Water and Watts: A new issue brief on energy and water in the Southeast

The World Resources Institute, Southface and the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance recently released a new issue brief about water and energy in the Southeast. Their basic conclusion? Thermoelectric power plants are responsible for nearly two out of every three gallons of freshwater withdrawals in the Southeast. Much of that water returns to the water body it was removed from, but some of it is evaporated or otherwise consumed and not returned.

The average kilowatt-hour of electricity produced in the Southeast consumes nearly a gallon of water.

Click here to read the issue brief.

Southeast coal plants put pressure on water supply (Wednesday, May 13, 2009)
E&E Daily

Evan Lehmann, E&E reporter

The Southeast's reliance on coal-fired power plants is threatening the region's water supply, according to a new analysis that says energy efficiency could alleviate the growing pressure on lakes and rivers.

The region uses 40 billion gallons of water every day in the production of electricity. That amounts to two-thirds of all its water use -- more than any other region -- and nearly matches the nation's daily draw of freshwater for public consumption, according to a report released today by the World Resources Institute and two regional conservation groups.

"The Southeast faces immense challenges in meeting the water and energy needs of a growing population," says the report, noting that climate change will strain water resources as more people tap the dwindling reserve.

The region is a focus for advocates of renewable energy and efficiency initiatives, in part because those states have historically trailed other regions in adopting strategies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The economic signals there have been slower to push utilities and policymakers to adopt cost-saving -- and carbon-reducing -- policies. Several Southern states are some of the highest per capita energy users in the nation.

"There's no hiding the fact. The Southern states have been blessed, and cursed, with low energy costs," said Ben Taube, a contributor to the report and the executive director of the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance. "We've got a lot of opportunity ahead of us, and we've got to find ways to make that happen."

Those cheap prices have traditionally led to a reliance on coal. But the pressures on water -- now and in the future -- are one more reason to impose energy-cutting efficiency programs and shift to renewable power production, the report says.

New efficiencies can reduce the amount of water used to cool equipment in the production of electricity in plants powered by coal, nuclear fuel and biomass. Also, conserving water can reduce the amount of electricity needed to treat and heat water. The report says the warm region is an ideal place for solar hot water systems, which can provide 40 to 80 percent of the hot water used in homes and businesses.

That could reduce electricity consumption -- and the water needed for that process.

Less energy = more water

The report says utilities and regulators need to consider the relationship between energy and water when planning new power plants.

"Most states take a silo approach to energy planning and a silo approach to water planning," said Dennis Creech, a contributor to the report and the executive director of Southface, a conservation group. "They don't look at the two."

The report will be delivered to businesses and policymakers. It recommends that legislators offer financial incentives, like tax credits, to encourage energy efficiency practices and the purchase of low-energy equipment.

"Steps taken to minimize energy demands will help relieve pressure to construct new power plants, thus avoiding the need to divert additional freshwater resources," the report says.

It also suggests that states require public buildings to be energy efficient, and that they launch aggressive education campaigns to teach the public about the connection between water and energy.

But those efforts might be a challenge. At least two new nuclear power plants have been proposed in the region. Nuclear plants use more water than other types of facilities.

And there's still a dependence on traditional energy, with some regional power companies asserting that the Southeast has fewer renewable energy sources -- like wind -- than other areas. Clean energy advocates strongly dispute that perception, saying the region could produce 25 percent of its power from renewable energy sources, like biomass, by 2025.

"One of the key things that came out of our report was the fact that the conventional means of producing electricity -- coal power plants, nuclear power plants -- can be very water-intensive," said Eliot Metzger of the World Resources Institute. "And the fact that the business-as-usual path was to build more of those plants, [which] was clearly not the sustainable path."

Their two cents

The Washington Times recently released disturbing news that the clean energy and jobs bill currently before Congress will let some utilities get away with building new coal plants without having to equip the facilities with the technology to capture dangerous pollution.

Instead, coal and utility lobbyists want us to pay to clean up their dirty coal. According to the Center for American Progress, the companies that comprise the lead coal-industry front group spend less than $0.02 of every dollar they earn to research and develop the supposed "clean coal" technology they say justifies building new coal plants. However they do have a $40 million communications budget and are spending the most money on lobbying in Washington DC to weaken legislation to address climate change.

Read more at the Institute for Southern Studies.

Like Oil and Water: Coal and Climate Don't Mix

Last week, 60 Minutes on CBS aired a segment called "The Dilemma Over Coal Generated Power." The segment features Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers and NASA climate scientist Dr. Jim Hansen discussing the urgent need to address climate change despite our addiction to dirty coal.

