March 5 , 2008

New York Times Faults Federal Energy Policy

On Monday the New York Times made two powerful objections to the current path of our federal energy policy, first taking aim at US Senate for caving to the pressure of fossil fuel interests.

            Senate Shills for Big Oil
"One of the major shortcomings in last year’s admirable energy bill was its failure to extend vital tax credits to producers of wind, solar and other renewable fuels. This was entirely the doing of the Senate, which caved in to the oil companies and their White House friends… The damage was immediately apparent. New investment in clean, non-fossil-fuel energy sources — which need the help until they become competitive with older, dirtier energy sources — began to shrivel."

(Read the full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/opinion/03mon4.html)

            Priced Out of the Market

"According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the price of wheat is more than 80 percent higher than a year ago, and corn prices are up by a quarter. Global cereal stocks have fallen to their lowest level since 1982. … The most important reason for the price shock is the rich world’s subsidized appetite for biofuels. In the United States, 14 percent of the corn crop was used to produce ethanol in 2006 — a share expected to reach 30 percent by 2010. This is also cutting into production of staples like soybeans, as farmers take advantage of generous subsidies and switch crops to corn for fuel.
The benefits of this strategy are dubious. A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development suggested that — absent new technologies — the United States, Canada and the European Union would require between 30 percent and 70 percent of their current crop area if they were to replace 10 percent of their transport fuel consumption with biofuels. And two recent studies suggested that a large-scale effort across the world to grow crops for biofuels would add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere rather than reduce it.

(Read the full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/opinion/03mon1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

PV

February 24 , 2008

Nevada Solar One Plant Dedication

In a press conference following the event, Alberto de Miguel, ACCIONA Energy's Executive Director of Corporate Development and Strategy discussed the company's plans to continue expanding its renewable portfolio in the United States. "We see a tremendous opportunity here in the United States," said Mr. de Miguel. "This country has the natural resources, the technical expertise and the entrepreneurial drive to lead the clean technology revolution."(read whole Acciona release)

The first new large scale solar thermal power plant to be built in the US in sixteen years was dedicated this week in Boulder, City, Nevada.  The plant was planned by Solargenix and built by Acciona, a large Spanish utility and renewable developer.  The 64 megawatt plant is located in the Eldorado Valley,  near Las Vegas and Hoover Dam,  in a beautiful landscape along Highway 95, the road to Searchlight,  Nevada, and Needles, California.(See the full Associate Press report here.)

Nevada Solar One uses state of the art solar mirrors and absorber tubes that heat a working fluid that makes steam to run a power plant, and the power is sent onto the Nevada power grid via adjacent transmission lines.
The day before,  Arizona Public Service and Abengoa,  Spanish construction giant that has moved aggressively into renewable, announced a 280 megawatt solar project to be built near Gila Bend,  Arizona.  The project also uses parabolic trough mirrors and absorber tubes, and relies upon some of he same established equipment suppliers and engineering experience as the Acciona Nevada plant.  (The price of the electricity being whispered about is 14 cents per kilowatt hour, which puts it very close to the price range for California’s renewable market price referent. )

To view Acciona's video presentation on Nevada Solar One click here

I flew in the night before, and stayed in Boulder City, which is the town that was built during the construction of Boulder Dam in the 1930’s, one of the most impressive engineering projects of its time, The drive south across the Eldorado Valley was magnificent, with the desert landscape sweeping across the horizon. You can see the solar field from miles away, and the transmission lines bisect the valley on the way to turnoff.

 
I turned off the freeway, and straight ahead was the beautiful sight of acres and acres of brightly shining mirrors, arrayed precisely in rows, joined together by newly designed aluminum frames, the absorber tubes in the middle, carrying the heat collecting in the solar field, to the steam plant where zero pollution electricity is made.
As I drove the length of the solar field to the parking area, the wind was gusting fiercely, blowing the sides of the tents where the invited guests and dignitaries were gathering. It was festive inside the tent, with a lively rhythm and blues combo riffing on Marvin Gaye’s, “what’s going on?” Even though the weather outside  was rainy and windy, the mood inside was glowing with happiness and pride.  It was also something of a family reunion, because Acciona’s senior management includes Gilbert Cohen, one of the original engineering pioneers from Luz, and many of the plant designers and operators are veterans of California solar projects in the 1980’s.

