IREA Voices Gains Some Momentum … !

For those of you who aren’t already aware, I’ve been working since July 2006 with “IREA Voices,” a group of member-owners of Intermountain Rural Electric Association (based in Sedalia, CO, south of Denver) who want to bring a great deal more openness, transparency, and modernization to their rural co-op utility. This small but dedicated group has been working to “Create a New IREA, One Voice at a Time.”

Rather than provide all possible background info, please check out the IREA Voices website – www.ireavoices.org – and an entry I submitted to the Colorado Renewable Energy Society’s blog in August 2006.

IREA Voices had a public “kick-off” meeting just before Labor Day 2006 in SW Denver, drawing 50 people, former Colorado Speaker of the House Lola Spradley, a spokesman for Congressman Mark Udall (D-CO), and other notables. A subsequent meeting in Castle Rock just before Thanksgiving drew fewer people, yet produced a great amount of brainstorming & ideas.

On January 18, IREA Voices came to Parker for another public meeting. While only a dozen or so new faces showed up, they came from all over IREA’s service territory. Some drove nearly two hours on each way a frigid weeknight to see what was brewing within their normally black-box utility … !

The meeting organizers didn’t have to do much to get the meeting (or the emotions) going. Many in the room had grown disgusted over years of IREA’s ignorance of their concerns, misuse of their money, and resistance to the idea of Colorado’s “New Energy Economy.” They appreciated seeing a group forming that could provide them with the kind of voice that IREA has up until now totally ignored.

Along with sharing a great deal of information about how co-op utilities are supposed to work, how IREA has actually worked, ETC., the meeting also focused attention on running candidates for IREA’s Board of Directors. Candidates are already running for 2 of the 4 districts that will have elections in the coming months. And while the “incumbent effect” is even more powerful here than it is in Congress(!), we can at least take solace in knowing that IREA will have to publish whatever we want published for candidate bio’s to be included in their infamous “Watts & Volts” newsletter. This could be the first time – maybe ever – that IREA publishes information about energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other forward-thinking ideas with a positive spin! Whether our candidates win or not, we look forward to seeing the kinds of forces that such an effort will unleash among the disaffected (or otherwise misinformed) IREA member-owners who have yet to find out about IREA Voices.

The next public meeting of IREA Voices will be on Tuesday, February 6, 6 – 9 PM, at the Woodland Park Public Library. Details are available at www.ireavoices.org.
PLEASE JOIN US, and help us “Create a New IREA, One Voice at a Time!”

Senator Richard Lugar’s Letter to The Economist

I never thought my first two entries into this blog would revolve around shout-outs to people of note who are much (MUCH!) more conservative than I am. Then again, it’s a very encouraging sign that a sustainable future is becoming more & more of a “purple” (i.e. as compared to “red” or “blue”) issue.

I’ll admit this item is a bit old, having slipped through the holiday cracks … but I’ve nonetheless found it worth repeating. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) responded to an article in The Economist with an excellent letter about the need to radically reduce our dependence on imported oil.

My only fault is that even Lugar fails to make the distinction between rising oil prices and the need for more renewable energy for electricity. Of course, that also still seems to be the only times the public, markets, et. al. pay more attention to solar, wind, and other renewable technologies.

Regardless: I applaud and thank Senator Lugar for his national-security focus on the need to become more energy independent. Environmentalists have known this all along, and Wall Street has finally realized this in the last year or so. Now we have another respected voice telling us about the geopolitical and even military advantages to embarking on this more sensible course for the future.

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December 7, 2006

Dear Sir,

Your report on investing in clean energy highlights the fact that public and political support for renewable energy may wane when the cost is perceived to be too high (“Tilting at windmills”, November 18th). However, the case for government subsidies and mandates to compensate for failure in energy markets is strong. For instance, the price Americans pay for oil does not cover the risks to the economy from delivery disruptions, price spikes, the vast expenditures required to protect supply routes and infrastructure, or the risk premium for the social tumult that could result from climate change.

Likewise, the foreign-policy priorities of America and her allies are endangered by current global trends. Oil-rich authoritarian regimes use their revenues to stymie opposition and fund anti-Western appeals, energy-poor nations struggle to pay their rising oil and gas bills and terrorists have targeted energy infrastructure. Energy reserves are coming under the tighter control of governments, resulting in supply decisions that are based on politics, not market logic, and this changes geopolitics. Our relationship with Russia has already been redefined: Brazil, China, India and others will follow suit.

