Oil, gas, and rock bands
A word of advice to rock bands touring through fracking country: you might want to line up accommodations ahead of time.
An interesting, energy-related footnote emerged Wednesday in an already strange story out of Ohio.
Indie rock band Here We Go Magic was pulling onto a highway in eastern Ohio when they passed a hitchhiker who was standing alongside the on-ramp.
They turned around and went back after their sound man recognized the hitchhiker as filmmaker John Waters.
We found John Waters hitchhiking on the side of the 70 fwy, he bought us lunch. What a guy! @herewegomagic @turnerjen twitter.com/avtark/status/…
— Avtar K (@avtark) May 16, 2012
What was the band doing in Ohio anyway? Guitarist Michael Bloch explained to the DCist blog:
“There’s a hydro-fracking boom in western Pennsylvania. You can’t get a motel room. We had to drive til 4AM, and finally found a Days Inn in eastern Ohio. Getting back on the highway this morning, there was a man at the side of the on-ramp with a sign that read ‘to the end of Rte 70.’ Jen wanted to pick him up, but we drove past him. As we passed by, our sound guy said ‘John Waters’ Luke said, ‘Yep, definitely John Waters.’ We got off at the next exit and circled back. He was still there. We pulled up, opened the door and asked where he was coming from. ‘Baltimore,’ he said. And we said ‘Get in, sir.’ “
The lesson: before you bring the rock to an oil-and-gas party, make sure you have a place to stay, or you might spend an uncomfortable night in the van.
That, and keep an eye out for hitchhikers.
Clean energy funding hot (and cold) in Ohio
Energy-efficient ice cream freezers installed at a new Pierre’s factory in Cleveland. (Photo Courtesy of Pierre’s Ice Cream Co.)
The Midwest is a hot spot for Clean Energy Funds, and an ice cream business is among the beneficiaries.
The scoop? So-called Clean Energy Funds, or CEFs, from sources including monthly surcharges on utility bills, have helped pay for energy efficiency and other improvements at places like Pierre’s Ice Cream Co., which opened a new, 35,000-square-foot factory in Cleveland almost a year ago.
Pierre’s used a state grant as part of a project that’s allowed the company to spend less money on the electricity needed to make its tasty treat — and keep the final product at an optimal temperature of minus 20 degrees when it’s stored in an on-site distribution center.
“The beauty of having all of this installed is that as we can increase volume, we will not be consuming more energy,” said Shelley Roth, president of Pierre’s Ice Cream Co.
“We’re hoping to see a savings of anywhere between 15 to 25 percent (on electricity costs).”
There are numerous other examples of states using CEFs for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in the U.S. But Ohio is among a number of states working to change the recipe for funding projects. Ohio’s version of the CEF was called the Advanced Energy Fund, or AEF. Pierre’s received money for its upgrades through an Ohio program supported by the AEF and federal funding.
The Ohio experience
Ohio’s Advanced Energy Fund was in place for a decade, until legislation that allowed for a 9-cent monthly surcharge on utility bills expired in December 2010, said Chad Smith, deputy chief of the Office of Energy at the Ohio Department of Development.
The state estimates that 120 companies are saving a total of $13 million in annual electricity and natural gas costs due to improvements supported by the Advanced Energy Fund.
Since the expiration, Ohio has restructured its remaining program dollars into an Energy Loan Fund, using payments from previous Advanced Energy Fund investments and supplemental federal funding.
“It was successful,” Smith said of the former AEF program. “One of the things we saw, however, was that the demand (for grants) exceeded the supply. So we ended up looking toward financing that could be sustainable, into the future.”
Under the state’s new Energy Loan Fund, money given to companies for efficiency improvements will be recycled, Smith said. Eligible projects include upgrades like insulation, lighting, heating and cooling systems, renewable-energy projects and improved production processes.
“The projects that we do will be repaid with a financing program,” he said. “The funds will come back into the program, and they can be loaned out again and again.”
