Dominion’s Whitehouse solar farm in Louisa County generates 20 MW on a 250 acre site

Just above the North Carolina border, in the heart of Southside Virginia, Halifax’s sunshine and abundant lands yielded some of the country’s largest crops of brightleaf tobacco. Mild and fragrant, the yellow-leaved variety sometimes known as “golden tobacco” sparked awe among visitors to the county’s auction warehouses and brought wealth pouring into the county. It was, the local historical society would later recall, the golden age of Halifax.

Today, the landscape is far different. The population has shrunk and is aging. South Boston, once an independent city that until the Great Depression was the second-biggest brightleaf market in the country, reverted to a town in 1995 after ongoing fiscal struggles. Tobacco is a shadow of its former glory.

Halifax, though, still has the two resources that once put it on the map: sunshine and abundant land. Together, they have made the county one of the most attractive in Virginia for solar developers looking to convert vast swathes of agricultural and forest lands into fields of solar panels capable of providing the thousands of megawatts of power needed for the 100 percent renewable grid lawmakers have pledged to create by 2050.

In Halifax, that looks like a sort of 21st-century gold rush. Over the past five years, the county has seen proposals for roughly a dozen large-scale solar farms. Eight projects covering some 5,500 acres have been approved, and County Administrator Scott Simpson said there’s room for more.

“The infrastructure that’s in place in Halifax as far as the power infrastructure that’s owned by the power companies is robust enough to accept more energy into that grid,” he said. And “Halifax has a lot of land that’s available around that infrastructure.”

Throughout Virginia, “we now see an increase of activity from larger players in the development game, including national or multinational companies,” said Matthew Gooch, an attorney with Richmond-based energy law firm Reisinger Gooch. “Those with the sophistication and know-how are entering the Virginia market given the certainty of demand for these projects.”

For large-scale solar, though, demand means land. And as the pace of development accelerates, Virginians will have to grapple with major changes to the Old Dominion’s landscape. Compared to coal and natural gas plants that emit pollution that is dangerous to human health, contributes to climate change and disproportionately affects low-income and minority communities, solar installations are low impact. But even advocates concede they have a larger geographic footprint, and tensions exist between rural areas that see themselves as bearing the burdens of the solar buildout and the urban areas that drive demand for renewables.

“The reality is there’s going to be a lot of solar going in — like, a lot,” said Jonah Fogel, a program manager with the University of Virginia’s Environmental Resilience Institute who has studied the overlap between the state’s renewables goals and local land use concerns. “For the average person driving down the roads, they’re going to be seeing energy in their life in a way that hasn’t happened before.”

A transition already underway

Virginia’s landmark Clean Economy Act of 2020 committed the state to an ambitious future of renewables rather than the fossil fuels it has long extracted from its southwestern mines and piped in from the shale fields. But for solar, the biggest changes came from a lesser-known package of laws that attempt to resolve growing tensions between rural areas and the solar developers increasingly flocking to them.

“We generally viewed solar with a jaundiced eye,” King and Queen County Administrator Tom Swartzwelder told more than 200 attendees at Virginia’s second Clean Energy Summit this October. “Like, ‘Well, that’s great, we’re going to get this 2,000 acre solar farm, and it’s going to support a new Amazon facility somewhere in Northern Virginia, and they’re going to have $1 billion of (capital expenditures) for this facility and 10,000 jobs, and we’re going to have a solar facility.’”

Unlike most other renewables, utility-scale solar was already on the upswing in Virginia prior to the VCEA’s passage. By the end of 2019, according to one developer’s calculation, plans had been announced for more than 17 gigawatts of solar energy in the commonwealth, most of it by non-utility developers. The Department of Environmental Quality’s permit by rule program, which reviews solar projects of between 5 and 150 megawatts, had seen applications grow from one in 2015 to more than 70 notices of intent in 2020.

Consequently, the VCEA’s mandate that by 2035 electric utilities Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power Company put forward plans for 16.7 gigawatts of new solar and onshore wind — the equivalent of nearly seven Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind farms — proved one of the least debated portions of the bill.

“The utility-scale sector was already robust. The VCEA just matched that,” said David Murray, executive director of the Maryland, Delaware, District of Columbia and Virginia chapter of the Solar Energy Industries Association, one of the biggest players in Virginia’s renewables sphere.

Still, as solar companies sought land across Virginia for their projects, counties began to balk. The rule of thumb given current technology is that for every megawatt of power, roughly 10 acres is required. DEQ’s permit by rule coordinator, Mary “Beth” Major, has calculated that the 50 projects already permitted by the department represent 27,000 acres of solar development. If all 70 projects in the program’s queue go forward, that figure will rise to almost 100,000 acres.

