U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has developed a Climate Resilience Screening Index (CRSI) and determined the expected resiliency of each county as the climate continues to change, making floods, droughts and wildfires more common.
The report was released in October and used 117 measurements to figure each county’s severe weather risk, governance, society, built environment, and natural environment into an overall resiliency score. Fortunately, researchers found that many U.S. counties have moderate to strong likelihood of bouncing back following a natural disaster however, the outlook varies.
The Appalachians, many counties in the southeast and the western Midwest and some counties in southwestern Texas were found to have lower resiliency scores. The factors that decrease a region’s resiliency in the face of climate disaster include limited access to internet and radio to communicate during an emergency, insufficient infrastructure for evacuation and the absence of local construction industries to rebuild afterward. Southeastern states including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee scored the lowest collectively in the U.S.
Those counties with higher social cohesion, levels of education and natural resource conservation are predicted to fare much better. The Pacific Northwest was determined most resilient to the changing climate, with region one of the U.S., including Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island following close behind.
The report’s authors suggest that index’s information be used to determine where climate mitigation resources are allocated in the future. However, it is unlikely that the current administration will use the information to inform any real climate policy.
Dr. James DeWeese is a research analyst studying on climate resilience at the World Resources Institute and was not involved in this study. He said to the Pacific Standard, “Whatever happens, I definitely think the CRSI is something innovative. I haven’t seen much else like it.”
The executive summary and full report can be found here.
]]>Germany’s federal court ruled on Tuesday that cities can ban diesel vehicles in order to lower air pollution.
Environmental Action Germany has been filing lawsuits against cities for years to encourage municipalities to implement policies that curb air pollution. German government statistics reveal that some 6,000 people die each year from nitrogen oxide pollution, 60 percent of which comes from vehicles on the road. Diesel engines in particular spew more NOx than gasoline engines and are more popular in Europe.
The ruling does not require communities to ban diesel driving, rather it grants them the legal authority to do so if air pollution in their city remains above the European Union limit for NOx in the air. Seventy German cities surpassed that threshold at least once last year.
Banning diesel vehicles would have negative implications for the country’s automotive industry. Since the ruling, the German government has proposed some measures to decrease pollution and avoid the ban, which include providing free public transportation and refitting existing diesel vehicles to meet clean air standards. However, it is unclear how the government would pay for such measures.
Germany is merely the latest country making a move away from diesel engines. Paris, Madrid, Mexico City and Athens have policies in place to ban diesel vehicles from city centers before 2025.
]]>Beech trees are crowding out other important tree species in northeastern United States woodlands because of climate change, according to a recent study.
Researchers from the University of Maine tracked beech, sugar and red maple tree data in the northeastern U.S. from 1983 to 2014. The U.S. Forest Service data showed that beech tree populations have increased significantly over the thirty years while the other tree species decreased. The study found that hotter temperatures and increased precipitation, both caused my climate change, allowed for beech trees’ population boom.
Beech trees have important advantages over the species that used to dominate the area. First, they often shade out other species competing for sunlight. Second, the local deer prefer the taste of sugar and red maple saplings to beech ones. The changing climate is changing the composition of forests and managers will have to adapt, researchers say.
Dr. Aaron Weiskittel is a forest biometrics and modeling professor at University of Maine and one of the study’s authors. “There’s no easy answer to this one,” he said to the Associated Press, “It has a lot of people scratching their heads. Future conditions seem to be favoring the beech, and managers are going to have to find a good solution to fix it.”
Sugar maples, one of the important species declining in the northeastern U.S., are also expected to decline in numbers in the northern Midwest due to climate change. A twenty-year study published in January found that as global temperatures continue to rise, sugar maple growth in the northern Midwest will be stunted and the species population will decrease.
Researchers point out that forests soak up 25 percent of the greenhouse gases that are emitted each year, so continuing to learn about how forests will respond to the changing climate should be prioritized.
]]>Natalia Welzenbach-Marcu | February 27th, 2018
Global warming, shifting weather patterns, and melting ice sheets are all playing huge parts in the possible disappearance of the distinctively colorful King penguins.
In a report published by the Nature Climate Change journal, a group of researchers compiled evidence that suggests a bleak future for King penguins within the century. Co-author, Celine Le Bohec, voiced one of the scariest concerns: “70% of breeding penguins []…will be forced to relocate their breeding grounds, or face extinction before the end of the century.”
This is because King penguins breed in very specific locations–isolated islands in the Southern Ocean that are unobstructed by ice cover. Penguins living around the Antarctic are already at an increased risk of dying out, because the Antarctic polar front, a warm body of water that hosts a variety of rich marine life and serves as the feeding ground for most penguins, is being pushed further away from land, forcing penguins to swim longer distances for food and subsequently leaving their chicks behind, unattended and vulnerable.
As the ice shelf melts and the trek from breeding ground to feeding waters becomes more dangerous, more and more penguins are in danger of being wiped out by natural predators. The researchers who worked to compile their findings warn that this is perhaps the most stark reminder that global warming has very real consequences.
]]>This week’s segment looks at research from Australia that’s working toward making clean water accessible to everyone.
Transcript:
A new invention from Australian scientists could filter even the most polluted water in just one pass.
This is the Iowa Environmental Focus.
Australian researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or CSIRO, have found a way to engineer graphene film to filter water.
Graphene is an ultra-strong, carbon-based material that is hydrophobic— meaning it repels water. But graphene is expensive and difficult to produce. The researchers at CSIRO have found a way to use hydrophobic properties to help filter polluted water while finding a way to reduce the cost of the filter.
The scientist hope this new use of graphene will slowly become easier and cheaper to produce, potentially saving millions of people that die from contaminated water globally.
For more information, visit iowa-environmental-focus-dot-org.
From the UI Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, I’m Betsy Stone.
]]>Just after what would have Charles Darwin’s 209th birthday, Iowa City will host its 12th annual Darwin Day celebration this weekend.
Each February, the non-profit Iowa City Darwin Day organization brings scientists from around the country to provide free, public workshops to residents. The organization aims to “recognize and show our appreciation for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity” through its lectures and social events.
The weekend’s events kick off today at 2 pm in the University of Iowa Biology Building with an art exhibit followed by a presentation from Jacquelyn L. Gill, Assistant Professor at the University of Maine Climate Change Institute, titled “The Past is Not Dead: How the Last 2.5 Million Years of Global Change Can Prepare Us for the Next Century.” In all, Friday will feature presentations from three scientists, including former NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies director and University of Iowa Alumni, Dr. James E. Hansen.
Tomorrow’s programming will run from 9 am to 5:30 pm and be rounded out by a workshop for Iowa teachers. The workshop, titled, “Getting Students to Think, Talk and Write Like Scientists” will be facilitated by Dr. Paul K. Strode. A doctorate in ecology and evolution, Dr. Strode teaches science to high school students in Boulder, Colorado. His efforts are centered around teaching students to distinguish between real science and pseudoscience and engage in inquiry-based learning.
Local teachers also have the option to register for a two-day course and interactive workshop, which is sponsored by the Darwin Day Iowa City organization. Titled “Raising Scientific Literacy in a Time of Climate Change,” the workshop will take place during the other public events and provide participants with 1 semester hour of continuing education credit.