The program is structured so companies can design a schedule that uses savings from reduced energy costs to pay back the loan, in 15 years or less and at an interest rate below prime, Smith said.
The Energy Loan Fund, with about $10 million per year available, received 60 pre-applications after its December launch. After a round of evaluations, 47 companies have enrolled in the program, said Penny Martin, communications specialist at the Ohio Department of Development. The surcharge collected a similar annual amount for AEF grants, via a 9-cent monthly fee on all investor-owned utility bills.
Christina O’Keeffe, assistant deputy chief at the Ohio energy office, said the Energy Loan Fund seems to fill a gap in the marketplace.
“Some of our customers cannot get loans from commercial banks because there’s not an understanding of the technology involved,” O’Keeffe said. “When we look, we’re looking at estimated energy savings from a project, and using that as a source to repay the loan.”
Experts Say Coordination is the Key
According to a January report from The Brookings Institution, a public policy think-tank based in Washington, D.C., CEFs exist in more than 20 states, mostly in the Northeast, West Coast and Midwest, generating more than $500 million annually, mostly from utility surcharges.
Programs in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Ohio will have collectively distributed more than $600 million in assistance by 2017, according the report.
States with clean energy funds, via the Brookings Institution.
Over the last decade, the state funds have invested more than $2.7 billion to support renewable energy markets while leveraging another $9.7 billion in federal and private sector investment, the report states. As a result, $12 billion has gone to more than 72,000 projects in the U.S., including solar and wind installations, hydrokinetic projects in rivers, and biomass generation plants on farms.
But authors of the Brookings report caution that such programs need to better coordinate activities with their respective state and federal economic development agencies, and go beyond per-project financing measures like grants.
Smith said he’s familiar with the Brookings report, and agrees that clean energy and economic development efforts in states work best if they’re merged.
“That’s something we’ve always thought was a good idea,” he said. “It really creates an environment that allows a company, in the future, to pursue job expansion and job creation.”
Cool Savings
For Pierre’s Ice Cream, shifting from grants to loans also seems to make good sense, said Roth, company president.
“We have a very large electrical bill,” she said. “Our goal was to have a new state-of-the-art facility that allows us to grow. And as we grow, the per-gallon, cost-per-unit in electricity will decrease due to what we’ve invested.”
Energy-saving features in Pierre’s new factory include:
- Using the hot and cold air created during the ice-cream making process to heat and cool rooms in other parts of the building;
- Insulated panels to save on energy use;
- Making use of natural light with strategically placed windows and skylights;
- Motion sensors and timers that make sure the lights are on only when rooms are in use;
- Programmable equipment control panels that optimize utility consumption;
- Pumps and equipment controls designed to reduce water consumption and process waste;
- A recycling program for corrugated packaging.
Roth said she’s not sure if her company will take advantage of Ohio’s new clean energy loans in the future, but she encourages other companies to look into ways to save energy.
“I thought what was great about the program was they made us really evaluate all aspects of our energy consumption and our training and our focus,” she said. “They made us quantify things that were eye-opening.”
Jeff Kart is a longtime environmental journalist, blogger and writer in the Great Lakes region, and principal of Enviroprose consulting. He lives in Bay City, Michigan.
Waterless fracking technique makes its debut in Ohio
A GasFrac operation in Alberta (PR photo)
Some 8,000 feet deep and 450 million years old, the Utica Shale has a lot of petroleum — crude oil, natural gas and byproducts like ethane.
Although no one really knows how much there is, oil and gas companies are flocking to eastern Ohio, home to some of the shale’s most amenable portions.
“Right now we’re still in an exploratory phase,” said Brian Hickman, a spokesperson for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.
It’s also an experimental phase for the technology that makes shale extraction possible, Hickman said. Companies that have used horizontal hydraulic fracturing successfully in the Marcellus, Barnett and other shales are still trying to figure out how to best use it in the Utica.
