Here are three articles from the Club's State Government Programs list serve. They are long, but this is important info on the CTL and TrAILCo battles we are currently fighting. Which of these can we use?
JBK
Efficiency, decoupling and the next step
Energy -- It's the economics, stupid.
Liquid Coal
Powering Down
Can utilities make money on energy efficiency? Governing Magazine for August, 2007 By CHRISTOPHER SWOPE
Saving electricity has never been a big priority in North Carolina.
Power
is cheap and plentiful, as it is across much of the South. These
days,
however, rising demand — what they call “load†in the
electricity business
— is catching up with supply. For the first time in two decades,
the state
needs a massive new workhorse of a power plant, what’s known as a
baseload
plant. Actually, according to Duke Energy, the state’s largest
utility,
North Carolina needs two of them. For an investor-owned utility such as Duke, planning a pair of huge
power
plants is just another turn in a familiar cycle: grow demand, build
supply,
sell more power, generate more profit. It’s a cycle geared for
growing
load, not shrinking it. It’s a cycle that rewards Duke when
consumers use
more power. It’s a cycle that encourages burning dirty coal, as
Duke
proposed with its two plants, since coal is so cheap. And it’s a
cycle that
regulators in North Carolina, as in most states, acquiesced to for
most of
the past century. Not anymore. When Duke’s plan for the two coal plants went before
the
North Carolina Utilities Commission early this year, the regulators
pushed
back. Go ahead and build one coal plant, commissioners told Duke. As
for
the rest of the demand, Duke could make it up through energy
efficiency.
That wasn’t all. Duke would have to spend 1 percent of its annual
revenues
— about $35 million — on helping its customers save
electricity by buying
energy-efficient appliances and lights and through other measures. For
a
state that had taken its energy abundance for granted, this was a staggering mandate. What happened next was even more unusual. Duke went back to state regulators with an entirely new pitch. The problem with energy-saving programs, Duke said, is that utilities don’t make money on them. In
fact,
utilities lose money because they don’t sell as much of their
product. Duke
proposed to turn that equation around through a radical new
regulatory
approach it calls “save-a-watt.†The idea is pretty simple: Let
the utility
earn profits by helping customers conserve power, just as it does by selling them more power. In fact, as Duke proposes it, energy
efficiency
might even become one of the company’s most profitable lines of
business.
Duke CEO Jim Rogers says he’ll propose a version of the same idea
in
Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and South Carolina, the other states where
Duke
does business. As North Carolina regulators mull Duke’s plan this summer,
they’ll have a
lot to consider. Critics accuse Duke of trying to greenwash its way
to
windfall profits. But many environmentalists, including some who are
still
fighting Duke’s right to build any coal plants at all, find the
premise
behind save-a-watt encouraging. The nation can’t get serious about conserving energy and fighting global warming, they say, until
utilities
see dollar signs in it. Utilities have always run modest efficiency programs, “but they don’t usually put their heart into them,â€
says Michael
Shore, the Southeast air quality manager for Environmental Defense.
“If
efficiency is too successful, it goes against their business model. We
need
to develop models so that the utilities can make money through
promoting
energy efficiency.â€
LIP SERVICE Whether or not North Carolina regulators accept the save-a-watt
approach,
it’s clear that states and utilities alike are fast changing their
views
toward energy efficiency. Not since the energy crisis in the 1970s
have
states pushed utilities to save electricity with so much zeal. Big
new
initiatives are underway in California, Minnesota and New York —
perennial
leaders when it comes to efficiency. Now, however, states that enjoy
cheap
power, including Arkansas, Idaho and North Carolina, are pinching as
well.
For all the headlines about the nuisances of coal and the distant hope
of
wind, solar and biofuels, what states are coming to see is that the
easiest
solution to their problems with energy is simply to use less of it. †If you actively engage in energy efficiency, you can push out the
date
when you’ll need new generating resources,†says Marsha Smith, a
utilities
regulator in Idaho. Smith’s state enjoys the nation’s cheapest
power, but
is nevertheless asking utilities to ramp up their efficiency efforts. “Whether you’re a low-cost state or a high-cost state, the further
you can
push that out, the better off you’ll be.†That’s always been the case, of course. But efficiency is back on
the
agenda only because several forces collided at roughly the same time.
For
one, high fuel costs are driving up the price of electricity.
According to
the Energy Information Administration, average rates across the
country
have increased by 19 percent over the past three years. Rate pain is especially acute in states that deregulated their power markets. When
price
caps came off last year, rates in Maryland increased 70 percent and
rates
in Delaware increased 60 percent. The flip side of these high power
prices
is that investing in efficiency now seems cheap by comparison. Another factor is the huge and growing expense of building power
plants.
