Some power companies are sending out charts and graphs that compare you to your neighbors. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
Air conditioners are running full-blast
in much of the country right now.
Shawn Allee reports some
utilities are sending out info that might
get you to turn them down a bit:
Transcript
Air conditioners are running full-blast
in much of the country right now.
Shawn Allee reports some
utilities are sending out info that might
get you to turn them down a bit:
Ever wonder if you’re an energy hog compared to your neighbors?
Well, some power companies are sending out graphs and charts to tell you.
Commonwealth Edison is a utility in Illinois.
It’s sending energy comparison letters to 50,000 customers this August.
Val Jensen runs the company’s program.
Jensen hopes competition will get people to conserve, because power bills alone don’t work.
“Despite pretty compelling economic reasons for customers to become more efficient at using energy, a lot of them don’t do it. Despite what they teach you in Economics 101, most customers don’t behave in the traditional, rational way.”
Jensen says, if enough people conserve energy, utilities can avoid building expensive new power plants.
Commonwealth Edison is just the latest utility to try energy comparison reports.
Power companies in New York and other eastern states will try them this year.
The McKinsey consulting group crunches all kinds of numbers for corporations.
It’s latest report suggests its cheaper to improve efficiency in heaters, homes, and electronics than it is to build new power plants.
It’s a welcome message to Lisa Jackson.
Jackson heads the US Environmental Protection Agency.
“I’m optimistic about Americans, who have so much common sense, saying, listen, the best energy is the energy we never have to use. It’s cheaper, it certainly means that we can invest in ourselves.”
The McKinsey report finds energy efficiency is economical in the long run, but it’ll take millions of consumers and businesses to boost power efficiency all at once to make a difference.
The authors recommend government and banks find new ways to finance home improvements.
They also recommend stronger efficiency labels on household electronics.
Michigan Waste Energy Chief Engineer Brad Laesser checks the cameras and emissions data at Detroit's incinerator. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)
The Michigan Waste Energy facility shreds and burns hundreds of tons of trash each day. The plant makes enough electricity to power about half the homes in Detroit. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)
Back in the 1980s and 90s,
dozens of communities across
the US built incinerators to
get rid of their trash. Many
of them financed the massive
furnaces with bonds they’re just
now paying off. And now that
those debts are off their books,
some cities are re-thinking whether
burning trash makes environmental
and economic sense. Sarah Hulett reports:
Transcript
Back in the 1980s and 90s,
dozens of communities across
the US built incinerators to
get rid of their trash. Many
of them financed the massive
furnaces with bonds they’re just
now paying off. And now that
those debts are off their books,
some cities are re-thinking whether
burning trash makes environmental
and economic sense. Sarah Hulett reports:
About 300 garbage trucks dump their loads each day at the nation’s biggest
municipal incinerator.
“You see the conveyor house going across, that’s conveying the fuel to the
boilers.”
That’s Brad Laesser. He’s the chief engineer at the Michigan Waste Energy
facility in Detroit.
The “fuel” he’s talking about is shredded-up trash.
And he says that’s the beauty of facilities like this. They produce electricity.
“So right now we’re putting out about 50 megawatts. But we can go to
here.”
Laesser points to 70 on the output gauge. That’s enough electricity to power
about half the homes in Detroit. And the leftover steam is used to heat and
cool more than 200 buildings downtown.
Sounds great, right?
Well, Brad Van Guilder of the Ecology Center says not so much.
“Be wary of people coming and talking to you about large, expensive magic
machines that are going to dispose of your waste for you.”
Van Guilder says municipal waste incinerators are major contributors to
smog, and spew dangerous pollutants like dioxin, lead and mercury.
And he says huge furnaces like Detroit’s make it nearly impossible to get
viable recycling efforts off the ground.
“Think about what’s in the trash that you throw out every day. One of the
most important components is paper and plastic.”
Both can be recycled. But Detroit has not had a curbside recycling program
for the past 20 years. That’s because the contract with the incinerator
required that all trash picked up at the curb be used to keep the furnaces
burning.
That changed this summer, though – when the contract expired. Now about
30,000 households are part of a curbside recycling pilot project. And there
are drop-off sites where people can take their recyclables.
(sound of recycling center)
Matthew Naimi heads an organization that runs several drop-off sites, and –
maybe surprisingly – he’s okay with the incinerator. Naimi says he sees
trash disposal and recycling as two separate industries.
“I realized that if we shut the incinerator down before we got a good
established recycling program running, we’d be burying our recyclables
instead of burning them.”
