SoCal wins $125 million for smart grid and energy storage

Two Southern California utilities were awarded more than $125 million in stimulus funds from the Department of Energy today to demonstrate “smart” electric grid systems and test energy storage projects.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power received $60,280,000 and Southern California Edison Co. received $40,134,700 to test out and collect data on smart grid programs.

SoCal Edison was also given $24,978,264 for its Tehachapi Wind Energy Storage Project, using an 8-megawatt lithium ion battery technology.

In a statement, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hailed the grants, saying they would "help modernize the state’s electricity infrastructure to make delivery methods more efficient," as well as save energy costs for consumers and create jobs.

Several Northern California projects in Alameda, Berkeley, Fremont and San Francisco also picked up energy storage grants, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said in a statement today.

In all, California systems were awarded nearly $175 million, part of the $620 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act given to 32 projects across the country dealing with large-scale energy storage, smart meters, electricity distribution issues and a range of technologies.

Green jobs: women and minorities left out?

Green jobs don’t have to leave out women and minorities, according to a case study released by the Applied Research Center today.

The report, by senior research associate Yvonne Yen Liu, profiled the work of the community organization Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education and the Los Angeles chapter of the Apollo Alliance in helping to pass a green retrofit ordinance for municipal buildings.

The Applied Research Center, a racial justice think tank based in New York, said in “Greening Los Angeles” that women and minorities are often left out of the green economy. Of the people employed in green industries and occupations, blacks and Latinos make up less than 30%. Black women fill just 1.5% of energy sector jobs, while Latinas occupy 1% and Asian women take up 0.7%.

For more information about green jobs – where they are, how to prepare for them and how to land them – read this story from Sunday’s Business section.

The federal government gave out around $5.5 million in grants Wednesday to encourage green jobs training.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Photo: Jesus Rosales, a member of La Causa, works to replace a leaking window in a home that his group has renovated using green technology. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times.

Green jobs grants for California

The U.S. Department of Labor doled out nearly $5.5 million in grants for green-jobs training today, with more than a dozen awards scattered throughout California.

The funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will support job-training and labor-market information programs to help workers find jobs in green industries and related occupations, said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis.

The Recovery Act has $500 million planned for green-jobs training grants.

Today’s grants, to be administered by the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration, were given out in two categories -- $48.8 million for state labor-market information improvement and $5.8 million in green capacity building.

The information-improvement grants will go toward collecting and distributing information and squeezing out more space within the infrastructure for clean-energy careers while connecting job seekers with green job banks and post-training employment.

Thirty grants, ranging from $763,000 to $4 million, were given to state workforce agencies. The California Employment Development Department was awarded $1.25 million.

The green-capacity building grants will boost the ability of 62 current Labor Department grant recipients to train targeted communities, including American Indians, women, at-risk youth and farm workers.

Seven California groups, including Los Angeles-based Women in Non-Traditional Employment Roles and Coalition for Responsible Community Development, received $100,000 grants. Five others were given from $70,000 to $98,122.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Nuclear power: less effective than energy efficiency and renewable energy?

If the U.S. wants to help stop global warming, nuclear power is not the way to go, according to a new report released today.

The Environment California Research & Policy Center concluded that launching a nuclear power industry nearly from the ground up is too slow and expensive a process. Energy efficiency standards and renewable energy options are better solutions, researchers said.

Currently, no new nuclear reactors are under construction in the country, and no U.S. power company has ordered a nuclear plant since 1978. All orders for nuclear facilities after fall 1973 were eventually canceled, according to the report.

Meanwhile, building a reactor would probably take around a decade – 2016 at the earliest, the study suggested. Without an existing infrastructure, manufacturing reactor parts with the dearth of trained personnel would be difficult.

But even if the nuclear industry managed to build 100 reactors by 2030, the total power produced would reduce total U.S. emissions only 12% over the next 20 years, which Environment California deemed “far too little, too late.”

The $600-billion upfront investment necessary for the 100 reactors would slice out twice as much carbon pollution in that period if invested in clean energy, according to the report. And given the costs of running a power plant, clean energy could deliver five times as much progress per dollar in lowering pollution.

Peter Bradford, a former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission member, made this comparison in a statement: “Counting on new nuclear reactors as a climate change solution is no more sensible than counting on an un-built dam to create a lake to fight a nearby forest fire.”

-- Tiffany Hsu

Supervisor opposes massive solar project in San Bernardino County [Updated]

A solar energy project proposed for development on public land in the Mojave Desert would create jobs mostly for Las Vegas and electricity for San Francisco at the expense of the relatively pristine area of east San Bernardino County where it would be built, San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt said Friday.