While some of those projects are likely to fail, others are certain to take their place. As it has for wind and energy storage, the VCEA has locked in demand for large-scale solar. Carveouts in the law requiring 35 percent of all new solar to come from non-utility developers also guarantees that while Dominion and Appalachian Power will be the primary offtakers of the resource, they won’t be the only ones in the game. Intended to reduce utility costs that could drive up customers’ bills, these provisions are in line with regulators’ preference for power purchase agreements over utility construction, which the State Corporation Commission says “provides significant safeguards for customers.”

In their earliest plans for how they will comply with the VCEA, Dominion and Appalachian have signaled their embrace of third-party development. Of the nearly 500 megawatts of solar Dominion proposed this October, more than 80 percent will come from non-utility companies. Appalachian Power’s plan would source half its first tranche of projects from third parties.

Whether the full 16.7 gigawatts will ultimately need to be built out remains a matter of debate. As was the case with offshore wind, the question of whether the Clean Economy Act’s declaration that 16.7 gigawatts of solar is in the public interest is a mandate for the commission to approve all solar projects up to that threshold remains unresolved. As Assistant Attorney General Mitch Burton noted during hearings on Dominion’s long-range plan this October, “Any commission determination over whether a public interest declaration equals a build mandate has significant implications for future customer bills.”

‘I’ve never seen anything move that quickly’

Even before the VCEA threw Virginia’s weight behind solar, the amount of land the projects required made Southside counties in particular nervous. The former tobacco- and textile-producing region has proven highly attractive to developers for its cheap, abundant land and large transmission lines that provide easy access to the electric grid. But its leaders feared losing too much land that they relied on for revenue and jobs.

“That’s land that will be out of production for agriculture or timber production for at least a generation,” said Simpson.

Solar developers and advocates argued tax revenues from solar farms far outstripped those from agriculture or timber. But many rural counties such as Halifax and King and Queen felt the arrangement was far from equitable. State solar incentives granted developers an 80 percent reduction in local property taxes and required that any projects larger than 25 megawatts be taxed according to the local real estate tax rate instead of the generally much higher machinery and tools tax rate.

“Over a cycle of 35 to 45 years, it really did not offset the impacts of solar,” said Simpson. “We’re giving up our natural resources, our land, and we’re not being compensated properly for it. And we felt like there should be a lot more equity there.”

As the 2020 General Assembly session drew near, the counties found themselves with unexpected bargaining power. The new Democratic majorities pushing for clean energy action needed solar development to not only continue but accelerate, and many projects were finding that the main bottleneck they faced was local approvals. Developers too were eager for a solution to smooth the path forward.

Three key laws ultimately emerged. One, known as the revenue share bill, allows localities to replace their machinery and tools tax for solar with an energy tax of up to $1,400 per megawatt for a project. A second reduces the machinery and tools tax exemption over time. The third allows virtually all localities to negotiate siting agreements with solar developers that can include incentives related to broadband or other projects already in local budget or capital improvement plans.

“We wanted to empower counties to develop the right set of tools to make these projects work if they want them,” said Drew Price, managing director of Hexagon Power, which is currently developing 10 solar projects in Virginia. The new laws, he said, have “enabled projects that were previously struggling to find the right set of agreements to make it a compelling local economic development opportunity.”

Local governments have been quick to flex their new power. Surry County has used the revenue sharing law to strike a deal with Spring Grove Solar. Others like Sussex have followed suit. A tool being developed by the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy and the UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center will also soon let localities weigh the financial impacts of the revenue sharing route versus the reduced machinery and tools tax exemptions.

“We have seen in the last five months tens of millions of dollars through the siting agreements being pledged,” Swartzwelder, the King and Queen County administrator, told Clean Economy Summit attendees in October. “In my tenure, I’ve never seen anything move that quickly to pump revenue into rural Virginia.”

Balancing conservation with carbon cuts

Even as many local governments’ concerns about revenues have eased — although not disappeared; Simpson for one said he still doesn’t think counties are getting “the full value” of solar developments — land conservation concerns remain.

“When I’m looking at siting, and this has to do with any project … these lands are oftentimes the same lands that are providing us our natural resource benefits, our ecological system benefits,” said Dan Holmes, director of state policy for the Piedmont Environmental Council.

Under Gov. Ralph Northam, Virginia has placed an increased emphasis on conservation. The governor has set a goal of protecting the top 10 percent of the state’s “high conservation value lands” and in October 2019 established a special cabinet to address the issue by executive order. The state’s ConserveVirginia mapping tool is also regularly touted by the administration as a new frontier in state-level conservation efforts.

So what happens when the state’s two goals — solar development and land conservation — collide?

That’s increasingly likely to happen, said Fogel of the Environmental Resilience Institute: “As time goes on, we’re going to see upwards of 1 percent of Virginia’s land area taken up by solar.”

