educe the pollution caused by gluttonous fossil-
fuel energy use? Yes, of course. But not to the level of 1990,
as the policymakers suggest and have legislated. Trees were
dying long before that. The mid-50s would be closer to the
mark." Causes of forest decline he identifies as linked to
fossil fuels include:
- Acid rain: In response to public complaints about air
pollution from coal-fired power plants in the Midwest during
the 1950s, utilities built "smokestacks hundreds of meters
high to dilute the pollution," the IPS article says, but the
result was to "allow the sulfurous pollution to travel 1,500
km or more, where it forms acid rain across the Adirondack
Mountains of New York, and across northern New England and
southern Canada." Studies begun by botanist Hubert
Vogelmann of the University of Vermont in 1965 of virgin
forest on Camel's Hump mountain, it adds, indicate that acid
rain not only affects trees, but "the soil and thus the
entire ecosystem" by leaching away minerals such as calcium,
magnesium, and phosphorus that fertilize trees.
- Climate change: "In Alaska," writes Little in EARTH ISLAND
JOURNAL, a warming trend has been taking place during most
of this century that coincides with the decline of the
Alaska cedar as well as an increase in atmospheric
CO2[carbon dioxide]. In recent years, the protective snow
cover has all but disappeared along the costs due to the
warming trend, causing the cedars to die. At the opposite
corner of the U.S., sabal palms (Sabal texana) are dying.
Francis E. Putz, a botanist with the University of Florida,
has found that the sabal palms--50-foot cousins of the
palmetto--were dying along a 200-mile stretch of Florida's
Gulf Coast. Putz suspects that rising sea levels have
exposed the palms' roots to toxic levels of salt water. As
he told a NEW YORK TIMES reporter, 'Areas that today support
salt marsh vegetation were forested in the 1940s.' . . . "
- Air pollution: "In the Midwest forests, earthworms are
dying. According to ecologist Orie Loucks, studies of soil
invertebrates in parts of Ohio and Indiana subject to air
pollution deposition 'show a 50 percent decline in the
density of invertebrates and a 97 percent decline in the
density of earthworms.' These extraordinary data have led
Loucks and others to describe the mixed mesophytic forest as
resembling an ecosystem with AIDS . . . "
Little offers no easy answers, and in fact suggests that the
problem may not be one that can be solved: "In the course of my
research, I have learned things I wish I had not learned. I have
learned that the trees are dying. And that the more trees die,
the more will die. I have learned that we have crossed the
threshold. And I simply do not know how we can get back safely
to the other side." The full text of the EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL
Article is available on the World Wide Web at
http://www.earthisland.org/ei/journal/americas.html
PUBLIC BACKS EPA BUDGET,
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICING
By a nearly two to one margin, voters oppose Congressional
cuts in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) budget,
according to a recent public opinion survey conducted for the
Clean Air Trust by the Democratic polling firm Lake Research,
Inc.
The poll also found overwhelming support for the view that
the agency should enforce air and water pollution laws "more
aggressively" than it does now, the Clean Air Trust said in a
news release. Of those surveyed, 55 percent backed stronger
enforcement, while 19 percent preferred to see the EPA "increase
flexibility and rely more on voluntary compliance . . . "
The survey is one of several in recent months that have
suggested that Congressional backers of legislation to weaken
environmental laws may be out of step with the American public.
Nearly three of four voters, the release said, believe the
environment should be an important priority for the next
President, and "nearly 60 percent say they'd vote against
candidates who want to relax clean air and clean water laws."
The view that the environment is important extended across the
electorate, with 71 percent overall calling it either a "top
priority" or "very important."
The random sample of 1,010 registered voters was conducted
January 21-23 and has a margin of error of 3.1 percent.
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NEWS
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* from the *
* AMERICAN WIND ENERGY ASSOCIATION *
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For immediate release: July 10, 1996
Contact: Karl Gawell, (202) 383-2500
HOUSE PANEL VOTES TO ABANDON LEADING CLEAN ENERGY INDUSTRY
The House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee today
voted to eliminate all funding for the federal wind energy
research and development (R&D) program in the coming year.
