Utility Executives think environmentalists are a pain in the ass for many reasons, but the main reason is because the language that environmentalists use to talk about utilities and utility executives hurts their feelings. Oh you won’t get them to admit it. Utility executives often have engineering or accounting backgrounds and these professions are not exactly known for their warm and fuzzy emotional types. But, still, environmentalists create immediate walls of distrust and antagonism just by choosing annoying words to frame their points of view.
Think of your own profession or job. Would you like it if people referred to what you were doing with words like “toxic”, “destruction”, “degradation”, “waste”, “monopoly”, “cancer” or my favorite derogatory word “spew”. What have you been spewing today? Did you spew your product on anyone?
How about degradation? Have you degraded anything today?
While most businesses secretly wish they were monopolies, no one likes to be accused of being one. It just isn’t the American way.
So, imagine recent headlines referring to the electric utility industry. Oh, I know, I am going to exaggerate a little for effect, but still you can imagine a headline like this in your local newspaper.
“Electric Monopoly Spews Toxic Destruction Degrading Air quality linked to Cancer”.
It’s like the old conundrum “when did you stop beating your wife”? Environmentalists lead with a verbal left hook. And, it seems like the only reason they would do that is to get headlines or make someone angry. If you had a neighbor with a barking dog or a messy yard, you wouldn’t storm over there demanding and accusing, unless you just like fist fighting. You’d get to know them first and find out if there were extenuating reasons for their behavior. Chances are there is more to the story. You know that. And the Electric Utility industry is in the same spot, there is more to the story. In fact, all of us that love our computers, televisions, cold beer, toast, light after dark, and inexpensive consumer goods, are all – the rest of the story.
Today we are stuck in what peace activist Adam Kahane calls “debating”. We have each side shouting their view of the facts hoping to drown out the other’s argument. One side says, “We can power the economy with a combination of wind, solar and conservation”. The other side shouts back, “No we cannot, the load growth is too large, we must use fossil fuels and expand nuclear power”.
What can we do about all of this? We can and must do two things. Stop wasting electricity and stop wasting words about solving environmental problems. I did not say stop using electricity (we can’t). Nor did I say stop having conversations about environmental problems. I said stop wasting energy and stop wasting words.
Study the work of Adam Kahane and learn how to talk to each other about difficult issues. If Adam can do it with people that have been killing each other for decades, we can do it with the inflammatory dialogue of the environment and electricity generation debate. The so called choice between the economy and the environment is a false choice. The environment is the economy (and I am tempted to violate my own beliefs and add “stupid”, but I won’t).
We must develop a generative dialogue to realize that we all agree that the earth is our only home. We must make collective decisions about how and what we spew. We should decide together when, where and why we degrade. We must face and answer the question about what we do about waste. In the long run we must reduce even the distant potential to harm our health and the health of our children through toxins, climate change and reduced air quality. Our very lives depend on it. It will not serve the future well to stay in divisive arguments. We must come together and agree on mutually understood facts. We must take decisive steps to make this world the kind of earth on which we can all live healthy and productive lives for all eternity. We cannot keep borrowing the future from our children and hope new technology bails us out. We cannot keep ignoring the elephant in the living room without catastrophic impacts to our homes. We cannot keep calling each other names and expect to ever have the kind of world that we know in our hearts is possible.
Please, let’s all do something today to take action on those two things that we can do. Stop wasting energy and stop wasting words. We could call it Vision Power Generation. Make it all count.
Next time in the interests of fair play, I‘ll explain why environmentalists think Utility Executives are a pain in the ass.
©Mark Richard Daily, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Why Utility Executives Hate Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards
Did you ever wonder why Renewable Energy provides less than ten percent of this nation’s electric energy? What the heck is an RPS and why should you take action to support them? And, finally if RPS’s are such a good idea, why do many utility executives hate them?
Defining Renewable Portfolio Standards
Renewable Portfolio Standards are not exactly on everyone’s mind these days. A Google search of RPS is just as likely to turn up sites about Rock – Paper – Scissors. Some insist that RPS is a game, but for states moving ahead with renewable energy industries, Renewable Portfolio Standards, sometimes called Renewable Electricity Standards, can be just the extra push that renewables need to become a big player in the electric energy generation game.
“A renewable portfolio standard is a state policy that requires electricity providers to obtain a minimum percentage of their power from renewable energy resources by a certain date. Currently there are 24 states plus the District of Columbia that have RPS policies in place. Together these states account for more than half of the electricity sales in the United States.
Four other states, Illinois, Missouri, Virginia, and Vermont, have nonbinding goals for adoption of renewable energy instead of an RPS.