Conservationists fear that those commitments will chip away at the commonwealth’s valuable resources, ranging from concentrations of high-quality agricultural lands to forests that help prevent erosion and absorb the very carbon in the atmosphere that the renewables transition is trying to combat. Holmes pointed to the planned Cricket solar project in Culpeper, which was withdrawn in 2019, as an example: 75 percent of the land it was planned to cover is identified as top-priority land for conservation, he said.

Who is in the driver’s seat when it comes to solar land use decisions also remains murky. With their zoning and permitting powers, local governments are often the primary assessors of a tract of land’s best use, but their considerations tend to stop at the county line. State-level reviews do occur through DEQ’s permit-by-rule process, or other approvals overseen by the State Corporation Commission or DMME, but all are project-specific rather than offering a broad framework for new development.

Even a complete picture of what solar is being developed and where is lacking. Because projects can follow multiple permitting routes, information about what’s in the pipeline is scattered between agencies. A recently launched dashboard by the public-private SHINE partnership between Southside Virginia Community College and MDV-SEIA has aimed to fill the gap but operates outside the auspices of government.

Funding is one impediment. Despite the explosive growth in solar projects, DEQ’s permit by rule process continues to be overseen by a single full-time employee and is underfunded, with fees unchanged since 2012. Amendments to the regulations that govern the program still need Northam’s signature to go into effect.

The conservation question, then, may point to a broader question likely to dog legislators in coming years: Who is at the helm of the clean energy transition?

“It’s going to require a lot of cooperation,” said Bill Shobe, director of the Weldon Cooper Center at UVA. “One thing the General Assembly is probably going to have to tackle this year is what sort of administrative locus on state government should have the responsibility.”

(Second in a five-part series on the VA commonwealth’s transition to a carbon-free electric grid. Tomorrow: The push to ramp up distributed solar.)

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People's Climate March 4-29-17

People’s Climate March Draws Massive Crowd in DC

From an Article by Stephanie Spears, EcoWatch.com, April 29, 2017

More than 200,000 people took to the streets in Washington, DC, today for the People’s Climate March. Tens of thousands more joined via sister marches across the globe, including Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand, Uganda, Kenya, Germany, Greece, United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, et al.

EcoWatch will be covering the People’s Climate March all day in Washington, DC, starting with interviews around 9:15 a.m. EST of climateleaders, spokespeople and influencers. From 10:30 – 11 a.m., 10 powerful speakers will tell their stories about why they are marching. At 11 a.m., hundreds of thousands of people will start to line up for the march. There are also hundreds of sister marches around the world.

Led by frontline and Indigenous communities, the march will begin up Pennsylvania Avenue at 12:30 p.m. towards the White House. At 2 p.m., marches will begin to surround the White House grounds, sit-down, take a moment of silence and join in a heartbeat action for 100 seconds to signify our collective stake in this fight.

“On the 100th day of the Trump presidency, the Peoples Climate March will show that our movements are ready to fight for our climate, jobs and justice,” 350.org’s Executive Director May Boeve said.

“While Trump and his crony cabinet rollback hard-won protections of our communities and our climate, we are mobilizing to fight for the bold solutions we need. We will present our vision to replace the fossil fuel industry with a 100% clean energy economy that works for all. Today, we march. Tomorrow, we rise united across our communities to make our vision of a just and equitable world a reality.”

See also: https://350.org

Getting Serious about Climate Change

We are facing a “make-or-break” election regarding climate change

From an Article by Michael Mann, EcoWatch.com, October 3, 2016

In just a matter of weeks, we will be confronted with a critical decision. It is not mere hyperbole to assert that we are facing a make-or-break election as far as climate change is concerned.

My co-author Tom Toles (the Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post) and I put it this way in the concluding chapter of our new book, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics and Driving Us Crazy.

In the current presidential contest, we could not have a more stark choice before us, between a candidate who rejects the overwhelming evidence that climate change is happening and a candidate who embraces the role of a price on carbon and incentives for renewable energy.

If you care about the planet, the choice would seem clear.

If the appropriate catch-phrase for the 1992 election was “It’s The Economy Stupid!,” then this time around it ought to be “It’s the PLANET stupid!.” A Toles cartoon used in the Madhouse Effect conveys the point masterfully:

Preventing dangerous climate change remains a daunting challenge, but we’ve made some real progress in the past few years. Global carbon emissions are actually on the decline, renewable energy is dramatically on the rise, and we achieved a monumental international agreement in Paris last December that promises to help steer us onto a path that just may avert dangerous 2C planetary warming.

A pair of Toles cartoons from the Madhouse Effect conveys both the auspicious nature of these developments and their fragility in the current political environment:

In this next election, we need to decide whether we are going to build on the successes of the Obama administration—which has used a combination of bold executive actions and international diplomacy to achieve action on climate change even in the presence of intransigence, denial and outright hostility from congressional republicans—or whether we are going to retreat back into the energy-equivalent of the stone age, continuing to degrade our planet through the profligate burning of increasingly dangerous fossil carbon even as the rest of the world moves forward, embracing the renewable energy revolution destined to be the hallmark of the 21st century.

