Business groups lower local emissions, without mentioning climate change

Posted on 05/16/2013 by ClimateWire

Downtown Cleveland. (Photo by Emily Bell via Creative Commons)

By Evan Lehmann

Cleveland’s chamber of commerce is ready to launch an unusual program to help businesses get loans for energy efficiency retrofits. In Salt Lake City, the local chamber is promoting “clean air” to reduce gasoline use.

These out-of-the-ordinary pursuits by local business associations are increasingly being used in regions where the politics of climate change might not fly, but profits from clean energy do.

Local chambers are devising ways to reduce the travel time of big trucks, swap gas guzzlers for natural gas haulers and erect wind turbines in conservative states. →

Redactions cloud dispute over FirstEnergy’s renewable credit purchases

Posted on 05/13/2013 by Kathiann M. Kowalski

(Photo by missrivs via Creative Commons)

FirstEnergy’s Ohio utilities face challenges that they overpaid for renewable energy credits and passed the excess costs on to consumers, but confidentiality claims make it hard to know how much money is at stake.

Environmental groups and the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel say the utilities’ “unreasonable” and “imprudent” management decisions distort the cost of renewable energy in the state.

The confidentiality claims are especially contentious because some of the alleged overpayments went to the utilities’ unregulated affiliate, FirstEnergy Solutions. The utilities say the information should stay confidential for competitive reasons.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) will review appeals from confidentiality orders in the case as it decides the merits of the challenges. Meanwhile, bidders’ names, numbers of credits, and purchase prices are all blacked out in public versions of briefs. Case testimony contains numerous redactions too. →

Utica shale gets infrastructure boost with new processing plant

Posted on 05/09/2013 by EnergyWire

(Photo by Penn State via Creative Commons)

By Peter Behr

Another link in an industrial chain Ohio hopes to see growing around the Utica Shale play was added Tuesday with the opening of a factory in Youngstown that builds natural gas processing equipment.

Houston-based Exterran Holdings Inc. said it built the 65,000-square-foot plant in northeast Ohio to be close to the Appalachian shale gas and oil plays. It has been supplying the region’s gas and oil operators from its Texas and Oklahoma plants.

“Our customers are actively participating in the development and production of oil and gas in this region, including the Marcellus and Utica shale plays, making this a natural geographic fit for us,” said Exterran President and CEO Brad Childers. The $13 million plant will ship its first completed units in about three weeks and will have 100 employees at full capacity, the company said. →

Critics say Ohio pollution settlement ignores local impacts

Posted on 05/02/2013 by Kari Lydersen

Environmentalists say Maumee Bay, near Toledo, would have been a better target for FirstEnergy conservation work. (Photo by rayb777 via Creative Commons)

When power plant operators commit pollution violations, they are often required by the Environmental Protection Agency to do mitigation work on environmentally sensitive lands.

Critics, however, say vague rules often let the violators choose projects based on convenience, rather than impact.

In 2007, oil leaked from a storage tank at FirstEnergy’s Bayshore power plant on the shore of Maumee Bay, on the western edge of Lake Erie near Toledo. The company said about five gallons of oil made it into Lake Erie.

A Clean Water Act settlement related to that and two other small oil spills at FirstEnergy plants means that the company will pay a $125,000 fine and donate 200 acres of wetlands along Lake Erie in northeast Ohio to a land conservancy.

The land targeted is about 60 miles from two of the plants that had the oil spills, in Cleveland and Lorain. And it’s more than 150 miles from Bayshore. →

Ohio tries to avoid repeat of 2011 injection well quakes

Posted on 04/29/2013 by Douglas J. Guth

A map of Ohio’s bedrock geology. (via Ohio DNR, click to view original)

More than a year after a string of earthquakes prompted Ohio to enact tougher rules on disposal wells for fracking wastewater, researchers are still working to understand the extent of the risk.

Seismologists say the state has generally done a good job mapping and monitoring its seismic activity, but there is still much work to come.

The link between the wells and earthquakes has strengthened in recent years, with Ohio regulators connecting as many as a dozen man-made temblors to the injection of gas-drilling wastewater deep into the earth. In response, officials have implemented new rules designed to adequately prepare parts of the state for future drilling activity.

The new policies determine the strain wastewater injection puts on fault lines. With the region’s financial future so heavily reliant on fracking, Ohio is also attempting to better understand the network of geological faults that encompass this underground economic boon, and the potential danger they represent. →

In Ohio, schools reap benefits of energy-efficiency push

Posted on 04/26/2013 by Kathiann M. Kowalski

(Photo courtesy John Gladden, Cloverleaf Local Schools)

The Cloverleaf school district in Ohio combined three elementary schools into a single, energy-efficient building. (Photo courtesy John Gladden, Cloverleaf Local Schools)

Ohio leads the nation in energy-efficient LEED schools, saving millions of dollars on energy costs statewide. And cash-strapped districts are hoping voters appreciate those financial benefits as they make their cases for levy approvals.

The state’s top rank is in large part because of the Ohio School Facilities Commission’s (OSFC) adoption of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Schools rating program. The program, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, applies to new construction or major renovations for schools from kindergarten through twelfth grade.

