How Solar & Wind Will Deliver Power to the People

by BizEd Guide Staff

“Renewable energy like solar and wind have enormous potential to create jobs and boost New Jersey’s economy.” said Emily Rusch, Energy Advocate for New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG).

By establishing New Jersey as an industry hub, New Jersey is positioning itself for economic growth in research, manufacturing, and installations.


Clean Energy Creates Jobs

NJPIRG released a report last fall about economic benefits of developing clean energy in the Mid-Atlantic region. The report, "Renewables Work: Job Growth from Renewable Energy Development in the Mid-Atlantic," found that developing renewable energy would promote job creation and benefit our economy.

The report was released the day after the Board of Public Utilities finalized new requirements on power companies to provide more clean energy to New Jersey customers. These rules will increase the use of solar power here more than tenfold, and require that four per cent of the state’s electricity come from clean renewable sources, all by the year 2008. As a result, dozens of new solar companies are flocking to the state.

• Installing a 2 kW photovoltaic system on just one in ten homes in the Mid-Atlantic would create 5,710 year-long local jobs in installation, operation, and maintenance and 8,080 manufacturing jobs.

• In the Mid-Atlantic Region, there are enough land-based natural wind resources feasible to provide nine percent of our region’s energy demand and lead to over 11,000 new yearlong jobs in manufacturing, with a payroll of $334 million; 740 permanent jobs in wind farm operation and maintenance, with a yearly payroll of $30 million; and 12,700 yearlong jobs and 850 permanent jobs indirectly supported by the wind industry.

Because New Jersey has made a commitment to clean energy and positioned itself as a national leader, renewable energy companies are already flocking to the state. In fact, in the last year, thirty new renewable energy companies have started doing business in New Jersey. * The IBEW Local 269 has also begun a training program for union workers to be employed as solar installers.New Jersey: Solar Capital of US?

Connie Hughes, one of the BPU’s three commissioners, purchased a 10 kilowatt solar system for her home last year, taking advantage of the current 70% grant available to business and homeowners in NJ. Hughes said she would “absolutely” recommend solar to others, for its clean value, and as a good financial investment. “One of my neighbors is getting it. The payback is seven years or less in New Jersey,” said Hughes.

As New Jersey leads in its rebates for clean energy, neighboring states are following. Pennsylvania recently signed into law a renewable energy portfolio standard and Maryland is currently considering legislation that would also set requirements for clean energy.

Considering global market demand with wind being the fastest growing energy sector in the world, and solar power as a close second, New Jersey is making the right move. As the clean energy industries expand, production costs continue to decrease, and many wind projects are now cost-competitive to natural gas power plants. The report points out that by guaranteeing local demand, policies like the New Jersey renewable portfolio standards position the region to benefit from the growing marketplace.

Is New Jersey considered the solar capital of America? “That’s our goal,” Hughes exclaimed.

“A long-term commitment to renewable energy would situate New Jersey as a hub for a growing international marketplace,” said Rusch.


Oil Running Out Too Soon?

Oil reserves are forecast, even by the optimists, to last only about 40 more years. Still, just 6 percent of U.S. energy now comes from renewable sources, and that includes conventional hydropower and wood, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Less than 1 percent comes from the leading alternative energy sources combined: wind, solar and biofuel.

“Optimists, like the US Department of Energy and the oil companies, estimate that around 2,600 billion barrels are left in known deposits and predictable future discoveries,” says Jeremy Leggett, chief executive of Solarcentury, the UK’s largest independent solar electric company, and a member of the government’s Renewables Advisory Board. “Pessimists, like the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, reckon on more like 1,000 billion barrels.

The difference is seismic, says Leggett. “If there are 2,600 billion barrels left, the topping out point - or the so-called peak of depletion - lies far away in the 2030s, providing enough time to get ready for the hydrogen age. If there are 1,000bn barrels left, the peak of depletion may be as soon as 2007. There is not enough time to make the transition from oil to hydrogen. Economies cannot run without energy and global depression lurks around the corner.”

In 2004 the price of gasoline shot up 30% and diesel fuel, largely used for trucks, almost 50%, according to the Department of Energy. Heating oil went up, and so too did natural gas that fuels electricity plants. Leggett suggests it’s time to use ”windfall taxes on Big Oil. . . to start bankrolling a war on oil dependence.”

Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve has said market forces would lead to both increased oil production, greater energy efficiency and faster development of alternative sources of power. "If history is any guide, oil will eventually be overtaken by less-costly alternatives well before conventional oil reserves run out," he said.

Despite that generally sunny prognosis, which is consistent with Mr. Greenspan's deeply held belief that market forces will eventually solve almost any kind of shortage, he suggested that the short-term outlook might well be bumpy.

