Chicago Green Fest Addresses Electricity Generation

The first ever Spring Green Festival hosted by Co-op America just wrapped up Sunday, April 22. Judging by the elbow to elbow crowds shuffling by the endless rows of green products and the standing room only attendance at most of the presentations by "green" speakers, I’d say the event was a success. Held at the McCormick Place convention center in downtown Chicago, Chicagoans and a few misplaced green people from across the nation turned out to support the event and learn more about green living.

Of course, unless you are a frog, you can’t be green without some consideration to the source of power that runs your home and your computer and lets you keep up with blogs about green things.

Alisa Gravits, executive director for Co-op America talked about their 12 step program. What is it about 12 steps? Can’t we do anything without 12 steps? Gez. Anyway, Alisa laid out the 12 steps that we all need to take according to her, to save the world. Well, now that you put it that way, if we can save the world in just twelve steps , why not give it a try. Alisa’s presentation on April 21st in Chicago had a few changes to the 12 steps posted on their website, but five out of the twelve steps on both lists deal with electric energy production.

Step 6- Increase Solar Energy capacity by 700 times what it is today. Since solar or photovoltaic electricity production is estimated to be less than .05 % of today’s electricity generation mix, this will be a big step. The biggest step here includes changes in lifestyles. As the old saying about successful marriage goes, "low expectations" will be the key here. Business, homeowners and renters will have to build their awareness and skill at reducing energy use. As one speaker gleefully noted in another session, "its like tax free savings".While the Solar cheerleaders brag about the Navajo Nation’s emergence into the 21st century due to solar energy, the difference between a 1,000 square foot hogan and the rest of the housing market is substantial. It’s a good thing that Co-op America plans to take 40 years to get there. One benefit of attending the Green Festival was that solar vendors did a good job demonstrating that solar energy can make a contribution to house hold energy demands in almost every part of the nation. They displayed many examples of homes in the Midwest that where using net metering and going solar, proving that solar energy is not just a sun belt phenomenon.

Step 7 - Increase wind power by 75 times current output. This is also a big one. Questions about interfacing, scheduling and dispatch-ability, still haunt this option. Is the wind blowing hard enough to make money, or just annoy the locals. What fills in the blanks on the quiet days and how will it be scheduled? The utility industry rightfully worries that winds reputation for functioning at a 25% reliability factor does not meet the industry standards for reliability that are now enforced by FERC. Will broad adoption of wind energy even out these load supply problems? Only time will tell, but for now, utilities will still feel that they must meet demand with base load generation that is in the 85 to 95 percent reliability range. So far wind can’t do that. This means that customers maybe paying for duplicate facilities every time new wind generation facilities come on line.

Steps 8 and 9 - Phase out coal fired power plants altogether and Replace 1,400 coal plants with natural gas fired plants. Alisa implied that this option could be done by converting existing plants to natural gas fired facilities. Aside from the engineering issues, I thought we were running out of natural gas. Natural gas price increases have nearly doubled in the last five years and increases are still predicted for the future. During her presentation Alisa was very emphatic about the nation being able to do this for as little as "an extra 1 cent increase" at the retail level. She said we must resist the "scare tactics" and "foot stomping" from the utility industry. She may be right, but expect some foot stomping anyway. Most utilities are predicting annual rate increases in the 4 to 10 percent range all across the nation. A four to ten percent increase on 8 cents/kWh means rates will rise $0.0032 to $0.004. While this sounds easy enough to take, remember that doing this every year for the next ten years means that your rates will be three point two to four cents more per kWh. This sounds like a small price to pay to save the world, yet the electric utility industry will still complain. Why? Because they really believe that all the customer wants is the cheapest electricity possible. And, for most of the nation they will be right, unless we can all change our attitudes about the cost of electricity.

Step 10 - Increase Coal plant Efficiency from 32% to 60 %- Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC)generation maybe able to do just that. Yet the utility industry still worries that this is an unproven technology. Today, they are right. Despite the hype, only three IGCC plants are providing commercial production today. While the environmental advocates decry the utility foot dragging on this issue, the fact is that very few of us drive experimental automobiles and even fewer fly experimental aircraft. There is of course a logical reason for this that has not been lost on utility executives and investors across the nation.

All in all I had a great time at the first Annual Chicago Green Festival and I hope they do it again. Its nice being surrounded by like minded people expressing support for causes that are important to the long term health of the earth and humankind. If my late father in law had witnessed this gathering, he would have said, "Jesus, do all these people vote?". Sadly, I would guess not.