In Ohio, 65 Utica Shale wells have been drilled so far, each requiring 5 to 6 million gallons of water, said Heidi Hetzel-Evans, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
But as Utica drillers analyze early results, at least one company thinks water might be unnecessary — or even a hindrance — and that using a waterless, propane-based form of fracking called LPG might be more efficient and profitable.
That currently unnamed company has asked GasFrac Energy Services to frack two Utica trial wells in Ohio using LPG, short for liquid petroleum gas. Founded in 2006 and based in Calgary, GasFrac is apparently the world’s only provider of LPG fracking and has used it about 1,200 times, mostly in western Canada and also in Texas and Colorado.
LPG uses a mixture of propane (and occasionally some butane) that’s pressurized to the consistency of a gel. Then, like water-based fracking, it’s injected through pipes at high pressure underground to release oil and gas by cracking open rocks using sand (or another proppant).
Unlike water, though, LPG naturally mixes with petroleum, so it returns to the surface with the oil or gas being extracted. And since LPG is electrically neutral and lacks much friction, it doesn’t dissolve any salts, heavy metals or radioactive compounds — compared to water, in which these things return to the surface and make a typically toxic mixture even more so.
Fracking, of course, is enormously controversial, mostly because of concerns of potential risks to water supplies. LPG fracking eliminates an entire wastestream — the copious amounts of toxic “flowback” water that has to be reused, treated and discharged into waterways, or disposed of in deep injection wells, which have been linked to earthquakes in Ohio.
But why would companies using hydro-fracking — which has proven to be pretty profitable — be interested in using a niche technology like LPG?
“I think the results they’re getting [in the Utica] are sub-par, and they’re looking for an alternative,” said Kyle Ward, GasFrac’s spokesperson.
GasFrac argues that LPG, compared to hydro-fracking, is both more environmentally sustainable and economically efficient in the the long run — a claim that has drawn some skepticism.
Terry Engelder, the Penn State University geologist who’s been dubbed the “Godfather” of the Marcellus Shale for his calculations of the rock layer’s natural gas potential, says water is the “mechanically most efficient fluid for breaking apart rock.”
Anthony Ingraffea, a Cornell University engineer who spent 20 years researching fracking for Schlumberger, one of the largest fracking companies, said: “I’ll give [GasFrac] credit that geochemically, it’s much better to use a hydrocarbon [propane and butane] to stimulate a reservoir…But I’m not sure how well this technique will work in a high volume long lateral shale formation [like the Utica or Marcellus shales] because they haven’t released proprietary data. That’s still unknown.”
Petroleum engineers in the 1960s and 1970s tried using propane fracking, but the potential for explosion — which is still a risk today, if better managed — left the technology uneconomical.
Last year, the petroleum giant Chevron used LPG to frack several natural gas wells in the Piceance Basin, home to several lucrative coal, oil and natural gas deposits in Colorado. The company’s annual report, while not mentioning GasFrac, noted that LPG “significantly increases production while minimizing water usage.”
The company BlackBrush recently announced a two-year contract with GasFrac in Texas’ oil-rich Eagle Ford Shale.
Offering an explanation for the dearth of public data on GasFrac’s work for other companies, Robert Lestz, the company’s chief tech officer, said, “Because our results our so superior to what people have done before, they’re not interested in sharing those results.”
In Ohio, GasFrac’s spokesman said the company hopes to start the Utica wells by the end of the month.
It could be a proving ground for the technology. “It’s no secret we’re going to the Utica,” Zeke Zeringue, GasFrac’s CEO, said in a May conference call. “Obviously we hope that leads to an establishment of some sort of base of operations.”
While GasFrac has been keen to note in its recent marketing efforts that LPG uses no water, the technology’s profitability will ultimately determine its potential, said Michael Mazar, a financial analyst who follows the company for BMO Capital Markets.
“The environmental benefits are secondary.”
CORRECTION: Because of an editor’s error, Robert Lestz was incorrectly identified as GasFrac’s founder in an earlier version of this story.
Portions of this story were originally reported for InsideClimateNews.
Anthony Brino is a Springfield, Illinois-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Allegheny Front, InsideClimate News and Illinois Statehouse News.
