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dam-l Energy choices (fwd)



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From bwallace@igc.apc.org  Tue Nov 11 13:21:40 1997
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 10:07:34 -0800 (PST)
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To: Tom Holzinger <energie@netaxis.qc.ca>
From: Bob Wallace <bwallace@igc.apc.org>
Subject: Energy choices
Sender: bwallace@igc.org

THE QUESTION
	I was asked if there are cost-efficient ways of making electrical power
other than fossil fuel burning and nuclear power.  Here is my answer.

NOT ENOUGH ELECTRICAL POWER?  
	It isn't electricity we need.  We need ways of cooling, heating, lighting,
running machines, appliances, electronic equipment.  Therefore, the
following questions are in order. 
   
	IS THIS WORK NEEDED?  Examples of unneeded work include streetlights on
during the day, air conditioning on while the central heating system is
working (as in a New York city office building where I worked for 2 years),
commercial buildings using electric lighting in areas where daylight is
plentiful, advertising billboards lighting up the night sky.

	CAN THIS WORK BE DONE USING A DIFFERENT POWER SOURCE?   I vacationed on
Monhegan Island this summer in an off-the-grid house that had a
photo-voltaic system with battery storage and a propane generator for backup
power.  In spite of several cloudy and rainy days, we didn't need the
propane generator.  Washing machine, lights, television, radio and small
appliances used the home-grown electricity.  The stove, refrigerator, water
heater and clothes dryer ran on propane gas as did several space heaters
that were for winter use.  
	In Nova Scotia, Neal Livingston is connected to the grid and has his own
hydroelectric plant.  It is small.  The water impoundment, located up the
hill on a little brook, is not big enough to swim in or skate on.  The
system has a 100 foot head.  An inexpensive flexible pipe delivers the water
to the turbine in the tiny powerhouse.  There is still water in the brook.
The utility pays him the same rate for his excess power as he pays the
utility and he comes out about even.  Neal designed his passive solar house,
Backup heat is provided by wood which he harvests sustainably from his land.  
	It would have cost Milt and Barbara Wallace $15,000 to $20,000 (Canadian)
to be connected to the Ontario Hydro grid 0.7k from there farmhouse in
Cameron.  Being connected would have required cutting a wide swath through
their 18 acre woodlot.  So they designed their own system which, like the
Monhegan house, has PV panels with battery storage and a propane generator
for backup power.  The Wallaces also installed a wind generator which has
provided, at most, 10 to 12% of their electricity.  The pay-back period for
their system was zero (0) years. They retro-fitted the existing log cabin
when they built an addition.  Now they have a well insulated passive solar
house and more than enough wood for backup heat.  They produce extra fruits
and vegetables to sell plus milk and eggs for home use.     
	They call their place Sun Run Centre and run workshops on sustainable
living.  Saturday, Nov 15, 1997 they are giving a solar energy workshop on
"Environmentally sound electricity from the sun or wind for your home, farm,
cottage or RV".  
	When my electric clothes dryer broke down I replaced it with a low-tech
solar clothes dryer which consists of a length of rope and clothespins.  In
freezing weather I dry my clothes on a collapsible wooden clothes dryer
placed over a heat vent.  Insulation plus tall sugar maples on the south and
west sides of my house keep it comfortable in hot weather.  Therefore I need
neither electric nor gas air-conditioning. 
	Another low tech idea is the Princeton ice pond, so called because it was
developed at Princeton.  A shallow man-made pond freezes in winter providing
ice which is insulated with a material such as straw.  A system of blowers
and conduits sends ice-cooled air when and where it is needed   A cheese
factory in western New York installed a Princeton ice pond to meet its
cooling needs.
	In Quebec, 90% of new homes are heated with electricity from the Provincial
utility, Hydro Quebec.  When the Cree community of Ouje-Bougoumou was
established, the easiest way to heat their new homes and community buildings
would have been with electricity.  It also would have had the lowest
start-up costs.  But the Cree wanted to buy as little electricity as
possible from Hydro Quebec, whose Great Whale project had flooded vast areas
of their ancestral homeland.  Instead the Cree converted an unused boiler
from an oil burner to a sawdust burner.  Their fuel comes from discarded
piles of sawdust at nearby lumber mills.  Heat from their waste sawdust
burning boiler is piped to every building in the community to provide both
hot water and space heating.  Their system promotes energy self-sufficiency,
keeps money in the community, provides a few jobs for community members, and
costs much less over time than the electricity alternative.  	
	The high school in Townshend Vermont was first heated with electricity and
later converted to wood.  When the school opened in 1970, the electric
utility told the school board that nuclear power was going to make
electricity too cheap to meter.  By 1991 the yearly heating bill was $60,000
and rising.  Energy costs were the single largest budget item after salaries
and benefits.  At that time in southern Vermont, electricity costs had risen
to $32 per million BTUs, and wood, a renewable local resource, cost about $3
per million BTUs.  The school chose a wood chip gasifier made by
Vermont-based CHIPTEC.  The payback period is under 10 years.  Over a 20
year lifetime it will save the town $1,238,000.  The system is efficient,
generates almost no hydrocarbons, is easier to maintain than the previous
system, and creates less than 1% ash and soot.  Residents collect the wood
ash to use as fertilizer.  Even if every school in Vermont emulated
Townshend, the state has plenty of wood for sustainable use. 	