Have a busy weekend and can’t make it to all of this fantastic programming? If nothing else, be sure to attend Darwin’s birthday part on Saturday at 1 pm in MacBride Hall’s Hageboeck Hall of Birds!
More details about Darwin Day Iowa City activities can be found here.
]]>A study recently published in the journal Science Advances found that even if global climate change mitigation goals are met, extreme weather events will still occur more frequently in the future.
The United Nations Paris Climate Accord aims to keep global temperatures from increasing more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Even if the global community succeeds, human-induced climate change has already made extreme heatwaves, floods and droughts significantly more common.
Unfortunately, scientists say that the existing emission-reduction pledges by the world’s nations are not enough to keep temperatures from rising above 2 degrees Celsius. The study finds that if temperatures were to rise to 3 degrees hotter than preindustrial levels, North America would see at least a 300 percent increase in extreme weather events, for example.
Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh is a climate scientist at Stanford University and the study’s lead author. He said to the Scientific American, “In addition to not meeting the global temperature target, those commitments also imply substantial increase in the probability of record-setting events. Not only hot events but wet events, and also in other regions of the world, dry events as well.”
The study found that extreme heat records are the most likely to be affected by unabated climate change. Scientists focused primarily on North America, Western Europe and East Asia. They found that hotter-than-ever night time temperatures have been occurring much more frequently in recent years. If the climate warms to the 3 degree threshold, extreme heat events are expected to happen five times more frequently in half of Europe and at least three times more frequently in parts of Eastern Asia.
The study reads, “However, even if cumulative emissions are sufficiently constrained to ensure that global warming is held to 1° to 2°C, many areas are still likely to experience substantial increases in the probability of unprecedented [extreme weather] events.”
An interactive map created by researchers at Carbon Brief allows user to see which past extreme weather events can were cause by anthropogenic climate change and which were not.
]]>A recent report from Iowa State University argues that removing nutrient pollution from Iowa’s water would provide economic benefits for the state.
Economists with ISU’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) first summarize the cost of nutrient pollution in Iowa’s waterways. They write that forty-nine public water systems treat water for nitrate pollution either by using nitrate removal equipment or blending the water; these systems serve more than 10 percent of Iowa citizens. The report estimates that Iowa’s public water systems have paid $1.8 million to treat nitrate in the water since 2000.
Smaller communities and rural areas are disproportionately affected by the economic consequences of polluted water. Many small town public water systems do not have the resources to purchase costly nitrate removal equipment and as a result, may not be able to meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s water quality regulations. Private wells go largely unregulated, so consumers are responsible for picking up the water treatment costs. Findings suggest that as many as a quarter of Iowa’s wells have unsafe nitrate levels in them.
The report also comments on the lost revenue from water recreation income for the state. The number of beaches and waterways under advisory or closed each summer because of harmful algae blooms, which are fed by nitrate, continues to grow. Economists estimate that improving water quality in Iowa’s lakes by meeting Nutrient Reduction Strategy goals would increase recreational benefits for all Iowans by $30 million per year.
Iowa Legislators recently passed a bill that will allocate $282 million to water quality improvement projects in the state over the next 12 years. Critics recognize, however, that scientists with the Nutrient Reduction Strategy have estimated that it will cost billions of dollars to adequately remove nutrient runoff from waterways in Iowa.
To read CARD’s full report, click here.
]]>Natalia Welzenbach-Marcu | February 20th 2018
A group of British scientists are due to set off soon to explore one of the largest icebergs discovered yet in Antarctica.
Led by the British Antarctic Survey and marine biologist Dr. Katrin Linse, the exploration will take researchers and field workers to the Larson C ice shelf on the Antarctic peninsula–and the findings might uncover vital new information about how the ecosystem of that region responds to climate change.
The team is racing to reach the newly formed iceberg before light changes the ecosystem underneath.
Melting ice from the Arctic and Antarctic regions are vastly speeding up the already rising sea levels. Researching the Antarctic is difficult, but when ice sheets split to form smaller icebergs, as with Larson C, biologists and other scientists are presented with a unique opportunity to explore the waters underneath the ice.
The group hopes their findings will provide more valuable information about climate change and its effects globally.
]]>This week’s segment summaries the report from the 2017 Iowa DNR’s Water Summary.
Transcript:
The Iowa DNR’s Water Summary Update reported less rainfall than normal for 2017.
This is the Iowa Environmental Focus.
In 2017, Iowa received 33 inches of rainfall which is 2 inches less than the 30 year average. The beginning of the year was drought free but by August the Drought Mitigation Center recorded most of the state showing some form of drought. Most of the dryness was concentrated in South and South East Iowa.
In areas like Marion, Washington, Lee and Wayne counties, annual precipitation deficits of 10 inches or more were common. The annual precipitation levels of 2017 were the lowest since Iowa’s record 2012 drought.
In terms of streamflow, the year started off with high levels after a rainy fall season in 2016. Throughout the rest of the year streamflow levels remained normal and are currently normal for the majority of the state.
For more information, visit iowa-environmental-focus-dot-org.
From the UI Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, I’m Betsy Stone.
]]>
The city turned on the solar array Dec. 29, just ahead of a Dec. 31 deadline for collecting a state production tax credit, which might reduce the city’s costs by as much as 8 percent.
“We’re still tweaking it,” said Chris Ball, the city’s energy efficiency director.
Ball estimated that the array, which tracks the sun throughout the day to maximize total energy production, will provide about 10 percent of the power used by the city’s 2,600 residents. The city chose a more costly tracking system because it is expected to produce 18 percent more energy than a stationary system and because it will produce during the utility’s peak times — late afternoon in the summer and morning in the winter.
In 2015, after an encouraging analysis by energy consultants and the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities, the Bloomfield City Council adopted a goal of attaining energy self-sufficiency within 15 years. Ball expects the city will eventually produce much more of the power it requires.
The energy researchers studied Bloomfield and another Iowa city, Algona, to evaluate their potential for energy self-sufficiency. They concluded Algona could meet half of its electric needs with locally produced renewable energy, and that Bloomfield could meet 100 percent through a combination of efficiency, direct load control, and a renewable power. The researchers pointed out that municipal utilities typically are freer than investor-owned utilities to experiment because they don’t have the same pressure to maintain or increase sales of electricity.
Iowa’s Economic Development Authority financed most of the initial study and recently awarded Bloomfield $100,000 in federal money to the city move forward and support creating a template other communities could follow to take more control of their energy needs.
Bloomfield “has accomplished a lot in a very short time frame following the study that first showed it’s possible,” said Jeff Geerts, the economic development authority’s special projects manager. “It’s amazing.”
But the city is at a juncture where it needs to strategize about the best path forward, he said. The study presented several options including varying levels of investment in renewable generation. Some large questions remain unanswered, Geerts said.
“The discussion would be how much wind, how much solar, who owns how much wind and how much solar? And is it owned by the city or entities outside the city? How much is distributed versus how much is community wind or solar? And how much is achieved through energy-efficiency measures and what is the role of the wastewater-treatment plant? Is there an opportunity not only to reduce energy use there, but how does that potentially become a generation source?
In short, “What’s the mix look like, and what are the policies to make it happen?”
The study put more emphasis on reducing energy use than it did on developing local renewable generation, and efficiency improvements have been happening throughout the city with the help of a team of 14 workers from Americorps and Vista. Last summer they knocked on the door of every home in town — at least three times, according to Ball — and offered to replace up to 10 incandescent bulbs with LEDs. Ball said they swapped out bulbs in about 450 out of 1,100 homes. Workers also replaced incandescent bulbs with LEDs throughout the city’s elementary and middle schools.
