ACORE Urges Speedy Action, Unity in Commercializing Renewable Energies in U.S.

WASHINGTON, DC - A key renewable energy organization is calling on American policymakers to come up with strategies that recognize diversity and variability in resources and other factors across the land but that still unite the nation in the common drive towards wide commercial use of renewables.

Addressing the opening session of the two-day “Renewable Energy in America: The Call for Phase II,” conference here last month, Michael Eckhart, president of the 166-member American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE), said “we have a set of natural resources that occur unevenly across our country - indeed, no two locations have the same set of resources, economics, culture and politics.”

“I suggest a national strategy that expressly acknowledges the diversity we are dealing with, a national strategy that supports local differences as the norm and seeks to get maximum value for everyone, hence nationally,” Eckhart told the close to 400 participants in the Dec. 6-7 sessions on Capitol Hill here.

"The solution is a broad framework called Phase II in which many kinds of policies and programs can co-exist, all pulling in the same direction - focusing on putting renewable energy technology to use,” he added.

Beginning with the oil embargo of 1973, ACORE is defining the last 30 years as Phase I that saw the creation of the U.S. Energy Department as well as the National Renewables Energy Laboratory (NREL), a flurry of more than a dozen pieces of energy and tax legislation, and the expenditure of close to $100 billion in energy research, development and demonstration - about half of it for nuclear power, about one quarter for fossil fuels, and only $14.2 billion for renewables, plus another $11.1 billion for energy efficiency.

While the group believes the goal of creating an initial inventory of new technology options - from solar hot water to solar photovoltaic, large wind turbine generators, hot dry rock and other geothermal technologies, biomass and waste-fired plant boilers, biofuels - has been successfully completed, there is still “much more” technology to be developed, ACORE says in its paper summarizing its policy recommendations.

Interestingly, the paper doesn’t mention hydrogen at all, an energy carrier - admittedly not a primary source - which is, after all, a quintessentially renewable form of energy, but some of the speakers mentioned hydrogen and its prospects in their presentations.

One of ACORE’s members is Technology Transition Corp., Washington, DC, parent and home to the National Hydrogen Association. Other ACORE members working in hydrogen include the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Sacramento Public Utility District (SMUD), Sandia National Laboratories and the U.S. Energy Department.

In the next stage, Phase II, ACORE wants rd&d budgets to double or triple and Phase II must “focus on getting a return to the taxpayers for their 30-year investment.” This means setting new goals and objectives, leadership might be shared with other organizations and agencies, and everybody “must be willing to embrace change and new proposals,” according to the document.

This should include lessons from “state and local governments that have begun Phase II-like policies, and....from countries like Germany and Japan, where governments adopted a Phase II-like approach several years ago.”

The German experience was brought home in a keynote speech by Hermann Scheer, a Social-Democratic member of the German parliament (Bundestag), founder of EUROSOLAR, chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy, and named as one of 50 TIME Magazine’s “Heroes of the Green Century” a couple of years ago.

Among Scheer’s key recommendations on how to move to more renewables:

“Don’t leave the job only to the conventional energy system” because its members “are prisoners of their own structures.”

And, “don’t leave the job only to the market. A fair market requires equal market conditions, which do not exist because of trillions in subsidies which were - and still are - spent for nuclear and fossil energies, directly and indirectly.”

Also, “Don’t wait for consensus among all. The replacement of conventional energy systems with Renewables is a race against time. In a consensus-minded activity, the slowest move decides the speed of all.”

Scheer said it is important to look at different strategies and “choose the really successful concepts.” He said he had profound doubts about the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) strategy and even about emission trading concepts:

"Emission trading concepts do not take into account the other motivations for Renewables, like the creation of new jobs, saving water, new promotion of agricultural and energy security. They reduce these broad motivations into only one. It could never be the only decision-making criterion.”

Germany’s current renewable energy legislation for the power industry became very successful, despite fierce opposition by the utilities via media and political campaigns, both in terms of speed and quantity of energy produced because its sponsors decided against the RPS strategy, Scheer said. Its principal features are guaranteed access to the grid for all renewable energy producers, and a legally guaranteed feed-in minimum price per kilowatt hour, different for the various renewable energy options.

Within few years, Germany built 17,000 MW new renewable energy capacities, not counting large hydro, according to Scheer. “The new annual installation rate is now 3,000 MW,” he added, meaning that it substitutes 1.5% of conventional power per year. Extrapolating this growth rate into the future, it would correspond to 47,000 MW by 2015, 77,000 MW by 2025, 107,000 MW by 2035, and 137,000 MW by 2045.

All this in a country with a total of 65,000 MW in conventional energy today, according to Scheer.

His recommendation: “try to take the best examples for America, and try to do it better.”

Remarks and comments by some other speakers:

• Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, Washington, DC announced that 62 MW of additional renewable energy have been contracted for by the six partners in the Green Power Group, bringing the total to 174 MW over three years, including some hydrogen. The group’s members are Alcoa Inc., Cargill Dow LLC, Delphi Corporation, The Dow Chemical Company, DuPont, FedEx, Kinko’s, General Motors, IBM, Interface Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Pitney Bowes, and Staples.
• “Twelve per cent of California’s energy is renewable, and it’s 30 per cent if you count hydro,” said John Geesman, commissioner with the California Energy Commission. Gov. Schwarzenegger wants to increase this to 33%: “Bodybuilders have this penchant for trying to move immovable objects,” quipped Geesman, adding 87% of Californians think the state should double is reliance on renewables.
• Lewis Milford, executive director of the Clean Energy States Alliance, made the point that the states now, rather than the Federal government, are the leading players in moving renewables forward. “It’s the preferred engine for commercial growth, and it’s also the historical role, not an aberration. It’s time we acknowledge that,” Milford said.
• Author and Rocky Mountain Institute CEO Amory Lovins, said the government can help build “vibrant 21st century industries” in several ways, including sharing r&d risks. The military, for example, should finance development of advanced materials and DARPA “can drive the hydrogen economy.” In his new report, “Winning the Oil Endgame,” Lovins argues that a roadmap involving several strategies - revenue - and size-neutral “feebates,” a scrap-and-replace program, implementing smart government procurement, among them - would set the stage by 2025 for the checkmate move in the Oil Endgame, “the optional but advantageous transition to a hydrogen economy.” Contact: ACORE, Michael Eckhart, 202/429-2030; www.acore.org.