Tag Archive: clean energy

1. RAEL Holds Press Conference in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo

   July 14, 2015 12:54 am Comments Off on RAEL Holds Press Conference in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo

   Media cov­er­age  of the press con­fer­ence and actions by the Gov­ern­ment of Sarawak include:

   The Bor­neo Post, August 11, 2015 — Ade­nan wants SEB to light up the rur­al areas

   The Malaysian Insid­er, July 31, 2015 — Ade­nan puts Baram dam on hold, agrees to lis­ten to natives’ grouses

   Radio Free Sarawak, July 15, 2015 — “Sjotveit should be out”, say Sarawakians

   The Malaysian Insid­er, July 14, 2015 — Stop Baleh dam ten­der until envi­ron­men­tal study scru­ti­nised, says Sarawak PKR

   Mongabay​.com, July 8, 2015 — Sarawak can meet ener­gy needs with­out mega-dams: report

   BFM 89.9 — The Busi­ness Sta­tion (www​.bfm​.my), Radio and online inter­view, July 3, 2015, Clean ener­gy options in East Malaysia

   The Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, July 1, 2015 —  Ama­zon’s Wildlife Threat­ened by Hydropow­er Dams, Study Finds

   The Dai­ly Express — East Malaysia, June 30, 2015 — Sarawak Mega Dam Project Study

   The Bor­neo Post, June 29, 2015 — Bor­neo May See the End of Mega-Dams

   The Malaysian Insid­er, June 29, 2015 — Activists say Ade­nan rethink­ing mega dams pol­i­cy in Sarawak

   Free Malaysia Today, June 29, 2015 — Ade­nan May Drop Mega Dam Projects

   The May­lay Mail, June 29, 2015 — CM pulls the brakes on Baram dam until he goes through detailed stud­ies, group claims

    

    

    

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   Peter Kallang, Gabriel Wynn, Dan Kam­men and See Chee How giv­ing press con­fer­ence on clean ener­gy option reports at the Telang Usan Hotel, Kuch­ing, Sarawak, East Malaysia.

   

   

   Jour­nal­ists attend RAEL & Green Empow­er­ment Press con­fer­ence in Kuch­ing, Sarawak, Malaysian Bor­neo to dis­cuss find­ings of stud­ies of clean ener­gy options, and to hear reports from Green Empow­er­ment of the per­for­mance of mini-grids to meet com­mu­ni­ty ener­gy needs.

   Text of the Bor­neo Post arti­cle:

   KUCHING: Datuk Pat­ing­gi Tan Sri Ade­nan Satem may just scrap the state’s plan to build more mega hydro­elec­tric dams in the state after lis­ten­ing to experts on alter­na­tive ener­gy sources on Saturday.

   A del­e­ga­tion com­pris­ing Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry (RAEL) direc­tor Prof Dr Daniel M Kam­men, Green Empow­er­ment Bor­neo Pro­gramme man­ag­er Gabriel Wynn, Save Sarawak Rivers Net­work chair­man Peter Kallang and Batu Lin­tang assem­bly­man See Chee How briefed the chief min­is­ter at his res­i­dence here.

   After the one-hour meet­ing, which includ­ed a pre­sen­ta­tion by Kam­men on the ben­e­fits of using renew­able ener­gy such as solar, wind, sus­tain­able bio­mass and micro-hydro in place of mega hydro-dams, the del­e­ga­tion had a feel­ing the Ade­nan admin­is­tra­tion would ‘seri­ous­ly rethink’ its pol­i­cy to build more mega dams.

   See said the brief­ing had enabled Ade­nan to hear the ‘oth­er side of the sto­ry’, rather than just depend­ing on what Sarawak Ener­gy Bhd (SEB) had to say.

   “We gave him (Ade­nan) the author­i­ty to recon­sid­er since he has heard from SEB with all their ener­gy projections.

   “We gave him an alter­na­tive, with stud­ies show­ing him that the state does not need that kind of ener­gy. You have Bakun HEP (hydro­elec­tric­i­ty project) that is there for so long, but you’re only using half of its capacity.