And officials with Covanta – which runs the Detroit incinerator – agree that
recycling and incineration can work together.
Paul Gilman is the chief sustainability officer for Covanta. He says landfills
are the problem – not recycling.
“Landfills and energy-from-waste facilities, that’s where the competition is.
It isn’t at the upper step of recycling.”
He says cheap landfill space makes the economics of incineration difficult.
But he’s hoping that could change with the passage of a climate change bill
in Washington. Gilman says in Europe and Asia, trash incinerators like
Detroit’s don’t get treated the same way as power plants fueled with coal or
natural gas.
“So in Asia, under the Kyoto protocols, a facility like this actually generates
what are called greenhouse gas credits. They’re reducing greenhouse gasses
by the act of processing solid waste and keeping it from going to a landfill.”
Where trash produces methane – a potent greenhouse gas.
But the people who want the incinerator shut down say they don’t believe
burning trash is the greener way to go. They want the city to landfill its
waste while it builds an aggressive recycling program.
So far, they’re not getting what they want from city leaders.
The board that oversees how Detroit handles its trash recently voted to go
with incineration for at least the next year.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
Whenever solar power is mentioned,
critics are quick to note – when there’s
no sun, there’s no power. Lester Graham
talked with the author of a report who
says one type of solar power can store
energy:
Transcript
Whenever solar power is mentioned,
critics are quick to note – when there’s
no sun, there’s no power. Lester Graham
talked with the author of a report who
says one type of solar power can store
energy:
Lester Graham: Concentrating solar thermal, or CST, can store power. Basically, mirrors are used to concentrate solar rays, heat up water, generate power. The heated water can be stored as heat in tanks – like coffee in a thermos – and produce electricity when needed. Britt Staley is with the World Resources Institute. She’s the lead author of a new report on concentrating solar thermal. So, you found, if it’s done right, CST could be built instead of coal-burning power plants. How practical is that?
Britt Childs Staley: We think that concentrating solar thermal is a very exciting renewable energy technology precisely because of this potential for storage. If you incorporate thermal energy storage, or fossil fuel backup, with your concentrating solar thermal, you can actually use the power of the sun around the clock.
Graham: Now, the CST plants are expensive – they’re more expensive than building a coal-burning power plant. So, why build them if that’s the case?
Staley: With climate change as a major concern in the US and around the world, we are going to need to reduce our dependency on coal in the power sector. And currently, as you said, concentrating solar thermal power is more expensive than coal, but in this report we’ve identified several policy interventions that could help reduce costs. For example, a price on carbon such as the cap-and-trade mechanism in the current Waxman-Markey Bill, and then some solar-specific policy interventions would help as well.
Graham: Now, when you say ‘policy interventions’, really you’re talking about government subsidies, right?
Staley: Yes. Support for R-and-D, for deployment such as the investment tax credit that’s currently in place.
Graham: Obviously, the most sunny places would be the best location for a concentrating solar thermal plant.
Staley: Mm-hmm.
Graham: And the most sunny places are often in arid places, such as the US Southwest. So, they’re the driest places, and CST relies heavily on water. So, in the long term, what’s the solution?
Staley: There are several alternative cooling technologies that are available and that can cut water by up to 95% to 98% in places where that is a concern.
Graham: Is this completely experimental, or have we seen this done anywhere in the world successfully?
Staley: It’s absolutely been done successfully. Here in the US, we have some of the longest operating CST plants. And Spain is another good example of where CST deployment has been particularly successful to date.
Graham: How long would it take to build one of these, and how soon could they contribute, and how likely is it to happen, given the cost?
Staley: A lot of the plants that we see on the drawing board right now are expected to be in operation in the next 2 to 5 years. With climate change concerns, with climate change legislation working its way through the House and Senate, coal plant investments are not particularly attractive right now. And investors are very wary of putting their money into something that’s going to be significantly more expensive in the coming years. Concentrating solar thermal, on the other hand, is a zero-emissions power resource. Also, it has zero fuel costs.
Graham: Britt Staley is the lead author of a report on concentrating solar thermal power plants. She’s an associate researcher with the World Resources Institute’s Climate Policy Team. Thanks very much for talking with us.
John Vrieze has a machine called a digester on his dairy farm that's used to turn manure into energy (Photo by Todd Melby)
Big dairy farms produce more than just milk. They also generate manure. Lots and lots
of it. That can be a problem for farmers and the environment. Todd Melby reports on a
technology that reduces manure and generates electricity:
Transcript
Big dairy farms produce more than just milk. They also generate manure. Lots and lots
of it. That can be a problem for farmers and the environment. Todd Melby reports on a
technology that reduces manure and generates electricity:
(sound of suckling cows)
I’m on a dairy farm with John Vrieze and his daughter Brittany.