Once again, the decision comes down to a single election that is now just weeks away. In the first presidential debate, though the moderator disappointingly failed to ask a question about was is arguably the single most critical issue facing human civilization today—human-caused climate change—the Democratic nominee for President, Hillary Clinton, forced the issue herself by calling out Donald Trump for his denial of climate change, noting that he, for example, in a past tweet dismissed climate change as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese (indeed Trump has posted at least a half-dozen climate change-denying tweets over the past few years).

Seemingly recognizing how self-discrediting it is to deny a phenomenon that people are now witnessing in their everyday lives, Trump denied having made the claim. But realizing that the damning evidence was available for everyone to see (via a tweet that remains in Trump’s twitter feed), his campaign sought to quickly clarify the next day that, despite what he might have stated in the past, he no longer believes climate change to be a hoax. Progress, right? Unfortunately not. Consider, for context, this Toles cartoon from the book:

The Trump campaign, it turns out, simply gave us a bait-and-switch, attempting to pivot from one patently absurd climate change denial talking point (“it’s not happening!”) to a seemingly more palatable, albeit equally indefensible one (“it’s natural, not human-caused!”).To be clear, Donald Trump and his campaign still firmly rejects the scientific evidence that climate change is human-caused, opposing the only action (a reduction of fossil fuel burning) that can save us from ever-more dangerous climate change impacts. A cartoon drawn exclusively for the Madhouse Effect captures the Trump worldview:

History will judge us by what we chose to do at the crucial moment in time. A group of scientists, including myself, have consequently decided that we must speak out about the irreparable harm that would be done by a climate change-denying, anti-science-driven Trump presidency. We have encouraged other members of the scientific community to join us:

It would nevertheless be a mistake to consider the problem to be limited to the Republican standard-bearer. It penetrates far more deeply. Whether to even accept the overwhelming evidence that climate change is real and human-caused has become a partisan political issue, thanks in large parts to the efforts of bad actors like the Koch Brothers to poison both our atmosphere and our public discourse. In the toxic environment that exists in today’s Republican party, even the most conservative Republican incumbents are subjected to well-funded primary challenges if they choose to admit that climate change is real and an issue we must contend with.

The one thing that every American voter can do to try to change that is to (a) vote in the upcoming election, and (b) vote CLIMATE, not just at the top of the ticket, but all the way down. The future of this planet could quite literally lie in the balance.

Solar Panels & Redbud in WV

Natural gas is just the next round in WV’s rut

Commentary by S. Thomas Bond, Charleston Gazette, April 5, 2016

It seems West Virginia politicians can’t get out of the rut formed by the extraction industries. We’ve gotten deeper and deeper into it since the state was formed in the Civil War. Look where we are with the outflow of our able citizens and our growing age- distribution. Not to mention our very low position on most scales of well-being.

At a recent “roundtable” in Bridgeport with oil and gas industry representatives, Bill Cole, Republican hopeful for the Governorship, told the group, “You guys have a phenomenal story to tell and you end up being the bad guys for some reason. Tell your success stories.”

The honest truth is that the easy stuff is gone from the United States’ 2 percent of the earth’s solid surface. The easy oil was exported for decades around World War II, producing affluence as long as it lasted. By 1970, we were importing, and imports passed national production in the early 1990s. Gas was abundant and cheap until after World War II. It was used freely to make glass and steel with little thought of waste.

Recently, supply had dwindled so plants were being built to receive liquefied gas on our coasts. It was known that vast amounts of gas and oil remained in shale rocks. In the “easy stuff,” it had been trapped in cracks and interconnected pores. In shale, it was locked in tiny packets barely visible to the naked eye down to microscopic in size. Patient research at the Morgantown Energy Research facility developed a new method, commonly called fracking, and George P. Mitchell, with government assistance, tried it. The results appeared fantastic. The early yields were very good and in a short time.   This was attractive to investors, who assumed the production would extend 30 or 40 years, like conventional wells.

Everybody and his brother in the oil and gas world jumped into it. Everybody wanted to try his own recipe for it, too. Old ways die hard. Everywhere it was tried, opposition quickly developed. It left the countryside a shambles. Water contaminated, toxic chemicals in the air, mini brownfields, huge areas rocked over, people sick and animals killed. Roads were torn up, royalty withheld, light and noise close to houses and livestock 24/7.

West Virginia alone presently has over 200 nuisance lawsuits. Arrogant young men in big pickups came from all over the country to do the labor. They were overworked, with a high rate of injury and close contact with dangerous chemicals in all kinds of weather. At first, complaints were put off by industry and officials alike, but the phenomenon is worldwide and science is slowly establishing the validity of the community claims.