	CAN THE SAME WORK BE DONE WITH A FRACTION OF THE ELECTRICITY NOW BEING
USED?  The answer is YES and answers abound.  Here are a few. 
	Super-efficient refrigerators have been developed in response to SERP, the
Super- Efficient Refrigerator Program, which was funded by 24 U.S.
utilities.  The carrot was a $30 million prize and the winner was the
Whirlpool Corp., maker of Whirlpool, Kitchen Aid and Kenmore brands.  These
refrigerators beat the 1992 federal efficiency requirements by 70% and the
tighter 1993 standards by 40%. They are good for the environment and are
proving popular with the public.  Electricity savings are estimated to be
$960 over a 15-year lifetime - about the same amount as the purchase price.  
	The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) is installing energy efficient Maytag
refrigerators, specially designed for apartment use, in 10,000 of its 58,000
units, thus saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy costs.  CHA is
setting a precedent by selecting an energy service company (Texas based
Planergy) other than the local utility through a competitive bid process.
	An efficient washing machine program is underway in Massachusetts and will
spread throughout the Northeast in 1998.  The ENERGY STAR label is on models
by Frigidaire, Maytag, Staber, Gibson, Asko, Miele, and Creda.  Use of these
washers by 20% of Americans would save about 82 billion gallons of water and
4 billion kwh of electricity a year. 	
	The federal government has entered into a 10 year "energy savings
performance contract" with XENERGY which will develop and implement
energy-efficiency measures at federal and state facilities.  Greater
efficiency in heating, lighting, cooling and industrial processes will save
both energy and taxpayer dollars.  	
	The Japanese use energy twice as efficiently as we do.  Furthermore they
are increasing their efficiency at a faster rate than we are.  The billions
in savings they realize from energy efficiency enhance their competitiveness
in international markets.  I figured out what we would have saved on a per
capita basis if we were as efficient as the Japanese.  In one single year,
1987, we would have saved $239 billion. 
	National Audubon has a "new" office in a turn-of-the-century building in
Manhattan.  Because of careful design decisions, the building now uses 60%
less energy than it did before it was renovated.  
	Even well-planned voluntary efforts can produce significant results.
Consider what Los Angeles did at the time of the first oil shock in the
early seventies.  Los Angeles was dependent on low sulfur oil from the
Middle East and their supply was threatened.  The city put together a
committee to figure out how to respond to the problem.  A plan was developed
which called upon each sector of the community (industrial, commercial, and
residential) to reduce its use of electricity by a specified percentage.
Although suggestions were made (e.g. turn off unused lights) how to do it
was left up to each electricity user.  The Los Angeles Dodgers met their
target by starting their games half an hour earlier.  
	The plan included penalties.  A utility customer who failed to reduce usage
by the specified percentage would be hit with a hefty surcharge.  Not only
were no penalties ever needed, each of the 3 sectors cut usage by more than
the mandated amount.  The numbers that I recall, 18 years later, are 14% and
17%, that is, the goal was an overall reduction in electricity use of 14%
and the actual reduction was 17%.  This may have been for the residential
sector only.   
	Going back many hundreds of years we can learn from the cliff dwellers of
the American Southwest.  They built their homes into south-facing cliffs
where they were shaded from the fierce summer sun and received light and
warmth in the winter.  Passive solar design is the simplest and cheapest way
to tap renewable energy yet seems to get the least attention.  It involves
building it right in the first place so that the sun can provide a large
fraction of the structure's heat and daytime light.  Probably Michio Kaku is
right.  Passive (and active) solar design gets the least attention because
it can't be metered.  If you read by daylight or heat your house with the
sun, there is no money in it for the utility and its shareholders.    	The
Long Island Lighting Company charges the highest electric rates in the U.S..
A friend who lives on Long Island, James Corrigan, within a year cut his
bills in half without giving up anything   
	In 1992 Amory Lovins said "Today, in fact, the best technologies on the
market can save about three-quarters of all electricity now used in the
United States, while providing unchanged or improved services".  
	Everyone should have the opportunity to reduce their electric usage by 75%
or as a minimum 50%.  What is needed is universally available information
(as easily available as information about Joe Camel) and easy access to
affordable financing.  A comprehensive demand side management (DSM) program
is one good way to provide both information and financing.

