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."

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."

Energy Efficiency, vol. 2: Saving Energy -> National Defense

From the LA Times an excellent article on how saving energy promotes national security. Read the full article here.

Military embraces green energy
A Mojave Desert Army base is full of plug-in cars, solar panels and new experiments. Liberal agenda? Nah, it's about saving money, even lives. But the Defense Department could cement a national trend.

By Alexandra Zavis

April 26, 2009

...

The Department of Defense is the single largest energy consumer in the United States. Last year it bought nearly 4 billion gallons of jet fuel, 220 million gallons of diesel and 73 million gallons of gasoline, said Brian Lally, deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment.

American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are using more fuel each day than in any other war in U.S. history. When oil prices spiked last summer, the Defense Department's energy tab shot up from about $13 billion per year in 2006 and 2007 to $20 billion in 2008. The Army alone had to make up a half- billion-dollar shortfall in its energy budget, said Keith Eastin, assistant secretary of the Army for installations and environment.

"That was, I think, a grand wake-up call that we somehow had to get a handle on what is loosely called energy security," Eastin said.

Defense officials now consider reducing consumption and embracing energy alternatives to be national security imperatives. At Ft. Irwin, commanders are experimenting with ways to power the desert training area -- which replicates austere combat conditions -- using wind, solar and organic waste-to-fuel technologies.

When Brig. Gen. Dana Pittard took command of Ft. Irwin in 2007, he was stunned by the cost of housing troops in tents powered by generators, as they often are in Iraq and Afghanistan. A brigade of about 4,000 to 5,000 troops was spending about $3 million to rent the tents and keep the air conditioners humming during a month-long rotation, Pittard said. By building tents covered with two to three inches of insulating foam and a solar- reflective coating, they reduced the generator requirements by 45% to 75%, a technique that is now being used at some larger bases in the war zones.

Estimates are that a $22-million investment to replace all the rented tents at Ft. Irwin with insulated, semi-permanent ones would pay for itself within nine months and could save the Army $100 million over five years, said Eric Gardner, a logistics management specialist at the base.

By reducing generator use, Ft. Irwin also expects to cut carbon emissions by 35 million poundseach year -- equivalent to taking 3,500 vehicles off the road, Gardner said. This year, for the first time, the facility did not need a waiver allowing it to exceed the state of California's emissions standards in the training area, Pittard said.

...

Read more.

Energy Efficiency, vol. 1

An article from this weekend's Post and Courier which hints at just a small portion of the vast potential to meet our energy needs through energy efficiency. Read more about energy efficiency here, or here. Pull the plug to save money on home electronic devices By ERNEST SCHEYDER Associated Press Saturday, April 11, 2009 NEW YORK — For Ben Veligdan, a music teacher in Brooklyn's Coney Island neighborhood, opening the electric bill became a monthly surprise. There's no way more than $100 a month for him, his wife and a cat could be normal, right? So Veligdan, 26, looked around his modest one-bedroom apartment for the culprit and decided unplugging his computer when sleeping or working would be a start. His electric bill fell almost immediately. Many electronic items still draw power when they're turned off. It's a phenomenon called "phantom" load, and it sucks about 5 percent to 10 percent of the energy used in America's homes each year. That's the same amount of power generated by 17 coal-fired plants annually, according to Brian Keane, president of the energy-efficiency think tank SmartPower. .... read more.

State editorial on Efficiency

Sun, Mar. 29, 2009
Lakshmi: Recession changes energy equation
By VENKAT LAKSHMI
Guest Columnist

In a period of less than 48 hours, state regulators approved Santee Cooper’s plan to build a $2.2 billion coal-powered plant near Florence and SCE&G’s plan to add two new reactors to its nuclear plant at Jenkinsville at a cost of around $10 billion.

Environmentalists have raised several valid concerns about both projects. The coal plant will emit carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas that is the primary cause of global warming — and mercury, which can enter ponds, lakes, streams and rivers, be ingested by fish and eventually enter the human system; exposure to even small amounts can cause neurological disorders in humans. Radioactivity could escape from nuclear reactors into the atmosphere; in addition, a nuclear plant needs enormous amounts of water to turn into steam to drive the turbines, and a water shortage during periods of drought may compromise plant operations.

However the most persuasive argument against these plants may come from dollars and cents.

The United States has one of the highest per capita consumptions of energy in the world. Only oil-producing countries use more energy per capita.

In the past few months, our local, national and global economy has slowed to the point that economic indicators are at the same point as a decade ago. There has been a definite decline in manufacturing; auto parts manufacturers have closed down due to the slowdown in automobile sales. Consumer spending is down across the board. With less industrial demand today than two years ago, is it wise to commit billions of dollars to build these new plants? Or should we wait and see if consumption and energy use go back up and then make a final decision? And shouldn’t everyone be working harder to reduce energy consumption, regardless?

There are numerous ways that factories can improve their efficiency, by reducing their energy consumption during non-peak times. A few ideas that are already being implemented in some places are more efficient lighting, with light bulbs that use less energy and switch off when not required; variable-speed motors, which use high speeds and high energy consumption during peak times and lower consumption during non-peak times; and water recycling.

Households can put lighting, heating and cooling on timing devices that minimize their usage when not required, saving money as well as energy. Combining energy efficiency and cost savings creates a powerful argument that appeals to everyone.

