All Solar, Et Al, In 12 Years?

[Meandering]

Congress Passes Tax Credits for Solar and Wind

December 18, 2015

Lawmakers in the House and Senate passed a spending package today that includes multi-year extensions of solar and wind tax credits, plus one-year extensions for a range of other renewable energy technologies.

The pair of bills, which included tax extenders and $1.1 trillion in funding to keep the government running for the next year, passed hours before lawmakers adjourned for the holidays.

“May the force be with you,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, urging her fellow Senators to vote in favor of the package shortly after the House approved the bills.

The force was certainly with renewables.

Under the legislation, the 30 percent Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar will be extended for another three years. It will then ramp down incrementally through 2021, and remain at 10 percent permanently beginning in 2022.

The 2.3-cent Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind will also be extended through next year. Projects that begin construction in 2017 will see a 20 percent reduction in the incentive. The PTC will then drop 20 percent each year through 2020.

Also included were geothermal, landfill gas, marine energy and incremental hydro, which will each get a one-year PTC extension. Those technologies will also qualify for a 30 percent ITC, if developers choose. In addition, the bill expanded grants for energy and water efficiency.

Business groups and analysts say the extensions will support tens of billions of dollars in new investment and hundreds of thousands of new jobs throughout the U.S.

“There’s no way to overstate this -- the extension of the solar ITC is the most important policy development for U.S. solar in almost a decade,” said MJ Shiao, GTM’s director of solar research.

According to GTM Research, the ITC extension will help spur nearly 100 cumulative gigawatts of solar installations by 2020, resulting in $130 billion in total investment. More than $40 billion of investment will be “directly attributable to the passage of the extension,” said Shiao.

The American Wind Energy Association expects similar growth. The group did not issue precise figures, but said the PTC extension would support tens of gigawatts of new wind projects through 2020.

The legislation also lifts a 40-year ban on exports of crude oil produced in the U.S. In exchange for lifting the ban, Democrats pushed for multi-year extensions of renewable energy tax credits and demanded that Republicans strip out any riders that would weaken environmental laws.

Both sides got what they wanted.

However, Pelosi publicly worried yesterday that she didn't have enough votes to support the bill. Many Democrats expressed concern about the oil export ban tradeoff, saying it would increase subsidies to fossil fuels and boost carbon emissions.

Congressional leaders and the White House lobbied hard to convince the Democratic base that the bill would be a win for the environment.

“While lifting the oil export ban remains atrocious policy, the wind and solar tax credits in the Omnibus will eliminate around 10 times more carbon pollution than the exports of oil will add,” wrote Pelosi in a letter to lawmakers.

Katherine Hamilton, a partner with 38 North Solutions, called the bill “sausage-making at its most intense.”

“The product should be palatable for most parties in clean energy. Extensions for renewables and efficiency tax credits were key sweeteners. In addition, clean energy R&D funding, land and water conservation funds, and clean energy funds were included in the deal,” she said.

Other independent analysts found that the deal would be a net positive for the climate. Although emissions would increase slightly because of increased drilling activity, they would be easily offset by increasing renewable energy development and decreased coal consumption.

"Our bottom line: Extension of the tax credits will do far more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions over the next five years than lifting the export ban will do to increase them. While this post offers no judgment of the budget deal as a whole, the deal, if passed, looks like a win for climate," wrote Council on Foreign Relations fellows Michael Levi and Varun Sivaram.

The tax credit extensions cap a big month for renewable energy policy.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Hooray! We have met the UN climate goal

Satellite data shows globe will stay below 1.5°C target at the current rate of warming, resulting in 1.1°C

UN Climate Change Goal? We’re There Now
Released: 18-Dec-2015 1:05 PM EST
Source Newsroom: University of Alabama Huntsville

Newswise — Global Temperature Report: 12/1978 through 11/2015

Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.11 C per decade 37-year temperature trends:

Global average trend.: +0.11 C (about 0.20 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since December 1978.

Northern Hemisphere: +0.14 C (about 0.25 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since December 1978.