Opposition continues to grow. The economics are awful. The yields go down to half in a couple of years and the wells are economic no more in six or seven. The recovery is 6 percent or 7 percent of the gas or oil in place, leaving the rest with no secondary recovery. The return on investment in terms of steel, energy, chemical input, is far lower than conventional drilling. Similar complaints are made for the hundreds of miles of pipeline required to get the oil or gas from production to use.

The over-production has resulted vast loss of investment and now is compared to the 2008 subprime housing scandal. Very few workers are required to get the gas — far less than the competing ways to get the energy — conservation, solar and wind. Fracking is strictly high investment, low labor. The few workers are well paid, but few women choose the work, and you are out of it long before retirement age, even if you aren’t injured or poisoned. Only fit, aggressive young men need to apply. And when you get out of it, you aren’t trained to do anything else. [The biggest reason for our huge military is the need to secure control of oil and gas. We spend $58 million an hour, more than the next 10 countries combined.]

Mr. Cole, get real. Fracking is the hard way to get energy. It will last only a few decades, will do more damage than coal has, and contributes to pollution of the atmosphere. Coal didn’t make us West Virginians rich, it just ruined a lot of our surface and broke many of our people. Fracking is doing the same. We need to get on into the 21st century.

>>> S. Thomas Bond, Lewis County, WV, is a retired chemistry professor and a member of Mountain Lakes Preservation Alliance.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Alex Ross is still a young man

Alex Ross (WV Native) to Discuss his Book “The Industries of the Future”

<<< Alex Ross who grew up in Charleston to speak there at Taylor Books  on Saturday at 6 pm >>>

From an Article by Anna Patrick, Charleston Gazette, March 27, 2016

Alec Ross has talked a lot about his book, “The Industries of the Future.”

In New York, San Francisco, even London, he’s rubbed elbows with business leaders and academic elites to discuss what the next wave of global innovation will bring. He’s talked complex robotics with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, debated the threats artificial intelligence will pose to the working world on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and explained why the world’s next trillion-dollar industry will be built out of genetic code rather than computer code on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Even before his book made The New York Times best-sellers list in March, Ross has been in serious demand to speak and advise on innovation. He served four years as senior adviser for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and is currently a distinguished visiting fellow at Johns Hopkins University.

Currently as an adviser to investors, companies and government leaders, Ross racks up a lot of air miles traveling from job to job. In 2015 alone, he took 25 trips abroad. “I work and live on a 196-country chess board,” Ross said.

But where on that giant chess board is he most excited to talk about his new book? That’s easy — his hometown: Charleston. “I’ve presented this book in London and in New York and in San Francisco, but I’m more excited to present it in Charleston than I have been in any other place,” he said.

Ross will be speaking at Taylor Books in downtown Charleston about his book, “The Industries of the Future,” at 6 p.m. Saturday. The event is free and refreshments will be provided along with alcoholic beverages for sale. He’ll be on hand after to chat and sign copies of the book.

Returning to Charleston with his first book, which was published in February by Simon & Schuster, is like returning to his inspiration. In a tragically beautiful way, it was West Virginia’s inability to move beyond its old, industrial economy, its failure to catch up with the last wave of technological and global innovation, that shaped Ross’ thinking and influenced the book’s creation.

During his four years working for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Ross traveled the globe. He visited companies developing advanced robotic technologies and came to understand how advancements in the life sciences will allow people to live longer while transforming the way we treat cancer and other disease. He saw first-hand how advancements in computer coding have transformed commerce while allowing for the fast-growing, disruptive weaponization of code.

In a way, Ross has seen the future. His unique position under the secretary of state allowed him to see what the next wave of innovation will bring. He’s not only written about the latest and greatest technology that will soon become mainstream, but he also tackles tough questions like: How will people adapt to the changing nature of work, and what do children need to know now to be prepared for jobs that don’t exist yet?

Ross said he’s hoping his book will go beyond giving business leaders and the academic elites a leg up. He didn’t write it for them. He wrote it for a much broader audience, for the kids coming of age in West Virginia, for his children’s generation. “People need information and tools to be able to make smart choices. This book is designed in part to give people the tools,” Ross said.

When Ross was graduating from George Washington High School in 1990 or attending college at Northwestern University in the early ’90s, he said, a book like “The Industries of the Future” didn’t exist. He wished it would have, wished a book could have thrown a stab at what the Internet revolution would bring.

“West Virginia was largely absent from the Internet economy. … I can’t help but think if more people in West Virginia had a glimpse that the Internet was going to change the world, they would have started Internet businesses.”

He’s hopeful that “The Industries of the Future” will help people living in places like West Virginia, places that missed out on the last wave of innovation, have a better understanding of what’s needed to make it in the next stage of globalization. “West Virginia struggled in the last stage of globalization, but it doesn’t have to struggle in the next stage,” Ross said.

