October 2009

FPL’s climate change of heart

October 28, 2009

Lew_Hay_III_FPL_Group_Chairman_CEOSeveral years ago, Lew Hay, the dynamic chairman and CEO of FPL Group, which is the nation’s leading provider of renewable energy ($16 billion in 2008 revenues), gave an impassioned speech at a Goldman Sachs climate change conference in New York, arguing for a tax on emissions of carbon dioxide to deal with the threat of global warming. A carbon tax, he said, would be simple and fair and speed the transition to a clean-energy economy. By contrast, he said, a cap-and-trade system inevitably would be overly complicated, negotiated in Washington back rooms, subject to political horse-trading and shaped not by the public good but by special interests.

Anyone who’s paid even cursory attention to the Congressional debate over climate change knows that Hay was absolutely right.

So why, I  asked him when we spoke by phone today, is he now a supporter of cap-and-trade? [click to continue…]

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Electricity that’s cheaper than free

October 27, 2009

Too much wind?

Too much wind?

Would you believe that there are places and times when power companies generate so much renewable energy that they give it away? In west Texas and Illinois, when the wind blows at night and nuclear plants run around-the-clock, power generators produce more electricity than people need. This oversupply “has forced electricity prices into the negative range,” an expert explains—meaning that some customers are paid to use electricity.

The expert is Terry Boston, and he knows what he’s talking about. Boston is the CEO of PJM, the company that manages the electricity grid that serves 51 million people in 13 mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C. It’s not an everyday occurrence but when demand exceeds supply, “cement manufacturing plants can get paid to take electricity,” he says.

It sounds crazy, but there’s a perverse economic logic at work. Owners of the wind turbines collect a production tax credit of 2.1 cents per kilowatt hour when they generate electricity, so they don’t want to shut the turbines down. So long as they pay customers less than the subsidy to consume power,  they make money.  Put simply, taxpayers dollars pay the wind companies who pass along a portion to their customers.

“It is not sustainable to have large negative prices for long periods of time,” says Boston. No kidding. Think about how you would behave if you were paid to use electricity. You can be sure no one at the cement company is chasing around turning the lights off.

One solution to this problem (aside from fixing the incentives) is energy storage, which would deliver other benefits as well. Ever since Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, people have been looking for cost-effective [click to continue…]

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Smart Grid: On its way…slowly

October 27, 2009

Today, President Obama travels to Arcadia, Florida, home to one of the nation’s biggest solar power plants, to announced 100 grants providing a total of $3.4 billion in recovery-act funding for the smart grid. The federal money will unleash $4.1 billion of private investment that, according to the government, that will bring smart meters to about 18 million American homes, or 13% of homes. It’s a big deal.

Nelson_River_Bipoles_1_and_2_Terminus_at_RosserWhat would a smart grid mean to you? In theory, you could save money by running appliances like dishwashers or dryers at night when electricity is cheaper. You’d know how much it costs you to watch that big-screen TV. (Care to take a guess? Read on.) If you installed solar panels on the roof, you could sell electricity back to the grid. Or recharge that electric car you may buy in 2010 or 2011.

The laudable goal is to empower consumers to buy electricity the way we buy groceries or gasoline or airplane tickets –where we know what we are getting and what it costs when we make purchasing decisions. Right now, we consume electricity without knowing how much we are using, understanding where it’s going or knowing the price until an unintelligible utility bill arrives in the mailbox once a month.

The trouble is, layering intelligence and transparency into the electricity grid requires action by two of the slowest-moving entities in all of America–the federal government and the regulated utilities. So you can be certain this won’t be an overnight transformation.

In fact–irony of ironies–the news that Uncle Sam was going to be subsidizing smart-grid rollouts has inadvertently slowed down the process, albeit temporarily. About 570 applications were filed seeking a total of $14 billion in grants. While waiting to see who got the grants and who didn’t, some utilities put their plans on hold. [click to continue…]

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My red, white and blue (and green) marathon

October 25, 2009

Today was a special day for me. I completed the 34th running of the Marine Corps Marathon, a 26.2-mile run through the streets of Washington and Arlington, Va., with a finish at a famed statue of Iwo Jima known as the Marine Corps War Memorial. I’ve run 17 marathons, but the Marine Corps has a unique place in my heart because it was the first marathon that I ran, back in 1994.