If the economy does not recover to its pre-2008 levels and the energy demands do not increase according to our predictions, we will be faced with the high costs of these plants, which will be transmitted to the consumers in the form of higher costs for every kilowatt of power. Using caution and cost-benefit analysis before embarking on these large construction projects is a wise idea. Twelve billion dollars is nearly twice what the state government spends in a year. Even if we spread this over 10 years, it would come to $1.2 billion, which is about what legislators have cut out of the current year’s state budget.

These are times of grave economic challenges. But with challenge comes opportunity. South Carolina and America must lead the way in energy conservation and efficiency. We need to get the United States off the top per capita energy consumption list — a list we definitely should not head. All these moves will help to delay construction of costly new energy plants and thereby conserve our monetary and energy resources.

The time is now.

Dr. Lakshmi is chair of the Department of Geological Sciences at USC.

From Hydrogen to A World of Home-Grown Alternatives

From this week's Columbia Free Times, a wide ranging look at alternatives to projects like Santee Cooper's proposed coal plant:

Through the prism of a hydrogen atom, the eyes of the nation and the world fall on Columbia and South Carolina for five days beginning Monday.
...

That is good news to South Carolinians getting swept up in economic convulsions of the time. After all, residents of the state average some of the highest power bills in the country. And all in all, South Carolina depends on coal for 61 percent of its electricity and nuclear power for 31 percent of it, a combined 92 percent, according to a state legislative report released in February.

Those numbers could rise.

With ratepayers set up to foot the bills, the train has left the station on plans by state-owned Santee Cooper to build a coal-fired power plant in Florence County and South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., in partnership with Santee Cooper, to construct two more reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Plant that SCE&G owns and operates near Columbia, as well as designs by Duke Energy to bring two additional nuclear reactors online in the Upstate region of South Carolina.

It is true even despite well-documented toxic pollution associated with coal- and nuclear-based power.

In that sense, then, South Carolina finds itself at two roads diverged on a path to the energy future. One road bends toward a dark past — the black seam of coal and the thousands of lifetimes of radioactive waste that is nuclear. The other way leads to a sort of last-place-to-first-place story waiting to be told:

In the affluent Heathwood neighborhood of Columbia, where drafty old mansions hold fast but inefficient, and across rural swaths of the Palmetto State, where row after row of poorly insulated manufactured homes stretch out upon the land.

In hydrogen laboratories at the university and other research and development operations in the state, where the vision of Oppenheimer has evolved from splitting the atom for extinction-level purposes to tapping the most bountiful element in the universe for its clean-energy potential.

Along the sleepy back roads of the state in forested fields and other agricultural assets, where grow enormous, renewable sources of biofuels.

Off the coast, where Mother Nature whistles strong winds atop the mighty Atlantic Ocean.
And in the sunny climate of South Carolina, where a virtually limitless solar source shines silently, lingering to be harnessed.

It is fitting then, as the city, state, nation and world hone in on hydrogen, to consider other options along with it. “I don’t think there’s any single silver bullet,” says John Clark, director of the S.C. Energy Office. “I think the key is going to be having greater diversity in energy sources than we have.”

read more...

Just how much clean energy potential does South Carolina have? Part of the answer comes from this study by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. It busts the myth that the Southeast -- and South Carolina -- doesn't have enough renewable energy. It shows that our state has enough clean energy to power 15% of the state over the near term -- long term the potential to power ourselves from home-grown energy resources is greater than all the energy we use today.

Energy Efficiency Shows the Way in Coal's Stronghold

ENERGY EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENTS WILL CREATE THOUSANDS OF NEW JOBS WHILE SAVING OHIO BILLIONS

National Group's Study Shows Ohio Can Create More Than 32,000 New Jobs, Save Over $19 Billion, and Reduce Energy Demand Over The Next 15 Years

COLUMBUS, Ohio (March 25, 2009) - Ohio could save over $19 billion by using energy efficiency strategies that are available right now, says a study released today by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), an independent, Washington, D.C. nonprofit research group. Ohio could also create more than 32,000 net new jobs by 2025, including well-paying trade and professional jobs needed to design, install, and operate energy efficiency measures. In total, the direct and indirect jobs created would be equivalent to nearly 250 new manufacturing plants relocating to Ohio, but without the demand for infrastructure and other energy needs, the study says. Investments in energy efficiency policies and programs have the added benefit of creating new, high-quality "green-collar" jobs in Ohio and increasing both wages and Gross State Product (GSP).

The study, Shaping Ohio's Energy Future: Energy Efficiency Works, was conducted by ACEEE researchers with support from a team of national experts in energy use. The 183-page report outlines policies to reduce electricity demand through improved energy efficiency, combined heat and power, and demand-response recommendations that reduce peak demand. The energy efficiency policies would reduce peak demand by 18% by 2025, while the demand response savings policies would reduce conventionally generated electricity by an additional 11%, for a total reduction of 29%.

Read more.

Note: Santee Cooper's Pee Dee plant would create an estimated 100 jobs, with a minority of them going to the local labor force, while exporting 70% of the multi-billion dollar investment to other states and nations. Compare the economic promises of coal to alternatives like energy efficiency here.