Rogers today announced that Duke Energy will not renew its membership in the National Association of Manufacturers partly because of differences over climate policy, but meanwhile he is building his own dirty coal plant in Rutherford County North Carolina.

Southern Alliance for Clean Energy's executive director Stephen Smith watched the segment and provides some context here. Or check out the Institute for Southern Studies' blog about how Duke Energy execs lose their cool over intensifying pressure to address climate change.

Canceling Coal: A Capital Idea

Recently the Architect of the U.S. Capitol announced that the Capitol Power Plant will be converted to run on natural gas instead of coal. The Capitol Power Plant marks yet another example of the trend against coal. Nearby, coal plants are being converted to run on renewable energy like biopower. Biopower and natural gas might not be perfect, but they demonstrate that there are viable alternatives to dirty coal.

To be sure, not all of the decisions coming out of Washington are praiseworthy, but I think this one is.

Read the Capitol Architect's letter to Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid here.

Capitol Power Plant to stop use of coal

By Jordy Yager

Posted: 05/01/09 06:10 PM [ET]

House and Senate leadership formally announced on Friday that coal would no longer be used to heat and cool the Capitol and surrounding office buildings – for the most part. Coal will continue to be used in three different scenarios as “emergency backup,” according to the leaders. “For years, the Capitol Power Plant has been the largest source of carbon emissions on the Capitol Complex,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in a statement. “The Architect’s switch to cleaner burning natural gas shows that the House and Senate are leading by example in reducing our emissions. I look forward to working with the Architect’s office to achieve even greater energy savings and efficiency through our greening programs.” Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) previously announced they intended to stop the plant’s use of coal. In explaining situations where coal would still be used, Pelosi and Reid in a joint statement referenced a letter sent to them last week by the overseer of the Capitol Power Plant (CPP). If the heating needs of the Capitol and surrounding office buildings exceed the capacity of the natural gas pipeline currently serving the complex, which still needs to be enlarged to allot for the increased usage of natural gas, coal may have to be used, acting-Architect of the Capitol Stephen Ayers wrote in the letter. Also, if abnormally cold conditions place larger than normal demands on the CPP or if any of the gas burning equipment breaks and needs repair, the plant may have to revert to burning a percentage of coal during that interim. In February, Pelosi and Reid requested the Capitol Power Plant switch to natural gas – a more environmentally friendly form of energy – for all of its energy production by the end of 2009. In their announcement on Friday however, they did not set a firm timeline. As part of the transition to using only natural gas, Ayers has requested $10 million to redesign and convert the remaining coal burner to be natural gas capable, a process that he said could be complete as early as November, 2010. The CPP has traditionally used a combination of fuel, natural gas and coal to create steam energy to heat and cool the Capitol and the House and Senate office buildings. The plant is currently the largest source of pollution in Washington. Ayers said in his letter that the AoC was still in the process of refining the “master plan” for the future of the Capitol Power Plant and has asked the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Academies to review it for feedback.

Energy Efficiency, vol. 3: New FERC Chair Leading the Way?

The new Chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or FERC, Jon Wellinghoff, was recently profiled in the New York Times as an energy efficiency evangelist of sorts.

If you visit Jon Wellinghoff in his office, he'll likely direct your gaze to the ceiling.

When he first joined the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2006, the lights in his office suite were considered a very efficient system, state of the art when installed a dozen years earlier. But they still were not efficient enough for him. So he had them ripped out and installed "light shelves" that provide indirect lighting, along with a digital sensor that dims the lights as sunlight brightens the room.

"We cut the lighting energy usage in my office suite by 50 percent," Wellinghoff said recently. "We can reduce our energy usage in this country by 50 percent."

Wellinghoff has long lived what he preaches, his associates say. And now that he's chairman of FERC, he wants to move the rest of the nation in his direction. He said in an interview today that his agenda is simply "efficiency in markets and least cost for consumers."

FERC regulates interstate energy markets, with a goal of ensuring an abundant and reliable source of energy for Americans.

Wellinghoff recently made waves by publicly stating that the U.S. may never need another new coal (or nuclear) plant, as reported by Greenwire.

Wellinghoff views improvements in the nation's grid as opening up new opportunities to utilitize a combination of energy efficiency, renewable energy and natural gas to meet all of the nation's power needs. The SCsaysNO Coalition has proposed a similar solution to the Pee Dee coal plant debate.

