Energy and Technical Services

Welcome
Welcome to another two weekly review of energy and environmental events and developments from both here in New Zealand and on an international basis. As always we hope you find our collection of stories to be of interest in what continues to be a highly fluid market. This week, the CMO (cubic mile of oil) is compared against a number of renewable energy technologies. Oil is what it is because of the high energy intensity – when I was young, we didn’t visit my uncle the coal merchant to fill the tank in the car, it was my uncle the Mobil man… Schools in Britain are being given the benchmark – through a new highly innovative energy and environmentally sensible building. Sounds like they see a future in education. If you’ve been wondering about food supply lately, it may be worth thinking of the bees. Apparently they are affected by power lines and high-frequency cellular telephone transmission. Maybe there could be a market opportunity for nano-bees, little robots that can fly around and spread pollen? Meanwhile, rural sector suppliers and commodity trading companies are winning through the lift in grain value, whilst United States farmers shudder at the thought of removing the 53c/gallon tax subsidy on ethanol. Recycling is big in Europe, and it turns out, is big in San Francisco – where 70% of waste (per tonnage) is diverted away from landfill to alternative end uses. What’s good for the Germans, it seems is good for the States. Meanwhile, the ozone layer is tied in with global warming, or so the story goes. Apparently the ozone hole above Antarctica has helped keep the region cool. Sounds like any response to global warming or climate change needs to be carefully managed with consideration given to possible side-effects. Whilst we consider management of climate change response, a pine beetle (a lot of pine beetles) has eaten its way through millions of trees, with forests in British Columbia (Canada) expected to become carbon source, rather than sink – reminds me of that movie “Starship Troopers” – about big bugs getting back at the humans for invading their space – maybe this is nature’s way of letting us know where our climate change actions are in the food chain… Finally, the consumer society that we so relish today is considered with regard to long-term sustainability, with embedded emissions, pension fund returns, mortgage rates and unemployment considered as part of the equation. Surely somewhere a balance may be achieved where we can have our toys, a job, a life and a future without constraining future generations. Surely?

Can renewable energy make a dent in fossil fuels?

Posted by Michael Kanellos

4.2 billion.

That's how many rooftops you'd have to cover with solar panels to displace a cubic mile of oil (CMO), a measure of energy consumption, according to Ripudaman Malhotra, who oversees research on fossil fuels at SRI International. The electricity captured in those hypothetical solar panels in a year (2.1 kilowatts each) would roughly equal the energy in a CMO. The world consumes a little over 1 CMO of oil a year right now and about 3 CMOs of energy from all sources.

Put another way, we'd need to equip 250,000 roofs a day with solar panels for the next 50 years to have enough photovoltaic infrastructure to provide the world with a CMO's worth of solar-generated electricity for a year. We're nowhere close to that pace.

But don't blame the solar industry. You'd also have to erect a 900-megawatt nuclear power plant every week for 50 years to get enough plants (2,500) to produce the same energy in a year to equal a CMO. Wind power? You need 3 million for a CMO, or 1,200 a week planted in the ground over the next 50 years. Demand for power also continues to escalate with economic development in the emerging world.

"In 30 years we will need six CMOs, so where are we going to get that?" Malhotra said. "I'm trying to communicate the scale of the problem."

The CMO is a figure you might begin to hear more as utilities and governments map out their renewable energy strategies. SRI's Hew Crane came up with the term as a way to normalize all the different measurements (kilowatt-hours, BTUs, million barrels of oil equivalents, cubic feet of gas, etc.) in the energy business.

It's also a big enough measure to suit the global energy market without saddling everyone with a train of zeros. Many of these stats and a far lengthier discussion of the issue will be found in a book coming from Oxford University Press by Crane, Malhotra, and Ed Kinderman called A Cubic Meter of Oil.

And judging by some of the stats Malhotra gave me, the book will alarm policy makers, environmentalists, and pretty much anyone else interested in weaning ourselves from fossil fuels. (To be honest, one of the truly great things about this job is getting the bejeezus scared out of you on a regular basis. One day, China is plunging into a water crisis. The next day, doctors report seeing malaria spreading to new regions because of climate change.)