Southern Hemisphere: +0.09 C (about 0.16 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since December 1978.

Tropics: +0.10 C (about 0.18 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since December 1978.

37-year composite changes:

Global Composite: +0.41 C (about 0.73 degrees Fahrenheit) composite change since December 1978.

Northern Hemisphere: +0.52 C (about 0.93 degrees Fahrenheit) composite change since December 1978.

Southern Hemisphere: +0.33 C (about 0.60 degrees Fahrenheit) composite change since December 1978.

Tropics: +0.37 C (about 0.67 degrees Fahrenheit) composite change since December 1978.

Notes on data released Dec. 18, 2016:

The average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere has warmed just over four tenths of a degree Celsius (almost three fourths of a degree Fahrenheit) during the past 37 years, with the greatest warming over the Arctic Ocean and Australia, said Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Microwave sounding units on board NOAA and NASA satellites completed 37 complete years of collecting temperature data in November, giving us nearly global coverage of climate change during that time.

If that trend was to continue for another 63 years, the composite warming for the globe would be 1.1 C (about 2 degrees Fahrenheit) for the century, Christy said. That would put the average global temperature change over 100 years well under the 2.0 C (3.6 degrees F) goal set recently at the climate change summit in Paris.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/un-climate-change-goal-we-re-there-now

http://nsstc.uah.edu/climate/

Keep moving, nothing to see here, global warming by human CO2 emissions will not cause a +2.00 C rise over the next 100 years. At the current rate of warming, the temperature rise will be closer to 1 C.

 

[Meandering]

Iberdrola USA and UIL Merge to Form Utility Giant Avangrid

Iberdrola USA finalized its acquisition of UIL Holdings this week to create a new company, Avangrid, which will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange as AGR.

Iberdrola bought UIL for about $3 billion to offset losses closer to home in Europe, according to Reuters. Avangrid has about $30 billion in assets across 25 states. Regulated distribution utilities, like the ones UIL owns, offer a steady return in the face of variable energy policies and a sluggish economy in Spain.

There are some synergies for the two utility companies, particularly in the regions they serve in the U.S. Iberdrola USA is already active as an owner of regulated distribution utilities in the Northeast, including Central Maine Power, Maine Natural Gas, Rochester Gas and Electric and New York State Electric & Gas. UIL is the parent company to United Illuminating Company in Connecticut, Berkshire Gas, Southern Connecticut Gas, and Connecticut Natural Gas.

The new company, however, has plans beyond just streamlining operations across the eight utilities. “We will be a leader in the transformation of the U.S. energy industry,” said James Torgerson, CEO of Avangrid (formerly UIL’s CEO), in a statement. "A new American energy giant has been born."

In a conversation about demonstration projects under New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) earlier this year, Laney Brown, director of smart grid at Avangrid, said that utilities need to be more adept.

She noted that Central Maine Power was the first utility in New England that was settling data on a daily basis using its advanced metering infrastructure. Avangrid’s New York utilities currently have smart meter plans in front of regulators that will be further defined next June in a follow-up filing related to REV. The utility has been able to leverage some of its own lessons learned about customer communications as well as benefits of smart meters from Maine for its upcoming projects in New York. Central Maine Power has also been working with Tendril for customer engagement.

Brown has spoken about bringing innovation to the company, and not just to meet the objectives in New York around REV, which aims to transition utilities into platform providers for a distributed energy future. That could mean greater synergies across the utilities as there are lessons learned about leveraging smart meter data and integrating renewables.

In New York, for example, one of Avangrid’s key demonstration projects focuses on cutting the time and cost of interconnecting distributed resources. At the time the demo project was announced, Brown noted that within the past year, 40 percent of her company’s proposed distributed energy projects did not move forward because of slow or expensive grid-connection issues.

Any process improvements or technological advancements gained through this demonstration project could likely serve all the utilities under Avangrid’s umbrella, and not just the ones in New York. UIL, for its part, announced earlier this year it was ready generate 10 megawatts of clean energy under Connecticut’s renewable energy goals.