	BENEFITS OF CONSERVATION AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY
	Conservation and energy efficiency, as in DSM programs, are a fast,
environmentally friendly and inexpensive way to produce additional
electricity on both sides of the border.  In New York State DSM programs
have provided many benefits.  Here is a list from the Energy Conservation
Fact Sheet put out by the Pace Energy Project, Pace University School of
Law, March 22, 1996.  The following statistics represent losses that will
occur if energy efficiency/conservation programs are not retained as part of
utility restructuring.
	*Energy conservation initiatives, mainly in the form of demand side
management (DSM) programs that were implemented during the period 1990-1995,
are now saving over 5 billion kilowatt-hours of electric power per year -
enough electricity to serve 750,000 households.
	*These efforts by utilities have significantly reduced New York's electric
bill.  Over their lives, programs implemented between 1990 and 1995 caused a
net reduction in electric power production expenses of about $1.2 billion
(chiefly through savings in fuel, operations and maintenance costs).
	*These efforts avoided the burning of large quantities of fossil fuels:  30
million barrels of oil; 5.45 million tons of coal; and 180 million MCF of
natural gas.  Almost all of this fossil fuel would have come from outside of
NYS and much from foreign sources.  
	*Energy efficiency has been an engine for economic development in New York,
generating over 31,400 job years.  These jobs are created by the design and
installation of energy efficient devices, by retro-fitting existing
buildings, and by the "wealth effect", that is, the transfer of spending
from electric bills and fuel imports to other goods and services.
	*Another benefit is substantially reduced statewide emissions from
generating plants:  198,080 tons less of SO2 and 63,000 tons less of NOx.
In 1995, this equaled 8.5% of annual statewide utility emissions of these
pollutants.  Also reduced were CO2 emissions by 40 million tons, small
particulates (PM10) by 7,000 tons and heavy metal emissions from oil and
coal fired units.
	*Energy conservation programs are economic winners because benefits exceed
costs by a margin of nearly 3 to 1.  In other words, for every $1 spent on
conservation programs, the utility, its customers, and society receive $3 in
benefits.
	*Utility energy efficiency programs also generate various indirect benefits
including fuel diversity, reduced environmental compliance costs and reduced
hemorrhaging of wealth from our State.  