The rising price of oil has opened many more minds to options long promoted by environmentalists.

"It creates what I would call a `teachable moment,'" said Nancy Hazard, director of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA). "We've been preaching solutions for a long time, but the motivation hasn't been there for people to look at them until recently."

Output of leading alternative energy choices like solar, wind and biofuel is now expanding at 20 to 30 percent annually, according to government and industry sources. Concerns about climate change and the invasion of Iraq have made Americans more acutely aware of the dangers to dependence on foreign oil.

According to a recent poll conducted by California-based Knowledge Networks, about 85% of Americans report that it is patriotic and in the best interests of the U.S. to seek independence from foreign oil. (Oct 22, 04).

Decades old in Europe, the biodiesel industry only began to expand here in the late 1990s. Now about 500 heavy vehicle fleets for schools, cities, and other institutions use biodiesel because of its cleaner emissions and made-in-America status, the industry's National Biodiesel Board says.

Its higher price, however, has slowed acceptance. Few American cars can run on diesel.

With the price gap closing, though, the industry sold about 20% more biodiesel over the past year, for a total of 30 million gallons, the Biodiesel Board estimates. Some Midwestern states mix biodiesel into at least half their fuel. Blends now account for about 70 percent.

A new federal tax credit, worth up to 20 cents a gallon to blenders, will help push biodiesel prices much closer when it takes effect this January. "Now that we have the incentive, and if oil prices stay high, then, sure, we will see a huge increase in demand for biodiesel," said Biodiesel Board spokeswoman Jenna Higgins.

Several conventional fuel companies like Shell and BP have a considerable stake in alternative energy ventures because they too predict more favorable marketplace economics.

Solar Design Associates, an architectural firm in Harvard, Mass, founded in the 1970s, is busier than ever, said president Steven Strong. Inquiries have doubled in the past year, and project commitments are up by at least 60 percent, he said.

Some perennial obstacles have stayed in place like the lackluster government backing compared with fossil fuels.

"There's a limit to how fast you can grow," said lobbyist Glenn Hamer at First Solar, a maker of commercial-scale solar electricity panels in Phoenix.


Playing Catch-up with US Solar

Most of the major technical advances of the last five decades have similarly been made in the United States. Many of them have been underwritten with US tax dollars.

As recently as 1998, the United States still produced more solar photovoltaic modules than any other country, though the world-wide volume before then was much smaller than today. By 1999 Japan took a commanding lead, and it has since widened the gap every year. Last year, Japan produced 3-1/2 times as many solar cells as the United States.

About the same time, Germany, Holland, and several other European countries started enacting policies to promote solar electricity. Last year, Europe produced 80% more cells than the United States.

As prices fall with economies of mass production, demand will skyrocket around the world.

“The policy question facing the United States is whether we will be exporting solar cells to the world or instead be importing solar cells from Japan while we desperately play catch-up - much as we are currently doing with efficient hybrid automobiles. Playing Catch-up with US Solar,” notes Dennis Hayes, President & CEO of the Bullitt Foundation, who’s mission is to protect and restore the environment. Hayes is credited with the founding of Earth Day in 1970.

“The Bush Administration, and the Republican leadership of the House and Senate, are committed to an energy policy designed by the Vice President that is dismissive of any important role for solar energy. This is a prescription for economic catastrophe. It hitches American prosperity to a fuel concentrated mostly in a handful of unstable Middle Eastern countries that, when burned, changes the climate,” Hayes succinctly states.

At this point, America's best hope lies in efforts of solar initiatives at the state and local levels like New Jersey and California’s renewable energy programs. While the federal government has done nothing to mandate national standards for renewables, states have themselves been a major driving force behind renewable energy, enacting their own mandates. Renewable energy industries and advocates from across the nation are very aware of this progress and many eyes were on Colorado this past election.

"Noting that Colorado's legislature has failed to act, Ballot Initiative 37 affords the citizens of Colorado an alternative means for moving the state's economy towards a cleaner energy future," was the collective message from the Washington DC-based Sustainable Energy Coalition, a 21-member group of business, environmental, and energy policy members who work to support renewable energy at the national level.

Already 16 other states have enacted renewable energy requirements for their utilities.

New Mexico, for example, requires 10% renewable electricity by 2011. Nevada requires 15% renewable electricity by 2013. New York State, a leader, recently required that 25% of its electricity come from renewable sources by 2013.

The Sustainable Energy Coalition itself has called for a national renewable energy standard directing that no less than 20 percent of the nation's electricity should be generated by renewable energy resources by 2020, in addition to that already provided by hydropower. Some environmental activists are recommending 50 to 70% of electricity to come from renewable energy to avert a worldwide crisis brought on by the burning of fossil fuels.