Three states, Missouri, Virginia, and Vermont, have set voluntary goals for adopting renewable energy instead of portfolio standards with binding targets.”
Source: Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy
Today renewable energy makes up less than 10% of the generation mix anywhere in the nation. And, 8% of that is from conventional large hydroelectric dam facilities. Wind generation even with its recent strong growth amounts to less than 1% of the generation mix and solar comes in at 0.04% of the generation resource in 2005.
Non-renewable resources mostly fossil fuel related, still account for 89.9% of the electricity generated in the USA.
Utility Executives Hate Renewable Portfolio Standards
So, why do some utility executives appose Renewable Portfolio Standards? It’s simple. No one likes it when someone else tells them what to do, especially when that someone else is outside the industry and expertise of that industry. Utility executives feel that the public is ill-informed about the true costs of electric energy generation. Utility executives with electrical engineering background especially feel that the public has arrived at their “pro-renewable” stance based on incomplete or faulty information. “If you knew what I know….,” you can hear them saying.
Frankly, I think that these executives are right. You don’t have to review too many of my previous blogs to find examples of misguided renewable cheerleaders getting carried away with a few acts or ignoring the facts all together. One mission of this blog is to correct that lack of information. The Union of Concerned Scientists must feel the same way because their FAQ does a pretty nice job of answering those happy hour questions about renewable energy.
Despite gains made in renewable energy production and in spite of the fact that the “fuel” for wind and solar energy is free, the fact still remains that all renewable energy resources cost more to get into the grid than non-renewable energy.
The Bottom Line for Renewable Energy
So, here is the real reason utility executives hate RPS. It raises rates and these guys have never ever gotten one phone call from any of their consumers yelling at them for having rates that were too low. Oh no my friends. I know from personal experience being the main person fielding angry customer complaints that I never, ever in fifteen years of dealing with angry customers – had a customer angry with me because rates were too low; quite the opposite in fact. And, since utility executives are trying to deliver electricity at the best rates possible, no one wants to be forced into RPS regulations mandating higher rates. Or, worse yet mandating rate freezes while requiring RPS targets, similar to what the retail deregulation experience did in many states.
A recent study by American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy of the financial impacts of RPS adoption shows that over all energy costs would go down but the cost savings do not happen right away and this study shows that electricity rates by themselves go up as a result of RPS implementation.
Renewable Energy Management
Renewable Energy tends to be a small scale disbursed generation resource. This requires more coordination for dispatching electricity to the load or demand centers that need the juice. Having a host of renewable energy resource generators to coordinate instead of one huge coal fired power plant gives utility executives nightmares. While there can be positive aspects to a more widely distributed generation resource, there is also the real possibility that making the system more complicated will lead to more system failures, brown-outs and black outs from mistakes made in the dispatch process.
What Can You Do to help Push Renewable Energy Electricity Generation and RPS forward?
So, how do we get around this opposition and get state legislators to adopt renewable portfolio standards?
There are three things that you must do to save the world.
First, know what you are talking about. Get the facts. Find out what alternate energy can really do. Parroting phrases like, “the State of Nevada has enough solar energy to power the entire US economy” is counter-productive. This may be a true statement, but unless you support extensive transmission line construction, no one cares what happens in Nevada.
Second, become a vocal, but polite voice advocating renewable energy development through the adoption of Renewable Energy or Renewable Electricity Portfolio Standards. Write to state and national elected officials and your utility executives and tell them that you support higher rates as long as those increases go toward the addition of renewable energy resources in their generation portfolios.
Finally the absolute most important thing that you can do to help renewable energy become a bigger percentage of the electricity generation mix is stop using electricity stupidly. This is more than just turning the lights off. Residential lighting in the US accounts for only about five percent of the entire electric energy demand. So even if you use headlamps all the time you haven’t done much to reduce energy use. Energy conservation means doing the same work smarter, by buying the most energy efficient appliances; hunting down and eliminating phantom electric loads in your house; making sure your home has the best insulation levels and high quality windows possible. Utility executives are not generating electricity because it’s a lot of fun. They are generating electricity because you are asking for it. Read some previous postings to find out more about energy conservation.
My next Blog will explain why utility executives think environmentalists are a pain in the ass.
©Mark Richard Daily
Defining Renewable Portfolio Standards
Renewable Portfolio Standards are not exactly on everyone’s mind these days. A Google search of RPS is just as likely to turn up sites about Rock – Paper – Scissors. Some insist that RPS is a game, but for states moving ahead with renewable energy industries, Renewable Portfolio Standards, sometimes called Renewable Electricity Standards, can be just the extra push that renewables need to become a big player in the electric energy generation game.