   “Of course, now with all these alter­na­tives, which come in with graph­ic pro­jec­tions indi­cat­ing what the state needs to meet demand for the next few decades, it is now clear we can actu­al­ly use alter­na­tive renew­able ener­gy sources to replace all these big dams,” he told a press con­fer­ence at a hotel here yesterday.

   See added that the brief­ing on Sat­ur­day enabled Ade­nan to have a bet­ter pic­ture of the whole sit­u­a­tion, adding that the chief min­is­ter even asked Dr Kam­men and Green Empow­er­ment to sub­mit a pro­pos­al and options of renew­able ener­gy (sources) that were prac­ti­cal for the state.

   “They (Kam­men and Green Empow­er­ment) will do it very soon because they have every­thing (all the infor­ma­tion) in the three reports that they have come out with based on stud­ies. They have most of the things there – it’s just a mat­ter of mod­i­fy­ing them and giv­ing the pro­pos­al to the chief minister.”

   In his view as a non-Sarawakian, Kam­men said the meet­ing with Ade­nan was ‘most inter­est­ing’ because a ‘very friend­ly dis­cus­sion’ was held on the oppor­tu­ni­ties, ben­e­fits and costs of clean energy.

   “In fact, we have been asked by the gov­ern­ment to pre­pare a pro­pos­al – maybe to start off with some pilot vil­lages or to vis­it some of the projects that are already in Sarawak or Sabah.

   “I worked in East­ern Africa where last year, more peo­ple were con­nect­ed to the grid with mini grids and off-grid prod­ucts than by grid exten­sions,” said the pro­fes­sor, who is Class of 1935 ‘Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Ener­gy’ at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia in Berkeley.

   Mean­while, Kallang claimed Ade­nan told the del­e­ga­tion that the news­pa­pers had mis­quot­ed him for stat­ing he had giv­en the ‘go-ahead’ with regard to the con­struc­tion of Baram dam dur­ing a gath­er­ing of com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers in Miri recently.

   “He (Ade­nan) was con­sult­ing the com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, but lots of peo­ple there were not even from Baram. The major­i­ty of mem­bers of the Fed­er­a­tion of Orang Ulu Malaysia (Forum) – the organ­is­er of the event – are from Bela­ga, Lim­bang and Bario, with very few from Baram.

   “They had noth­ing to lose, (which was why) they stood up and gave their sup­port (for Baram Dam).”

   Kallang also took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sub­mit to Ade­nan the anti-Baram Dam peti­tion signed by more than 8,000 peo­ple who were affect­ed by the project, and Kallang claimed Ade­nan respond­ed ‘very positively’.

   He said Ade­nan also gave his word to vis­it Baram after Hari Raya Aidilfitri.

   “I asked him (Ade­nan) to vis­it the Baram peo­ple. Don’t just lis­ten to com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers because at the moment, the chief min­is­ter is only being fed with feed­back by the com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers. They are not rep­re­sent­ing all, they are only rep­re­sent­ing themselves.”

   Kallang said Ade­nan was very recep­tive to the ideas raised dur­ing the Sat­ur­day pre­sen­ta­tion because he (Ade­nan) sym­pa­thised with the rur­al people.

   “He (Ade­nan) told us: ‘I don’t care what but let there be light (in all the rur­al areas)’.”

    

   

   

    

2. What happens when a state invests seriously in clean energy?

   June 15, 2015 5:23 pm Comments Off on What happens when a state invests seriously in clean energy?

   Piece from the Huff­in­g­ton Post and Yale360:

   http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​2​0​1​5​/​0​6​/​1​5​/​c​a​l​i​f​o​r​n​i​a​-​c​l​e​a​n​-​e​n​e​r​g​y​_​n​_​7​5​7​8​8​1​0​.​h​tml

    

   This sto­ry was first pub­lished by Yale Envi­ron­ment 360.

   Solar farms are bloom­ing across California’s deserts, wind tur­bines are climb­ing the Sier­ra, pho­to­volta­ic roofs are shim­mer­ing over sub­urbs, and Tes­las are the Sil­i­con Val­ley elite’s new ride. A clean ener­gy rush is trans­form­ing the Gold­en State so quick­ly that near­ly a quar­ter of its elec­tric­i­ty now comes from renew­able sources, and new facil­i­ties, espe­cial­ly solar, are com­ing online at a rapid rate. Last year, Cal­i­for­nia became the first state to get more than 5 per­cent of its elec­tric­i­ty from the sun.