He’s familiar with the fatalistic sentiment he’s seen often expressed by his fellow West Virginians — this attitude that if you want to get a leg up in the world, you have to leave the state. Or that everything went down the tubes when coal died, and there’s nothing we can do about it. He knows plenty of people who have left the state, and he knows others who have stayed and squandered talent.

“Here’s the key point for me: the kids that I grew up with in West Virginia, I believe, are made of the very same stuff that the people I worked with in the White House situation room are,” Ross said. “Talent is universally distributed, but opportunity is not.”

To hear Ross talk about the kind of opportunities and challenges the next wave of innovation in the coming 10 to 20 years will bring, listen to him speak at Taylor Books at 6 p.m. Saturday. For more information, contact Taylor Books at 304-342-1461.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

“Return on Investment” (ROI) is used in industry to select projects for funding

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor and Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

Part 1 considered “energy return on energy invested” (ERoEI). Unfortunately, there is typically a single value which determines where investment money goes in our economic system. It is how fast an initial investment will grow, including returns less costs, and including increase in value of investment. This is the subject of Part 2 here, “return on investment” or ROI.

Individual investors seek their own advantage, not what is best for society, goals often quite pointedly at odds. In the most extreme argument, if someone becomes wealthy, it “trickles down” to the rest. This is the way jobs get formed, this provides cheapest goods, and this gives the most taxes paid, etc. Beautiful idea, that even the most stupid and careless can be convinced.

However it is totally wrong. Read on. One reason is because the money may be invested in the wrong industry. It makes money without creating real wealth (usable goods and services) or a satisfied population. The idea of a closed world of limited resources has no place in this thinking. The result, as we now see, is the concentration of wealth — and worse.

So it has been, with energy. The increase in use of energy is a determinant of national and personal wealth, with those using the most achieving the greatest real wealth. Real wealth trickles up, not down.

The original source of non-muscle energy was fire. Wood was widely dispersed and free for the labor of taking it, at first. As population increased, the supply of wood became more restricted. Rome had apartment houses where the poor lived, some several stories tall. People ate at a kind of fast-food joint on the ground floor, or close by, in part to minimize the need for wood for cooking, which had to be hauled for miles in carts. Although coal was used as far back as the Bronze Age, it was only used locally. The first large scale use occurred in the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.

Not so oddly, our energy still comes from compounds (containing carbon and hydrogen) that are burned, producing carbon dioxide and water vapor and heat energy. Very few kinds of devices can turn heat into mechanical energy. The primary ones are the piston engine used for transportation and other small engines, the steam turbine, which uses expanding steam, and is used mostly for generating electricity, the gas turbine and the various kinds of jet engines which are used to propel airplanes at very high speeds. So there are four ways to use burned fuel, with a great variety of designs. This runs our civilization at the present time.

The investment in this system is huge. Extraction, transportation, conditioning or refining and distribution are involved. Each involves huge amounts of capital and the objects and people “owned” are not readily adaptable for other purposes. It is mind boggling to think of any large part of that huge system being abandoned, but it must, almost all of it, to stop increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

What investors want to do is double down, dump more money into production and accept the inefficiencies that are resulting from having used up all the “easy stuff” that was mined first, and ignore the effect on climate from the effluvia.

The “return on investment” promised to be good from shale drilling at the beginning, particularly since the return was so fast. Huge initial production was assumed to decline like conventional wells. Unfortunately, it took several years to find this is not true, the decline in production is swift and sure. Also unfortunately, everybody wanted to get into the big money seen at the beginning. The result was that only a few specialized operators, like those who took leases and then sold them to the too-eager, made out well.

Now well head prices in some areas of $1.58/Mcf (Marcellusgas.org cloud sourcing for September) have put the industry under stress. The oversupply is huge. An investment newsletter says, “natural gas remains near-bidless, as we enter the traditionally strong winter heating season. Just imagine where we’ll be in April if December is at $2.38.” Some companies face bankruptcy.

With the climate change problem caused primarily by burning carbon, and with the over invested production of oil and gas, this must be a classic case of mistaken investment of capital. It should be going into renewable energy. This would allow the U. S. to be a leader in a forthcoming series of technologies, out-distancing other developed nations in technology and protection of the earth. These technologies could replace burning fossil fuels for electricity generation and for personal transportation.

What our economic system has been good at is aggregating capital. This article lists some figures. Exxon Mobil Corp has $320 billion for potential acquisitions. Chevron is next with $65 billion in cash and its own shares tucked away, followed by BP Plc with $53 billion according to data from corporate filings. Royal Dutch Shell Plc has $32.4 billion available, almost all of it in cash. others include ConocoPhillips with $31.5 billion and Total SA with $30.5 billion. The article speculates that it will go to gobble up companies in trouble. More of the same. “Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” not least so in investors.

High immediate return has deflected much recent investment to carbon burning industry and away from more widely useful projects. No doubt that has slowed considerably of late.