In an interview, Mitzelfelt, whose district includes the Ivanpah Valley project site about 20 miles south of Las Vegas, said BrightSource’s proposed 440-megawatt, 4,000-acre Solar Electric Generating System, “should not go forward.” [Update: An earlier version of this post listed the project as having 100 megawatts.]

The system is among 130 renewable energy applications to build wind and solar projects on more than a million acres of public land under review by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and California Energy Commission. Companies hope to begin construction on about a dozen of those projects by late next year.

State and federal regulators said the BrightSource project is furthest along in the process and could break ground late next year. Conservationists, however, are concerned about its impacts on several rare bat, bird, plant and reptile species including the threatened California desert tortoise.

The development of solar power facilities in the desert has been a top priority of the Obama administration as it seeks to ease the nation’s dependency on fossil fuels and address climate change.

“Obviously, there is a lot of political pressure to get this project expedited and under construction,” Mitzelfelt said. “But its impacts in San Bernardino County and sensitive and scenic Mojave Desert environment are not worth the benefits.”

“I would do everything I could to advance a project that would provide jobs, induce economic investment and increase the tax base in our county,” he said. “This is not that project.”

BrightSource spokesman Keely Wachs disagreed.

"Considering the project has been going through a state and federal environmental review process for more than two years, and will generate 1,000 jobs, $250 million in wages and more than $400 million in local and state tax revenue, we're surprised to see the supervisor's press release," Wachs said in a statement.

"We look forward to meeting with Supervisor Mitzelfelt and his staff," Wachs added, "to clarify any misunderstandings they might have about the Ivanpah project."

-- Louis Sahagun

Solar Power International kicks off Tuesday in Anaheim

One of the largest alternative energy conventions opens Tuesday in Orange County.

Solar Power International, co-presented by Solar Electric Power Assn. and Solar Energy Industries Assn., is expected to draw about 25,000 attendees from 90 countries to the Anaheim Convention Center.

From Oct. 27-29, more than 900 exhibitors will converge on the convention floor as more than 200 speakers in about 60 sessions discuss the latest industry developments in policy, finance, markets and technology.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, will deliver the keynote at 8 a.m. on Oct. 28. That night, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., doors open to members of the general public who want to learn more about solar power options.

Back in 2004, the convention was launched with only a few hundred attendees. Since then, the size has grown rapidly, doubling in the last year. This year’s exhibitors will take up 203,900 net square feet of floor space, compared to the 422 companies who reserved just 88,000 net square feet in 2008.

The conference has been held in Southern California for five of the past six years.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Cost of solar panels drops--but tax breaks dip too

The average cost of solar photovoltaic power systems in the U.S. plunged more than 30% from 1998 to 2008, with a 4% drop between 2007 and 2008, according to a new report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

But a simultaneous drop in total after-tax incentives for photovoltaics from 2007 to 2008 resulted in a slight rise in net installed cost, according to the lab, which is run by the Department of Energy.

Overall net costs for residential solar systems were up 1% in 2008 compared with the previous year, averaging $5.40 per watt. Costs for commercial photovoltaics averaged $4.20 per watt, a 5% increase from 2007.

After-tax incentives for residential systems were at a historic low of $2.90 per watt in 2008, while incentives for commercial photovoltaics were at $4 per watt, down slightly from the 2006 peak.

But excluding the incentives, installation costs dropped recently after a multi-year plateau due to the solar industry’s expanded manufacturing capacity and the pressures of the financial crisis.

The early end of the decline, from 1998 through 2007, was caused by shrinking costs of labor, marketing, overhead, etc.

The Berkeley Lab study considered 52,000 photovoltaic systems in 16 states. The average cost of installation dropped from $10.80 per watt in 1998 to $7.50 per watt in 2008, or a reduction of 3.6% per year.

Small residential solar systems completed in 2008, producing less than 2 kilowatts, cost an average of $9.20 per watt, while large commercial photovoltaics producing between 500 to 700 kilowatts averaged $6.50 per watt.

The cost of going solar varies widely across states. For systems producing less than 10 kilowatts that were completed in 2008, costs range from a low of $7.30 per watt in Arizona, to a high of $9.90 per watt in Pennsylvania and Ohio. California’s average is $8.20 per watt.

But the report suggests that costs could be driven even lower through large-scale implementation.