	BACK TO THE QUESTION
	I could go into the present restructuring of the power industry and its
effects, one of which is a drastic cutback in DSM programs in New York. and
elsewhere.  However, important as it is, it may not contribute to answering
the question, "Are there cost-efficient ways of making electric power other
than fossil fuel burning and nuclear power?"
	Several cost-effective and environmentally benign approaches to solving a
shortage of electricity have been discussed:  ELIMINATION - eliminate work
that is harmful or unnecessary;  SUBSTITUTION - use another source of power
to do the same work that electricity is doing;  CONSERVATION AND ENERGY
EFFICIENCY - through demand side management and other methods, use less
electricity to do the same work.   	
	There are also SUPPLY SIDE SOLUTIONS that the utility can implement, such
as the following.   	COGENERATION was an important source of electricity in
the early years of this century, meeting about 15% of our electricity needs.
Cogenerated electricity was produced mostly by harnessing waste heat from
industrial processes.  The increasing availability of relatively cheap power
from utilities caused cogen to languish.  As electricity prices rose, cogen
became economically attractive again, but regulations stood in the way.  For
example, a chemical plant that harnessed its waste heat to produce
electricity could not sell any of its excess power without being treated as
a utility, subject to all the rules and regulations of a utility.  In the
aftermath of the oil shocks of the 70s, most of these inhibiting regulations
were eliminated, a process that is continuing with the present move to
deregulate the utilities and introduce competition.   
	Cogen today often takes the form of new combined cycle gas-fired plants
which can produce power at about 2.7 cents kwh which includes the cost of
building the plant as well as operating costs.  This is less than the mere
operating cost of some existing utility dinosaurs, especially nuclear
plants.  Ideally we would use conservation and energy efficiency to greatly
reduce electricity use and, with all due speed, start replacing nuclear and
fossil fueled power with the sun and sun derived power such as wind.  In a
less than ideal world, we may need super efficient gas fired plants as a
bridge to a sustainable energy future.    
	FUEL CELLS can improve the way electricity is generated.  Fuel cells (FCs)
are like chemical engines with no moving parts.  They use a catalyst to
oxidize the fuel rather than burning fuel to make electricity.  For that
reason, FCs produce far fewer emissions than the conventional method of
burning fuel.  They are more efficient than almost all other small-scale
generators, provide high-quality power which is excellent for running
sensitive equipment, and are quiet, compact and modular.  
	FCs may be ideal for DISTRIBUTED GENERATION in "load pockets", which are
areas where transmission or distribution constraints limit competition.
Emissions will approach zero as renewable sources of electricity are
increasingly used to produce hydrogen which is the ideal FC fuel.  According
to NRDC, FCs currently have the ability to generate high-quality electricity
at competitive prices.  
	For information about a residential fuel cell using propane or natural gas,
see the New York Times , Oct. 21, 1997, p. A14, "In a Step Toward a Better
Electric Car, Company Uses Fuel Cell to Get Energy From Gasoline".  The
company, Plug Power, says it will have units commercially available in 2
years.  The unit would be "roughly the size of a small dishwasher" and "You
won't have to pay a penny for the device," but it will be metered and charge
8 to 10 cents per kwh depending on propane or natural gas prices. This price
would not be attractive to current residential users in Quebec where rates
are lower.  However, it would save me between 16% and 33% on my electric
bill because I am one of the 25 million households in the U.S. that pay more
than 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. Widespread use of Plug Power units in
the Northeast, plus energy efficiency, could put a damper on Hydro Quebec's
plans to greatly expand into the U.S. market.   
	Also in "remote" locations, i.e. sites half a kilometer or more from the
grid, the unit could be a viable alternative to paying thousands of dollars
in hookup costs.   	
	PHOTO-VOLTAICS are available now and are cost-effective for Neal
Livingston, the Wallaces and in many situations where extending the
transmission and distribution system makes delivery of conventional power
too expensive.
	My parents had an electric hot water heater timed to go on in the wee hours
of the morning when electric rates were lower.  PEAK LOAD PRICING - charging
higher rates at times of high demand and lower rates when demand is low - is
a simple way to distribute demand more evenly throughout the day thus
lowering peak load needs.  Lowering peak load needs can lessen the need to
buy imported power or the need to build expensive new power plants. 
	Today savings through conservation and energy efficiency are easier.  For
example, we have compact fluorescent bulbs which provide one of the fastest
ways to reduce usage.  Peak load pricing is a relatively fast and easy way
to make existing capacity go farther by distributing demand.  And there are
appliance efficiency standard, DSM programs, building codes that promote
energy efficiency, low tech ideas (a rope and clothespins is one of many),
flat rates that eliminate discounts for greater use, net metering to
encourage individual generation of power.  
	In Quebec, where the majority of homes are heated electrically, tighter
homes - using caulking, weather-stripping, insulation, storm doors and
windows, argon filled double glazed windows - will mean big savings of
electricity and dollars.  Have there been studies, in Quebec, of the
multiple benefits of using energy efficiently?      
	The value of conservation and energy efficiency cannot be over-emphasized.
Energy conservation initiatives are winners - creating jobs, improving the
economy, lowering ratepayer bills, enhancing the environment, reducing
dependence on foreign power and foreign oil, eliminating the need to destroy
cultures (e.g. the Cree), wage war (as in the Persian Gulf) and commit
murder (e.g. Ken Saro-Wiwa and his fellow Ogoni) while improving quality of
life and the economy.

	Betty Quick, Energy Committee Co-Chair 
	Sierra Club/Atlantic Chapter (New York)
	14 Ledge Rd., Old Greenwich, CT  06870
	203-637-1345     <bwallace@igc.apc.org>
	
Dear Tom,  Here is my reworked version.  I would appreciate your comments
before I copy it for distribution, per your suggestion, at the Montreal
meeting Nov. 15 & 16.  How many copies?  I thought I would put 3 (or 4)
references at the end: (1) The Wallace's Sun Run Centre in Ontario  (2) Neal
Livingston and his Black River Productions in Nova Scotia (Neal  is a
documentary film maker.  In the early 80s he did 2 films on small hydro,
"Water Power" and "Portrait of Small Hydro")  He also was the first
independent power producer in Nova Scotia having made the winning bid on an
abandoned hydropower plant which produces 1.8 million kwh per year.  He is
happy to report that now there are two independents  (3) A group or person
in Quebec which I hope you can supply  - possibly the group putting on our
meeting?  (4) Another group or person that you think of?