I got to hang out with one of these wise men, Dave Kearney, who is one of the band of brothers, many of whom are now competitors,  who kept the dream of big solar alive during the last sixteen years, when low fossil fuel prices,  government indifference and hostility, and the misadventure of deregulation put renewable development on hold.

VJW

February 23 , 2008

SATIRE: Fake coal video on YouTube from FreeLoveForum

As of today this look at coal industry advertising by a comedy group had been viewed over 229,000 times.

February 21 , 2008

Big Solar Announcement from Arizona Public Service

Arizona Public Service Co. (APS) today announced plans for one of the world’s largest solar facilities – a 280-megawatt (MW) concentrating solar power (CSP) plant to be built 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, near Gila Bend, Ariz. (Click here to read the rest of the announcement.)

To read more about this project read Rebecca Smith's piece in the Wall St Journal "Solar Project is set for Arizona" (subscription required).

February 4 , 2008

The Cost of Renewables: Trying to Make it Real, Compared to What??

"Looks like we always end up in a rut,

Tryin' to make it real, compared to what?"

Eddie Harris/Les McCann "Compared to What?" (click to view YouTube link)

Last week’s article by Stephen Lacy in Renewable Energy Access does an excellent job of summarizing the public perception hurdles the clean energy industry faces in entering the mainstream.

Like any capital intensive new technology industry in its early stages, clean technologies must rely on deep pocket support to get their footing. There is no doubt that the on-again-off-again nature of federal subsidies has hurt the industry’s ability to maintain growth. But there is some truth to Lacy’s claims that the clean energy industry must to a better job of telling its story.

As I sat in a meeting last week with representatives from various renewable technology industries the concerns all sounded very similar, ‘How do we justify our cost?’ Historically the clean energy industry has relied on the environmental benefit argument to justify their costs – relegated to the green ghetto. In  the article Ron Pernick rightly points out that to break through to a larger audience the industry needs to “lead with all of the other value propositions.”

The key here is the difference between talking about cost and talking about value. Yes, it costs more but what do you get?

Well, you get national security by reducing our dependence on energy supplies coming from foreign countries. School children get to go outside more because there will be less spare the air days. Development of renewable projects stimulates the flagging rural economies where most wind, solar and geothermal resources are located. Renewable projects provide more jobs than conventional energy projects. Renewable energy offer stable fuel costs…err well it doesn’t really offer fuel costs at all. Cities and countries will not get flooded as a result of the climate pollution which has already begun to cause global climate change.

And while we’re at it maybe we should talk about the costs of conventional fossil generation. What about all of the children in Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley who make regular emergency room trips for asthma attacks. Fossil fuels are responsible for at least 2,400 premature deaths in California each year – fossil fuels kill people. They pollute our water supplies.  To get to  some fossil fuel supplies you have to blow up the tops of mountains. To get to others we run pipelines across pristine wilderness. Fossil resources drive military conflicts across the world. Thanks to fossil fuels I have to watch how much fish I eat for fear of mercury poisoning. What is the cost of lower Manhattan, New Orleans, Florida or Bangladesh being underwater? Billions of people displaced around the world, the implications are almost unimaginable.

In the end it cannot be about how much clean energy costs but how much it’s worth.

PV

February 1 , 2008

A Green Energy Industry Takes Root in California

As this story in today's New York Times puts it:"The sun is starting to grow jobs."

“'There is a real economy — multiple companies, all of which have the chance to be billion-dollar operators,' said Daniel M. Kammen, a professor in the energy and resources group at the University of California, Berkeley. California, he says, is poised to be both the world’s next big solar market and its entrepreneurial center."