Oh, and some cows too.
Vrieze is a frugal man. A couple of winters ago, he had a contest with his son to see who
could use the least electricity. Vrieze was willing to go to extreme measures.
His daughter Brittany tells the story this way:
Brittany Vrieze: “He’d shut his fridge off in the winter time. Just use the outdoors for his
fridge. He was definitely trying to keep the kilowatts down.”
Todd Melby: “So what did he do? He just kept his milk in the porch?”
Brittany Vrieze: “Yup.”
Todd Melby: “And kept his frozen stuff outside?”
Brittany Vrieze: “Yup. Yup.”
Today, Vrieze isn’t just trying to save energy. He’s trying to create it.
(sound of cow moos)
From cow dung.
He’s got 1,600 head of cattle at his place here in western Wisconsin. Those cows produce
milk that gets made into cheese. But they also produce about 50,000 gallons of manure
— every day.
Farmers are required to store that manure in a big pool-like structure called a lagoon.
John Vrieze covers his up with a giant tarp.
“It would blow up from the biogas. It would look like a great big balloon or like the
Metrodome, for folks in the Cities. It’s from the nature decomposition of the manure. It
creates biogas. We would have to take that gas out from underneath the cover and flare it
off, which got us to thinking that there has to be a better way to use that energy than just
to flare it off.”
So Vrieze bought a $1 million machine called a digester. And he had help from the
federal government. They paid for a quarter of it. The government is interested in these
things because they can turn manure into energy.
And it turns out — the reason it’s called a digester — is a farm thing.
“A cow has four stomachs. We call the digester really the fifth stomach. All the stuff that
comes out of the back of the cow we then put in that digester.”
So this “fifth stomach” produces energy. However, it’s not ready-to-use energy. To sell it
as natural gas, it has to be about 95% methane. The gas from the digester is only about
60% methane.
(sound of pipeline burn off)
Another option is to convert it to electricity. But in the U.S., electricity is cheap.
Todd Melby: “You tried to sell it to the electric company, but they didn’t want it.”
Brittany Vrieze: “They’re not offering us enough money. So …”
After all this investment by Vrieze and the federal government, some of the gas he
collects is just being burned off into the air.
But maybe not for long.
Vrieze wants to build a greenhouse right on his Wisconsin farm so he can grow
vegetables and herbs in the winter. He says he’ll power it with energy from the digester.
“So, instead of your produce coming from 2,000 miles away – from the central valley of
California – wouldn’t it be neat if it came from 45 miles away?”
Vrieze is planning to use the water from the cow manure for his vegetables and herbs in
his greenhouse. And he’s got a machine similar to ones used at wastewater treatment
plants to clean the manure water.
But even with the digester, there’s still leftover manure he has to deal with. But Vrieze
says the digester makes it more manageable.
(blowing sound)
Some of the dry manure is blown into a pile where it’s gathered up and used as bedding
for the cows. In the summer, it’s also used for another purpose.
“It’s just a clean version of manure. It stinks a little bit. Most of the stink has been taken
out of it. And we mix this with potting soil and it works great for the plants. So …”
That manure/potting soil mix is sold to gardeners in the city. It’s another way for Vrieze
to be frugal and environmental at the same time.
Net metering is when people use rooftop solar or wind power to generate electricity, and then sell the extra back to the power companies (Photo courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories)
As a climate change bill works its way
through Congress, businesses are bracing
for change to cleaner energy. Lester Graham
reports some homeowners are thinking about
generating their own clean electricity:
Transcript
As a climate change bill works its way
through Congress, businesses are bracing
for change to cleaner energy. Lester Graham
reports some homeowners are thinking about
generating their own clean electricity:
People like the idea of using rooftop solar or wind power to generate the electricity and selling extra back to the power companies. It’s called net metering.
But some state regulations don’t allow it.
James Rose is the Senior Policy Analyst for the Network for New Energy Choices. He says these days more states are smoothing the way for net metering.
“It started out looking like a very big patchwork quilt – where some states are doing well, other states aren’t doing well, other states aren’t doing anything – to more of a regional mosaic, now where we see, like, the northeastern states in the United States to really improve their net metering. States out West such as Colorado and California are leading the way.”
Some power companies block net metering where they can.
But Rose says as lawmakers watch neighboring states implement net metering, and then embrace the idea for their own states.