"The Subcommittee vote is a vote to abandon U.S. industry in
the competition to dominate the world's fastest-growing energy
market," said Karl Gawell, Director of Governmental Affairs for
the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). "Wind energy is
likely to be one of the most important new sources of
manufacturing jobs in the next decade and century, but the
Subcommittee would have us throw in the towel just as the world
market begins to grow."
AWEA forecasts that world wind energy equipment sales, which
grew by 20% in 1994 and 35% last year, will total more than $18
billion through the year 2005. Terminating the program now, AWEA
said, will:
- Force the U.S. to abandon over $200 million invested in
high-technology wind turbine R&D--work that is very near to
making wind an economically competitive option in wide areas
of the U.S. and other countries.
- Jeopardize over $1 billion in export sales of advanced wind
turbines that are already in negotiations.
- Hand over U.S. technology to international competitors at
bargain-basement prices.
"The wind R&D program costs the average American less than
20 cents a year--a trivial price to pay for the potential
benefits," Gawell said. "Congress must look beyond protecting
the profits of the coal and oil industries. Terminating the wind
program will undercut the U.S. wind industry's ability to compete
in a burgeoning world market and will result in more air and
water pollution from fossil fuels, damaging public health and the
environment."
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AWEA, formed in 1974, is the national trade association of the
U.S. wind energy industry. AWEA's membership of over 800 includes
turbine and component manufacturers, project developers,
utilities, academicians, and interested individuals from 49
states.
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NEWS
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* from the *
* AMERICAN WIND ENERGY ASSOCIATION *
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For immediate release: July 11, 1996
Contact: Karl Gawell, (202) 383-2500
SCHAEFER BILL INCLUDES TRADEABLE
REQUIREMENTS FOR RENEWABLE POWER
The following statement was issued today by Karl Gawell,
Director of Governmental Affairs for the American Wind Energy
Association:
Yesterday, U.S. Rep. Dan Schaefer (R-Colo.), who chairs the
House Energy and Power Subcommittee, released the provisions of
his utility restructuring bill, the Electricity Consumers' Power
to Choose Act of 1996.
We are pleased to see that Rep. Schaefer's bill includes a
requirement for the supply of electricity from new renewable
energy sources such as wind--a proposal that is very similar in
form and intent to the Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) that
AWEA has been championing in state utility deregulation
proceedings.
More specifically, Rep. Schaefer's proposed legislation
would require that total electricity generation from several
renewables (biomass, landfill gas, geothermal, solar, and wind)
be 2% of all generation through 2004, 3% from 2005 through 2010,
and 4% thereafter. These levels of supply are to be achieved
through a system of tradeable credits patterned after the
successful system of credits established by the Clean Air Act
Amendments of 1990.
In addition, Rep. Schaefer's bill preserves the Public
Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA) until this new
system of support for renewable energy technologies is in place,
and also maintains the sanctity of existing power purchase
contracts under PURPA. Both of these provisions are ones that
AWEA has advocated in proceedings before the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) and Congress.
In proposing a competitive market that will preserve the
significant progress already made by renewables from the
potential market disruption of deregulation, Rep. Schaefer has
taken a bold and visionary step toward a clean energy future for
America. Enormous strides have been made toward reducing the
price and improving the productivity of wind electric generating
equipment over the past decade, and it is vital to make sure that
the orderly progress of this technology toward the commercial
marketplace continues.
The adoption of a minimum requirement for renewable energy
generation will do much to help ensure that utility deregulation
does not jeopardize our nation's environment, air quality, and
public health.
AWEA, formed in 1974, is the national trade association of the
U.S. wind energy industry. AWEA's membership of over 800 includes
turbine and component manufacturers, project developers,
utilities, academicians, and interested individuals from 49
states.
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