In North Carolina, Duke believed as recently as two years ago that it
could
build the two coal plants it wanted for $1 billion each. Now, thanks
to the
rising cost of building materials, Duke expects the bill for just the
one
plant it got approved to come in around $1.8 billion. That cost would translate directly into higher rates for customers. With eye-popping figures such as this on the table, states are beginning to see that
the
least expensive power plant is the one that never has to be built at
all.
Finally, concern over climate change is also fueling the efficiency
push.
Across the country, utilities have proposed building 150 coal-burning
power
plants. Coal plants are cleaner and more efficient than they used to
be,
but coal nevertheless remains a leading source of carbon dioxide.
It’s hard
to see today’s coal boom as a moment of truth when the plant
proposals come
up one by one before the 50 state utility commissions. But a moment
of
truth is exactly what this is. If states allow all of these coal
plants
now, they’ll be stuck with them and their greenhouse gases for two generations. On the other hand, if they can reduce demand for
electricity,
they just might prevent many of those coal plants from needing to be
built
in the first place. The good news is that there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit, as far
as
policies for reducing energy demand go. States can adopt efficiency standards for appliances, electronics and boilers that go beyond the federal government’s minimum standards. They can upgrade their
building
codes and provide tax breaks or expedited permitting for green
buildings.
They can use tax breaks to help customers make smarter appliance
purchases,
trade in clunky old freezers or weatherize their homes. And they can
lead
by example, by improving energy performance within government
buildings. At
this micro-level, there are literally hundreds of ways to power down,
and
many have been shown to work when there is sustained effort put into
it.
The problem with demand-side efficiency programs, however, is that
states
typically ask the electric companies to run them. There’s a certain
logic
to that — utilities already maintain ties to customers. But
utilities also
have a built-in conflict with the job they’re being asked to do.
Quite
simply, they’re in the business of selling electricity. Economists
have a
name for this natural urge to sell more power and make more profit.
They
call it the “throughput incentive.†Harris B. McDowell III, a
state senator
from Delaware, describes it this way. “Ask yourself: how hard would
General
Motors work to convince people they don’t need a car? How hard does
RJ
Reynolds try to get people to stop smoking? It’s the same problem
when
efficiency programs operate under the utility. They’ll give lip
service,
but they won’t pour their hearts out.†As McDowell sees it, utilities can’t be entrusted with
responsibility for
energy efficiency. Instead, he prefers circumventing them altogether. McDowell’s efficiency plan, which the Delaware legislature passed in
June,
sets up a competing “sustainable energy utility†whose sole task
is to help
customers save energy. The utility will subsidize purchases of energy-efficient appliances, and also aid customers who want to
generate
their own energy on site using solar, wind or geothermal
technologies.
Delaware will bankroll the new nonprofit with revenues from a $30
million
bond sale. The hope is that after 10 years, the utility can sustain positive cash flow by taking a cut of the savings customers see on
their
energy bills. Delaware’s sustainable utility is a twist on a similar program
that has
been showing positive results in Vermont. McDowell thinks it’s the
best way
to break the electric system of its gluttonous habits. “That
structure
knows only one thing, and that is to increase supply,†McDowell
says. “It’s
what’s comfortable. The utilities know exactly how many consultants
to hire
to tell you to do that. But building more supply is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you build it, they’ll use it.â€
THE GRAPH There are other ways to neutralize the throughput incentive. And
electric
utilities, which seem resigned to a future with some kind of carbon regulation, are increasingly open to talking about them. The Edison Electric Institute, the national voice of investor-owned utilities, recently hired Diane Munns to direct its energy-efficiency
operations.
Munns was a utility regulator in Iowa and co-chaired a panel that
produced
the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency — a solid synopsis
of
barriers to efficiency and methods for overcoming them. Asked if any particular method works better than others, Munns said, “I’m not
going to
say there is a best way to do it. I think whatever gets you going is
good.
We need to get moving on efficiency.†She continued, “It’s
whatever gets it
done for you — whatever you can put together that you think can
promote
efficiency and keep your shareholders whole.†California thinks it has a method that works. The Golden State is
the
established leader in energy efficiency, and has been for some time.
The
proof is in what energy experts there simply call “the graph.â€
What “the
graph†(on page 27) shows is electricity use per capita, for both California and the rest of the United States. The line for the other
49
states trends steadily upward from the 1950s through today — a
proxy for
Americans’ ever-growing appetite for electronics and big houses.
The
California line, however, goes flat in the late ’70s, when the
state
adopted the nation’s first efficiency standards for appliances and buildings. California hasn’t eliminated the need for new power
plants — its
load continues to grow along with the population. But the average Californian today consumes about the same amount of power as he did a generation ago. What’s more, California began tackling the throughput incentive in
the
early 1980s. The tool it devised was called “decoupling.†To
understand
what that means, it helps to know how rate regulation works.