“We’re saving them about $2,000 a month that they can spend on teachers and books,” Ball said.
The same workers performed energy audits and some basic weatherization work in some homes. Although most of the workers have returned to college, two remain and are developing a nonprofit organization aimed at keeping the energy-efficiency improvements coming.
The city government has enhanced its own operations by upgrading nearly all of its light fixtures to LEDs, adding insulation and weather sealing, and getting more systematic about maintenance tasks such as replacing filters in heating and cooling systems. Staff members inventoried the city’s 15 buildings and made a list of needed efficiency upgrades to be done in coming years.
Ball said they are considering a liquid cover for the swimming pool, which would reduce evaporation and keep heat in the pool.
The Davis County Community School District, which serves Bloomfield, also is pursuing energy efficiency along with a broader agenda of sustainability. Lead by an Americorps worker, Paul Fleetwood, students, and staff are devising a way to compost organic waste.
Danny Roberts, the district’s director of support services, is talking with four solar contractors about putting arrays on the district’s larger buildings. His aim is to generate as much solar power as they use in a year.
“We know where we want to be,” he said, “but getting there, we’re not quite sure how.”
The district is also looking at various strategies for cutting energy use in schools. It would like to install motion sensors in middle and elementary schools to automate lights and heating and cooling, as was done in the high school in 2009.
And then there’s the human factor. Over Christmas break, Fleetwood led a team of students through the district’s buildings, counting the number of machines eating electricity “that didn’t need to be” while the buildings were empty.
The count: 771.
Getting people habituated to unplugging them at appropriate times is also on Fleetwood’s to-do list.
“We’re helping them to understand the effects of wasted energy on the environment, and the cost of energy waste. We’re talking about how students make choices that can either be destructive or supportive of what we’re trying to achieve as a school system,” he said.
Much remains for the district and city to accomplish to reach the 2030 goal. Geerts, with the state’s economic development agency, is confident the lofty goal is within reach.
“There’s a lot of momentum in that community, a lot of support, a lot of optimism for achieving it,” Geerts said.
]]>Supporters of an effort to create a city-owned electric utility in Decorah, Iowa, got a boost this week from a consultant’s report that concludes the move is financially feasible.
“We think the results are very robust,” said Andy Johnson, one of the leaders of the initiative, “and have identified tremendous opportunities.”
Johnson is a board member of Decorah Power, the entity created about a year ago to explore the creation of a public utility in this community of 7,900.
Talk of a municipal utility surfaced after several attempts to develop renewable energy in the city ran into policies of Interstate Power and Light, the investor-owned utility that currently serves Decorah and much of the state.
Five of the Decorah’s largest institutions at one point envisioned building a shared 2.5-megawatt solar array that could provide power to each of the partners. Interstate was cool to the proposal, though, and the Iowa Utilities Board never offered much of a response to it.
One of those institutions, Luther College, has tried several approaches to generating some of its own power from renewables, but it’s consistently run into insurmountable policies from Interstate.
Johnson, the director of the Winneshiek Energy District, said a city-owned utility in Decorah would likely create more opportunities for clean energy and would also have benefits far beyond that including local control, cheaper power, economic development, the retention of utility payments in town, job creation and greater energy efficiency.
Although the feasibility study, conducted by NewGen Strategies & Solutions and two other consultants, signaled that municipalization could work, Johnson said he’s aware of what a long and arduous process it would entail. The City of Boulder (Colo.), for example, last November approved a tax measure that will provide the funds needed to continue exploring the possibility of creating a city utility. That process began seven years ago.
“We’ve seen some happen in three years. And some take 20 years,” said Ursula Schryver, vice-president of education and customer programs for the American Public Power Association. An enthusiastic community tends to hasten the process, she noted, while a resistant incumbent utility tends to slow it down.
Interstate does not favor the Decorah Power plan, and contends that it “should concern the citizens of this community,” company spokesman Mike Wagner wrote in an e-mail. He claims that a city utility would not have local service crews, meaning a potentially delayed response to an emergency such as a tornado.
He also said that Decorah Power has indicated it would take over serving some customers outside the Decorah city limits, meaning that those customers would not have a vote as to who provides their power in the future.
Furthermore, a consultant for Interstate estimated the value of the company’s Decorah distribution assets at $50 million, nearly 10 times the value estimated by Decorah Power’s consultant.
“We don’t think it’s reasonable to ask citizens to take on millions in new debt to pay for a utility system that Decorah residents have already paid for through their utility bills,” Wagner said.
The company plans to ask the city council for an opportunity to present its perspective on the matter.
Every year there are communities that start to explore creating a municipal utility to take the place of a for-profit utility, Schryver said. Although motivations tend to vary, she said that the desire for clean energy has been the main driver recently.
A few new municipal utilities have taken shape lately. In California, the South San Joaquin Irrigation District, which provides water service, recently won approval from state authorities to create an electrical utility as well, meaning it will displace Pacific Gas & Electric in that locality.
“It’s likely they’ll take over that system in the next year or so,” Schryver said.
Jefferson County in Washington state formed a municipal utility in 2013 to serve about 18,000 customers who formerly purchased electricity from Puget Sound Energy. Three smaller communities — two in Alaska and one in Ohio — also created new municipal utilities in the past few years, according to Schryver.
Although exploration of municipalization doesn’t always result in a city-owned utility, Schryver said it can effect change in other ways. In Minneapolis, for example, efforts to depart from Xcel Energy ceased when the utility agreed to expand its clean-energy portfolio.
In Iowa, the state regulator ultimately would have to give Decorah Power the right to serve as the monopoly electric provider in and around Decorah. Long before that, the people of Decorah and the Decorah City Council would have to embrace the idea. A public vote is required, and it is the next item on the agenda, according to Johnson.
Although he and other promoters of municipalization presented the feasibility study to the Decorah City Council on Tuesday evening, Johnson said it’s too soon to ask that the question be put on a ballot.
“Right now, we want to let the council and the community digest the results. We think it’s a good idea to move towards a referendum, but we are not asking them to do that tonight. People need time to study the results.”
The cost to customers would depend, in part, on how Decorah Power would purchase its power. Buying it all with secure long-term contracts would be the most expensive option, while purchasing it all daily on the wholesale market could be the cheapest and most volatile. Assuming a city utility struck a balance, purchasing 70 percent each day in the marketplace and locking up 30 percent in long-term contracts, the consultant estimated that, averaged over all of the city’s customers, Decorah Power could provide electricity at 4 to 5 cents less per kilowatt hour than Interstate Power and Light.
That is generally consistent with experience nationwide, at least where residential customers are concerned. According to the public power association, residential customers of public power utilities pay an average of 11.5 cents per kilowatt hour, while those of rural electric coops pay 11.6 cents and customers of investor-owned utilities pay 13.2 cents on average.
And customers of the country’s 2,009 municipal utilities also tend to enjoy better reliability, according to the association. They are without power roughly half as many minutes each year as the industry average.
Johnson said that over the past year, Decorah Power has hosted many speakers from municipal utilities and rural electric coops as well as an engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in an effort to ensure that city residents are educated before they make a decision if, and when, the matter is on the ballot.