-- Tiffany Hsu

California has third-highest wind capacity of U.S. states

California has the third-highest amount of total operating wind capacity in the country, according to the American Wind Energy Assn.’s third-quarter report.

The state can produce up to 2,787 megawatts, or 2.8 gigawatts, behind Texas, with 8.8 gigawatts, and Iowa with 3 gigawatts. But California outpaces Minnesota, with 1.8 gigawatts, and Oregon, with 1.7 gigawatts.

Only 10 states can produce more than a gigawatt of wind energy, according to the trade association.

Across the country, 1.6 gigawatts of wind-power generators were newly installed in the third quarter, more than the previous quarter or the third quarter of 2008. This year, more than 5.8 gigawatts have been added.

States such as Arizona, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wyoming and New Mexico had the fastest growth rates in the third quarter.

Overall, the country can currently produce more than 31 gigawatts of wind energy, or enough to power nearly 9 million homes and avoid 57 million tons of annual carbon emissions, according to the wind association.

But manufacturing of wind turbines is still slower than the 2008 levels, despite 1.7 gigawatts of new construction starting during the quarter and $6.5 billion in new investment.

The fourth quarter will also be weaker than the equivalent period in 2008, according to the association. With a credit crisis that dragged down turbine orders, ongoing construction is nearly 38% lower.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Renewable energy projects threaten some of California’s rarest plants

The proposed construction of massive wind and solar energy projects on public land in the California desert would hasten destruction and further fragment land that is home to 17% of state’s rarest plants, botanists said Saturday.

“Most of the solar and wind projects currently under review are in the wrong places,” said Greg Suba, conservation program director for the California Native Plant Society. He and other experts spoke at Cal State Fullerton for the Southern California Botanists’ 35th annual symposium.

“We believe that full surveys of all plants — not just of targeted species — should be required for all these project sites,” Suba said. “Plant species represent the underlying fabric of an ecosystem.”

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management and California Energy Commission are reviewing 130 applications to build wind and solar projects on more than a million acres of public land. Companies hope to begin construction on about a dozen of those projects by late next year.

The development of solar power facilities in the desert has been a top priority of the Obama administration as it seeks to ease the nation’s dependency on fossil fuels and address climate change.

But Suba and James Andre, director of the Sweeney Granite Mountains Desert Research Center in the east Mojave community of Kelso, urged that the projects currently under review by state and federal regulatory agencies be built on more than 200,000 acres of land already identified as ecologically disturbed.

“It’s the end of much of the California desert,” said Andre. “Millions of acres could eventually be bulldozed and fenced off. It’s your land, but you won’t be able to go there.”

Read more here

--Louis Sahagun reporting from Fullerton

 

T. Boone Pickens talks natural gas at WasteCon event in Long Beach

Oil magnate and clean energy champion T. Boone Pickens tried to whip up enthusiasm for domestic natural gas this morning while speaking at the Long Beach Convention Center.

Pickens, founder and chairman of investment firm BP Capital Management, delivered the presidential keynote address for the Solid Waste Assn. of North America’s WasteCon 2009 event. He took a folksy, can-do approach while touting his Pickens Plan for energy reform, cheerleading for U.S.-produced fuel sources while urging the country to “get off foreign oil from the enemy.”

The plan, first publicized in July and later through millions of dollars worth of air time, would end dependence on foreign oil. It would also create millions of jobs by integrating alternative energy sources such as wind and solar into the national grid and using natural gas – “the trump card in the deck” - as fuel.

 “I don’t want to get out of Saudi oil and onto the Chinese battery,” he said in a Texan lilt. “That is unacceptable. We’ve got to do it here, at home, not somewhere else.”

Over three days, WasteCon participants pore over issues spanning solid waste management to greenhouse gasses to recycling.

When not trying to recruit the audience to join his “Pickens army,” the 81-year-old also name-dropped supporters such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Pickens said he expected votes on several bills in Congress, including the “Natural Gas Act,” HR 1835, “just as soon as we get healthcare out of the way.” He then railed a bit against cap-and-trade emissions trading programs and general environmental illiteracy in political circles.

“We know more in this room about energy in America than all of Washington,” he told the large, crowded hall.

But although he faulted Americans for allowing years of cheap oil to distract from growing concerns about dependency, Pickens suggested that America still has more barrels of oil equivalent (BOEs) of natural gas than Saudi Arabia has oil.

“It’s cleaner, it’s cheaper, it’s abundant, and it’s ours,” he said.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Photo: Pickens in 2007. Mark Boster, Los Angeles Times