Plug Power does sell these dishwasher-sized fuel cells for your home, but in places like India (Photo courtesy of Plug Power)
Researchers and start-up companies are looking for new ways to power the country. There’s been a lot of hope for hydrogen. But as Mark Brush reports there have been some bumps for companies on the road to the new hydrogen economy:
Transcript
Researchers and start-up companies are looking for new ways to power the country. There’s been a lot of hope for hydrogen. But as Mark Brush reports there have been some bumps for companies on the road to the new hydrogen economy:
There has been a lot of excitement about hydrogen fuel cells for awhile now.
Ten years ago we talked to a rep at a company called Plug Power. He was excited about selling a dishwasher-sized fuel cells that could power and heat your home.
“The only barrier to fuel cells is that people don’t know about them.”
Turns out, that wasn’t the only barrier.
It’s expensive to make these things, and the units weren’t as efficient at heating as they hoped they would be.
But the company is still around, and they are still hopeful about fuel cells for your home.
Andy Marsh is the president of Plug Power.
“So the industry hasn’t moved ahead as rapidly as we would like. It sometimes takes many more years to makes some progress than you had originally hoped.”
Marsh says his company is selling fuel cells in places like India, but he says fuel cells for our homes in the US are probably still three to five years away.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu says coal will have to be a part of the energy mix in the future, so the government is committing money to clean it up. (Photo courtesy of the USDOE)
President Obama’s Energy Secretary is talking about building a facility to find ways to burn coal more cleanly. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
President Obama’s Energy Secretary is talking about building a facility to find ways to burn coal more cleanly. Lester Graham reports:
Burning coal pollutes – acid rain, toxic mercury, soot. And lately the big concern – carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas contributing to global warming.
The Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu told Members of Congress, despite the concerns about pollution, we still depend on coal for half of our electricity.
“So, it’s very important that we develop the technology that captures and also that safely sequesters carbon from coal plants.”
The technology does not exist today.
Chu says three-point-four-billion dollars in government stimulus money is now available to find a way to clean up coal.
An experimental plant called Futuregen was supposed to find ways to burn coal more cleanly and do something about carbon dioxide emissions. But the Bush administration killed funding.
Secretary Chu says the Obama administration is now negotiating with Futuregen partners again.
(Photo courtesy of American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity)
You are being targeted by lobbyists. The coal industry and environmentalists are both trying to influence what you think. In the first part of our series on the future of coal, Lester Graham looks at the campaigns for-and-against coal:
Transcript
You are being targeted by lobbyists. The coal industry and environmentalists are both trying to influence what you think. In the first part of our series on the future of coal, Lester Graham looks at the campaigns for-and-against coal:
You probably don’t buy coal directly. But you do0 pay for it when you pay your power bill. 50% of the nation’s electricity comes from coal-burning power plants.
The problem with that is, coal pollutes.
Not as much as it used to. Some traditional pollutants have been reduced by 77% since the 1970 Clean Air Act.
Although the government forced it to reduce some some of the pollution, the coal industry brags about the progress and encouarges you to believe in the future of “clean coal.”
American Coalition for Clean Coal advertisement:
“I believe. I believe. We can be energy independent. We can continue to use our most abundant fuel cleanly and responsibly. We can and we will. Clean coal: America’s power”
Joe Lucas is the man behind that ad. He’s with the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Lucas says the meaning of the phrase “clean coal” is always evolving.
“Ah, the use of the term ‘clean coal,’ it is a term of art. Up until now it has been technology that has reduced traditional pollution emissions and increased the efficiency of power plants and going forward we’re rapidly approaching the point to where it will be technologies for capture and storage of carbon.”
But right now, no power plant captures carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas contributing to climate change.
That’s why environmentalists scoff at the coal industry’s use of ‘clean coal.’
Cohen brothers advertisement:
“Clean coal harnesses the awesome power of the word ‘clean’ to make it sound like the cleanest clean there is!” (coughing)
The guy behind that ad is Brian Hardwick. He’s the spokesman for the “This is Reality” campaign.
“In reality today there is no such thing as ‘clean coal.’ There is no commercial coal plant that captures its carbon pollution not to mention the other environmental impacts that the coal industry has – from burning coal and the runoff and the extraction of coal. So, we launched an effort to try to bring out the truth about coal in response to the marketing campaign that the coal industry had so that people could come to their own conclusions about whether or not they thought coal was indeed clean.”
Clean or not, we have a lot of coal here in the U.S. It’s relatively cheap. And when pushed, a lot of environmentalists concede we’ll need to rely on coal for electricity generation for some time to come.