Typically,
states allow utilities to recover their fixed costs, such as debt on
power
plants, and in addition earn a reasonable rate of return. These calculations are penciled out every so often in rate cases before
public
utility commissions. In the meantime, if utilities sell more power
than
they anticipated, they earn windfall profits. If demand is lower than expected, their profits suffer. What decoupling does is sever the
link
between a utility’s sales and its profits. From time to time,
regulators
tweak rates in a way that smooths out ups and downs in revenue. The
utility
still makes its profit. But it also becomes agnostic on the question
of
whether it’s better to sell more electricity or less of it. California’s decoupling experiment worked so well that a few other
states
also began tinkering with it. Then deregulation fever set in, and all
the
states pushed decoupling aside for what seemed like a much sexier
idea:
competitive power markets. Deregulation, as everyone knows, failed.
Shortly
after its blackout crisis of 2001, California went back to decoupling.
This
was one way California renewed its vows to energy efficiency. (Another
key
policy was called the “loading order,†which put efficiency above
renewable
and fossil fuels in the list of utilities’ options for meeting
electric
demand.) California’s second run with decoupling seems to be working. The
state’s
three investor-owned utilities are in the midst of one of the
nation’s most
aggressive efficiency campaigns ever. Between 2006 and 2008,
they’re
investing $2 billion toward the goal of helping reduce customer demand
for
their product. Peter Darbee, CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric, attributes
his
company’s newfound enthusiasm for efficiency to decoupling.
Testifying
before Congress, he said decoupling “means our financial health
doesn’t
depend on selling more energy.†Dian Grueneich, a public utility commissioner in Sacramento, agrees. “We believe strongly that
decoupling is
an essential part of doing a good job on energy efficiency,†she
says. “You
can’t just expect a business to want to do something where they
lose
money.†Now other states are looking at decoupling. Idaho just began a
three-year
pilot with Idaho Power in June. Minnesota, New York and Wisconsin are studying decoupling for electric utilities. Eleven states have
adopted
decoupling for their natural gas utilities. Decoupling has its critics, especially among consumer advocates.
Because
of how the mechanism works, customers end up paying higher rates when
they
use less power — and it doesn’t matter whether that’s because
efficiency
programs are working or because of mild weather or a slow economy. Neutering the utilities’ profit motive may make them lazy about
controlling
costs. Utilities might also forfeit their traditional role of helping government promote industry and economic development, a job that
utilities
always did in order to grow their load. And California’s Grueneich
admits
that all decoupling does is level the playing field for efficiency programs. It eliminates a disincentive, but it doesn’t make
efficiency
financially appealing for utilities, either. California expects to correct that last problem soon. Later this
month,
the state utilities commission is due to introduce a package of
financial
incentives for utilities that would allow them to earn profits on efficiency programs. Other states have tinkered with such incentives,
but
Grueneich says the plan California is working on will be
characteristically
groundbreaking in its comprehensiveness. “Decoupling is a major
first
step,†Grueneich says. “But the second step is that utilities make
an
approximately similar amount of money as they would if they took the
same
money and put it on the generation side.â€
AN EPIPHANY If this way of thinking is nothing new in California, it’s almost
unheard
of in North Carolina. Some credit for the new mindset goes to Jim
Rogers,
the CEO of Duke Energy. Rogers has been an outspoken advocate of a
national
cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. He also served as Munns’ co-chair on the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency. Rogers recently told the Charlotte Observer that he had an epiphany.
It
happened in February, he said, during a dinner with 14
environmentalists.
They told him Duke should support renewables and take a more
aggressive
approach on energy efficiency. Rogers says now that he’s following
their
advice. Surely, the epiphany was helped along by North Carolina’s
decision
to limit Duke to one coal plant rather than two. Rogers began calling energy efficiency the “fifth fuel,†right behind nuclear power,
coal,
natural gas and renewables. And he began laying the groundwork for save-a-watt. “We need a new regulatory compact,†he wrote in an
op-ed in
March, “that puts investments in energy efficiency on an equal
footing with
new generation investments.†On the surface, save-a-watt sounds similar to what California is
doing.
But Duke’s plan actually is quite different. It has nothing to do
with
decoupling, for example. Rather, what Duke is proposing is to make efficiency programs extremely lucrative — so much so that the
utility won’t
just want to run them but run them with gusto. Richard Sedano, a
director
at the Regulatory Assistance Project, a Vermont think tank, describes
it
this way: “Save-a-watt attempts to overwhelm the throughput
incentive with
financial counter-incentives.†Here’s what Duke proposed: In exchange for helping its customers
save
electricity, Duke wants to charge them for 90 percent of the cost of
the
power plant it no longer has to build. Duke says customers would save
money
compared with business-as-usual. And Duke would collect only if
independent
auditors verify that the load reductions are for real. “It’s a
fundamental
shift,†says Duke spokesman Tom Williams. “Efficiency is a
business line
for the utility now.†Some of the efficiency programs Duke would invest in are old
standbys.