He pointed out that even if voters approve the initiative, and even if the Iowa Utilities Board gives its blessing, Interstate still could take the issue to court.
“We know it’s a process,” he said, “and it’s not going to be cheap or quick.”
]]>The experience of two neighboring states shows there’s no guarantee the effort will result in policies that are more favorable for renewable power.
Across the country, commissions have been playing catch-up with policies in the wake of rapid economic and technological change around clean energy, according to Karl Rábago, a distributed-energy consultant who has provided testimony in some Midwestern states.
In some states, notably California and New York, regulators have adopted new policies designed to advance clean energy, Rábago said. In others, “you’ll have … no recognition of the need for change. And in some places, you will see barriers erected.”
A study by the Kansas Corporation Commission, for example, ended in a September ruling that is expected to lead to higher charges for customers with solar panels. An Iowa proceeding last spring resulted in an experimental tariff on distributed generation that appears likely to put at least a small drag on future solar installations.
It’s not clear where matters are headed in Missouri, where regulators are holding workshops and soliciting feedback from utilities, clean-energy advocates, and others.
“They haven’t given us much of a clue as to what might come out of this,” said Henry Robertson, a lawyer with the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center in St. Louis who filed comments in the proceeding on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “These workshop dockets are always very interesting, but they don’t necessarily result in anything.”
The NRDC’s comments stress the need for interactive load management — utilities need the ability to smooth out peaks and valleys in demand using smart meters and demand-side resources, Robertson explained.
James Owen, the director of Renew Missouri, said one of his top priorities conveyed to the commission is a value-of-solar study, an attempt to identify and quantify costs and benefits that result for the electric grid from distributed generation.
ICYMI: Advocates say recent net metering changes could slow solar growth in Ohio
Rate cases are regularly hung up on warring claims about the impact of distributed generation, with solar promoters generally asserting that it benefits the grid and opponents claiming it unfairly shifts costs to customers without their own generation.
Owen said he thinks the state’s major utilities also see merit in a value-of-solar study.
Ameren’s senior director of regulatory affairs, Tom Byrne, did not confirm that but said that the state’s largest electricity-provider believes “policymakers should take into account the full costs and benefits of all sources of energy.”
While a value-of-solar study might be seen by some as a win for clean energy, Owen said utilities have also made clear they “want to focus on whether distributed energy should be treated differently… which I think is a disastrous idea.”
Byrne responded that Ameren “does not plan to seek a class change for distributed generation customers. By statute, they are treated the same as all other customers.”
In one respect, the Missouri process appears like a replay of a similar docket in Kansas, which wrapped up in September. Clean-energy activists there pushed hard for a value-of-solar study but wound up with a ruling that could set distributed generation back.
The commission said that utilities can establish a separate rate class for customers with distributed generation. In upcoming rate cases, utilities can then seek a distinct, and presumably higher, rate for customers who also generate their own power.
Dorothy Barnett, executive director of the Climate+Energy Project in Kansas, said if the state’s two major investor-owned utilities file rate cases in 2018 — which she deems likely — they could have “a substantially chilling effect on the market.” She expects the utilities to ask for additional fees, perhaps including a demand charge.
“That was the piece that every conversation circled around, that demand charges were an appropriate way to charge customers with distributed-generation systems,” Barnett said.
Scott White, a research and project analyst for Cromwell Solar in Lawrence, Kansas, said he has concluded the Kansas commission isn’t the place to make a case for more renewable energy because “they’re limited in what they can consider. It’s reliability and cost. It’s got to be as cheap as possible.”
Purported benefits that are difficult or impossible to quantify such as air quality cannot be considered by the commission, he said. Now that the commission has authorized separate rates for customers who generate their own power, White thinks distributed renewables will be a target in every rate case going forward.
“The only hope is if the legislature weighs in. I don’t know if that will happen,” White said.
Iowa spent three and a half years considering distributed-generation policy before concluding last spring. The results are a bit more ambivalent toward clean power. The Iowa Utilities Board preserved existing net metering rules, endorsed improvements to interconnection standards and generally expressed support for a “data-driven” approach toward distributed-generation policy, a position that pleased clean-energy advocates.
The board also ordered the state’s two largest utilities to conduct three-year experiments with new tariffs for customers with distributed generation. It is not yet clear how the new tariffs will affect distributed generation, but there are concerns the tariff being piloted by Interstate Power & Light may handicap the economics of distributed generation.
“For the pilots, we’re waiting to see what impact those are having,” said Nathaniel Baer, the energy program director for the Iowa Environmental Council. “Our hope is that the distributed generation market will continue to grow, and grow well. We need to see a little more evidence that that is the case.”
While acknowledging that Interstate’s experimental pilot is “a concern,” Josh Mandelbaum lauded most of the docket’s outcome to date. Mandelbaum is an attorney for the Environmental Law & Policy Center, and has filed many briefs in the distributed-generation docket.
“The overall approach, the fact that the board was willing to maintain net metering, the fact that the board was clear that the goal was to experiment in order to keep growing distributed generation, that’s a positive. The fact that board expressed interest in collecting data and understanding its impact, that’s positive.”
]]>The Direct Connect Development Company has been working on a plan for an underground transmission line along existing railroad tracks from north-central Iowa to the Chicago area. The goal is to provide a way to move additional wind energy from Iowa, the Dakotas and Minnesota to a transfer point in the Chicago area. From there, the power could move farther east into regions with more electricity demand.
And because the line with a capacity of 2,100 megawatts (MW) would be mostly invisible, it might elude some of the problems that have dogged transmission lines that would tower overhead while crossing Midwestern farm fields.
Direct Connect CEO Trey Ward said the Canadian Pacific Railway has agreed to allow the comany to bury the line within its right of way, which extends for about 85 percent of the 349-mile route.
“We have the land,” Ward said. “That’s the most significant issue for new transmission lines. Having the land in hand is very important. The second thing is, doing the project underground … limits the impact to the environment, streamlines the permitting process, and limits impacts to neighbors.”
Ward said he’s following the example of the nation’s fiber optic network, which also made use of railroad rights of way.
SOO Green Renewable Rail LLC, as the project is known, could challenge the Rock Island Clean Line, a proposed overhead transmission line that would move about 3,500 MW of wind energy from northwest Iowa to the Illinois-Indiana border — a roughly similar route to the Green Renewable Rail plan.
For several years now, Clean Line Energy Partners has been attempting to get permission from Iowa and Illinois regulators to build the Rock Island line. In September, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Clean Line had not fulfilled one of the requirements for a permit to build the line in Illinois. While it seeks a solution to that, the company has withdrawn the application it had pending before the Iowa Utilities Board.
Clean Line declined to comment on Ward’s vision for an apparently competing transmission line.
Clean Line is also attempting to build the Grain Belt Express project, a 780-mile transmission line out of Kansas to Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. Missouri regulators had denied the plan, though the developers — led by former Gov. Jay Nixon — are challenging the decision.
Ward is optimistic that he won’t encounter the same regulatory obstacles that Clean Line has. He said he has spoken with utility regulators in both Iowa and Illinois.
“We got a very warm reception,” he said. “They like to see a project like this on a brownfield site. They also like to see it in the ground.”
Ward is aiming to begin construction by early 2020 and to be operational by early 2024. He is trying to raise about $90 million in capital. The project’s price is estimated at $2.5 billion to $3 billion.