South Dakota gives ethanol blender pumps a boost
An ethanol blender pump in Baltic, S.D.
I spent a couple of days last week in Sioux Falls, S.D., where I had a chance to meet with some local energy contacts.
South Dakota has lots of wind potential, but not enough customers or transmission lines to fully capitalize on it.
A geologic formation in the state’s northwest corner might have potential for oil, but for now those hopes are speculative.
When it comes to home-grown energy, ethanol is king here. The state is home to 15 ethanol plants, and the industry directly employs nearly 900 South Dakotans.
My itinerary included visits to the South Dakota Corn Growers, ethanol producer POET, and the American Coalition for Ethanol, which is based in Sioux Falls.
A state grant program has helped make South Dakota a national leader in blender pumps, along with Minnesota and North Dakota.
Blender pumps let gas stations sell several blends of ethanol fuel, from E10 to E85, at a single pump. Flex-fuel vehicles can run on up to 85 percent ethanol, but some drivers prefer lower blends like E30 or E50.
The pumps help address another alternative fuel chicken-and-egg problem. Car dealers have a hard time selling flex fuel vehicles if there aren’t ethanol fueling stations around, but station owners don’t want to install them if there aren’t customers.
A blender pump can be used to dispense both E10, which can be used in conventional vehicles, or higher blends like E85 that can only be used in flex-fuel vehicles. Gas stations don’t have to commit space for a pump that can only be used by one type.
South Dakota announced in March that it had awarded $755,000 in first-come-first-serve grants to help gas station owners purchase blender pumps, which are more expensive than conventional pumps.
Another $200,000 was to be awarded on a competitive basis, and in July the program will be refreshed with $900,000 in new funding for the next fiscal year.
The current year’s funds have been awarded to 21 gas stations to install 44 blender pumps. The awards are up to $25,000 for the first pump, and up to $10,000 for each additional pump.
Gas station owner Bruce Vollan was among the early adopters in South Dakota.
Bruce Vollan, Vollan Oil Co.
“You’ve got to find what sets you apart from the guy down the road,” Vollan said.
In his case, the next guy down the road is a ways away. Vollan is co-owner of Vollan Oil Co. and Midway Service station, which sits along on a two-lane highway in rural Baltic, S.D.
Vollan was filling a tanker truck with a python-thick hose Friday morning as I asked about his experience with ethanol blender pumps.
He bought a blender pump in 2007 and upgraded to a better one in 2010 with help from federal stimulus money. Since then, fuel sales have tripled, he said, and the ethanol pump deserves some credit.
He’s not sure whether the blender pump would have the same draw in a city, but in rural settings he senses a connection with his customers.
“For small town folks, it’s a full circle scenario,” he said. Farmers sell their corn to ethanol producers, who sell fuel to gas stations, who sell it to farmers and their families and neighbors.
If the ethanol blending pump has been so successful for Vollan, why aren’t they at all of his competitors? There’s several reasons, but one big one:
“Money,” Vollan said, pinching the thumb and forefinger of his blue rubber glove together.
That’s where the Ethanol Infrastructure Incentive Program comes in, helping to bring down the expense for station owners and expand the market for the state’s home-grown fuel.
I’ll share more from my South Dakota visit in the weeks ahead.
Photos by Dan Haugen, Midwest Energy News
Obama’s nod to ‘clean coal,’ and a tale of three plants
Today, following pressure from Republicans upset by the omission of coal from President Obama’s “all of the above” energy plan, the Obama campaign has added a section for “clean coal” to its website, The Hill reports.
But in the Midwest, as elsewhere, low-emissions coal projects are having trouble getting off the ground, in large part because of plunging natural gas prices.
In Illinois, Tenaska has been working for five years to gain legislative approval for a power plant that would convert coal to synthetic natural gas and use it to generate electricity. The developer is now offering to build only the natural gas portion of the plant, adding the coal gasification facilities later when market conditions warrant. Jeffrey Tomich of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an overview.