Professor Kammen is also the co-author of a paper in the April 2007 issue of the American Chemical Society's journal, Environmental Science and Technology, which examined the history of U.S. nuclear power plants and suggests the past has much to teach us about the future costs of nuclear power. Read the full paper here.

January 30 , 2008

California League of Conservation Voters Submits Climate Questions to Presidential Candidates in advance of this weekend's debates

Here's the text of a letter that went out to all of the major party candidates for President today:

Dear [Sen. or Gov. Obama, Clinton, Romney, McCain, and Huckabee]

The challenges of global warming and energy policy demand national attention and bold action. California is leading the way and we hope to have a partner in the White House come January 2009. We know that national – and global – environmental leadership is a priority in your campaign. As you know, the environment is a top priority shared by voters across the country, particularly in California where voters will be going to the polls in less than a week.

As part of our organizational and community effort to ensure that voters are well- informed on the environmental positions of the candidates, we are asking that you provide a written response to the following four questions attached to this email. We plan to distribute your responses to the media and directly to our members as well as members of other environmental organizations. This is your opportunity to provide California environmentalists with concrete information regarding your views on these very important issues.

Thank you for your prompt consideration of our request. Due to the short time frame before the February 5th California primary, we ask that you fax or e-mail your response no later than 12pm PST this Friday, February 1st.

We look forward to your reply. You may contact me directly at 510-271-0900 x 302 with questions. Fax number is 510-271-0901, e-mail is smartt@ecovote.org.

Sincerely,

Susan Smartt
Executive Director

Enc.

California League of Conservation Voters
350 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Suite 1100
Oakland, CA 94612

www.ecovote.org

January 28 , 2008

Value of U.S. House's Carbon Offsets Is Murky

Skeptics about the value of carbon offsets will be wearing their I told you so faces after reading today's report by David A. Fahrenthold of the Washington Post entitled "Value of U.S. House's Carbon Offsets Is Murky"

January 25 , 2008

US SENATORS ASK FOR RENEWABLES PRODUCTION TAX CREDIT PTC

January 25, 2008

Little energy behind state solar plant efforts

Patrick McGreevy’s article in today’s LA Times ("Little Energy Behind State Solar Plant Efforts", January 25, 2008 ) begins to shed light on a problem that the renewable energy industry has long struggled against. California’s Energy Commission has spent more than 20 years refining a process that can get a fossil fuel plant permitted in one year – even less if you find out you got swindled by Enron.  But in the shadows of smoke from fossil power plants, renewable projects struggle under a patchwork of regulations and permitting authorities that is choking the life out of the clean air industry.

The solar plants discussed in McGreevy’s article are just the tip of the iceberg. Though wind projects go through local permitting processes their development timelines invariably run 2-3 years. I would love to give you a time line for the development of a geothermal project but the state hasn’t brought a new plant on line since before the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) went into effect in 2003. Permitting is only one of a variety of hurdles outlined in the article, including prices and infrastructure, any one of which is worthy of its own investigation.

The bottom line - California is not succeeding at developing the renewable energy that is supported by a wide majority of Californians. Under the RPS mandate California has built 361 MW of eligible renewable power and 8273 MW of natural gas. That means since the RPS went into place for every one megawatt of renewables we’ve built 23 megawatts of natural gas. This is a clear contrast to the urgency needed to address our environmental and public health problems. Assemblyman Krekorian and others have been right to look for ways to accelerate this process. If California is to succeed at cleaning our air and fighting the effects of global warming we must reverse this statistic.

PV

January 24 , 2008

Antarctic Ice Loss Speeds Up, Nearly Matches Greenland Loss

Because I have apparently seriously angered the computer gods (I do regularly curse Bill Gates), I have suffered a succession of failures over the past six months that have repeatedly deprived me of virtually all of my e-mail addresses. The statement in the attached message from Jim Hansen--

... the common misstatement that the atmospheric lifetime of fossil fuel emissions is 50-200 years (Maiken finds this error in a current U.S. EPA document). In point of fact, a large fraction of the CO2 increment remains in the air for more than 1000 years, and the mean lifetime, dominated by this long tail, is about 30,000 years (D. Archer, Fate of fossil fuel CO2 in geologic time, J. Geophys. Res. 110, C09S05, 2005).

is of such great importance that I hope you will forward it to all those with whom you deal on global warming.

