Evaluation gives high marks to Wisconsin efficiency program

Posted on 05/15/2013 by Dan Haugen

An infrared scanner used in home energy audits. (Photo by Green Energy Futures via Creative Commons)

A new report suggests that Wisconsin’s energy efficiency incentives are back on track following an administrative shake-up two years ago that brought major changes to the program.

An independent evaluation released last week says Focus on Energy achieved greater electricity savings and a higher participation rate in 2012 than any other year in the program’s history.

Wisconsin utility customers last year conserved about 650 million kWh of electricity — enough to power about 92,000 homes — through Focus on Energy’s appliance recycling, lighting discounts, energy audits and other programs.

And more than a million residential and business customers received direct incentives for energy efficiency or renewable energy projects, a nine-fold increase from the previous year. →

Commentary: Time to reconsider ‘baseload’ power

Posted on 05/10/2013 by guest contributor

Michael Vickerman is program and policy director of RENEW Wisconsin.

By Michael Vickerman

Though equipped with a license to operate for an additional 20 years, the Kewaunee nuclear power station rode into the sunset this week, having generated its final kilowatt-hour.

Dominion Resources, the Virginia-based company that owns the 550 MW facility along Lake Michigan, plans to spend nearly $1 billion to decommission the facility and transform the acreage back to its former status as farm fields. The process could take as long as 60 years.

It’s more than a little odd to see a 39-year-old nuclear plant taken offline in a state that’s replete with middle-aged fossil units. But in this story, age and fuel type matter less than the extremely unfavorable market structure confronting an independently owned baseload plant in the Upper Midwest, especially one lacking a power purchase agreement. →

Report: Wisconsin needs an energy plan to stay competitive

Posted on 04/25/2013 by Dan Haugen

Fog enshrouds the Oak Creek Power Plant in Wisconsin in this 2010 photo. (Photo by jonnyfixedgear via Creative Commons)

A new report warns that Wisconsin’s economic competitiveness could be at risk if the state doesn’t diversify its electricity sources.

The Badger State is already burdened by the second highest electricity prices in the Midwest, with only Michigan customers paying more on average.

Those rates are likely to climb faster than inflation and prices in surrounding states in the next decade due to Wisconsin’s dependance on coal-burning power plants, according to Gary Radloff, director of Midwest policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Energy Institute.

His recent paper, “How to Keep Wisconsin and the U.S. Competitive in a Changing Energy World,” says better planning and more investment are needed to shield the state’s economy from fossil fuels’ risk and volatility. →

In Wisconsin, politics continue to hold back wind development

Posted on 04/18/2013 by Erik Ness

A wind farm near Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. (Photo by digidave via Creative Commons)

More than two years after Wisconsin completed a bipartisan process to establish statewide standards for siting wind turbines, development remains sluggish amid continuing political pushback.

In 2012, a year that saw a nationwide surge in wind farm installations as developers rushed to beat expiring tax credits, Wisconsin added only 18 megawatts of capacity.

By comparison, Michigan and Ohio, with much lower wind potential, had already installed 138 MW and 308 MW in just the first three quarters.

Compared to other Midwestern states, Wisconsin ranks at the bottom in both wind projects under construction and in queue, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

Challenges to wind energy have come from nearly every level of government.

Shortly after taking office in 2011, Gov. Scott Walker proposed a plan supported by the state’s Realtors Association that would upend the new standards. That effort, and other bills to weaken or repeal the new rules, have failed to gain broader support in the state legislature.

New on the state’s legislative docket this spring are a bill that would allow local governments to adopt more stringent restrictions on wind farms than current state law allows, and another that would clear the way for legal action against wind facilities. →

Documentary aims to draw attention to frac sand impacts

Posted on 03/22/2013 by Dan Haugen

$A frac sand processing facility near New Auburn, Wisconsin. (Photo by Jim Tittle)$

A frac sand processing facility near New Auburn, Wisconsin. (Photo by Jim Tittle)

The Oscar-nominated documentary “Gasland” was for many an eye-opening conversation starter on the environmental hazards of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

A new independent documentary called “The Price of Sand” aims to play a similar role in the region’s frac sand mining debate.

St. Paul filmmaker Jim Tittle started his project, like “Gasland” director Josh Fox, after a fossil fuel company began speculating near his family’s land. About two years ago, an oil company bought land down the road from his mother’s home in Hay Creek Township, south of Red Wing, Minnesota.

As word spread about the company’s plans to build a 150-acre open pit silica “frac sand” mine, nearby residents started asking questions about how it would affect them. Tittle, a freelance videographer, decided to seek answers across the river in Wisconsin, where more relaxed regulations had already attracted a silica mining boom. →

Commentary: Wisconsin legislature weighs nuclear option for renewables

Posted on 03/04/2013 by guest contributor

Michael Vickerman, program and policy director of RENEW Wisconsin.

By Michael Vickerman

Only in Wisconsin will you find lawmakers who treat renewable energy as though it were radioactive.