The situation is remarkably similar to that of the Mesaba Energy Project in Minnesota, which Midwest Energy News reporter Dan Haugen profiled last year. Mesaba, which has been in development for 10 years and has received $41 million in public money, recently won approval from the state legislature to proceed with a natural gas plant while keeping state funding intended for advanced energy projects.
And yesterday, reporter Kari Lydersen wrote about a proposed coal gasification plant in Indiana that would sell the synthetic gas to consumers via a state agency rather than use it to generate electricity. Under a current proposal, the plant would sell gas at a rate more than double the current market price for natural gas, drawing opposition from environmentalists, consumer advocates and free-market conservatives.
As Lydersen reported last month, natural gas prices (along with pollution rules and other factors) are raising serious questions about the economic viability of existing conventional coal plants, meaning far more expensive “clean coal” projects may be impossible without considerable public subsidies.
And since that dependence on public support is a frequent point of criticism about renewable power, it will be interesting to see where the president’s endorsement of coal will take the subsidy debate.
Senate bill aims to appraise value of home efficiency
For appraisers, it may not matter how green your house is. (Photo by Sean Marshall via Creative Commons)
Say you were getting ready to put your home on the market and wanted to make a quick investment to boost the selling price.
Would you be better off buying a granite countertop for your kitchen, or an ultra-efficient furnace that would lower heating bills by hundreds of dollars every year?
The answer in almost every case is going to be the granite countertop.
The reason is that appraisers rarely consider energy use when determining a home’s value. Two homes that are identical except for energy efficiency are likely to be appraised for the same amount.
That makes it difficult for home builders and sellers to recoup the cost of efficiency improvements, even when they would clearly benefit buyers.
A coalition of builders, business groups and efficiency advocates is now lobbying to change federal underwriting guidelines so that energy use becomes a factor.
A bipartisan bill called the Sensible Accounting to Value Energy (SAVE) Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs committee in October.
The legislation would require lenders to consider energy costs as well as the mortgage when determining whether a borrower can afford the monthly payments.
For homes with below-average energy costs, appraisers would be instructed to add the net present value of those savings to the appraised value of the home. Savings would be estimated using a U.S. Department of Energy formula, or calculated in an optional, “qualified, independent” energy audit.
The rules would apply to any loans issued, insured, purchased or securitized by the federal government — about 90 percent of all new loans.
Appraisers are allowed to incorporate energy efficiency into home values, but in practice it rarely happens, says Cliff Majersik, executive director of the Institute for Market Transformation, one of the SAVE Act’s main supporters.
Home appraisers need to churn through a lot of work quickly to make a living, and calculating efficiency is something that normally gets skipped over. Plus, appraisers aren’t trained energy auditors.
When a seller seeks a higher price because of efficiency, the lender’s appraisal often won’t cover that premium, leaving it up to the buyer to come up with the difference in cash.
“That’s a real problem” for buyers, who often can’t afford the extra down payment, says Majersik. And for builders and sellers, it creates a disincentive.
“They don’t want to invest in energy efficiency in their homes because they’re worried when they go to sell it they won’t recoup that investment,” he says.
The SAVE Act aims to eliminate that problem. Builders and sellers could be assured that the value of efficiency would be reflected in appraisals, and buyers will be more easily able to qualify for loans.
Jim Petersen, research and development director for Michigan-based Pulte Homes, the nation’s largest home builder by sales, says the SAVE Act could help resolve some of the opposition among builders to energy code updates.
“As the energy codes increase, new homes are on an unlevel playing field with existing homes,” says Petersen. “We have to put in better furnaces, better windows, better insulations, etc., etc., but the current mortgage process gives no value for all of those items.”
Energy code updates have added costs for builders, but it’s a tough sell for builders to convince buyers or their lenders that the added efficiency justifies the higher price, which is why the SAVE Act is needed, says Petersen.
The law would also allow existing home owners to pay for energy projects through refinancing, making it a potential alternative to property assessed clean energy, or PACE, financing in some cases, says Majersik.