Why in heaven people who work on global warming fail to understand incredibly important fact is a constant frustration, and it may be the death of us all. I am not joking.

Read the press release from Science Daily ("Antarctic Ice Loss Speeds Up, Nearly Matches Greenland Loss").

Curtis Moore

January 18 , 2008

Coal is no longer on front burner

Nice piece in the LA Times by Judy Pasternak on the slowing of the "headlong rush" of the Bush years into building coal plants ("Coal is no longer on front burner").

January 3 , 2008

CARL POPE ON BUSH EPA DECISION; CALIFORNIA'S OPTIONS

Now that we're all back and properly rested from the long holiday we can begin the job of removing the Christmas eve baracade the Bush EPA erected to prevent California from regulating vehicle CO2 emissions. Sierra Club executive director, Carl Pope, posted a blog entry on this mystifying decision yesterday which you can find here.

There was also an article in today's Sacramento Bee which discusses some possible options California can take without waiting for deliverance from the EPA by the US Supreme Court, or by the voters in November.

Happy new year everyone.

December 23 , 2007

ENJOY YOURSELVES

I got a T Shirt in the mail from one of my friends, a woman who lives in Reno and works on green air conditioning, but a kindred spirit:

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic.
Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.
It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breath deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, and the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk bound-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators, I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards."

Edward Abbey.

December 21 , 2007

MY DOGMA ATE MY CLIMATE HOMEWORK; EPA OVERRULES ITS OWN STAFF RECOMMENDATION; EMPIRICAL REALITY AS SATIRE

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. That may be the lesson from Jim Marston's observation that the automobile companies violated the rule about being careful what they wish for in this article from the NY Times ("E.P.A. Ruling Puts California in a Bind"). Just as they let down their investors, workers, and ultimately our country, and ceded leadership of the world automobile industry to foreign competitors, in their 30 year joy ride into fuel efficiency irrelevance, this temporary freeze in CO2 emission reduction progress may be the final nail in the car companies' self-constructed coffin.

Today we read what we already suspected, that to reach their backward ruling the EPA's political leadership overruled the written recommendation of their professional staff ( "EPA chief is said to have ignored staff" in the LA Times). Like so much else today, what counts seems to be not facts or scientific evidence but who's got the money and power.

Which leads us to today's comic relief. If we can't get the government we by reason believe we should have, we can at least take momentary solace in satire about the one we have, like this from The Onion: "Bush Acknowledges Existence of Carbon Dioxide").

December 18 , 2007

GORE RECEIVES NOBEL PRIZE; TESTING THE CLIMATE

You might enjoy as I did the commentary in the current New Yorker about Al Gore's acceptance of the Nobel Prize and some thoughtful observations on current politics of the climate challenge by writer Elizabeth Kolbert.

December 14 , 2007

CAPITULATION

While it is always desirable to be of good cheer, and particularly so this time of year, it is difficult today to view the outcome of the federal Energy Bill as anything other than a capitulation to the fossil fuel lobby. The oil industry won this battle, and they won it ugly for all the world to see. (See John Broder's piece in today's NY Times, Industry Flexes Muscle, Weaker Energy Bill Passes, for details).

December 12 , 2007

BREAKING NEWS: FEDERAL COURT ISSUES LANDMARK RULING UPHOLDING CALIFORNIA CO2 REGULATIONS OF VEHICLES

Great news today from Fresno, where Federal District Judge Anthony W. Ishii has handed down a landmark decision dismissing the challenges to California's ARB regulations on CO2 emissions of vehicles. (Read the entire decision here.)

Statements praising the decision were quickly issued by the Governor, UCS, and Sierra Club.

It seems it would be in the best interest of all if the car and oil companies now put the legal foot dragging behind them and got down to the work we know they can do designing and producing the kinds of vehicles Americans need for the future.