Even if Ward has 85 percent of the route wrapped up, that leaves another 15 percent that could cause him some trouble. Ward claims he’s confident he can pull it all together.
“We’ve got another railroad we’re working with,” he said. “We will have to acquire some additional land rights in Illinois. We will have to work with some landowners, but there are several ways we can get to the final destination point.”
It’s become clear in recent years that expanded transmission from the windy Great Plains to the east is a prerequisite to developing more of the wind potential in the Midwest. If his project comes to fruition, Ward said, “We will pull some of the cheapest, most robust wind from the upper Midwest and bring it to the East Coast.”
As a result of recently completed multi-value transmission projects across the region, he said, his project would be able to tap into a wide swath of the windiest land this side of Canada.
However, Ward’s decision to pursue this project now is a function of technology, not policy. Moving high voltages of electricity generally has required copious amounts of space, he said, meaning that transmission developers would hoist their lines high overhead. But over the past five years or so, “The technology of high-voltage cables has changed dramatically. I think everybody understands that solar and wind and batteries have changed a lot, but nobody is thinking about transmission.”
The German manufacturing conglomerate Siemens, looking for a way to unobtrusively move wind power from the North Sea to southern Germany, has been “leading the charge,” Ward said. The company has used a new rubber-based cable that is “very easy to handle in the field, easy to splice,” Ward said.
High voltages of power moved underground now require “a relatively small footprint,” about two-and-half feet across, Ward said. Two transmission cables are installed about three to five feet underground. It seems that the price has a smaller footprint as well.
“Compared to five years ago,” Ward said, “we can transmit much more power at a much lower price.”
And although underground installation generally adds to construction costs, Ward said he’s confident that the invisibility of this approach will reduce opposition, legal bills and permitting costs enough to compensate for much of the cost of digging a 349-mile-long trench.
]]>Interstate Power and Light has indicated it likely will seek to include the cost of grid modernization in its rate base over the next few years. Because these types of capital investments earn utilities a high rate of return — typically around 10 percent in Interstate’s case — the incentive is strong to build infrastructure regardless of how urgently it’s needed.
“That is our concern,” said Brad Klein, an attorney for the Environmental Law & Policy Center who has filed comments about the case with the Iowa Utilities Board. “We don’t know if that’s at play in this case, but they don’t have a plan in place to ensure that wouldn’t happen.”
Sonia Aggarwal, an energy policy consultant who has written about effective approaches to grid modernization, said, “There’s a justification for good grid modernization plans. I think what’s so appealing about grid modernization is there’s something in it for everybody. The utility can earn a rate of return. There are real modernization needs that need to happen in the distribution system if it’s going to contribute more flexibility as we de-carbonize. There’s a cyber-security side of it also. And there’s also a resilience and reliability part of it.”
But the potential payoffs notwithstanding, she said, “Without defining what you want out of them initially, you might get more spending from (investor-owned utilities) than would be efficient.”
Klein said he expects that costly but loosely structured grid modernization proposals “are going to increasingly be an issue in utility rate cases.
“Utilities all recognize that electricity use is flat or decreasing, so they are looking for ways to address that revenue gap. I think many utilities are looking to investments in the grid as a place where they can increase their rate base and earn a return for shareholders.”
The term “grid modernization” doesn’t have a clear definition, but generally is associated with system upgrades that would tend to enhance energy efficiency and the use of a wider range of distributed energy resources.
Interstate spokesman Justin Foss defined it as “finding new technologies and tools that will help us provide safe, reliable power to help continue to grow clean energy in Iowa, to enable new options for customers. A lot of that is still being determined by our engineers.”
Interstate already has been making those types of investments, Foss said. The company has begun upgrading primary distribution lines to 25 kilovolts, he said, which will give the company more flexibility to move new distributed generation that might come on line.
“As we see more two-way power flow on the grid, we can run into constraints,” he explained. “As we continue to upgrade to 25 kV, it’s like building a bigger highway.”
The company also is interested in installing smart meters throughout its territory.
Iowa’s Office of Consumer Advocate, as well as a group of clean-energy proponents including the Environmental Law & Policy Center, have urged the Iowa Utilities Board to carefully scrutinize Interstate’s grid modernization plans as they take shape in the coming months.
Interstate’s proposal — $300 million yearly for several years — “is a lot of money,” observed the state’s consumer advocate, Mark Shuling. “Is it needed? I don’t know. That’s why we want more discussions. That’s why we’re saying to the board, ‘Direct this. Be aware that we’re concerned that not enough information is getting out pre-construction.’”
Schuling said that Interstate made promises once before, but didn’t keep them.
In 2007, “they sold off their transmission system to ITC and were talking about how they were going to go forward and what they were going to do. They said, ‘We’re going to collaborate, we’re going to talk to you, OCA, and our customers and get an idea of what they need and how this can work for us and for them.’
“This is not occurring.”
Several other Midwestern states have begun to pursue grid modernization, and they provide examples of an effective way forward, according to Klein.
He said Michigan regulators required the state’s two largest utilities to provide a detailed plan that outlined grid modernization projects, goals and metrics for the program, and a cost/benefit analysis describing consumer benefits.
This type of detailed planning “has not happened yet in Iowa,” he said.
Aggarwal, the vice president of Energy Innovation, said that “some exciting work on the part of public utilities commissions in some parts of the country are helping to lead on this. In Rhode Island, they’re thinking systematically about how to modernize the grid via a combination of performance-based regulation and distribution system planning. I think they’re working closely with National Grid to figure out how to do this in a way that is of the greatest benefit to the customer.”
California’s regulators “have asked the utilities to do some mapping of systems to understand which distribution feeders are ready to accept more DG resources, and which are strained and could use some investments. That’s a nice place to start, understanding the current state of the distribution system, and to look comprehensively at what the solutions are, not just substation upgrades, but what DER resources could do that would be cheaper.”
As stated in a paper that she published early this year with Mike O’Boyle, Aggarwal said, “Our big message about grid management is that right from the beginning of the conversation, it’s really important to get stakeholders from a lot of corners together to talk about what they want get out of grid management, and to define it quantitatively. So when a utility makes a plan, it will be oriented around achieving those outcomes.”
]]>In Iowa, a state with some of the highest demand charges in the nation, a solar installer is offering a storage solution that the company claims could cut power bills in half for some large electricity customers.
One year ago the company, Ideal Energy, installed its first solar-plus-storage system at Stuff Etc., a large consignment store in Coralville.
Amy Van Beek, the company’s co-founder and its chief marketing officer, said the project has been performing well and the company is now working with several large electricity customers in the state to determine how solar-plus-storage could work for them.
“We’re rolling this technology out in a big way in Iowa,” said Robbie Gongwer, a senior energy consultant with the company. This morning, Ideal Energy will share its story and its vision at a public event that Gov. Kim Reynolds is expected to attend, along with a representative of the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Although Iowa’s generally low electricity prices can detract from the economics of solar power in some cases, Gongwer said that the high demand fees charged by some of Iowa’s utilities can improve the economics of storage for some customers.
According to a National Renewable Energy Laboratory survey gauging the number of commercial customers in each state estimated to be eligible for utility rates that include demand charges of at least $20 per kilowatt, Iowa rated tenth. The report, published in August, put the number in Iowa at about 23,000 electrical customers.