   With its goal of 33 per­cent renew­able ener­gy by 2020 now with­in reach, Gov­er­nor Jer­ry Brown recent­ly raised California’s bar, order­ing the state to cut its green­house gas emis­sions to 40 per­cent below the 1990 lev­el with­in the next 15 years — the most ambi­tious tar­get in North Amer­i­ca. To meet the new direc­tive, plan­ners say Cal­i­for­ni­ans will need to step up their ener­gy tran­si­tion even more: dou­bling ener­gy effi­cien­cy, boost­ing elec­tric trans­porta­tion, and get­ting at least twice as much of their elec­tric­i­ty from renew­ables. Ener­gy experts cau­tion that it will take effort, but they say it’s doable.

   It’s dif­fi­cult to remem­ber that just 15 years ear­li­er the state was expe­ri­enc­ing an ener­gy melt­down. Elec­tric­i­ty prices sky­rock­et­ed, sup­ply crashed and black­outs rolled, due main­ly to a dis­as­trous dereg­u­la­tion attempt and unscrupu­lous mar­ket manip­u­la­tion. Fast-for­ward to 2014, and the state’s renew­able capac­i­ty grew to an esti­mat­ed 21,000 megawatts, includ­ing more util­i­ty-scale solar than all the rest of the states combined.

   So how did Cal­i­for­nia go from chaos to clean pow­er leader in such a short time? And where does it go from here?

   “Fif­teen years out of a cri­sis — that’s kind of unprece­dent­ed,” said Daniel Kam­men, direc­tor of the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. “For the world’s sev­enth-biggest econ­o­my, to be in such a sol­id and good cli­mate posi­tion in a decade and a half is remarkable.”

   California’s phoenix act stems from a com­bi­na­tion of favor­able geog­ra­phy, inno­v­a­tive poli­cies, and busi­ness­es that saw the ben­e­fits of clean ener­gy invest­ments, Kam­men said. Reel­ing off a list of Cal­i­for­nia solar com­pa­nies, he said, “All of these com­pa­nies are cre­at­ing wealth … and that is the most fun­da­men­tal part of the whole equation.”

   With bipar­ti­san sup­port, state leg­is­la­tors a decade ago enact­ed an ambi­tious Renew­ables Port­fo­lio Stan­dard requir­ing that 33 per­cent of elec­tric­i­ty sold in Cal­i­for­nia come from renew­able sources by 2020. Gov­er­nor Brown has called for that goal to be raised to 50 per­cent by 2030, and his admin­is­tra­tion has expand­ed efforts to boost ener­gy effi­cien­cy and to sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the use of elec­tric vehi­cles and renew­ables, among oth­er measures.

   Wind ener­gy pro­duc­tion has dou­bled since 2009, and today Cal­i­for­nia gen­er­ates near­ly 6,400 megawatts of wind pow­er, pro­vid­ing around 7 per­cent of the state’s elec­tric­i­ty. Mas­sive new solar farms are also com­ing online, includ­ing two 550-megawatt pho­to­volta­ic plants added last year. By the end of 2014, Cal­i­for­nia had rough­ly 5,400 megawatts of util­i­ty-scale solar installed and sev­er­al more facil­i­ties, includ­ing a new 579 megawatt plant, are slat­ed to open by the end of next year. Cal­i­for­nia also leads the nation in small dis­trib­uted, or “rooftop,” solar, with more than 2,300 megawatts now installed, and ana­lysts pre­dict con­tin­ued strong growth through 2016.

   On top of that, the state has ample geot­her­mal ener­gy pro­duc­tion, with expan­sion on the way. All told, accord­ing to the Cal­i­for­nia Ener­gy Com­mis­sion, com­mer­cial renew­able ener­gy facil­i­ties in the state, includ­ing small hydropow­er, now gen­er­ate enough clean elec­tric­i­ty to pow­er more than 7 mil­lion Cal­i­for­nia homes — and that doesn’t include home solar and oth­er small­er, on-site production.