Besides the distribution utility, Avangrid also includes Iberdrola Renewables, which is the second-largest wind producer in the U.S., with projects in 18 states, and Iberdrola Energy Holdings, which includes natural-gas storage and energy services.

Avangrid was trading at $37.80 per share at midday on Thursday.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

To Achieve Paris Climate Goals, U.S. Will Need New Laws

The climate agreement reached in Paris last weekend has been hailed as a landmark in the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and it could well turn out to be one.

But the accord’s lofty goals won’t be achieved without large corporations making big changes. And while many companies have welcomed the deal and voluntarily pledged to cut emissions, the sweeping reforms required to avert a sharp rise in global temperatures will almost certainly require substantial new government regulations.

In the United States, the goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels by the year 2025. To achieve that, the Obama administration is being forced to count mainly on several laws that are already on the books, rather than pursue new regulation.

That’s because the Republican-controlled Congress has vowed to block any climate legislation and to rescind the laws already in place. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, said last week that President Obama was “making promises he can’t keep,” warning that the Paris agreement “is subject to being shredded in 13 months” if Republicans win the White House.

Even the rules the president is counting on face challenges. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan is a major component of the president’s efforts. The plan pushes electricity generators away from coal and toward natural gas, and provides some incentives for renewable-power generation. It could make a significant dent in domestic carbon emissions, but it is being opposed in a number of states; the Senate has already voted to scuttle it, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued to block it.

Another pillar of the administration’s plan is the enforcement of increasingly tight fuel efficiency standards. Already enacted by Congress, these rules force automakers to make a gallon of gasoline go further over time. Industrial manufacturers are also required to make appliances progressively use less energy. But falling gasoline prices and the renewed popularity of less efficient S.U.V.s have blunted fuel efficiency gains.

The effect of politics — and political horse trading — on these policies was underscored last week when members of Congress agreed to a deal that ended a ban on oil exports (helping the fossil fuel industry) but also extended tax credits for wind and solar industries. That move is expected to give renewable-energy industries a huge boost.

Local efforts, like California’s tougher climate laws, and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative of several Northeastern states, are also essential to curb overall emissions. These programs are having measurable effects.

But these initiatives affect only a few industries, namely utilities, automakers and, to a lesser extent, industrial companies. Big consumer goods manufacturers, for example, might face higher energy costs in coming years, but are for the most part being spared any new climate regulation for now.

It is not even clear that these efforts will be sufficient to meet the Obama administration’s carbon reduction goals. In a recent paper, the climate researcher George David Banks argues that the emissions reductions possible through the current proposals will fall well short of what is needed to achieve the targeted reduction in emissions: For the administration’s goals to be achieved, new national regulations may well be necessary.

“The United States would need to regulate new sources and sectors of the American economy, particularly U.S. manufacturing, if the president’s target is to be met,” Mr. Banks wrote.

One approach that could deliver significant gains, and be introduced on a national scale and across industries, is a carbon tax, or carbon cap-and-trade system, which would establish a price for carbon emissions. California has a cap-and-trade program, as do a growing number of other countries. But national efforts have not gained traction in Congress.

For many business groups, the political gridlock preventing new climate laws is just fine. The National Association of Manufacturers expressed its “great concerns” over what policies will have to be put in place by the United States to honor the Paris agreement.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a big-business advocate, dismissed the goals set in Paris. “None of the commitments made, including those by the U.S., are binding, and many aren’t even complete,” the group said in a statement. “Moreover, Congress must appropriate any funds that the Obama administration has pledged.”

The administration has set ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years, and it may well make some progress with the laws that are on the books. But so long as Congress and the White House are at loggerheads over climate policy, regulations that would prompt reforms throughout American business are likely to remain a pipe dream.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/b..._th_20151220&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50329110

Even the NYT believes the Paris climate agreement is not and was not intended to seriously reduce CO2 emissions.