Some utilities charge hefty demand fees on customers whose need for power roller coasters up and down, and a momentary spike in demand can trigger a very high fee for the customer. Utilities generally defend high demand fees because, they say, they must maintain enough capacity at all times to meet the high peaks. The fees for that capacity can amount to half of a customer’s bill, according to Gongwer.
With storage, “you can perform peak shaving where you are not covering a large chunk of an electric bill,” Van Beek said. “If we can hit enough of their peak, even if we’re just covering 8 to 10 percent of overall use, that can be enough to have a good impact on their utility bills.”
Van Beek said technology has advanced to the point where a storage system can learn a given customer’s cyclical need for power. After monitoring a system’s power use for some time, the storage system can anticipate when power use is about to spike, and it flips on the battery, thus keeping the demand on the system low enough to avoid demand charges.
“The system figures out the best time to recharge and when to discharge,” Van Beek said. “They are highly intelligent.”
“Demand charges are a great way for storage systems to work, said Matt Roberts, vice president of the Energy Storage Association. “I’ve seen this in hotels in San Francisco and New York. They know when rush hour is. When the elevators are going to be busy, the battery is waiting. When someone pushes the button, the battery kicks in so your demand doesn’t exceed a certain level.
“They can write a contract that says, for example, ‘You’ll never go above 6 megawatts (of demand).’ In places with demand charges, it’s a really smart model.”
Van Beek said that she expects that customers with demand charges would find that the solar-plus-storage system they are getting ready to market will pay for itself in four to six years.
The owner of Stuff Etc., where Ideal Energy installed its first and so far only solar plus storage system, wanted to generate all of her own electricity. She also was angling to reduce the store’s demand enough to avoid the demand fee, according to Troy Van Beek, one of the founders of Ideal Energy.
The solar/storage system has enabled the store operators to keep their demand below 75 kW throughout the year, meaning that they no longer have to pay a demand fee, he said.
Although batteries can be useful in several ways, Gongwer said that Ideal Energy now is focused on using them to erase demand fees from electricity bills.
“It’s not for every project,” he pointed out. “It takes an energy study to see if this would be good fit. For customers that do have the right profile, it really, really makes a big difference.”
]]>Work on the project began last month and is expected to be completed by late 2020. The Des Moines-based company will replace about 1,000 megawatts (MW) of its 4,000 MW portfolio.
MidAmerican has embarked on one of the larger repowering projects in the country, said John Hensley, deputy director for industry data and analysis at the American Wind Energy Association.
Nationwide, about 700 MW of capacity has been repowered, he said. In most of those cases the entire system was dismantled and replaced. Many of those turbines were much smaller and less powerful than the turbines being erected now.
The machines that MidAmerican is rehabilitating were built mostly between 2004 and 2008. The utility will replace their gear boxes and install longer and more powerful blades.
Given the tremendous advances in wind power, Hensley said owners of wind farms are seeing value in replacing parts of the system years before the end of the turbines’ typical lifespan. MidAmerican estimates that the new turbines will generate between 19 and 28 percent more power than those they replace.
The expected increase in production is enough that the overhaul essentially will pay for itself, according to MidAmerican spokesperson Adam Jacobi.
“Because of the cost savings that we get from this, we wouldn’t be increasing our customer rates or pursuing a rate case until 2029,” he said. “It’s cost-effective for us without a customer rate increase.”
In a press release, MidAmerican president and CEO Bill Fehrman called the repowering project the “next step in our journey toward our 100 percent renewable energy vision. In 2021 when both our repowering and Wind XI projects are complete, we expect to generate renewable energy equal to 95 percent of our Iowa retail customers’ annual use.”
Wind XI, with a pricetag of $3.6 billion, has been called the largest capital project in Iowa history. It will add 1,000 turbines and 2,000 MW to MidAmerican’s wind resources.
Nathaniel Baer, energy program director at the Iowa Environmental Council, lauded the utility’s decision to renew some of its turbines. As a consequence, he said, “You get this bump in energy and a longer lifespan. In our opinion, it makes a lot of sense to do these repowering projects. You’re getting more renewable energy benefits, and landowners get a longer payment.”
Wind turbines, which are estimated to function for about 20 years, wind down as the years go by. According to an article published in the journal Renewable Energy, the energy output from wind turbines generally falls by about 1.6 percent each year.
There is also some indication that updating turbine parts to make them more powerful can reduce bird mortality, according to a study published in 2009 in Wildlife Management. After refurbishing some of the turbines at the Diablo Winds project in the Altamont Pass in California, researchers found that the fatality rates fell by 54 percent for raptors and 66 percent for all birds.
The time is ripe for repowering for another reason: The federal production and investment tax credits are beginning to diminish. Wind projects started before 2017 qualified for the full production tax credit of 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour. The credit falls to 80 percent of that for projects started in 2017; 60 percent for those started in 2018; and 40 percent for those started in 2019.
With the nation’s fleet of wind turbines just beginning to approach the age for rehabilitation, Baer said, “It’s important to set that precedent now; let’s keep these projects operating to the maximum extent that is possible. Hopefully this project provides some momentum, and the idea that it’s not just new wind development that’s important, but the repowering is important too.”
]]>Both sides agree, however, that there needs to be more clarity about how a federal renewable energy law should be implemented.
Optimum Renewables wants to develop three 8 MW wind farms and sell the output to Interstate Power and Light, a subsidiary of Alliant Energy. This sort of transaction is at the heart of the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act, known also as PURPA. Congress passed the law in 1978 for the express purpose of fostering more renewable and other domestic energy sources.
After more than a year of discussions with Interstate, Optimum finally filed a complaint in April with the Iowa Utilities Board. It alleges that Alliant made a “non-negotiable” offer to purchase power at a rate and under terms that, according to Optimum, ensure that “these projects will not be able to secure financing.”
PURPA in very broad terms requires utilities to purchase renewable energy from certain “qualified generators,” provided the energy is cost competitive. But a lot of details are left unspecified, and that’s where state regulators such as the Iowa Utilities Board, enter the scene. If Optimum and Alliant continue to disagree, the board will need to decide what complies with the federal law.
Optimum wants to be paid $49.50 per megawatt hour, more than double the $23.59 that Alliant has offered Alliant’s offer, according to documents filed by Optimum, “is approximately 46 percent lower compared to the rate IPL offered in similar PPAs executed in March 2016.”
Also, Alliant has offered to sign a contract to buy power from Optimum for five years. Power-purchase agreements between generators and utilities typically run for about 20 years. That long time period is often critical to provide the assurance of future revenue that is required by potential investors.
Alliant also has told Optimum that it will curtail production from the wind farms “based on load,” a practice that Optimum contends is “in direct conflict with PURPA.”
The developer also asserts that the interconnection fees that Alliant wants to charge – averaging about $1.4 million for each of the three wind farms – is about four times what it has charged for recent projects, “with no real explanation.”
In documents filed with the state regulator, Optimum suggests that Alliant’s offer is influenced in part by a wind project it is pursuing.
“We feel that these Projects are being discriminated against due to the fact that IPL is planning to build a 500MW wind project and was permitted to … earn an 11% return on this investment over the 40 year depreciable life of the project,” Optimum wrote in the complaint it filed with the regulators. “Judging from the information, we are confident that IPL is paying their own generation far in excess of the avoided costs” that IPL has offered to pay Optimum.