“A renewable portfolio standard is a state policy that requires electricity providers to obtain a minimum percentage of their power from renewable energy resources by a certain date. Currently there are 24 states plus the District of Columbia that have RPS policies in place. Together these states account for more than half of the electricity sales in the United States.
Four other states, Illinois, Missouri, Virginia, and Vermont, have nonbinding goals for adoption of renewable energy instead of an RPS.
Three states, Missouri, Virginia, and Vermont, have set voluntary goals for adopting renewable energy instead of portfolio standards with binding targets.”
Source: Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy
Today renewable energy makes up less than 10% of the generation mix anywhere in the nation. And, 8% of that is from conventional large hydroelectric dam facilities. Wind generation even with its recent strong growth amounts to less than 1% of the generation mix and solar comes in at 0.04% of the generation resource in 2005.
Non-renewable resources mostly fossil fuel related, still account for 89.9% of the electricity generated in the USA.
Utility Executives Hate Renewable Portfolio Standards
So, why do some utility executives appose Renewable Portfolio Standards? It’s simple. No one likes it when someone else tells them what to do, especially when that someone else is outside the industry and expertise of that industry. Utility executives feel that the public is ill-informed about the true costs of electric energy generation. Utility executives with electrical engineering background especially feel that the public has arrived at their “pro-renewable” stance based on incomplete or faulty information. “If you knew what I know….,” you can hear them saying.
Frankly, I think that these executives are right. You don’t have to review too many of my previous blogs to find examples of misguided renewable cheerleaders getting carried away with a few acts or ignoring the facts all together. One mission of this blog is to correct that lack of information. The Union of Concerned Scientists must feel the same way because their FAQ does a pretty nice job of answering those happy hour questions about renewable energy.
Despite gains made in renewable energy production and in spite of the fact that the “fuel” for wind and solar energy is free, the fact still remains that all renewable energy resources cost more to get into the grid than non-renewable energy.
The Bottom Line for Renewable Energy
So, here is the real reason utility executives hate RPS. It raises rates and these guys have never ever gotten one phone call from any of their consumers yelling at them for having rates that were too low. Oh no my friends. I know from personal experience being the main person fielding angry customer complaints that I never, ever in fifteen years of dealing with angry customers – had a customer angry with me because rates were too low; quite the opposite in fact. And, since utility executives are trying to deliver electricity at the best rates possible, no one wants to be forced into RPS regulations mandating higher rates. Or, worse yet mandating rate freezes while requiring RPS targets, similar to what the retail deregulation experience did in many states.
A recent study by American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy of the financial impacts of RPS adoption shows that over all energy costs would go down but the cost savings do not happen right away and this study shows that electricity rates by themselves go up as a result of RPS implementation.
Renewable Energy Management
Renewable Energy tends to be a small scale disbursed generation resource. This requires more coordination for dispatching electricity to the load or demand centers that need the juice. Having a host of renewable energy resource generators to coordinate instead of one huge coal fired power plant gives utility executives nightmares. While there can be positive aspects to a more widely distributed generation resource, there is also the real possibility that making the system more complicated will lead to more system failures, brown-outs and black outs from mistakes made in the dispatch process.
What Can You Do to help Push Renewable Energy Electricity Generation and RPS forward?
So, how do we get around this opposition and get state legislators to adopt renewable portfolio standards?
There are three things that you must do to save the world.
First, know what you are talking about. Get the facts. Find out what alternate energy can really do. Parroting phrases like, “the State of Nevada has enough solar energy to power the entire US economy” is counter-productive. This may be a true statement, but unless you support extensive transmission line construction, no one cares what happens in Nevada.
Second, become a vocal, but polite voice advocating renewable energy development through the adoption of Renewable Energy or Renewable Electricity Portfolio Standards. Write to state and national elected officials and your utility executives and tell them that you support higher rates as long as those increases go toward the addition of renewable energy resources in their generation portfolios.
Finally the absolute most important thing that you can do to help renewable energy become a bigger percentage of the electricity generation mix is stop using electricity stupidly. This is more than just turning the lights off. Residential lighting in the US accounts for only about five percent of the entire electric energy demand. So even if you use headlamps all the time you haven’t done much to reduce energy use. Energy conservation means doing the same work smarter, by buying the most energy efficient appliances; hunting down and eliminating phantom electric loads in your house; making sure your home has the best insulation levels and high quality windows possible. Utility executives are not generating electricity because it’s a lot of fun. They are generating electricity because you are asking for it. Read some previous postings to find out more about energy conservation.
My next Blog will explain why utility executives think environmentalists are a pain in the ass.
©Mark Richard Daily
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