One thing is certain is the economic effect of climate change regulations and laws called "carbon leakage".

Carbon leakage is defined as the increase in CO2 emissions outside the countries taking domestic mitigation action prompted by the reduction in the emissions of these countries where industustries relocate outside of the jurisdictions imposing CO2 emission restrictions, offsetting or neutralizing or cancelling out any benefit. California has that already. The net effect is to lose manufacturing operations and jobs while increasing the infrastructure cost of doing business.

Carbon leakage may occur for a number of reasons:

• if the emissions policy of a country raises local costs, then another country with a more relaxed policy may have a trading advantage. If demand for these goods remains the same, production may move offshore to the cheaper country with lower standards, and global emissions will not be reduced.
• if environmental policies in one country add a premium to certain fuels or commodities, then the demand may decline and their price may fall. Countries that do not place a premium on those items may then take up the demand and use the same supply, negating any benefit.

China, India, Russia and Brazil have substantially increasing CO2 emissions as their economies are propelled by cheap carbon fuels and companies expanding their operations into these countries.

 

[Head Surfer]

Please!

Stop copying and pasting large articles here from other sources! All of these articles are copyrighted and copying and pasting them here is against our forum rules! There is even a red notice telling you not to do this in the block where you made the post!

Our forums are for ORIGINAL discussions, not just re-posting what is already posted somewhere else!

The proper way to do what you are doing is to:

1. Post the headline and the first 2 or 3 sentences of the article.

2. Post the link to the article with the words "read more" or "full story" or "continue reading' or the like.

3. Post your own COMMENTS about the articles in your OWN WORDS.

 

[Restrain]

Oil tankers loaded with refined diesel turning back from Europe as stocks are full there.

http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/product-tankers-turn-back-as-european-storage-fills

 

[Eli]

Please!

Stop copying and pasting large articles here from other sources! All of these articles are copyrighted and copying and pasting them here is against our forum rules! There is even a red notice telling you not to do this in the block where you made the post!

Our forums are for ORIGINAL discussions, not just re-posting what is already posted somewhere else!

The proper way to do what you are doing is to:

1. Post the headline and the first 2 or 3 sentences of the article.

2. Post the link to the article with the words "read more" or "full story" or "continue reading' or the like.

3. Post your own COMMENTS about the articles in your OWN WORDS.

Head surfer,

Are we good posting youtube videos? I assume we are because you haven't said otherwise. Please advise any other issues that might be un-kosher. Thanks for the heads up !

 

[Randolph Kinney]

• As Pot-Growing Expands, Power Demands Tax U.S. Electricity Grids
• Equipment causes emissions equal to those of New Hampshire
• The industry's energy use is undoing cities' efficiency gains

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...pands-power-demands-tax-u-s-electricity-grids

 

[Meandering]

• As Pot-Growing Expands, Power Demands Tax U.S. Electricity Grids
• Equipment causes emissions equal to those of New Hampshire
• The industry's energy use is undoing cities' efficiency gains

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...pands-power-demands-tax-u-s-electricity-grids

Commissioner Pam Witmer of the Pennsylvania Public Utility said, “We are looking all across the country for examples and best practices” of how to grow pot without tapping so much electricity. But they are counting in the electric use, everything from plants to package labeling to advertising.

They ought to look at television.

6 minute tv shows with 24 minutes of commercials.

Heck if we're going green might as well shut down all of the advertising industry.

But it's pretty funny they link green lifestyle with those that smoke pot.



Sorry Pete, that's what the article says.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...pands-power-demands-tax-u-s-electricity-grids

.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

California has a big problem 70 times worse than CO2

While world leaders signed the 'historic' agreement signed in Paris to fix the world's "greatest threat," a natural gas storage site in southern California is belching 145,000 pounds per hour of Methane - a greenhouse gas 70 times more potent than carbon dioxide. What is worse, while official proclaim this a "top priority" a fix won't arrive until spring as emergency crews recognize "the leak was far from routine, and the problem was deeper underground."

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/massive-gas-leak-california/