December 10 , 2007

EPA Report Contradicts Bus Admin on Climate Change Urgency

Our good friend and esteemed colleague Vickie Patton of Environmental Defense has sent the following email summary of a recent EPA study on the effects of climate change. There is a link to the full study at the bottom.

The Role of Technology in Climate Change (EPA, Frank Princiotta, Dec. 4, 2007- 852kb pdf)

December 1 , 2007

Compromise Announced on federal CAFE standards, but no deal yet on the Renewable ITC -- The Church of John Coltrane

News today ("Lawmakers Set Deal on Raising Fuel Efficiency", New York Times) of a big compromise engineered by Speaker Nancy Pelosi on federal CAFE standards. It's a long overdue, modest but important step. We are grateful that Speaker Pelosi successfully resisted Rep. Dingell's and the auto industry's efforts to preempt EPA and the states on reducing global warming pollution from cars and trucks.

There is much unfinished business, however. the future of big solar and other renewable electric technologies hangs in the balance until lawmakers act to preserve crucial green energy tax credits. Billions of dollars of new investment in solar, wind, and geothermal are at risk until the renewable investment tax credit and production tax credits are extended beyond their expiration date in 2008.

To help lift your spirits this weekend let me recommend this story in the NY Times about a church in San Francisco dedicated to the inspiration of Jazz pioneer John Coltrane, where the aesthetic is "half jam session and half revival meeting" and the church founder preaches “The kind of music you listen to is the person you become.”

November 30, 2007

Breaking News: Federal Solar Investment Tax Credit and California CO2 regulation Threatened in Congress

Extent ion of the federal Solar investment tax credit is imperiled by shenanigans in Congress (details here.) Without this helping hand we will likely see no near term development of our critical solar renewable resource.

And, the car companies best friend in Congress, Rep. John Dingell is leading another end run attempt around California (and 11 other state's) regulation of tailpipe CO2. Read about that in today's Washington Post.

We need to let our friends in high places know that we are watching.

November 28, 2007

Solar Sketches of Spain

A new day is dawning for solar energy in Spain, which has become the world leader in large scale solar plants. Two utility scale solar plants are under construction, and several more are moving through the planning process. By 2010 they will have  500 megawatts of big solar on line, most using technology which originated in California 20 years ago, representing more than $2 billion in new investment in construction and technology.  Spain is also a hot market for rooftop solar cells and is one of the largest wind producers in Europe.

In October, I attended the World Solar Power 2007 conference in Seville.  I also traveled through the Andalusian countryside and toured new solar plants that are under construction.  I also visited the Plataforma Solar near Almeria, which is a joint research facility operated by the German Space Agency, with the German and Spanish governments and the European Union.

The conference brought together an extraordinary group of people from all over the world who are working to build large scale solar generating stations.   These engineers, technology and construction firms, bankers and academics, are the brain trust of the world’s hope for large scale deployment of solar energy. They came from Israel, Germany, North Africa, and Spain, and included a handful of Americans.

The conference featured a  tour of the breathtaking Abengoa Solar complex just outside Seville , which has a 10 mw power tower, and a 20 mw tower,  the world’s largest under construction,  and a 50 mw parabolic trough power plant, just like the ones built in the 1980’s by Luz in California’s Mohave desert. Abengoa is one of the largest construction companies in the world, just behind Bechtel, and has plans to build both solar plants and bioenergy plants in the US.

Al Gore was in Seville the same week, addressing another conference. His visit was front page news, and he was quoted saying that Spain faced significant impacts from global warming, but also had enormous opportunities to lead the world with renewable energy production. (Seville is one of Spain’s oldest cities, and was the place from which Columbus sailed, and returned from the New World, and over the next hundred years, much of the silver and gold from the Americas landed in Seville. But the architecture of Seville is much older, dating to the time of the Moors which rule Seville for nearly 500 years, and leaving behind the magnificent Giralda, a former mosque that is now the one of the largest cathedral’s in Europe, and the Alcazar palace and royal gardens.)

