Statewide LG EE Best Practices: Weekly Update

1.    UCLA Launches the LA Energy Atlas
The Atlas features an interactive map that displays energy consumption across LA County by COG, City, and Neighborhood, strategies for energy conservation strategies and a range of state and local energy efficiency policies, incentives, and goals, and more!

2.    DOE and White House Office of Science and Technology Released Second Quadrennial Technology Review
The Review examines the most promising research, development, demonstration and deployment opportunities across energy technologies that can affect the future of energy efficiency. The review presents 4 trends: convergence (all sectors of economy becoming increasingly interdependent); diversification (state and local energy planning shifting energy sectors to diversified, distributed resources); confluence (computing power and simulation ushering a new era of "systems by design"); and efficiency everywhere (energy efficiency as a critical element in achieving energy security, cost, and environmental goals).

3.    Job Opportunity: Statewide Local Government Energy Efficiency Best Practices Coordinator
The Coordinator facilitates a statewide focus both in gathering exemplary policies and practices, and tracking progress on a statewide level on government facility and community energy use, retrofits, and strategic plan metrics. Please contact Julia Kim at jkim@lgc.org if you have any questions and we would appreciate your support in spreading this announcement through your networks!

4.    AB 802: Measuring Savings at the Meter
On the Governor's desk ready to sign, AB 802 (Williams) allows utilities to provide incentives to customers who improve their buildings up to the current building code and beyond. It also allows building owners and tenants to determine the most effective efficiency and renewable energy improvements through improved tracking and benchmarking of energy use.

5.    Energy Calendar
If you have any energy-related events you would like added to the calendar, please send details to statewideenergycoordinator@lgc.org.

And that is all for this week! 

Stand Aside: The Rush To Solar Valley Is On!

My office sits in one of the most fertile agriculture regions in the world. I just have to venture a few miles to see crops in every direction. Farmers in Fresno County last year produced almost $6 billion worth of grapes, tomatoes, almonds and other commodities, and employed more than 59,000 people.

It's no wonder that Fresno County and the rest of the Valley is often called the nation's salad bowl.

The same resources - such as ample amounts of flat land and sun - that make the Valley so fertile also are prompting what Lois Henry, a former colleague of mine, described in The Bakersfield Californian as, "The great Central Valley solar rush."

Kern County is home to some 32 solar applications that would encompass 17,000 acres. Likewise, Fresno County is fielding about 30 applications on 10,000 acres that collectively could be worth $5 billion. Kings County also is a solar hot spot.

Everyone acknowledges the emerging potential of the solar industry on the Valley. Farmers in California lead the nation in the use of renewable power, especially solar. It could be another cash crop for growers, could slash their operational costs, bring new life to unproductive farm land, reduce greenhouse gas emissions (electricity contributes about 25 percent of the state's emissions) and help reduce a stubborn double-digit unemployment rate.

But at what price? The Fresno County Farm Bureau opposes solar projects on prime acreage, but solar developers need to be close to the power grid. In this story, Fresno Bee reporter Kurtis Alexander quoted Steve Geil, president of the Economic Development Corporation in Fresno County: "There's a window here of opportunity. The companies are saying, 'Are you going to welcome us or are we going to find obstacle after obstacle after obstacle?' "

Alexander has devoted many inches of copy to the subject lately, including this story where Fresno County supervisors approved the cancellation of a Williamson Act conservation contract to permit a 27-megawatt, 318-acre solar project near San Joaquin, a tiny community on the county's west side with a 35 percent jobless rate. The panel said the land lacked water and thus was suitable for solar development.

But local governments are proceeding cautiously while developing strategies. Fresno County formed a group to study how much and where land should be devoted to solar. Kern County, according to Henry, has approved 1,444 megawatts from five projects, but also is treading tenderly.

Even projects proposed for marginal land have met opposition at times. A proposed 400 megawatt, 5,000 acre solar photovoltaic facility on land with poor water access in the Panoche Valley in San Benito County drew strong opposition from local ranchers and farmers - even though the local farm bureau supported the use of solar, according to a new study by UCLA and UC, Berkeley.