“Ohio is leading the nation in our green school efforts. We’re even beating California,” says Lisa Laney, green schools program director for OSFC. As of April 2013, Ohio had 345 schools either certified or registered for certification, compared to just 201 in California, according to commission and USGBC data.

“Every district that we’re currently working with is expected to design their building with an eye to receiving LEED silver certification,” OSFC spokesman Rick Savors adds. Schools don’t have to stop at silver. The 69 Ohio schools certified so far include three at the platinum level, 31 with gold certification, 34 with silver certification, and one plain certification.

The law doesn’t require all new school projects to go through OSFC. For those that do, projects get co-funding from the state, and OSFC boosts the budget 3 percent to cover LEED certification. State and local shares vary, based on a funding formula that considers local property values.

“Those green schools average about a third less energy use in wattage than traditional schools,” notes Rob Delane, deputy executive director at the Ohio School Boards Association. Depending on a school’s size, savings “could be upwards of $100,000 per year.” →

Q&A: David Wilhelm discusses ‘bumpy road’ to Ohio solar farm

Posted on 04/19/2013 by Kari Lydersen

David Wilhelm

David Wilhelm made his name as a political strategist managing campaigns for President Bill Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, among others. In 1993 he was the youngest ever chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Now Wilhelm has turned his focus to renewable energy investment, particularly in economically distressed areas like his native Ohio. He is a driving force behind Turning Point Solar, a 50 MW solar farm proposed in southeastern Ohio, on the site of a reclaimed strip mine.

Wilhelm’s firm, New Harvest Ventures, initially planned to develop the project with AEP Ohio, but in January Ohio’s Public Utilities Commission denied AEP’s request to pass the cost of the project on to ratepayers, leaving the power company no way to pay for the $130 million project. The Columbus Dispatch declared the project “all but dead” in January.

Now the developers are seeking other buyers for power and renewable energy credits from the solar farm, and Wilhelm said he is still confident it will come to fruition. Wilhelm is a board member of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, and spoke on a panel in Chicago on Wednesday celebrating the organization’s 20^th anniversary. →

Renewed interest — and criticism — for small modular reactors

Posted on 03/27/2013 by Karen Uhlenhuth

(Photo via GE Hitachi)

A new, smaller breed of nuclear reactor that is being promoted by the Obama administration may offer some advantages over the larger reactors that now provide about 20 percent of the United States’ electricity, but critics say they also have the same drawbacks.

While nuclear plant construction is largely a thing of the past in the U.S., the new smaller paradigm – and the $452 million in federal funds aimed at pushing it forward – has generated a lot of interest. At least four consortia of engineering and utility firms are now developing designs and licensing standards, and competing for federal funds.

One industry group, led by engineering/construction firms Babcock & Wilcox and Bechtel, has been awarded federal funds and plans to have its first small modular reactor (SMR) operating at a site in Tennessee by 2022.

The Obama administration is aiming for 20 plants by 2030 and 50 plants by 2040. →

As SEC investigates, towns weigh legal options on Prairie State contracts

Posted on 03/06/2013 by Kari Lydersen

Officials in Marceline, Missouri say they’ll have to cut city services to pay for their contract with the Prairie State Energy Campus. (Photo by J. Stephen Conn via Creative Commons)

As the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigates Peabody Energy Corporation’s role in the Prairie State Energy Campus, it remains unclear what exactly the commission is investigating or whether the utilities in eight states that are co-owners of the project have also received subpoenas.

But towns contracted to buy power from and cover costs of the trouble-plagued southern Illinois coal plant continue to lose millions of dollars on the deal, according to recent statements by local officials and analysts.

Critics say they are not surprised to hear the SEC is investigating, and regardless of the outcome, they hope Prairie State’s owners will move to reduce the burden on financially struggling towns.

The investigation was disclosed in Peabody’s annual SEC filing on February 25.

“We think it’s a suspect deal at best,” said Kerwin Olson, executive director of Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, an environmental and consumer group that opposes the plant. “This was going to be a Peabody thing and suddenly Peabody shifted 95 percent of that risk onto small municipalities. It’s definitely worthy of investigation by multiple authorities we would think…we’re pleased to see the SEC stepping in.” →

Bills target renewable energy standards in three states

Posted on 02/27/2013 by Dan Haugen

A bill in Missouri would allow energy from large hydro facilities, like the Table Rock Dam, to count toward the state’s renewable standard. (Photo by jeff brown via Creative Commons)

Ohio’s energy efficiency and renewable standards will be on trial again this year in the state’s legislature.

The Buckeye State is among a few Midwestern battlegrounds where lawmakers associated with a conservative policy group are working to freeze, repeal, or otherwise weaken renewable energy policies.

Others so far include Missouri and Kansas, where fossil-fuel-funded groups have actively attacked the state’s renewable standard at public events and legislative hearings.

The efforts follow a call to action last fall by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for its members to pass legislation repealing renewable standards in their home states.

“[ALEC] is definitely on the march,” says Gabe Elsner, who tracks oil and gas company lobbying for the Checks and Balances Project, a nonprofit watchdog group. →

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