   The push toward renew­ables has bumped up elec­tric­i­ty prices — Cal­i­for­ni­ans pay around 14 cents per kilo­watt hour across all sec­tors, com­pared to a lit­tle over 10 cents nation­wide, accord­ing to 2015 fig­ures from the U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Agency. But thanks to a mild cli­mate and suc­cess­ful ener­gy effi­cien­cy pro­grams, res­i­dents’ month­ly bills are actu­al­ly among the low­est in the nation — Cal­i­for­ni­ans rank 49th in ener­gy use and 46th in per-per­son spend­ing on electricity.

   But as California’s clean pow­er goals rise, new capac­i­ty could begin to slow. Some planned large projects are now on hold due to finan­cial prob­lems. Oth­ers face envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges, such as threats to bird fly­ways and desert habi­tats. Large-scale solar plants, par­tic­u­lar­ly those using solar ther­mal tech­nol­o­gy, are los­ing appeal to investors as pho­to­volta­ic pan­el prices plunge. And util­i­ties, hav­ing large­ly reached their cur­rent renew­able pro­cure­ment tar­gets, have few new projects in the pipeline. What’s more, the fed­er­al solar invest­ment tax cred­it pro­gram for new util­i­ty projects drops from 30 per­cent to 10 per­cent after 2016, and ends com­plete­ly for individuals.

   Despite these obsta­cles, a num­ber of enter­pris­ing alter­na­tives are emerging.

   In the past few months, both Apple and Google have announced they are devel­op­ing their own grid-scale renew­able ener­gy projects. Apple is part­ner­ing with First­So­lar to build a 280-megawatt solar farm not far from its Sil­i­con Val­ley head­quar­ters. The facil­i­ty, slat­ed for com­ple­tion next year, will pow­er all Apple stores in Cal­i­for­nia, as well as the company’s offices and a large data cen­ter — plus deliv­er 150 megawatts to the grid. Not to be out­done, Google has bought into a wind project to pow­er its huge Moun­tain View cam­pus. The com­pa­ny plans to replace out­dat­ed tur­bines that are inef­fi­cient and haz­ardous to birds with few­er, high­er-effi­cien­cy, bird-friend­ly machines.

   
   DirecTV has built a solar farm at one of its Cal­i­for­nia offices. Its tele­vi­sion tech­ni­cians now offer solar ener­gy pack­ages when vis­it­ing cus­tomers’ homes.

   Anoth­er new approach is designed to stim­u­late small, local renew­able ener­gy projects. Under this pro­gram, Com­mu­ni­ty Choice Aggre­ga­tion (CCA), cities and coun­ties con­tract with renew­able ener­gy pro­duc­ers to tai­lor their own clean ener­gy sup­ply. Elec­tric­i­ty is still deliv­ered through the area util­i­ty, which charges a trans­mis­sion fee, but res­i­dents can choose whether to receive up to 100 per­cent clean ener­gy from the CCA.

   The state’s first CCA, Marin Clean Ener­gy, opened in 2010 and now serves about 165,000 cus­tomers. The pro­gram keeps costs down by buy­ing direct­ly from sev­er­al small, local ener­gy projects it helped devel­op, includ­ing a solar pan­el array on city air­port hangars and bio­gas from a coun­ty land­fill, as well as agree­ments with com­mer­cial solar, wind, and geot­her­mal producers.

   California’s green ener­gy aggre­ga­tion mod­el is now spread­ing to oth­er states, includ­ing one start­ing up this sum­mer in New York’s Westch­ester Coun­ty. The Los Ange­les-area city of Lan­cast­er this month launched its own CCA, which, along with Sono­ma Coun­ty, brings California’s total to three, with more in progress.

   In a tes­ta­ment to clean energy’s bipar­ti­san appeal in Cal­i­for­nia, Lancaster’s Repub­li­can may­or, R. Rex Par­ris, dreams of mak­ing his city “the Sil­i­con Val­ley of Clean Ener­gy.” His ini­tia­tives include requir­ing solar pan­els on all new homes in this fast-grow­ing com­mu­ni­ty and lur­ing an elec­tric bus man­u­fac­tur­er to town.

   “We’ll be net-zero this year,” Par­ris said, enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. “We’ll be pro­duc­ing more elec­tric­i­ty than we use.”