The opponents expressed concern about the project’s potential impact on their
agricultural land. Environmentalists said it endangered the San Joaquin kit fox and giant kangaroo, and the Audubon Society said it could hurt one of the world's best birding sites.

The joint UCLA/UC Berkeley report could help reach that delicate balance between agriculture and solar interests. It's called "Harvesting Clean Energy: How California Can Deploy Large-Scale Renewable Energy Projects On Appropriate Farmland."

Here's a link.

Meeting California's 33 percent renewables goal will require a mixture of large-scale and centralized solar projects, such as those on rooftops and along roads. The study reveals that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has received requests to build approximately 34
large solar thermal power plants, totaling roughly 24,000 megawatts, on more than
300,000 acres.

By December 2010, the California Energy Commission approved
10 solar-thermal projects - seven of them on BLM land - totaling 4,192 megawatts of generating capacity. In addition, developers proposed 8,000 megawatts of renewable energy projects using wind and photovoltaic technologies.

In 2010, California local governments permitted 1,097 megawatts of non-thermal renewable energy capacity on private land. Kern and Los Angeles Counties approved an 800 megawatt wind project, a 230 megawatt photovoltaic project, and a 10 megawatt photovoltaic project.

Solano County permitted a 37-megawatt wind project, Kings County approved a 20 megawatt photovoltaic project and, in March, Kern County permitted a 6,047-acre Maricopa Sun solar project south of Bakersfield. The Maricopa installation alone will produce an estimated 700 megawatts of clean power.

However, the authors of the UCLA/UC Berkeley report noted that farmland is disappearing at the rate of one square mile every four days, and that potential for conflict arises even though the amount required for clean energy is relatively modest.

Only about 1.3 percent of the state's 30 million acres of farm and other suitable private and public land would be displaced. An additional 3.7 percent of the land would be required for less disruptive energy sources, such as wind turbines and dual-use of solar with farms and other types of localized generation.

However, energy transmission is a bug-a-boo; the report quoted the California Public Utility Commission's estimated requirement of seven new transmission lines needed to accommodate the 33 percent renewables mandate by 2020.

The report recommends upgrading the transmission infrastructure to meet the clean-energy power needs from remote and impaired agriculture sites. Other recommendations include developing energy policies for agriculture land and streamlining the permitting process for projects on impaired and unproductive farmland.

With a little effort and cooperation, the San Joaquin Valley and the rest of California could become a leader in clean energy.

Cool new fuel: Scientist leads innovation that could spur biofuel revolution

James Liao may be one of the most important people in the nation's energy sector.

And while his name may be unfamiliar to just about everybody not intimately involved with biofuel innovation, that could quickly change.

He leads a team that has developed a microbe capable of turning cellulosic material, or grassy and woody matter, into isobutanol, a fuel with huge potential. Just how huge, we'll likely find out in coming months. But suffice to say it's important, especially with gas prices pushing $4 per gallon.

This fuel is a far bigger deal than ethanol, which is made in this country from corn. Liao's team's feat is the first time isobutanol has been coaxed directly from cellulose.

"Unlike ethanol, isobutanol can be blended at any ratio with gasoline," Liao said in a statement from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "Plus, it may be possible to use isobutanol directly in current engines without modification."

The last sentence is a big one. It certainly captured my attention.

Liao's statement implies that should this process reach commercialization at a cost consumers will accept, the United States has a shot at providing an alternative fuel at a reasonable price to compete with foreign oil. Don't expect panacea, or cure-all, but an alternative fuel that could substitute for refined petroleum would no doubt exert economic pressure on retail fuel prices.

The conflict in Libya between Gadhafi and separatist forces shut off the oil production spigot in that country and illustrates what eliminating a small percentage of the world's crude can mean to prices. At this writing, the price remained above $100 per barrel, according to oil-price.net, but showed a decline. And the one year forecast dropped by about $10.