The Institute for Market Transformation and the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) estimate the act would create 83,000 jobs and $1.1 billion in energy bill savings by 2020.
Other supporters of the legislation include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Leading Builders of America, the Appraisal Institute, and the U.S. Green Building Council.
Aerial photos show scale of frac sand mines
As you’re probably aware by now, Minnesota and Wisconsin are the source of much of the silica sand used in fracking operations throughout the U.S. The expansion of sand-mining operations has understandably let to considerable public debate, as well as moratoriums on mining operations in some communities.
Jim Tittle, a St. Paul filmmaker, is working on a documentary, “The Price of Sand,” which explores the impact of these mining operations on the residents who live near them. Recently, Tittle shared some aerial photos of sand mines in Wisconsin (posted here with his permission) that he shot as part of the project.
Below, the Chippewa Sands mine in Chippewa County, which was the subject of this report from American Public Media’s Marketplace program:
A processing plant near Chippewa Falls owned by EOG (formerly Enron), documented in this USA Today article:
The Fairmount mine near Maiden Rock, which is currently seeking a permit to expand from 789 to nearly 1,700 acres:
The Preferred Sands mine in Chippewa County:
And the Superior Silica Sands mine, also in Chippewa County:
Opponents say the expanded mining operations contribute to increased noise and road damage from increased truck traffic, and have raised health concerns about dust blowing from open-air sand piles.
Tittle said his interest in sand mining was sparked when an oil company bought land near his mother’s house outside Red Wing, Minnesota.
“I grew up playing on those bluffs,” he said.
Tittle’s film is scheduled to be completed this summer. He has interview clips and other footage posted on his YouTube page.
UPDATE: On our Facebook page, John Wawrzyniak comments: “You have sand and gravel pits all over the country. What’s the issue? They make awesome shooting ranges and trails for motor cross.”
That’s a fair point, and in these communities, sand and gravel pits have long operated without much controversy. What’s changed is the vastly increased scale and intensity of the operations – that’s what is stymieing local officials and stirring up opposition from neighbors. This video goes into more detail on this point:
Habitat homes achieve efficiency and affordability
A Habitat for Humanity chapter in North Carolina built this zero-energy house in 2005, thought to be the first of its kind in the state. (Photo by skrobotic via Creative Commons)
Volunteers last year helped East Central Minnesota Habitat for Humanity build one of the state’s most energy-efficient homes.
The 1,100-square-foot ranch-style house in Princeton, Minnesota, includes a solar water heater, exterior insulation, and Energy Star appliances.
Altogether, those and other energy saving features are expected to help the single mother who bought the home save $769 annually on her utility bills.
Across the country, Habitat for Humanity is demonstrating that efficiency and affordability can go together. Its leaders are making the case that a little extra upfront investment in efficiency pays off in the long run.
“We can’t afford not to,” says Molly Berg, sustainable buildings specialist at Habitat for Humanity of Minnesota. “Small changes that we can make up front during the planning and construction process actually result in long-term, large changes in the abilities of a family to meet their basic needs.”
As energy efficiency advocates (including Fresh Energy, which publishes Midwest Energy News) press for tougher energy codes in Minnesota, Illinois and elsewhere, they’re pointing to affordable housing supporters such as Habitat to help make their case.
Bill Fay, executive director of the Energy Efficient Codes Coalition, a program of the Alliance to Save Energy, said he began reaching out to low-income housing groups about five years ago in California.
“I was getting a little tired of the National Association of Home Builders trying to speak for low-income families,” says Fay.
A common argument made by home builders’ associations is that requiring them to build more efficient homes will put ownership out of reach for people with lower incomes.
But many Habitat for Humanity chapters have taken the opposite approach in recent years, putting more money into efficiency even during a severe recession.
All of the homes built since 2008 by Habitat for Humanity St. Louis have been LEED Platinum certified, and one project in 2010 achieve LEED Gold.