Alliant declined to respond to particular allegations leveled against it, saying only, “Our mission is to deliver energy solutions and exceptional service our customers and communities count on. As part of that effort, we are transitioning our generation and energy mix to include more highly-efficient natural gas and renewables, such as wind and solar.”
“Alliant’s posture in the negotiations is such that it would not allow the project to go forward,” said Josh Mandelbaum, a lawyer for the Environmental Law & Policy Center who has followed the matter and is writing a brief that he hopes to submit to state regulators.
“Alliant was not negotiating in good faith. It was, ‘take these terms or leave it.’ If utilities don’t act in good faith and don’t follow the law, they force each and every renewable project to file a complaint, and that’s not viable. Most developers will just quit a project” rather than expend the money and energy to take it to the state regulators, Mandelbaum said.
“That’s part of what the utility is counting on. In some respects it rewards bad behavior. We see a pattern of that with Alliant and renewables. At every opportunity they look for ways to create a barrier.”
Alliant was quite forthright about its frustration with renewable projects earlier this month in a hearing before an energy subcommittee at the state legislature. The hearing was titled, “Reevaluating PURPA’s Objectives and its Effects on Today’s Consumers.”
Terry Kouba, the company’s vice president for Iowa operations, testified before the subcommittee that in order to comply with PURPA, Alliant often is forced to purchase “renewable power at a premium compared to other available renewable energy sources, such as utility-owned generation or competitively bid PPAs, and our customers bear that premium.”
He also accused developers – including Optimum and its current project – of “gaming” the law and “disaggregating” projects into smaller limited-liability corporations in order to meet PURPA’s limits on the size of a “qualifying facility.”
He offered a solution: “Congress should consider exempting utilities from PURPA’s mandatory purchase requirement if a state regulatory commission finds (1) that the utility’s customers do not need the additional power to meet their customers’ needs or (2) the utility employs integrated resource planning and conducts a competitive resource procurement process that provides an opportunity for (qualifying facilities) to participate.”
Nathaniel Baer, who directs the energy program for the Iowa Environmental Council, said that Alliant “is looking at this very narrowly. The conversation has to start with, ‘What are the costs, and what are the benefits?’” of renewable generation on the grid.
“There are some studies showing that customers adding solar can reduce utility revenue but also the revenue requirement (the cost to the utility) by the same amount. So far, they’ve refused to acknowledge there are benefits. That underlies the hostility we are seeing.”
Other large customers have found it difficult, if not impossible, to develop renewable resources in Alliant territory. Three years ago, Grinnell College punted on a plan to build a 5.1-megawatt wind farm that would have provided about half the power consumed on the campus. Alliant told them that most of the power would have to be curtailed – thrown away, essentially – because another developer had already put up a wind turbine that would meet the demand on that substation. The developer, it turns out, was Optimum Renewables.
Grinnell proposed tapping into a different substation that could have accommodated energy from the proposed wind turbine. It was the substation, in fact, that earlier had provided the college with its power.
“We sent them a letter saying, ‘Here are some other ideas,’” Chris Bair, the college’s environmental and safety coordinator, said at the time. “We were trying to make it work for everyone. Optimum wanted to make everything work too. I do think [Alliant] could have switched us back to the other substation. They never got back to us on it. I don’t think we ever got a final yea or nay. They’re not required to do that. There’s no legal obligation to do it, and no financial reason to do it.”
Another college, Luther College, about four years ago began exploring the possibility of a combined heat and power (CHP) plant. The consulted with a team from a CHP research outfit in Chicago.
According to Jim Martin-Schramm, a religion professor at Luther who has pursued more renewable energy on campus, “They looked at us and said, ‘You’re a good candidate.’ Then they ran us through a detailed study and put in Alliant’s relevant rates including standby tariffs, and said, ‘If you were a customer of MidAmerican (Iowa’s other major investor-owned utility), your 1.4 megawatt system would have a payback of 15 years. But since you’re a customer of Alliant, the payback is 55 years.
“We just threw up our hands at that point. A tariff is a tariff, and there’s not much we can do about it”
The potential to save energy through combined heat and power is so great in Iowa that members of the Chicago CHP think tank submitted some testimony on the topic in Alliant’s now-pending rate case.
Next, Luther joined with the Winneshiek Energy District in Decorah and four other large institutions and proposed a “shared solar” project to Alliant. Rather than put panels at numerous locations such as government offices and schools, they proposed installing one 2,500 kilowatt array, then each using 20 percent of its output.
They would have needed to use Alliant’s distribution system, and they would have utilized a “virtual” approach to net metering – something not required by PURPA or by Iowa law. Each of the partners invested $10,000 to market the idea to Alliant.
“We had a couple meetings over a year of back and forth, but we never got a formal response or written explanation of any kind. It was frustrating process,” said Andy Johnson, director of Winneshiek and one of the leaders of the shared solar project. The issue lingering in the background, he said, was the same one that causes conflict over countless initiatives to cut energy use and promote renewable energy sources.
“We all understand the issue of revenue loss…and a decade of no load growth. Our economy is built around growth, and they haven’t seen that. That’s understandable, but it creates important questions for regulators to be looking at.
“Nobody wants utilities to go bankrupt, but nor are they guaranteed perpetual growth. If customers increasingly are able to save energy, that should be a great thing for customers and communities. On the flip side, it could be a challenge to the utility.
“Our regulators need to look at that.”
]]>Interstate Power & Light has asked the Iowa Utilities Board to allow it to create two new rate classes for “partial requirements” customers — those who generate some of their own energy.
The utility has not requested a new rate for solar customers, but clean energy proponents suspect it will be coming if the Iowa Utilities Board approves the proposed new rate classes.
In another move that would tend to impinge on efforts to reduce energy use, the utility has asked for a $3 increase in the fixed monthly fee for residential customers. The utility wants to raise the fixed fee by $6.20 for small business customers.
Both proposals have stirred up criticism from proponents of clean energy as well as the state office that serves as a watchdog for consumers in the state.
“The proposal to create new rate classes seems to aim to discourage solar investment,” Karl Rabago said in some testimony submitted to the regulators this summer. Rabago is a former utility commissioner who now consults on utility and energy matters.
The creation of new rate classes “is the first step in discouraging distributed generation,” said Josh Mandelbaum, a lawyer for the Environmental Law & Policy Center who has been involved in the rate case. “We are very concerned.”
Interstate spokesman Justin Foss did not indicate whether a rate hike is in the future for members of the new classes, provided they are approved.
“We are gathering and presenting data so that we can ensure future customer rates accurately reflect the cost to serve them,” he said in an e-mail. The company’s broader mission in a rate case, he said, is “to balance out customers’ need for reasonable rates with our responsibility to provide services in a safe and reliable manner, recover costs of supplying energy and earning a reasonable return to remain financially strong.”
Mandelbaum called the attempt to create two new rate classes “part of a pattern of hostility towards distributed generation that we’ve seen from IPL for a number of years. They’ve taken multiple bites of that apple, and this would be one of them.”
Earlier this year, Interstate proposed a pilot tariff for solar customers that several solar installers and advocates said would make solar far less economically viable. Regulators approved a modified version of the initial proposal. It’s not yet clear what the repercussions may be on the pace and scale of solar installations.