From the Greenwire article:

Wellinghoff said renewables like wind, solar and biomass will provide enough energy to meet baseload capacity and future energy demands. Nuclear and coal plants are too expensive, he added.

"I think baseload capacity is going to become an anachronism," he said. "Baseload capacity really used to only mean in an economic dispatch, which you dispatch first, what would be the cheapest thing to do. Well, ultimately wind's going to be the cheapest thing to do, so you'll dispatch that first."

He added, "People talk about, 'Oh, we need baseload.' It's like people saying we need more computing power, we need mainframes. We don't need mainframes, we have distributed computing."

The technology for renewable energies has come far enough to allow his vision to move forward, he said. For instance, there are systems now available for concentrated solar plants that can provide 15 hours of storage.

"What you have to do, is you have to be able to shape it," he added. "And if you can shape wind and you can effectively get capacity available for you for all your loads.

"So if you can shape your renewables, you don't need fossil fuel or nuclear plants to run all the time. And, in fact, most plants running all the time in your system are an impediment because they're very inflexible. You can't ramp up and ramp down a nuclear plant. And if you have instead the ability to ramp up and ramp down loads in ways that can shape the entire system, then the old concept of baseload becomes an anachronism."

Over-reliance on Fossil Fools Spells Trouble for SC

Below is an excerpt from an opinion piece published in The State. Read the whole thing here.

Thu, Apr. 30, 2009
Moore, Wislinski, Schretzmann-Jebaily: The real costs of carbon
By STEVE MOORE, BOB WISLINSKI AND CAROLYN SCHRETZMANN-JEBAILY
Guest Columnists

Santee Cooper and SCE&G complained in a recent news article that placing a price on carbon emissions, which Congress is now considering, will cause their customers’ electricity rates to rise. (“S.C. utilities wary of proposal,” April 20.)

What the utilities did not say is that electricity rates for these same customers have already been rising, and will continue to rise as long as these utilities rely on fossil fuels for large portions of their energy production. Coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, has gone up in cost by 60 percent over the past five years. Santee Cooper in particular has been foolishly wedded to this power source for too long — and insists upon another large coal plant even as we write this piece.

The plain fact is that as soon as we get out of this recession, we can expect these utilities’ costs to rise anyway as they compete with other utilities and other countries for this diminishing resource.

The article did not mention the important fact that President Obama’s proposed clean energy/jobs plan will provide money for making buildings more energy-efficient, reducing the need for generating more electricity and saving money for consumers. This is not an insignificant component. Already because of state-mandated energy-efficiency measures, California uses half as much electricity per capita as the rest of the country. This did not bankrupt California or its energy consumers. They have prospered. In fact, these savings are helping that state weather tough economic times.

Unfortunately, the S.C. utilities prophesying gloom and doom have put relatively few resources toward promoting energy-efficiency, while spending enormous sums on building new power plants and lobbying Columbia and Washington to keep the status quo. Little wonder: They are rewarded for producing energy, not for saving it. While this might have been good for their profit margin in the years gone by, it is disastrous for the rest of us and has made South Carolina dependent upon importing coal from other states.

Continuing to burn fossil fuels at an ever-accelerating rate is ravaging our environment. Whether it is mountaintop removal in West Virginia or Kentucky, which has resulted in hundreds of miles of streams being buried under toxic rubble, or mercury poisoning, which has resulted in many fish in South Carolina’s black-water rivers being dangerous for human consumption, or global warming, which is starting to change the very conditions under which we live, there are many reasons for limiting our use of these damaging fuels.

Legislators Say No to Coal

Yesterday South Carolina legislators spoke out against coal. The issue was covered in a brief AP News story printed in The State. (A more in depth article appeared in the Augusta Chronicle):

A bill introduced by Republican Rep. Carl Gullick of Lake Wylie would ban coal-fired plants operated by state utilities from using coal from mountaintop mining.

In February, state health officials agreed to issue air quality permits to let state-owned utility Santee Cooper build two coal-fired generators at a Florence County site. The Southern Environmental Law Center has asked a special court to require the Department of Health and Environmental Control to reconsider that decision.

The Sierra Club says about half of South Carolina’s coal comes from mountaintop removal.

Read the full story here.

Mountain top removal is a method of coal mining that literally destroys mountains. Over 500 mountains and thousands of miles of rivers in Appalachia have been destroyed via this process. Learn more about this barbaric process (which our SC coal plants are implicated in) here. At the ILoveMountains website you can actually enter in your zip code and see your utility's connection to the destruction of our mountains.

The editors of the Greenville News thinks it matters. They editorialized on the bill today. Read the editorial here.