In Lansing, Michigan, officials and donors broke ground last week on the first of four green, energy efficient Habitat homes.
And in Iowa City, a chapter is getting ready to build its first net-zero-energy home, which will draw the little energy it needs from solar panels and solar water heaters.
Habitat is made up of scores of independent chapters around the country and world. The organization’s state and national offices support the local chapters, but doesn’t speak for them or set policy.
A survey sent to Minnesota chapters five years ago showed a desire for more resources on sustainable building, which led to a green building conference in 2008 and the hiring of a sustainable building specialist.
Several local chapters were already moving in the same direction, and Berg now helps coordinate training and other support around sustainable building in the state.
All but a few of Minnesota’s 33 chapters have since built homes that meet or exceed Energy Star for homes. The methods and materials being used include installing windows that transfer less heat, covering homes with exterior “blue board” insulation and spacing studs 24 inches apart instead of 16 inches, which creates fewer gaps in wall insulation.
The state office has been tracking Habitat homes’ energy use since the 2009-2010 heating season. The average monthly heating bill has been $110, compared to almost $170 for an average Minnesota home.
“Affiliates have seen the value and the continuous return on investment these things have for families that don’t make as much money a year,” says Berg.
That nearly $60 average monthly wintertime savings has a greater impact for families making 30 percent to 80 percent of median income, the target demographic for Habitat buyers.
There is an added upfront cost, which gets passed on to the home buyer (Habitat sells its homes at-cost with zero-interest loans to families that qualify).
“We have seen a little bit of an uptick [in costs],” says Matt Clark, Habitat’s national director for construction technologies, “but nothing that throws it way out of whack.”
Often its just a couple thousand dollars or less. In the Iowa City the solar and other improvements are expected to add about $15,000 for a home that would otherwise cost about $125,000 to build.
“My guess is that the extra item payback will be [in] 10 to 15 years, but the life of those [additions] will be over 20 years, so there’s actually a net gain there,” Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity Director Mark Patton told The Daily Iowan.
While many Habitat chapters are deciding efficiency is a worthwhile investment, they’ve been quiet in the arguments over state energy code updates.
For Clark and others in the organization, it’s less a political concern and more a practical one: “It just makes sense for us.”
Minneapolis hydro plant shows existing dam potential
An array of small hydro turbines at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis. (Photo courtesy Brookfield Renewable Energy Group)
A U.S. Department of Energy report last month sought to draw attention to an underutilized national resource: dams.
The nation’s waterways are broken up by more than 80,000 dams, but only about 2,500 of them are used for generating power.
The Midwest could add more than 5,000 megawatts of generating capacity by incorporating turbines into existing dams on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, the report says.
A newly operating small hydro plant in Minneapolis offers a potential model for developers elsewhere in the region.
The 9.2-megawatt Lower Saint Anthony Falls hydroelectric project was built into an Army Corps of Engineers’ lock and dam on the Mississippi River. It started generating in December.
It’s the first U.S. facility to use a technology called StrafloMatrix — a modular system in which turbines and generators sit in window-fan-like boxes that can be stacked and assembled to fit unique spaces.
The Lower Saint Anthony Falls project has 16 turbines stacked two deep and eight across. The turbines are made by an Austrian company called Andritz Hydro.
The equipment is designed to be compact enough to fit inside existing dams. It also allows for individual sections to be pulled out of the water for maintenance without disturbing the rest of the system.
“It’s an interesting concept,” said Peter Rodrigue, a senior consultant with Hatch Energy in Amherst, N.Y.
In general, it’s more economical to have fewer, larger turbines, but a matrix system may have an advantage for certain existing facilities, Rodrigue said.
Hatch Energy consulted on a proposed project on the Ohio River in the 1990s that would have used the technology and concluded they weren’t economical at that time.
But hydropower is a very site-specific business, more so than wind power, and so it’s hard to generalize about how widespread a turbine could be used, Rodrigue said.