Breaking our dependence on oil through the use of renewable energy and efficiency is not something we should do because of “green idealism”. It is a necessity for our economic and social security. Whether the cost of subsidies is “too high” cannot be judged in a vacuum: it must be weighed against the calamitous consequences of doing nothing, and the enormous gains in security and economic and environmental well-being that will result from a sustained long-term effort that the market cannot currently provide. So although it is correct to say that the public will not support wasteful subsidies, it is up to politicians to convince the voters that these expenses are neither a waste nor a luxury, but are essential to avert political, economic and environmental disaster.

Richard Lugar
Chairman
Foreign Relations Committee
United States Senate
Washington, DC

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PvH

James Woolsey: “Gentlemen, Start Your Plug-Ins”

It’s not often when I quote a neo-con so proudly. Yet few people have as much of a clue about true national security as R. James Woolsey.

Woolsey served as CIA Director under President Clinton (1993-1995), and has since become a rather authoritative voice for the Neo-Conservative Movement. While I’m sure Mr. Woolsey wouldn’t lump himself in with Messrs. Bush Jr., Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al., he’s been labelled as such nonetheless. And while I’d never – EVER – want to publicly agree with a NeoCon, I have to give Mr. Woolsey props for his notion that the the Cold War actually was WWIII, and the current War on Terror is now “World War Four.”

Aside from all that NeoCon malarkey, Woolsey has become quite an authority and advocate on America’s dire need for radically increased energy efficiency. Rather than put my own spin on what he has to say about it, I’ve taken the liberty of pasting his Jan. 1, 2007 column in the Wall Street Journal into this entry.

The only bumper sticker on my 2001 Prius says “Support the Terrorists. Keep Driving that SUV.” I’m close to removing that bumper sticker for something a more “positive,” and I can only hope that something James Woolsey says about all this can be condensed down into a bumper-sticker-sized sound bite … ~:-)

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Gentlemen, Start Your Plug-Ins
How does 500 miles a gallon sound to you?

BY R. JAMES WOOLSEY
Monday, January 1, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

Wall Street JournalAn oil and security task force of the Council on Foreign Relations recently opined that “the voices that espouse ‘energy independence’ are doing the nation a disservice by focusing on a goal that is unachievable over the foreseeable future.” Others have also said, essentially, that other nations will control our transportation fuel–get used to it. Yet House Democrats have announced a push for “energy independence in 10 years,” and in November General Motors joined Toyota and perhaps other auto makers in a race to produce plug-in hybrid vehicles, hugely reducing the demand for oil. Who’s right–those who drive toward independence or those who shrug?Bet on major progress toward independence, spurred by market forces and a portfolio of rapidly developing oil-replacing technologies.In recent years a number of alternatives to conventional oil have come to the fore–oil sands, oil shale, coal-to-diesel and coal-to-methanol technologies. But their acceptability to a new Congress, quite possibly the next president, and a public increasingly concerned about global warming will depend on their demonstrating affordable and effective methods of sequestering the carbon they produce or otherwise avoiding carbon emissions.

Ethanol’s appeal rose a few years ago when it became clear that genetically modified biocatalysts could break down the cellulose in biomass and thus enable ethanol’s production from a wide range of plant life. This means that, compared with corn, little fossil fuel is needed during biomass cultivation and land use presents much less of a problem. Indeed two years ago the National Energy Policy Commission (NEPC), making reasonable assumptions about improved vehicle efficiency and biomass yields over the next 20 years, estimated that just 7% of U.S. farmland (the amount now in the Soil Bank) could produce enough biomass to provide half the fuel needed by U.S. passenger vehicles, and that production costs for cellulosic ethanol were headed downward toward around 70 cents per gallon. Further, conversion of only a portion of industrial, municipal and animal wastes–using thermal processes now coming into commercial operation–appears to be able to yield an additional several million barrels a day of diesel or, with some processes, methanol.