There is one more large point to be made that holds government favor for oil especially. The US oil reserve is vitally important to preserve the operations when needed of the US military, a huge organization that runs principally on petroleum (oil) products.

(Did you know West Virginia’s gross domestic product, the total value of all goods and services, in 20 13 had the largest rate of growth in the nation while adding no new jobs and actually had negative income growth? The increase in GDP is sent out of state. Another demonstration “trickle down” doesn’t work. See here.)

See also: Top 5 Facts Your Utility Company Won’t Tell You

CLEAN-POWER COMPLIANCE EXAMINED IN NEW REPORT

From an Article by David Beard, Morgantown Dominion Post, June 16, 2015

While the fight against the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan continues in the halls of Congress and in federal courts, a report issued Monday suggests ways the State of West Virginia can comply with the plan and still maintain a sound economy.

The report — “The Clean Power Plan and West Virginia: Compliance Options and New Economic Opportunities” — comes from WVU law school’s Center for Energy & Sustainable Development and Morgantown-based consultants Downstream Strategies.

Center Director James Van Nostrand, Downstream President Evan Hansen, Center Fellow Beren Argetsinger and Downstream scientist Joseph James are the authors.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan prescribes a range of pollution control measures to reduce carbon emissions nationwide by 30 percent of their 2005 levels – 20 percent for West Virginia. The final rule is due out this summer. This past week, a federal panel set aside a multistate legal challenge led by West Virginia, saying it’s too early to decide the case.

In a release accompanying the report, Van Nostrand cautioned, “Once the final rule is issued, states will likely have only one year to file plans describing how the required CO2 emission reductions will be achieved. Future legal challenges may not be settled for years, and if West Virginia waits that long to develop a state plan, EPA could just step in and implement a federal plan.”

They hope the report will provide some tools for legislators and regulators as the plan unfolds, they said. They acknowledge that the plan means less coal will be mined and burned, miners will lose jobs and severance taxes will shrink. But West Virginia can meet the challenge, they say.

>>> Five scenarios <<< The report looks at five scenarios to comply with the plan.

>> “Business as Usual” takes into account current and planned coal power plant closures and a planned natural gas plant near Moundsville, with no additional gas plants and little expansion of renewables. Coal makes up about 89 percent of the fuel mix by 2030.

>> Based on HB 2004, passed in the recent legislative session, “Inside the Fenceline” relies on the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to draw up a plan based on more efficient coal-powered plants. HB 2004 precludes the use of fuel switching, demand-side energy efficiency, renewables and other options. This also fails to meet plan requirements.

>> “Reduced Export” relies on reducing the amount of coal sent to other states. Under an option permitted by the plan, the report says, West Virginia can reduce its emissions by reducing its exports.

>> The authors favor the final two scenarios — variant versions of “All of the Above.” Under these options, natural gas co-firing (coal and gas alternating as needed), increases; another natural gas plant joins the Moundsville plant; renewables and local combined-heat-and-power (CHP) plants play a bigger role. Coal drops to about 75 percent of the total fuel load, gas ranges from 4 percent to 9 percent; renewables make up about 9 percent; and CHP ranges from 2 percent to 7 percent.

<<< Policy suggestions >>>

The report makes a number of policy recommendations, including reducing the restrictions on a state plan as mandated in HB 2004.

Another is to adopt an energy-efficiency resource standard. It notes that FirstEnergy and American Electric in other states must offer energy-efficiency programs. Such requirements in West Virginia could save ratepayers money and reduce energy demand. The full report can be found here on the Internet.

Solar Panels already in WV, MD, etc.

Energy needs could actually fit quite nicely in just one desert

Guest Commentary by Mark B. Tauger, Morgantown Dominion Post, February 23, 2015

WVU President E. Gordon Gee’s remarks about solar power were recently quoted (DP-Tuesday) as: “Replacing fossil-fuel energy with alternative energy means ‘we would have to pave this country in windmills and solar farms … a windmill in every backyard … a solar panel on every green space.’ ”

Gee’s assertion is exaggerated and one-sided. A German scientist, Nadine May, in her diploma thesis, “Eco-balance of a Solar Electricity Transmission from North Africa to Europe” (Technical University of Braunschweig, 2005), examined solar irradiance and solar energy generating capacities of existing technologies.

She calculated that all of the world’s energy needs could be met by solar panels covering an area of 254×254 kilometers or about 25,600 square miles (roughly the size of West Virginia.)

May showed that this area would occupy a very small square of the Sahara Desert, but to use a more secure site, this is the area of the Mojave desert, and much smaller than the Chihuahuan Desert (140,000 square miles) or the Sonoran Desert (110,000 square miles).

All these deserts receive sufficient continuous sunlight to provide continuous energy flows, especially now that global warming will be causing decades-long droughts in our nation’s Southwest, according to new research by NASA. Again, that is the total world energy demand, the United States demand would require much less than half of that area of solar panels.