The companies developing solar projects in Spain include some of the largest and most experienced solar technology consortiums and construction companies in the world.  Solar Millennium, Epuron, and Schott of Germany, Abengoa, Acciona, and Cobra of Spain, and Solel and Luz2 of Israel are all actively developing new projects in Spain.  One of Spain’s largest utility companies, Iberdrola, recently acquired PPM Energy from Scottish Power, and is now perhaps the largest wind and solar developer in the world (link to Iberdrola Renovables).  Acciona recently acquired Solargenix, a US solar developer, and recently opened the first new large solar plant in the US near Las Vegas.

The scale of the projects being developed in Spain, both distributed photovoltaic and central station solar power plants , is exciting, beyond anything seen in the world since the early days in California 20 years ago. And these Spanish companies have all established a presence in the  US, hoping to build large scale plants in California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico, where  solar radiation is better than in Spain, and almost makes up for the exchange rate between the Euro and the dollar.

Solar Age Begins in California

Inventions concentrating the sun’s energy date back to the ancient time of Archimedes, but when coupled with modern heat exchangers and steam turbines to make electricity you have the foundation for a modern energy industry. More than 20 years ago California began building the first generation of large scale solar power plants in the Mohave Desert.  Between 1984 and 1991, nine plants were built, using mirrored parabolic troughs and reflector tubes to generate steam and make electricity.  A  combination of state and federal tax credits, along with mandated utility purchases from independent power producers, provided the right balance of financial incentives and certainty for industry investors. 

But a huge drop in oil prices spelled the end for state and federal tax credits, and the utilities’ successful campaign to eliminate mandated power purchase contracts, cut short the dawn of the solar age. By 1992 the developers and owners of the original plants, Luz International was forced into bankruptcy. The dissolution of the pioneering Israeli/American solar company marked the end of the beginning of large scale solar development in the world.   Even though the company was gone, a small band of people who worked to bring about the revolutionary idea of converting the sun’s energy into electricity on the scale of fossil fuel and nuclear plants did not go away.
 
In California, Luz’s creditors organized themselves and established an operating company, KJC, to keep the plants running. With the help of state renewable subsidies provided by the California Energy Commission, and high natural gas prices, seven of the original plants are still in operation, and have proven to be a steady, reliable part of California’s generation portfolio.   Under the ownership of FPL Energy, the plants are being updated and refitted with new equipment, and have continued to serve as a real world test bed for improving the performance of solar thermal technologies.

One of the new plants under construction in Spain, Andasol 1, outside Granada, uses an innovative heat storage system that was first demonstrated at Kramer Junction in the Mohave.  Excess heat created during the hottest part of the day is stored in a large tank of molten salt. The stored heat allows the plant to keep generating electricity in the evening, after the sun goes down, but when air conditioners are still running.  Heat storage enables the solar plant to provide firm, dispatchable peaking power, exactly when utilities in warm climates need power the most. This is but one example of the technical innovations

Why Has Spain Become the World Leader?

Spain has followed the lead of Germany in designing a simple, powerful means of encouraging solar and wind development called the “feed in tariff”, which I describe as “if you build it, you get paid”.  Such simple policy mechanism are borne out of years of unsuccessful policies weighed down by complex pricing mechanisms. The green tariff is set at a level that the Spanish Government determines is needed to ensure that developers will build projects, based on an independent estimate of costs and rate of return.  The tariff, or payment schedule, is guaranteed for 20 years, and is high enough that plants using established technologies and experienced designers can get project financing from banks. (There are separate green tariffs for rooftop/distributed solar and wind). To qualify for the tariff, developers must arrange for interconnection to the transmission grid (which requires a one million euro deposit for each 50 megawatts), and local and regional government permits for construction. The green tariff is only guaranteed for the first 500 megawatts of big solar projects, or until 2010, whichever comes first. After the first phase is fully subscribed, the level of payments under the green tariff will be reconsidered, and will probably be reduced.