But in spite of the technological promise of alternative liquid fuels, skeptics rightly point out that it will take time to build production facilities and learn the practicalities of operating biorefineries and shifting industry from hydrocarbons to carbohydrates. Most of all there is a sense of investor caution, driven by memories of the mid-’80s and the late ’90s when sharp drops in oil prices, driven in part by increased production from Saudi reserves, bankrupted such undertakings as the Synfuels Corporation. Also, industry support for moving away from oil dependence has long been weak outside agribusiness, and consumers see little immediate savings from using alternative liquid fuels.

All this is likely to change decisively, because electricity is about to become a major partner with alternative liquid fuels in replacing oil.

The change is being driven by innovations in the batteries that now power modern electronics. If hybrid gasoline-electric cars are provided with advanced batteries (GM’s announcement said its choice would be lithium-ion) having improved energy and power density–variants of the ones in our computers and cell phones–dozens of vehicle prototypes are now demonstrating that these “plug-in hybrids” can more than double hybrids’ overall (gasoline) mileage. With a plug-in, charging your car overnight from an ordinary 110-volt socket in your garage lets you drive 20 miles or more on the electricity stored in the topped-up battery before the car lapses into its normal hybrid mode. If you forget to charge or exceed 20 miles, no problem, you then just have a regular hybrid with the insurance of liquid fuel in the tank. And during those 20 all-electric miles you will be driving at a cost of between a penny and three cents a mile instead of the current 10-cent-a-mile cost of gasoline.

Utilities are rapidly becoming quite interested in plug-ins because of the substantial benefit to them of being able to sell off-peak power at night. Because off-peak nighttime charging uses unutilized capacity, DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory estimates that adopting plug-ins will not create a need for new base load electricity generation plants until plug-ins constitute over 84% of the country’s 220 million passenger vehicles. Further, those plug-ins that are left connected to an electrical socket after being fully charged (most U.S. cars are parked over 20 hours a day) can substitute for expensive natural gas by providing electricity from their batteries back to the grid: “spinning” reserves to help deal with power outages and regulation of the grid’s voltage and amperage.

Once plug-ins start appearing in showrooms it is not only consumers and utility shareholders who will be smiling. If cheap off-peak electricity supplies a portion of our transportation needs, this will help insulate alternative liquid fuels from OPEC market manipulation designed to cripple oil’s competitors. Indian and Chinese demand and peaking oil production may make it much harder for OPEC today to use any excess production capacity to drive prices down and destroy competitive technology. But as plug-ins come into the fleet low electricity costs will stand as a substantial further barrier to such market manipulation. Since OPEC cannot drive oil prices low enough to undermine our use of off-peak electricity, it is unlikely to embark on a course of radical price cuts at all because such cuts are painful for its oil-exporter members. Plug-ins thus may well give investors enough confidence to back alternative liquid fuels without any need for new taxes on oil or subsidies to protect them.

Environmentalists should join this march with enthusiasm. Replacing hydrocarbons with fuels derived from biomass and waste reduces vehicles’ carbon emissions very substantially. And replacing gasoline with electricity further brightens the environmental picture. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute has shown that, with today’s electricity grid, there would be a national average reduction in carbon emissions by about 60% per vehicle when a plug-in hybrid with 20-mile all-electric range replaces a conventional car.

Subsidizing expensive substitutes for petroleum, ignoring the massive infrastructure costs needed to fuel family cars with hydrogen, searching for a single elegant solution–none of this has worked, nor will it. Instead we should encourage a portfolio of inexpensive fuels, including electricity, that requires very little infrastructure change and let its components work together: A 50 mpg hybrid, once it becomes a plug-in, will likely get solidly over 100 mpg of gasoline (call it “mpgg”); if it is also a flexible fuel vehicle using 85% ethanol, E-85, its mpgg rises to around 500.

The market will likely operate to expand sharply the use of these technologies that are already in pilot plants and prototypes and heavily reduce oil use in the foreseeable future. And given the array of Wahhabis, terrorists and Ahmadinejad-like fanatics who sit atop the Persian Gulf’s two-thirds of the world’s conventional oil, such reduction will not be a disservice to the nation.

Mr. Woolsey, co-chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger, was director of central intelligence from 1993 to 1995.

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I have plenty more to say about that myself (and will probably do so in the future), but it would largely pale in comparison to the airtight case Mr. Woolsey presents here. Bravo, Mr. Woolsey! Here’s hoping the Powers that Be in Washington, Detroit, et. al. come over to your way of thinking sooner rather than later . . . PvH