To meet West Virginia’s energy needs, which are considerably less than the energy demands of most U.S. states and developed countries, the area of solar panels necessary would be much less than one-half of one percent of the 25,000-square-mile area, perhaps 50 square miles of cells, or a region 7 miles by 7 miles, which could be broken up and scattered in a few isolated regions in the state, certainly without “a solar panel on every greenspace.”

Similar corrections could be made to Gee’s exaggerated assertions about “a windmill in every backyard.”

Even if May’s estimate is too low, and the world would need two or three times that area, that would still be a tiny fraction of the regions in the world that get reliable sun and could produce energy for all the world’s needs.

Such a system would also be very cost-effective. The existing U.S. energy industries — oil, coal, gas and nuclear — have received during their lifetime an estimated $630 billion in subsidies from the U.S. government, i.e., from taxpayers.

They have also received much larger indirect and hidden subsidies because they have avoided paying for many of the damages their products have caused or contributed to, such as mine workers’ lung diseases, many illnesses among the general population related to coal smoke, environmental destruction caused by mine pollution and burning of fossil fuels, and the long-term effects of climate change.

By comparison, solar and other renewables have received only about $50 billion in subsidies, yet they are already being used widely in many countries. Renewables have been a bargain, and the more they are used, the bigger a bargain they will be.

Most importantly, in my view, no one will get black lung from setting up or monitoring a solar panel or a windmill.

Anyone who complains about the “cost” of solar must explicitly and openly address the costs of thousands of coal miners’ lives shortened by lung and other diseases, the medical expenses they must bear while the companies try to avoid paying, the costs to miners’ families devoting their lives to caring for fathers and husbands and then losing them early, and endless illnesses and contamination of waters and lands that everyone has to deal with in our coal-powered country.

A few areas of “green space” covered by solar panels would seem a negligible price for keeping unpolluted more lands, streams and lakes, and enabling more people to live their full lives.

>>> Mark B. Tauger is an associate professor of history at WVU, specializing in the history of famine, agriculture and agricultural sciences. <<<

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

WVU Energy Forum

The “Forum Looking at America’s Energy Roadmap to 2050,” hosted at West Virginia University by Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va. and WVU President James Clements was held in Morgantown this past Monday. Limited seating resulted in standing room only for many observers.

“This is what we’ve needed to do,” said McKinley. He joked that, as one of two engineers in Congress, he needs to “see some kind of an energy plan.” Clements said the goal at WVU is to become “America’s energy university,” an activity that he said requires balance and focus.

About 20 other participants represented fossil fuels, renewable energy and electricity, environmental and consumer groups and public agencies. They contributed to brief roundtable commentary on each of six topics: regional and national energy policy; role of fossil fuels in such a policy; whether carbon capture, utilization and sequestration is viable; consequences of a transition from fossil fuels; ways Congress could strengthen federal investment and stimulate public-private partnerships; and how non-conventional uses of fossil fuels in transportation and chemical feedstocks could impact the local economy.

A few friends and I attended the forum and discussion as outsiders. At the head table flanking McKinley were Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. and WVU President Jim Clements. Others at the table were energy CEO’s, other industry leaders and a UMWA representative. There were also three environmental groups represented at the table. It would be fair to characterize these three groups as “capital intensive,” as compared to “membership intensive” environmental groups that have a large active set of members.

In formulating a national energy policy the discussion soon dissed oil out of the conversation. The policy should primarily concern fuels we have in abundance in the United States they said. Nuclear rated little attention, and solar, wind, wave and renewable sources were considered of little significance. The national energy policy so defined would primarily benefit the industries most represented in the room.

The idea that air could be purified to oxygen to facilitate carbon capture and storage was discussed. Opinion in the panel placed the cost of carbon capture at an additional 75 to 80% of the present cost of coal generated electricity. At present there is no discussion of carbon capture for gas-generated electricity. This observer sees this as a great subsidy for gas generated electricity, and a handicap for coal. Surely carbon dioxide from burning gas has the same effect as carbon dioxide from coal. 

Fossil fuels were touted as reliable, inexpensive and abundant, but in view of the foregoing, “inexpensive” might have to be dropped from the list, and “healthy” didn’t make the list. A great deal was said about the market system controlling the form of energy demanded by customers. The market may not work to the advantage of fossil fuels when health and other costs are considered. Technological fixes to a mature industry are difficult, and both solar and wind, as new technologies, have significant improvements coming along regularly.

Government control and the EPA in particular were repeatedly called a problem. However, government research for the industries was considered vital. The present $400 million a year is not enough for carbon capture research. A dollar a month addition to all electrical bills to be used for coal research was suggested.

This observer found the forum interesting, but a bit like a family reunion. The public interest demands input from customers, and a mind set comfortable with change. Both were missing.

S. Tom Bond, Jane Lew, Lewis County, WV