Finally...

Work is finally getting exciting! Not that the first few week weren't - I got to learn a lot about how environmental policy is made and the numerous interest groups that comprise "environmentalists" and "cornucopians" - but I was doing a lot of listening and reading, not so much doing. That's starting to change. I drafted my first action alert today about the upcoming Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS,or RES or RFS, depending on the crowd and the exact specs). Action alerts are where a form of communication we send via e-mail to "activists" across the country. We have over 200,000 people on our e-mail list who, when they receive an action alert, will send a letter to their member of Congress, urging them to support or fight an upcoming piece of legislation. It's crafted to both teach the activist a little bit about the context of the legislation and to reach out to members of Congress in a different way than a phone call from someone at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

It's a form of lobbying, different from actually meeting with a Representative or a Senator - that's direct lobbying. Action alerts are a form of indirect lobbying. Since we are a non-profit who lobbies, we must adhere to certain hourly restrictions on both our indirect and direct lobbying efforts. I never knew lobbying was so nuanced!

The action alert I drafted, as I mention above, concerns the RPS. Minnesota and many other states have such standards in place on the state level. They mandate that a certain portion of electricity generated comes from renewable energy, such as hydro, wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal. For instance, Minnesota has enacted a 25% by 2025 bill, while Xcel Energy (go Dad!) has enacted a 30% by 2020 (with 25% coming from wind). Other states have similar pieces of legislation, although few are as ambitious as Minnesota's. The bill to be introduced to the House tomorrow will require that nationally, we get 25% of our energy from renewable sources by 2025. This is excluding any provisions for energy efficiency (a separate bill) which has previously sapped the actual percentage required in previous legislation (ex. a 4% offset from energy efficiency turns a 15% renewable requirement into an 11% one, boo).

At this point, you may wonder, "What percentage of electricity is renewable right now?"
Good question - despite the fact that in 2007, for the first time ever, renewable energy made up the largest portion of new electricity added to the grid (EIA report), renewables make up only approximately 2.5% of our country's energy portfolio. And even with this encouraging sign that more sources of renewable energy are being created than ever before - we have yet to see the watershed moment of renewable energy. There will always be an artificial cap on the amount of renewable energy we will see in our current industry climate. Only with an RPS will companies be able to invest in the technologies requisite for widespread adoption and cost-effectiveness renewables will someday enjoy. Think about this - the average large-scale wind farm takes about 5-10 years, if not longer, from plan, design, and construct. This coincides with the average length of a CEO's tenure. You think they want to take this risk without reassurance of a future market? True, it would take about the same amount of time to get a coal-fired plant up and running (maybe longer if they get litigated) but at least there is a mature market for fossil fuels. They will take that bet and choose coal. Every time.

Which brings me to my second big project: studying engineering barriers to Carbon Capture and Storage/Sequestration (CCS). Since we rely on coal for almost half of our electricity in this country, and likely will for the foreseeable future, a serious discussion on the merits of CCS must be considered. Don't be fooled by Peabody Energy saying that clean coal is here now. It isn't. However, be careful not to be too persuaded by environmental groups that clean coal is not a viable option. Yes, coal has numerous environmental problems and is a major contributor to GHGs. But it is a fact that it will remain the cheapest energy option in this country for the next decade, if not longer. More money must be spent, both the government's and industry's, to investigate the technologies that will make CCS work, both environmentally and economically.

There are currently three forms of capture, each with various other subgroups: pre-combustion, post-combustion, and oxyfuel. Capturing the carbon dioxide from the gas resulting from the combustion of coal is the most expensive and technologically vexing portion of the CCS cycle. Often, the processes involved in capturing the climate change-causing gases significantly decrease the efficiency of the power plants (which are already only operating at ~40%, at best) thus increasing the amount of coal needed to produce the same amount of energy, all for an increased cost. You can see why companies are reluctant to adopt CCS technology at the present. The transportation of CO2 is not quite as difficult technologically, but it could still be expensive. The optimal scenario would have a viable place to pump the gas close to the plant, but only certain sites are suited, via their geologic properties, to sequester carbon dioxide. Transportation costs increase linearly with distance from the plant to the storage site. Current options for transporting are via pipeline and truck. Storing the carbon, by pumping it underground, into aquifers, old oil wells, and other geologically stable formations has yet to be tested on a large scale. There are several pilot operations currently studying this, but they can only store about 1 million tons of carbon dioxide a year - the average power plant produces 4 million tons a year, and there are a lot of them around the US! Once in the ground, experts are unsure about what will happen. The UN IPCC believes that 99% of the stored gas will remain underground for the next 100, even 1000 years, but much uncertainty remains. A slow leak from the storage chamber would negate the global warming benefit of storage in the first place. A rapid leak could kill you. Carbon dioxide could acidify groundwater, which could dissolve part of the cap rock or concrete well covers. Finally, the sheer scale of the operation and the monitoring of the site could prove very difficult to implement. That being said, we have to do something!

Trying to label coal as the enemy is the wrong course to chart. It seems as though people in the environmental community are so used to railing against the status quo they run the risk of dooming the ship they are trying, ultimately, to save. Of course renewable forms of energy are preferable over coal and we shouldn't quit fighting for their adoption and maturation because it will eventually change how we get our energy. But the key word is "eventually". We've got to work with the options at our disposal to develop viable CCS technologies because even if we forget about coal and focus only on renewable energy, any savings brought about by that will be overshadowed by an India and a China using antiquated coal-fired technology (they will account for 3X more coal usage than the U.S. in the coming decades). Invest in CCS and ensure that any technological advances that come out of it are shared with the rest of the world. Because this is not a national fight, it's a global one. Invest in CCS, but not at the expense of renewable energy. Companies will be slow to innovate if all of the research money flows to coal. It will be a self-fulfilling prophecy, that renewables are forever doomed, if sufficient money is not given towards their development alongside CCS.

These are just my thoughts, not connected necessarily to UCS, and I applaud you if you got this far down my blog. Here are some links to articles about carbon capture and sequestration technologies, if you are so inclined.
MIT: The Future of Coal
IPCC (read the summary for policymakers)
National Energy Technology Lab (a section of the Dept. of Energy)
Union of Concerned Scientists