Three months ago, Interstate asked state regulators to approve a “green tariff” that, according to some solar proponents, would levy an additional fee on willing customers without actually increasing the amount of solar energy in Interstate’s system.
In Interstate’s current rate case, it proposed one class that would encompass residential customers who generate some of their own power. The other class would cover small businesses with solar panels or another renewable technology.
Foss said that Interstate is moving ahead with its own company-owned solar energy, with the development of a 5 megawatt array in Dubuque – the largest community solar project in the state.
Interstate contends that solar customers should be in their own class because their power use is distinctly different from non-solar customers. And in fact, according to data submitted in the rate case, the power demand of solar customers tends to peak a couple hours later than customers who rely on Interstate for all of their power.
Included in the rate case is a graph that illustrates one difference between the 1,200 customers with solar panels and the 400,000 customers without them: the solar customers’ peak demand on Interstate’s grid occurs two to three hours after the peak demand of the other 400,000.
Rabago challenged the idea that a distinct pattern of energy use constitutes a reason to segregate a group of customers for different treatment. Any number of such groups could be identified, he said.
“Firemen, people who work the night shift, senior citizens with limited income, dual-income couples who both work outside the home. We have to ask, ‘Why do these 1,200 people get a separate rate class? What is this exercise for? Especially when (Interstate) refuses to consider the benefits these customers might also be providing.’”
Although 1,200 solar customers do not at this point make much impact of any sort on the grid, Rabago said that if and when their numbers grow, the graph suggests that their impact on the grid could be beneficial.
“They’re making use of the system at a time when it’s not fully loaded. That’s a dream for utilities.”
In the rate case, Interstate also has requested increases in both the fixed monthly fee and the energy charge, but with an emphasis on the former. It is seeking to raise the fixed fee for residential customers from $10.50 to $13.50 per month. That amounts to a 29 percent increase, compared to a requested 12 percent overall residential rate increase.
The company proposes increasing the fixed fee for General Service (most commercial) customers from $17.80 to $24 per month. That would be a 35 percent increase, compared to an overall rate increase of 11 percent for General Service customers.
As sales of electricity have stagnated in recent years, utilities across the country have been pursuing hikes in their fixed rates to compensate for flatlining or falling revenues from energy charges.
Fixed charges “are discriminatory against low and moderate-income households,” Andy Johnson, director of the Winneshiek Energy District in Decorah, wrote in a statement he submitted to state regulators. “They deny customer control and responsiveness, and they discourage customer initiative for energy efficiency and renewable energy.”
But opinions vary as to what constitutes a fixed cost. To Rabago, it’s only the costs associated with adding a customer to the system – probably no more than $5 or $10 a month.
To Interstate, many of the costs of the distribution system are fixed. And while Rabago agrees that those costs are fixed – over the short term – he contends that over the long term, they become variable, depending on how much demand is put on the system.
Further, in its rate case, Interstate is essentially assigning costs without sufficient facts about which customers impose which costs on the system.
In contrast to earlier directives from the Iowa Utilities Board, Rabago said that Interstate “is not following a data-driven approach. That’s the most frustrating thing about this proposal.”
]]>Critics also expressed doubts as to whether Alliant Energy’s green pricing option, known as Beyond Solar, would lead to the development of new renewable energy in the state.
Advocates say it looks like the option, now pending before the Iowa Utilities Board, will simply tap into wind and solar resources that Alliant Energy already owns. That would defeat the purpose of green pricing, critics add, and apparently would not follow the “spirit and intent” of a law that requires utilities to offer green pricing, or a premium for renewable energy.
“While it might not technically violate the rules, it certainly violates the spirit and intent of those rules,” said Josh Mandelbaum, a staff attorney based in Iowa for the Environmental Law & Policy Center.
“The way this program is set up, the same amount of renewable energy is going to be on the grid whether no one participates in the program or 1,000 people participate,” Mandelbaum continued.
The reason, he said, is because Alliant Energy proposes to provide Beyond Solar subscribers with energy from two existing sources of generation — a power-purchase agreement with an Iowa wind farm and a 5-megawatt (MW) solar array that Alliant just built in Dubuque.
Mandelbaum also said the new choices offered by Beyond Solar come with an “incredibly high premium” that would approximately double a customer’s power bill.
Three Beyond Solar options are available: 100 percent solar, a 50/50 split of solar and wind, and 25 percent solar with 75 percent wind. In each scenario, generation capacity is sold in increments of 1 kilowatt and is added to a customer’s existing bill. The cost per kilowatt is $13.61 for 100 percent solar, $6.70 for 50 percent solar and $3.24 for 25 percent solar.
A typical residential customer choosing to go 100 percent solar would need to buy 5 kilowatts a month, incurring a roughly $68 monthly fee. That basically would double the cost of electricity, according to Mandelbaum.
Beyond Solar would be in addition to a green-pricing option that Alliant introduced in 2001. Known as Second Nature, it offers the option of renewable power derived mostly from wind for an additional 2 cents per kilowatt hour. Mandelbaum says it is much less costly than power purchased through Beyond Solar.
Alliant spokesperson Justin Foss responded: “We know that Beyond Solar is more expensive. We also know that Beyond Solar involves up to 100 percent solar energy. That’s why it costs more.”
Foss said Alliant developed Beyond Solar to satisfy customers who have been requesting green-pricing alternatives to Second Nature.
“Second Nature really involves a lot of wind energy,” Foss said. “There’s a miniscule amount of solar in there. Beyond Solar would involve mostly solar. We find there are a couple types of customers: Some customers want low-cost renewable energy, or just renewable energy in general. Some customers really just want solar energy. So we are trying to create different options.”
The two programs, he added, “are not designed to compete against each other.”
While tapping into an existing source of solar energy is fundamentally different from investing in additional solar generation, Foss said, “It’s difficult to create a new program if there are no existing assets. It’s hard to say to a customer, ‘Sign up now and I’ll give (power) to you in two years, once we purchase the land and move forward on that.’”
Mandelbaum countered that other utilities — such as the city electric provider in Cedar Falls, Iowa — have done just that.
Alliant proposes launching Beyond Solar on November 1 while continuing to offer Second Nature. Jennifer Easler, an attorney with Iowa’s Office of Consumer Advocate, said she’s concerned that Alliant might be more aggressive in marketing the more-costly Beyond Solar to customers who are unaware of what they’re getting.
“They’re paying a premium for existing resources,” she said, adding that “there’s not a direct commitment” to invest in more renewable resources. Even if Beyond Solar attracts a lot of customers, she said, the recently completed 5-MW array in Dubuque has “quite a bit of room … for expansion.”
On the wind side, Beyond Solar will meet customer demand with generation from the Hancock wind farm, which it may no longer use for Second Nature customers because it is too old and no longer meets the certification requirements of Green-e, a clean-energy certifier.
“Cynical” is how Mandelbaum characterized Alliant’s proposal to sell uncertified wind energy and existing solar energy with the suggestion that customers would be paying a hefty premium to develop new renewable resources. He said Alliant envisions reserving all of the benefits of renewable power for itself, and leaving customers with no long-term benefits from renewable energy — just a higher bill.
If Alliant wanted to move renewable energy along, Mandelbaum suggested it could devise a community renewable program.
“It’s something we’ve had many conversations about, but we’re not there,” he said. “A community renewable program, at least one that meets best practices, adds renewables and allows customers to benefit. It would accomplish several things that this does not.”
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