Two things struck me about today’s race. The first is that the MCM made a significant effort to “go green.” Marathons are, inevitably, messy affairs and they generate enormous amounts of trash. An estimated 850,000 (!) paper cups are needed to stock the water and Powerade stops to keep 21,000 runners well hydrated. Add to that 26,000 Clif shots, 25,000 bag of sports beans, 10,000 sliced oranges—well, you get the idea. Lots of garbage, much of it unavoidable.

photoThe MCM says its goal this year was to cut the trash in half, and produce less than a pound of landfill waste per runner. Sponsor Aquafina set up recycling kiosks near the start and finish line. Race waste, including cups, is composted. And, in an experiment, the race bibs given out at a fun run for kids were made of recycled post-consumer and wildflower seeds. The young runners can plant their bibs and enjoy growing Black-Eyed Susans along with the satisfaction of being green. MCM also collected used running shoes at its expos, for donation to people who need them.

While much of this is symbolic, symbols matter. Promoting environmentally-friendly sports events is a nonprofit called the Council for Responsible Sport (ReSport), along with a group called Athletes for a Fit Planet (“greening the world one race at a time”). Cool.

On a more sober note, running in the Marine Corps marathon is always a reminder of the sacrifices so many people make for our country. [click to continue…]

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John Farrell: Say no to transmission

October 24, 2009

Today’s guest post is from John Farrell, a senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a nonprofit think thank and consultancy that promotes strong and independent local communities. We’ve all heard about the benefits of local food; the ILSR is looking at energy independence on a local scale—the idea that states and even cities and towns can produce much of their own power. Farrell, 30, saw signs of this during a  recent visit to Denmark.”There are wind turbines everywhere,” he told me, “but in small little clusters.” Is smaller better? Or do we need scale to produce energy, food and consumer products more efficiently? In this column, Farrell argues that instead of building massive new electricity transmission lines, we should develop ways to produce energy closer to home. His column originally appeared in Grist.

jf photo lgThe last thing renewable energy needs right now are new transmission lines.

This statement is heresy in the green community, but there’s a danger that the increasing focus of green energy advocates on a new nationwide transmission superhighway may undermine the pursuit of near-term renewable energy goals.

People are excited by renewable energy.  It’s clean.  It’s limitless.  It’s local.  It’s the one kind of energy source that anyone can harness.  Public polls show substantial majorities of Americans in every state favoring more renewable energy.

And states have an abundance of renewable energy assets.  A new report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance—Energy Self-Reliant States—shows that every state has the potential to meet its renewable energy goal or mandate and that 3 in 5 states could get all of their electricity from in-state renewable resources.  Almost every state could get at least 20 percent of its electricity from rooftop solar photovoltaics (PV) alone. [click to continue…]

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FedEx: Pushing the envelope on sustainability

October 22, 2009

When you need to ship a package, how do you choose between FedEx and UPS? Their services are similar, if not identical. While I’ve never compared prices, I assume they are roughly equivalent.

Could the company’s sustainability practices come into play? I’m told that they do, for select customers. Their employees care as well–people want to work for companies that are helping to solve the world’s big problems, like climate change. Regulators could also be paying attention. Whatever the explanation, FedEx and UPS are competing to become known as the most sustainable shipping company–which means we’re all winners.

FedEx's efficient Boeing 777 freighter

FedEx's efficient Boeing 777 freighter

Mitch Jackson, who is staff director of  environmental affairs and sustainability at FedEx, met with me recently to make the case on behalf of FedEx. He says the company has identified four “building blocks” of its approach to the environment. [click to continue…]

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Green housing for the poor

October 21, 2009

Lots has been written and said about green skyscrapers (like Bank of America’s $1 billion tower in Manhattan) and green campus buildings (like this one at Oberlin College) and even, strange as it sounds, green mansions (like the Atlanta home of Laura Turner Seydel). But what about green housing for the poor? Is that possible? Can developers and tenants afford it?

Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit, and Enterprise Community Investment, its sister company, which together build housing for low- and moderate income people, set out to examine those questions back in 2004. You may not know Enterprise, but you may be aware of its founder, the pioneering urban developer James Rouse,  and you almost surely know of Edward_Nortonhis grandson, the actor Edward Norton, who sits on the Enterprise board. Based in Columbia, Maryland, a planned community developed by Rouse, Enterprise says it invests about $1 billion a year in housing and community development. It has helped finance about 25o,000 affordable housing units since 1982.

Today, at an event held at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Enterprise said it had studied the nexus of affordable housing and the environment and found that, in fact, building green affordable homes makes business sense. The payback, executives said, comes in the form of lower utility costs, health benefits and even savings on transportation (if homes are clustered around public transport.)  As a result, Enterprise said it would commit $4 billion over the next five years to affordable, environmentally-friendly developments, aiming to build or retrofit 75,000 homes. Its “Green Communities” initiative has been developed in partnership with Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). [click to continue…]

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GE, clean tech and your tax dollars

October 20, 2009

271_home_img1_ge_ecomagLet me state my bias upfront: I’m am admirer of GE and its chief executive, Jeff Immelt, and the company’s ecomagination initiative. GE and Wal-Mart are, as I have written, the most influential companies in America, and it’s great that they are serious about becoming more sustainable, and working with their customers and suppliers to do so as well.

But I can’t help but be struck by the extent to which GE’s clean-energy businesses depend on federal and state tax and regulatory policy, along with grants and loans from the government. Wind energy, solar energy, nuclear power, cleaner coal, smart-grid initiatives, energy-efficient appliances, compact fluorescent light bulbs—all of these either benefit from current policy, get stimulus money or Department of Energy grants, or stand to benefit if the climate-change legislation strongly supported by GE is enacted into law, or all of the above.

This is fairly obvious, admittedly, to anyone paying attention to the energy and climate debate, but it was brought home to me vividly last week, at a GE Ecomagination Forum [click to continue…]

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AES: Business as unusual

October 19, 2009

Imagine a company where profits took second place to values, where workers could decide whether to be paid by the hour or get a salary, where there was no HR or PR or strategic planning department, where executives were trusted to make deals without approval from headquarters and where people were encouraged to have fun. That was the old AES—a radically decentralized and entrepreneurial power generation company where revenues grew to $7.5 billion and the headcount grew to more than 50,000 people—until it all nearly came crashing down, post-Enron.

AES_Logo

Since then, AES has since recovered. My story about the Arlington, Va.-based company, called A Powerful Comeback, appears in the October 26 issue of FORTUNE. It was a fun story to report–AES is easily one of the most unusual companies I’ve run across, and the people who work there, who haven’t been written about much lately, were uniformly thoughtful, interesting and cooperative. Unfortunately, space is tight these days in the magazine biz so FORTUNE was only able to publish a fraction of what I wrote. Because there’s lots to say about this pioneering firm, whose goal is to bring clean, reliable and safe electric power to billions of people around the world, I’ll add a few thoughts here.

AES was started by two men who, by all accounts, were brilliant thinkers: Dennis Bakke and Roger Sant. Both were evangelists, in a way—Bakke was a deeply religious man who [click to continue…]

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The Impact of No Impact Man

October 18, 2009

nim-bookHis stunt is over, his book published, his movie released, but Colin Beavan is still living without a TV set, air conditioner or dishwasher, buying seasonal produce and not much else, and making his way around Manhattan by bike. During a year-long experiment in radically “green” living, Beavan, 46, his wife Michelle Conlin (a writer for Business Week) and their baby daughter tried to  limit their impact on the environment: They made no trash (no more take-out food or toys wrapped in plastic), cut way down on their greenhouse gas emissions (no taxis, AC or flights to see family at Thanksgiving), and shopped at the local farmers’ market (no strawberries in December).

Beavan has since written a terrific book about the experience, called No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Plant and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process (FSG, $25). Upending conventional wisdom, he found that consuming less stuff made his life a whole lot more fun. As he puts it in the video below:

I saved money, lost weight, gained energy, improved my health, spent more quality time with my family and friends, renewed my relationship with my wife and discovered an overall sense of freedom.

I learned that, yes, sometimes less is more.

This is a  valuable insight even for those of us who can’t or won’t bike in the winter,  stop flying, or get rid of our [click to continue…]

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