For example, Duke would pay for energy audits of customers’ homes
and
businesses, offering energy-saving suggestions, and it would
subsidize
purchases of compact fluorescent light bulbs and high-efficiency
heating
and cooling systems. Duke also would test new energy-saving
technologies,
such as advanced metering, as well as ways of remotely shutting off customers’ air conditioners, freezers and hot water heaters for
brief
periods of time. The idea is to save energy without inconveniencing
people.
These steps would reduce demand by 1,700 megawatts by 2012. To sweeten
the
deal, Duke would retire 800 megawatts of its oldest, dirtiest coal
plants
as the energy savings come online. Nobody in North Carolina disputes that Duke’s save-a-watt plan is
an
innovative approach. The question now is whether North Carolina
regulators
will go along with it. The hang-up may be deciding whether Duke is
trying
to make efficiency too profitable. “The incentives are larger than
what
you’d normally see,†Sedano says. “What a commission tries to
decide about
any cost it asks consumers to pay is, is it worth it?†James
McLawhorn,
director of the electric division of the North Carolina commission’s
public
advocacy arm echoes the concern. “We recognize there needs to be
some
incentive,†McLawhorn says. “But how much is enough and how much
is too
much?â€
More resources on electric utilities and energy efficiency:
Delaware sustainiable energy utility report http://www.seu-de.org/docs/final_report_4-21.pdf
ACEEE energy efficiency policy toolkit http://www.raponline.org/showpdf.asp?PDF_URL=Pubs/Efficiency%5FPolicy%5FTool...
2Epdf
ACEEE decoupling http://www.aceee.org/pubs/u061.htm
Duke's "save a watt" http://ncuc.commerce.state.nc.us/cgi-bin/webview/senddoc.pgm?dispfmt=&it...
=TAAAAA72170B&parm3=000126792
- Amory Lovins: How to Face Today's Greatest Energy Challenges
Read this interesting interview on Alternet at
http://www.alternet.org/environment/58460
- Scientific American magazine on Liquid Coal
July 15, 2007 The full article, "Worse Than Gasoline," can be found at www.sciam.com
.. . . The conversion technology is well established (the Germans used it
during
World War II), and liquid coal can power conventional diesel cars and trucks as well as jet engines and ships. Coal industry executives
contend
that it can compete against gasoline if oil prices are $50 a barrel
or
higher. But liquid coal comes with substantial environmental and
economic
negatives. On the environmental side, the polluting properties of coal—starting with mining and lasting long after burning—and
the large
amounts of energy required to liquefy it mean that liquid coal
produces
more than twice the global warming emissions as regular gasoline and
almost
double those of ordinary diesel. As pundits have pointed out, driving
a
Prius on liquid coal makes it as dirty as a Hummer on regular
gasoline.
One ton of coal produces only two barrels of fuel. In addition to
the
carbon dioxide emitted while using the fuel, the production process
creates
almost a ton of carbon dioxide for every barrel of liquid fuel. Which
is to
say, one ton of coal in, more than two tons of carbon dioxide out. Congressional and industry proponents of coal-to-liquid plants argue
that
the same technologies that may someday capture and store emissions
from
coal-fired plants will also be available to coal-to-liquid plants. But
even
if the carbon released during production were somehow captured and sequestered—a technology that remains unproven at any meaningful
scale—some
studies indicate that liquid coal would still release 4 to 8 percent
more
global warming pollution than regular gasoline. Liquid coal is also a bad economic choice. Lawmakers from coal
states are
proposing that U.S. taxpayers guarantee billions of dollars in
construction
loans for production plants, guarantee minimum prices for the new
fuel, and
guarantee big purchases by the government for the next 25 years.
Their
mantra is that coal-based fuels are more American than gasoline. But
no
operating coal-to-liquid plants exist in the U.S., and researchers at
the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimate it will cost $70
billion to
build enough plants to replace 10 percent of American gasoline
consumption.
Some energy experts worry that the scale of the incentives could lead
to a
repeat of the disastrous effort 30 years ago to underwrite a
synthetic
fuels industry. The country would be spending billions in loans, tax incentives and
price
guarantees to lock in a technology that produces more greenhouse gases
than
gasoline does. This is unacceptable at a time when leading scientists
from
all over the world are warning that greenhouse gases must be cut by
at
least 60 percent over the next half a century to avert the worst consequences of global warming. Instead of spending billions to
subsidize a
massively polluting industry, we should be investing in efficiency and
in
renewable energy technologies that can help us constrain global
warming
today.
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