The new plants are being built in 50 megawatt increments, with two, three or more phases planned for each site. The Abengoa site near Seville has a 50 megawatt plant under construction, and another 150 megawatts planned;  the Cobra/Solar Millennium Andasol project, outside Granada,  has 100 megawatts under construction, and another 50 megawatts planned. Extramadura province is the third area where large solar plants are being planned. Projects are being developed by Acciona, Epuron, and Solar Millennium. Acciona is a large Spanish construction firm, which recently opened a 50 mw plant near Las Vegas Nevada, the first new large solar project built in the United States since the last Luz plant was completed in 1991.

The Spanish grid operator is preparing for the large solar plants to come on line, and as in California, the output from the plants fits nicely with the growing peak energy demand that the country is facing.

Why has California fallen behind?

Despite all the talk about renewables and solar in California, we have fallen behind Spain and Germany in new installations. Whereas we have a complicated renewable portfolio standard law that lets the utilities decide what kind of renewable to buy and limits how much they can spend,  Spain and Germany both have special  tariffs for  renewable plants that guarantee long term payments to any developer who connects a solar plant to the electric grid.  In Spain, the solar tariff guarantees 20 years of subsidies for the first ten 50 megawatt plants that come online. They have separate tariffs for wind and small scale solar photovoltaic installations, based on the same principle.

California politicians and regulators regularly proclaim their support for renewables, passing and proposing laws to require ever larger increases in the renewable part of utilities’ portfolios. But they  have failed to deliver the results that the simpler, more direct European tariffs have produced.  Ironically, the investor owned utilities emerged from the deregulation misadventure with a stronger market position than they had before. And they have enormous influence in the Legislature, the Governor’s office, and the PUC.  While they run commercials advertising their green energy credentials, they maintain ironclad control over which renewable projects get contracts.

Another factor has been the politicians’ fear of paying too much for renewable power, and increasing electricity bills.  So the law is written to require renewables fit under a stringent cost cap, based on the expected cost of fossil fuels.  In Spain and Germany, on the other hand,  the cost and value of renewables are considered a long term investment by society, and the utilities are required to take power from renewable generators and pay a long term price that is significantly above the cost of today’s electricity.   As a consequence, Spain and Germany have become the global leaders in new solar installations, and have launched a new age of investment and technology improvements for wind, solar photovoltaics, and now, large scale solar generating plants.

As California gets closer to the 2010 deadline for the utilities’ to meet the requirement for 20% renewable, it is becoming clear that they will all fall short of the goal. A dramatic illustration of this failure is the fact that since the passage of the California RPS law in 2002, only 350 megawatts of new renewable energy projects have come on line, while more than four times that amount of natural gas power plants has been installed. The PUC and the utilities like to point to the thousands of megawatts of power purchase contracts that have been signed, but signing a contract is only the first step in getting a project built, and it is this failure to get projects constructed and operating that haunts the California renewable portfolio standard law.

This gap between signed contracts and projects under construction is especially dramatic in the case of large scale solar projects, and reflects the strategy of the utilities to choose new technologies and start-up companies which promise dramatically lower costs, instead of  relying on proven technologies and companies with experience in construction, engineering, and finance. In Spain, the green tariff places a premium on the ability to get projects built and financed in a timely fashion, in order to guarantee access to the attractive prices.  The promise of new technologies and lower costs is understandably attractive to utilities, but the failure so far to get projects constructed and online suggests that a new approach is in order.

California is blessed with some of the world’s best solar irradiation in the Mohave Desert and Imperial County, and these solar fields are far closer to large urban populations than in any other part of the world.  We have a growing peak electricity demand that large scale solar plants are ideally designed to meet. We have begun a new, comprehensive renewable transmission planning process that includes all of the key stakeholders and decision makers, and we have a strong base of public support for accelerating investment in green energy technologies to meet the challenges of climate change and air pollution.

As the new day for solar dawns in Spain, California is waking from the long night of failed deregulation, growing dependence on fossil fuels, and utility resistance to green energy.  We have much work to do, but Spain offers a look at the future that awaits.