Brookfield Renewable Energy Group and Nelson Energy, which own the facility, applied for their federal permit in 2004 and started construction in 2009. The $38 million project was paid for in part with a grant from Xcel Energy’s Renewable Development Fund.
Glenn Cada, a fish biologist with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory who studies the impact of hydropower, said he’s unaware of any conclusive studies on how the small, matrix turbines might affect aquatic life.
There are three main ways in which fish are harmed by hydroelectric facilities. One is being struck by turbine blades. Others are the extreme pressure changes and water velocities.
“It’s like a fish traveling through the jet of a fire hose,” Cada said. “There’s turbulence and sheer stresses that can remove scales or even tear gill cover.”
The smaller blades leave less space between them for fish to swim through, Cada said, but on the pressure change and water velocities in matrix turbines are likely less intense and therefore more fish-friendly.
As a run-of-the-river hydro facility, it doesn’t involve creating any new reservoir, avoiding the carbon-sink penalty we reported on Wednesday.
“[M]any of the monetary costs and environmental impacts of dam construction have already been incurred,” the DOE report says, “so adding power to the existing dam structure can often be achieved at lower cost, with less risk, and in a shorter timeframe than development requiring new dam construction.”
ALEC disclosure language in Illinois fracking bill
© 2012 E&E Publishing, LLC
Reprinted with permission
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Hydraulic fracturing rules moving through the Illinois Statehouse this session have taken their cue from model legislation supported by an influential conservative think tank.
The Illinois chemical disclosure legislation, which passed unanimously through the state Senate last week, includes language that copies almost verbatim a new Texas law and a subsequent model bill from the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.
The language originated in Texas in 2011 and requires well operators to reveal chemicals used in the fracking process, which shoots sand, water and chemicals into the ground to release gas. An exception, heavily favored by the industry, allows companies to protect qualified chemical concoctions as trade secrets. Those exceptions can be challenged by certain landowners and state agencies.
ALEC members, who meet three times a year to discuss policy trends and propose legislation, used the Texas bill to draft a model last year. The draft is available as a resource for all members of the organization.
Dan Eichholz, associate director of the Illinois Petroleum Council — a state office of the American Petroleum Institute — said the council consulted with ALEC when negotiating disclosure requirements of the Illinois bill. ALEC did not approach the council first, he added.
“I don’t think it really makes a difference which group it comes from,” he said, noting that the Illinois bill, introduced by Democratic state Sen. Michael Frerichs, has received support from the oil and gas industry, environmentalists and the Illinois Farm Bureau.
Jack Darin, director of the state chapter of the Sierra Club, said he supported the legislation as a good starting point to regulate not-yet-blooming fracking action in Illinois.
“This is a really rare opportunity for us to actually get it right from the beginning,” he said. Oil and gas companies working in the state are reportedly drilling their first test wells in southern Illinois this month to see how much shale gas is available. It makes sense, Darin said, for legislators to look for best practices from other states, like Texas.
That is the purpose of any model bill, said Todd Wynn, director of ALEC’s energy, environment and agriculture task force, who wrote in a March blog post that the chemical disclosure model was also catching on in Indiana, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
“ALEC model bills are example bills which can easily be tailored by a state legislator to fit his or her constituents needs,” he wrote in an email to EnergyWire.
The source bill in Texas was widely supported last year by groups as varied as the Environmental Defense Fund and well operator Southwest Resources Inc. Ultimately, the bill received 137 votes in favor with eight legislators opposed and two present but not voting.
Ky Ash, chief of staff to bill sponsor Rep. Jim Keffer (R), said the disclosure requirements were “highly negotiated” but did not face interference from ALEC. The council support of the chemical disclosure bill came “completely after the fact,” he said.
He encouraged other states to copy the Texas language and adjust it for their needs. “Why reinvent the wheel entirely,” he asked, “when someone’s already gone through the tough battles?”
Alex Mills, president of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, which represents small and midsized companies, added that duplication of language across states is business-friendly.
“If they can follow the Texas Legislature,” he said, “it would make it easier on companies that operated in multiple states.”