A legislator from Brown County, Rep. Andre Jacque, has introduced a bill (AB 34) to incorporate nuclear energy within Wisconsin’s 14-year-old renewable electricity standard.

The bill defines the terms under which utilities could apply the output from in-state nuclear power plants toward their existing 10 percent requirement, which would be renamed the Advanced and Renewable Portfolio Standard (ARPS). Right now, Wisconsin has three operating nuclear reactors at two locations five miles apart along Lake Michigan.

Two of the three nuclear power stations–Point Beach units 1 and 2–are located within Rep. Jacque’s district. The adjoining district contains the other nuclear unit , the 560-MW Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant owned by Dominion Resources, a Virginia-based utility holding company. Late in 2012, Dominion announced that it would shut down and decommission Kewaunee this spring, while cutting the plant’s 650-person workforce in half. →

Dominion CEO: Despite Wisconsin plant closure, nuclear key to climate goals

Posted on 02/21/2013 by Greenwire

Dominion’s Kewaunee Power Station in Wisconsin will close this spring. (Photo by Lenka Reznicek via Creative Commons)

By Hannah Northey

The president and CEO of Dominion said Wednesday that nuclear power will play a key role in meeting President Obama’s goal of lowering carbon emissions — despite the president’s silence on the energy source during his State of the Union speech.

“When President Obama … indicates his priority is decreasing greenhouse gases, we have to pay attention to this,” Thomas Farrell said at a Platts nuclear energy conference in Washington, D.C. “And when he establishes this national agenda without mentioning the role of nuclear power … we have to pay attention to that, too.”

Obama dedicated a significant portion of his address to energy and climate change but drew the ire of some industry groups and lawmakers for not mentioning coal, nuclear power or hot-topic issues like the Keystone XL oil pipeline project (E&E Daily, Feb. 13).

Any environmental movement that is “anti-carbon” will also need to be “pro-nuclear,” Farrell said, noting that activists like James Hansen of NASA are embracing nuclear energy. →

FERC dismisses complaint over CapX2020 ownership

Posted on 02/08/2013 by Dan Haugen

Xcel Energy does not have to share ownership of a planned Twin Cities-to-La Crosse transmission line with a Wisconsin competitor, federal regulators ruled earlier this week.

American Transmission Company (ATC) had argued it was entitled to own part of the $490 million project in a complaint to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

On Monday, FERC denied ATC’s complaint and said MISO, the Midwest’s electricity grid operator, was correct to distribute ownership of the transmission project as it did. →

Analysis: Politics drown out facts following Wisconsin wind noise study

Posted on 01/08/2013 by Dan Haugen

Five acousticians from four consulting firms were hired to gather noise data from the Shirley wind farm in Wisconsin. (Photo via Wisconsin PSC)

Is a recent Wisconsin study the smoking gun that proves wind turbine noise causes health problems?

It depends on whom you ask, and more importantly, whether that person is qualified to answer the question.

One month ago, five sound experts set up recording equipment at three homes near a Wisconsin wind farm that had been abandoned by their occupants, who blame the turbines for a variety of health issues.

Over the course of a few days, microphones picked up inaudible, low-frequency turbine noise in the home nearest to the turbines. The subsequent report prompted state Rep. Andre Jacque, R-De Pere, to call for an emergency moratorium on wind permits in the state, saying the analysis proves wind farms produce “dangerous” infrasound levels.

“These results compel them to act immediately to keep this nightmare from spreading,” Jacque told the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

However, whether turbine noise is to blame for nausea, headaches and other symptoms was well beyond the limited scope of the three-day field study, which acknowledges the issue as “serious” and “possibly affecting the future of the industry,” but calls for further research into the matter. →

Commentary: How Wisconsin regulators ‘tax’ renewable energy

Posted on 12/07/2012 by guest contributor

Michael Vickerman, program and policy director of RENEW Wisconsin.

Starting next January, the price of purchasing renewable energy voluntarily through monthly utility bills will spike to all-time highs, thanks to recent decisions rendered by the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSCW) on two popular “green pricing” programs.

The thousands of Madison Gas & Electric (MGE) customers participating in the utility’s Green Power Tomorrow program will see their premiums jump from 2.5 cents/kWh to 4 cents/kWh. That’s an increase of 60 percent. To translate this into dollars and cents, an average MGE customer consuming 500 kWh of electricity per month and subscribing at the 100 percent level will pay $90 more in 2013 for the same amount of renewable kWh sold this year.

Residential customers of Milwaukee-based We Energies (WE) will see an even larger percentage increase next year. In that utility’s rate case, the PSCW jacked up the premium paid by Energy for Tomorrow subscribers by nearly 73 percent, from 1.39 cents to 2.4 cents/kWh. Energy for Tomorrow has more than 20,000 subscribers.

Back in 1999, the year both programs were launched, MGE and WE customers paid an extra 3.33 cents and 2.04 cents/kWh, respectively, for the renewable energy they sponsored. Come January 1st, MGE and WE will likely share the dubious distinction of being the only utilities in the country offering renewable energy at a higher rate than they did in the 1990’s. So much for progress. →

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