Global Warming Threats

“Massive storms, drought-related wildfires, and floods will become more frequent and hence more likely to hit cities,” warns Leggett. “Just a few big hits on major cities would be enough. The effect on Wall Street’s balance sheets would be catastrophic. A global insurance collapse would probably take the capital markets with it. This has been backed up by the world’s biggest reinsurance company, Munich Re.”

“If we want to abate this threat, and the other horrors of global warming, we have to stop burning oil, or more exactly back out of it and the other fossil fuels, and move into hydrogen fuel and other renewable forms of energy such as wind and solar power,” stresses Leggett.

A recent study coming out of Argentina, as reported by the Associated Press, says a group of European scientists warned that a long-term increase of 3.5 degrees in global temperatures could wreak havoc in the world.

They said such a change of climate could threaten Latin American water supplies, reduce food yields in Asia and result in extreme weather conditions in the Caribbean.

Carlo Jaeger, a scientist at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said if the long-term temperature increase from a century ago was 3.5 degrees or above, it could collapse the Amazon rain forest ecosystem and lead to rising sea levels affecting Greenland.

American scientists reported last April that global temperatures rose an average of one degree in the past century.

A long-term 3.5-degree increase would constitute "dangerous interference with the climate system," Jaeger said. "This can lead to sea-level rise of several meters and involve a whole range of major risks to human well-being and environmental integrity."

The planet's temperature is a guideline environmentalists and government officials use to ascertain the amount of greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

The report was released as representatives from almost 200 nations refined details of the Kyoto Protocol, a global warming treaty, to be implemented in February.

The treaty commits major industrialized nations to curb gases from factories, cars and coal-burning power plants blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere by 2012.

President Bush has rejected the plan, saying that it would damage the economy.

In Peru, where almost 70% of all power comes from hydroelectric plants, water supply for the Peruvian capital could be threatened if warming continues, Jaeger said.

China is also vulnerable where an increase in global temperatures could affect rice yields, and the Caribbean, a region already hit by an increase in extreme weather such as hurricanes, Jaeger said.

China is the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, with the United States being first.

Government and private groups said they are rushing a new generation of more sophisticated satellites into space to monitor greenhouse gas emissions and track changing sea levels and melting polar ice in relation to rising planet temperatures. They aim to better understand the impact of heat-trapping gases on the climate.

The European Union is taking part in an Earth monitoring program that is tracking everything from polluting forest fires in Borneo to changes in farmland in Europe and the thinning of polar ice caps.


Wind Energy

The wind industry installed a near-record 1,687 megawatts (MW) in 2003, but many wind energy projects were on hold in 2004 because Congress hadn’t yet renewed the wind energy production tax credit (PTC) until last fall. The uncertainty created by the Federal delay in renewing the tax incentive, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) caused a big decline in wind installations in 2004. However, new projects in the pipeline for 2005 amount to more than $2 billion in business, said AWEA executive director Randall Swisher. “The wind industry is ready to provide hundreds of skilled jobs to rural counties around the nation.”

If the wind industry were to consistently grow at a rate of 18 percent per year, AWEA said, six percent of the nations electricity could be generated by wind power by the year 2020, resulting in over $100 billion of investment. Over the last five years, U.S. wind capacity has expanded at an annual average rate of 28% showing that the wind industry can ramp up quickly to meet the nations power needs.


A Fight to Harness the Wind

Cornelia Dean, writer for the New York Times recently reported on the progress of a private wind company’s proposal to build the world's largest offshore wind power plant near Cape Cod, Mass. “Depending on who is talking, the results would be either a hideous blot on the landscape or a significant step toward clean power and energy independence,” notes Dean.

The wind company was required to have an environmental impact study on the proposed off-shore site done by The Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps found few flaws in the owners plan.

In their 4,000-page draft, new support is given to environmental groups that praise the project as a safe, non-polluting and desperately needed alternative to fossil fuel power plants. But opponents are challenging the report and the idea of building the turbine array in the first place.

“And while opponents predict that the field of towers would drive away tourists, the corps said the project might actually attract sightseers,” writes Dean.

Marine mammals and shellfish can be protected with relative ease, the report said. And birds that fly into the towers and die would probably be at a rate of only one a day, not enough "to cause bird population declines."

Advocates of wind power cite Denmark as an example, saying it generates 20% or more of its energy from wind. Mr. Davies of Greenpeace suggests that offshore wind farms can become tourism destinations. "In Denmark, day sailors take off and sail to these things," he said.