During last year’s Presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama aknowledged that to people at a rally in Virginia, but indicated we need to find a way to really get to ‘clean coal.’
“Why aren’t we figuring how to sequester the carbons from coal? Clean coal technology is something that can make America energy independent.” (applause)
And President Obama has followed up on that. In the stimulus plan, 3.4 billion dollars was set aside to find ways to make coal clean.
There’s more to clean up. Sulfur dioxide, or SOx, contributes to acid rain. Nitrogen Oxides, or NOx, helps cause smog. Those have been reduced, but not eliminated. And then there’s toxic mercury and particulate matter – or soot. All of it harms the environment and public health.
President Obama’s Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, is a big proponent of cleaner energy sources such as wind and solar. But he says we do need to find a way to use coal.
“Right now as we’re using coal it’s not clean. But, I firmly believe that we should invest very heavily on strategies that can take a large fraction of the carbon dioxide out of coal as well as the SOx the NOx, the mercury, particulate matter.”
But until that technology is in place, ‘clean coal’ is no more than what the coal industry calls an “evolving term of art.”
The coal industry hopes the federal government will help them find a way to catch and store the carbon coming from smokestacks.
The coal industry got hit with expensive
pollution restrictions almost two decades ago. Now, the government’s considering putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. Coal companies think they have a technological solution in a test project called FutureGen. In the
second part of our series on the future of coal, Shawn Allee looks at why they
have such high hopes for it:
Transcript
The coal industry got hit with expensive
pollution restrictions almost two decades ago. Now, the government’s considering putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. Coal companies think they have a technological solution in a test project called FutureGen. In the
second part of our series on the future of coal, Shawn Allee looks at why they
have such high hopes for it:
The last time the federal government put a price on coal pollution was in 1990.
Power plants had to start paying for sulphur dioxide that came out of smoke stacks and caused acid rain.
To clean up, many burned cleaner coal.
That was bad news for Illinois miner Chris Nielsen.
He happened to mine some of the dirtiest coal.
“A good portion of the economy around here was built on coal industry. And coal mining jobs not only paid a good wage, they had terrific benefits. And as the industry went soft, people lost the best jobs they ever had.”
Cleanup technology improved, but it took nearly two decades to make burning the highest-sulpher coal economical again.
Nielsen says today, coal executives worry they’ll lose profits if the government prices carbon dioxide.
And coal miners worry they’ll lose jobs again.
The industry wants new plants that do two things: first, they capture carbon dioxide while burning coal, and then bury, or sequester this carbon dioxide – so it stays out of the atmosphere.
Nielsen says there’s a plant like that in the works, it’s called FutureGen.
“We can burn the coal in a clean, environmentally friendly manner. The FutureGen project where they were going to sequester the carbon dioxide was a terrific opportunity to show that.”
Well, Nielsen’s jumping the gun.
FutureGen hasn’t proved anything; it’s not even built.
The coal industry and the government were supposed to design and fund FutureGen, then build it in Central Illinois.
The government and coal companies fought over how much the plant would cost but now, it’s likely to move forward.
Even with a sketchy history though, the industry’s got almost no choice but to be hopeful for FutureGen.
The industry wants carbon dioxide capture and sequestration to work – otherwise, it’s gonna pay big for carbon pollution.
Not everyone’s so confident in the technology.
“We can not depend on carbon capture and sequestration to achieve greenhouse gas emissions reductions because we don’t know whether it’s going to work.”
That’s Ron Burke, with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
He says FutureGen is worth testing but it shouldn’t distract us from technology we know is low-carbon.
“There are ways to meet the greenhouse gas reductions targets that we need to meet without carbon capture and sequestration. We can do it, it’s primarily through in investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency in the near term.”
There’re energy researchers who aren’t so sure enough renewable energy like wind and solar will be available soon enough.
One is of them is Ernest Moniz at MIT.
“We have a ways to go for let’s say, solar, to scale up. Right now, it’s less than point 1% of our electricity.”
Coal generates nearly half our electricity.
Moniz says it won’t be easy to replace, but it might be possible to improve it.
He says its likely carbon dioxide capture and sequestration can work technically.
But he says we need to build FutureGen to answer whether it works efficiently and economically.
“Well, if we are going to establish a new technology, like sequestration, and be able to have it not only demonstrated but then deployed and implemented, that means we would need to start, preferably yesterday, but at worst, today.”
For Moniz, FutureGen could be clean coal’s first major test – not just of whether it works – but whether it’s too expensive.
Some power companies are sending out charts and graphs that compare you to your neighbors. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