Injecting an alternative source, cellulosic isobutanol for instance, likewise could push prices lower -- perhaps far lower.

But, as energy seer Paul Johnson just told me, it's hard to tell initially future junk bonds from the next Microsoft. And that may be the case here. But I hope not.

Paul is executive director of the nonprofit I work for, the San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Organization and just returned to Seattle after attending REXPO, the recycling exposition in Stockton, Calif. put on by Frank Ferral with the Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce.

Paul said clean energy opportunities abounded at the event and noted "very positive energies given the fact of the economic gloom and doom."

Liao wasn't at REXPO, but he is one of clean energy's bright spots. He serves as chancellor's professor and vice chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California Los Angeles Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.

The isobutanol work was conducted at the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center, led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The team's findings were published online in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu called the advance "yet another sign of the rapid progress we are making in developing the next generation of biofuels that can help reduce our oil dependence."

Chu said the technology promises the potential of a new industry that can convert wheat and rice straw, corn stover, lumber wastes and specialty plants into fuel.

DOE has given extra attention to the biomass sector of late, offering a series of webinars on the subject that even included algae, another of my cool fuel picks. The agency is coordinating peer review meetings of advancements on various processes that will continue through June 2011. DOE plans to use the information as it considers future funding decisions.

Expect Liao to continue making news in the cellulose sector. Last year, he was awarded the 2010 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The award, according to a story for the UCLA Engineering Department by Wileen Wong Kromhout, promotes research on and development of less-hazardous alternative technologies that reduce or eliminate waste.

In the story, Liao sounds committed to providing an alternative to fossil fuels. "It is essential to develop a renewable source to replace petroleum as the major chemical and energy source," he says.

I know a bunch of guys on my street in Clovis, Calif. who would maybe turn their noses up at the concept of plant fuel. But if it enables them to keep their mondo lift Chevy trucks on the road, they'd be big supporters.

UCLA Report: Environment, Energy Focus Can Spur Economic Recovery

Budget cuts and slashing payrolls dominate the headlines but officials at UCLA School of Law are focusing on what they say is Gov. Jerry Brown's "tremendous opportunity" to build on California's environmental infrastructure.

"Environmental protection and fiscal prudence can be synergistic goals," says a just released report. "California's historic leadership in environmental protection has brought with it enormous benefits to our economy and public health. Only by continuing will the state continue to reap these benefits."

The report, jointly published by the Evan Frankel Environmental Law & Policy Program and Emmett Center on Climate Change and The Environment, is billed as an environmental blueprint for the governor. It urges Brown to strengthen programs in renewable energy and energy efficiency, environmental modeling, energy storage and livable communities.

The election of Brown, who has a strong green jobs platform, and the rejection of Prop. 23 in the November election, send a clear signal that Californians favor a future of clean energy, the authors said. Thus, California can lead the way in using clean energy to stimulate the economy and to improve public health.

The 22-page report has a host of recommendations. Here are just a few:

• Establish an independent agency or council to compile, model and predict environmental data. That would allow for assessment of programs and promote efficient use of funding;


• Streamline the environmental review process;


• Support the Air Resources Board's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions;


• Promote and expand renewable energy options;


• Support renewable power payment programs, also known as feed-in tariffs;


• Keep supporting Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs, which use property tax assessments to fund energy-efficiency projects;


• Develop energy-storage projects;


• Recognize that energy efficiency is the "free lunch" of the energy world, and encourage those types of programs;


• Improve and upgrade energy-transmission systems.

If Brown focuses on Green, the rapidly growing San Joaquin Valley is perfectly positioned to benefit from and to play a key role in the development of clean-energy programs.

The Valley has ample solar, biofuel, biomass, wind and other resources; a large supply of flat vacant land accessible to transmission lines; the proximity of universities such as UCs Davis and Merced, Fresno State, Cal Poly and Cal State, Stanislaus; and high power bills and low incomes that would directly benefit from energy-conservation programs.

Photo by Shastabe.com