The question of bird habitat had been an obstacle to Community Energy, Inc getting approval for a proposed wind farm in New Jersey. In mid-December 2004 they announced having reached an agreement with the New Jersey Audubon Society for state-of-the-art avian studies to accompany their wind generation project for Atlantic County Utilities Authority property in Atlantic City. Under the agreement, Community Energy will join with the Audubon Society to launch a detailed study using new radar technology to better predict how bird migration may be affected by wind turbine towers, which rise between 200 and 300 feet in the air. While not specifically objecting to the Atlantic City Wind Farm—which is small by wind industry standards, with just five turbines— the New Jersey Audubon Society appealed issuance of a Coastal Area Facility Review Act permit (CAFRA permit) for the project contesting the standards applied by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in approving the project. The Agreement settles that appeal and allows the wind farm to be constructed. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities has committed incentive funding to the Atlantic City Wind Farm—the first commercial scale wind generation project in the state—and also expressed support for the settlement, which allows the project to move forward.

"We commend the New Jersey Audubon Society and Community Energy on their joint commitment to working together and with other stakeholders to demonstrate that renewable energy is a true success story in New Jersey. This facility will help reduce air pollution and the impacts of global warming across the whole state," said Jeanne Fox, President of the Board of Public Utilities.

Offshore wind farms represent about 2 percent of installed wind capacity in Europe currently. However the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) industry targets an increase to 13% by 2010 and 39% by 2020 - a total of 70 GigaWatts within 16 years. It is stating a simple truth that the offshore wind industry can challenge the oil and gas sectors on their home territory.


National Security

“If one actionable priority could be distilled from the chorus of support expressed for renewables at the December conference of the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE), it's that the time has come to shift the nation's priorities from an era of research and development to one of major deployment,” writes Jesse Broehl, Editor, at RenewableEnergyAccess.com, an e-newsletter. “And the one mantra rising above the conference chatter that might create enough political muscle to kick-off that shift can be summed up in two words: National Security.”

"Back in the '70s, we did not have the technologies," said Michael Eckhart, President of ACORE. "Now it's time to say we've done well, we have the technologies, some are commercialized and some are near, but we have succeeded and now it's time to move into Phase II where we put those options to use."


A key question for today's renewable energy visionaries is how to get there.

While much of the conference focused on pushing the federal government for more than its lackluster and inconsistent support for renewables, Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, questioned the Feds’ progress but highlighted the many legislative successes at the state level. Renewable energy benefit funds, renewable portfolio standards (now effective in 18 states), government purchases of green tags, and rebate programs have all served to foster regional and state-based renewable energy markets. For example, New Jersey’s Clean Energy Program has been offering a grant to homeowners and business owners up to 70% of the purchase price of a solar photovoltaic (pv) system since 2001.

Many, though, stress that energy security is now a national imperative and only through the involvement of the federal government can renewable energy play its part for energy independence.

R. James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the Clinton Administration said the U.S. is waging a war against three totalitarian movements: the Shiite and Sunni Islamists, and the ranks of Al Qaeda.

"I fear we're going to be at war for decades, not years," Woolsey said. "It will have a major ideological component. Ultimately we will win it but one major component of that war is oil."

Woolsey, who drives a hybrid-electric Toyota Prius has his own solar PV system on his home.


Renewable Energy Credits (RECs)

Since 2001 the World Resources Institute (WRI) and members of its Green Power Market Development Group worked to establish a corporate market for green power. In 2004, the partnership secured 62 MW of new renewable energy purchases and projects, bringing their three-year total to 174 MW.

Government sectors have also expanded their voluntary green power purchases since 2000. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that government now buys over 620 million kWh of green power per year, while U.S. military installations purchase 360 million kWh and universities purchase 150 million kWh per year.

The Green Power Group's goal is to create 1,000 MW of new cost-competitive green power for corporate markets by 2010. In 2004, WRI and the Green Power Group received the "Green Power Pilot Award" by the Center for Resource Solutions, EPA and the U.S. Dept of Energy for groundbreaking work in developing corporate green power markets in the U.S.

Six of the group partners: Alcoa, Delphi Corp, FedEx Kinko's, Interface, Johnson & Johnson, and Pitney Bowes, purchased 39 MW, more than 210 million kWh per year of new Green-e certified RECs.

"Such large purchases by well-known Fortune 500 companies signal that renewable energy is coming into the mainstream," said ACORE President Michael Eckhart.

Anyone who purchases a solar energy system for their home or business is now offered the option to sell renewable energy credits every year. They can earn income from selling their RECs in addition to receiving the clean electricity the pv system generates from the sun’s rays. And that is how solar and wind energy are delivering power to the people.