   In addi­tion to slow­ing glob­al warm­ing — a cause Par­ris con­sid­ers crit­i­cal — he said becom­ing a clean ener­gy com­mu­ni­ty makes fis­cal sense. The CCA’s direct pur­chase from solar farms will save Lan­cast­er users 15 to 30 per­cent on their ener­gy bills, he said.

   “The free mar­ket is work­ing,” Par­ris said. “There are my Repub­li­can principles!”

   California’s three large investor-owned util­i­ties will soon begin offer­ing clean pow­er choic­es as well. Under a state com­mu­ni­ty solar devel­op­ment man­date, they’ll be required to pur­chase renew­able ener­gy from small, local pro­duc­ers in an effort to encour­age such endeav­ors and let cus­tomers choose their own ener­gy mix.

   Mean­while, unlike­ly allies from uni­ver­si­ties to coun­ty dumps are band­ing togeth­er and tak­ing a new look around their prop­er­ties, with an eye to unused space that can be repur­posed for clean ener­gy pro­duc­tion. Ear­li­er this month, stand­ing on a closed land­fill near San Fran­cis­co Bay slat­ed to sport 19,000 solar pan­els by next year, U.S. EPA admin­is­tra­tor Gina McCarthy said she hopes a pio­neer­ing Region­al Renew­able Ener­gy Pro­cure­ment arrange­ment by a group of pub­lic agen­cies will become a nation­al mod­el. Under that ini­tia­tive, solar pan­els will be installed at 186 sites such as fire sta­tions, city halls, libraries, col­lege cam­pus­es, and san­i­tary dis­tricts across four north­ern Cal­i­for­nia coun­ties to pro­duce ener­gy than can be fed into the grid.

   California’s ener­gy tran­si­tion still faces some daunt­ing obsta­cles. A mas­sive influx of new ener­gy threat­ens to over­whelm the cur­rent trans­mis­sion sys­tem. The spo­radic nature of wind and solar pos­es a spe­cial chal­lenge. In addi­tion, the remote loca­tion of many new ener­gy pro­duc­ers means the state will have to extend elec­tri­cal wires.

   The grid is already start­ing to expe­ri­ence over­sup­ply episodes when wind and solar pro­duce unex­pect­ed bursts of pow­er, which forces the grid to shut down its ener­gy feeds, said Steven Green­lee, a spokesman for the Cal­i­for­nia Inde­pen­dent Sys­tem Oper­a­tor (CAISO), the state’s util­i­ty reg­u­la­tor. That wastes energy.

   To address these prob­lems and achieve California’s goals for a new ener­gy future, CAISO envi­sions fleets of pri­vate and mass-tran­sit elec­tric vehi­cles that serve as bat­ter­ies on wheels — plug­ging in and soak­ing up excess cur­rent when the load gets too high, and feed­ing it back into the grid through spe­cial charg­ing sta­tions when sup­ply drops. The plan also calls for retro­fitting the state’s slug­gish old con­ven­tion­al pow­er plants or build­ing new ones that can ramp up pro­duc­tion quick­ly when the sun sets or the wind dies, then stop when these sources become active.

   A third com­po­nent — a region­al elec­tric­i­ty-shar­ing grid where Cal­i­for­nia and its neigh­bors can cut costs and increase effi­cien­cy by offload­ing sur­plus or acquir­ing extra with­in min­utes of peak demand — was launched last year. So far, West­ern Ener­gy Imbal­ance Mar­ket mem­bers include parts of Ore­gon, Wash­ing­ton, Utah, and Wyoming, in addi­tion to California.

   Reach­ing the state’s aggres­sive new ener­gy tar­get like­ly will raise costs. A recent study by the con­sult­ing firm Energy+Environmental Eco­nom­ics and Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry esti­mat­ed that the steps need­ed would add an aver­age of $14 to month­ly house­hold bills. But Berke­ley ener­gy pro­fes­sor Kam­men points out that the effort also will spur inno­va­tion, stim­u­late the econ­o­my, and cre­ate jobs.

   Lan­cast­er May­or Par­ris agrees. “Once you release the cre­ative forces like that,” he said, “it doesn’t stop.”