One of the more compelling aspects of Malhotra's research is how it highlights the amount of energy, particularly in the form of fossil fuels, that the world consumes. Oil provided about one-third of worldwide energy (1.06 CMO) in 2006 followed by coal (0.81) and natural gas (0.61). Together, the three fossil fuels accounted for 2.48 CMOs of the 3 CMOs consumed that year.

The figures drop quickly after that. The fourth largest source of energy is biomass, mostly in the form of burning wood. Biomass, however, only provide 0.19 CMOs, while hydroelectric and nuclear provided, respectively, 0.17 and .015 CMOs.

Wind and solar accounted for less than 0.005 CMOs.

(Credit: SRI International)

The minuscule size of renewables, unfortunately, also means progress will come slowly. Some more comparisons: A large hydroelectric dam can generate about 18 gigawatts of power a year. To get an annual CMO from new hydroelectric dams, you'd need to build the equivalent of 200 Three Gorges Dams. There aren't that many available rivers in the world left to dam up. Solar thermal? 7,700 plants, or 150 a year for 50 years, required for an annual CMO. One plant went up last year, and it was the first in over 15 years. In his calculations, Malhotra takes into account the fact that solar, wind, hydroelectric, and even nuclear plants don't operate at optimal conditions 24-7; in other words, he has baked in real-world assumptions.

If consumers worldwide could replace 1 billion incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents, it would save only 0.01 CMOs in a year.

"What is truly humbling is that we aren't going to make any impact on CO2 emission levels for the next 20 to 30 years," Malhotra said. Much of the growth for energy demand will come from emerging markets. Still, North Americans will continue to consume far more energy per person than people in China and India, according to SRI's figures.

Ultimately, the world will likely have to continue to burn fossil fuels and buy time with nuclear power and carbon capture technology, particularly capture technology that can pre-treat and clean fossil fuels before they get burned. GreatPoint Energy, GreenFuel Technologies, and others are looking at capture technology, but the whole field is in the embryonic state.

If there's a bright spot here, it's that the world has a lot of fossil fuel, he claimed, so we won't be plunged into darkness yet. Oil reserves come to around 46 CMOs, while natural gas reserves total 42 CMOs. There are 121 CMOs of coal out there. These numbers all go up when difficult-to-extract energy such as tar sands are added.

"It's been 30 years of (oil) reserves for the last 50 years," he joked. "It's like your pantry. Do you look at it and say 'Oh, no. I'm going to run out of flour in two weeks'? You go out and buy more."

http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9928068-54.html?tag=nl.e703

Too cool for school: Britain's most eco-friendly building

By Esther Walker

Thursday, 10 April 2008

The loos flush using rainwater, roofs are covered with sedum plants, the building is heated using the playground and the desks are made from drainpipes. In the "living" classroom, wearing jerseys bearing the school's part-flower, part-windmill logo, a group of nine to 11-year-olds demonstrate their field skills by looking for creepy-crawlies with magnifying glasses. Imogen, a bright-eyed nine year-old, talks to me about carpets. "They're made up of tiles," she tells me authoritively. "So that when it wears out, they can replace one or two rather than the whole carpet."

Eco education: head Debra Massey and pupils at Howe Dell in the outdoor classroom

Welcome to Howe Dell primary school, Hatfield, the most eco-friendly building in the country.

Commissioned by Hertfordshire County Council, one of Britain's more environmentally conscientious local authorities, Howe Dell is almost an experiment in how green and sustainable a building can be.

The pièce de résistance of the building was the construction of the world's first IHT system underneath the playground. IHT, which stands for Interseasonal Heat Transfer, takes heat from the sunshine that falls on the tarmac playground, then stores it and releases it in the winter to heat the school. IHT was invented and then developed by the London-based company Icax (Interseasonal Collection and Exchange).

Until now, if you wanted to use the heat generated by summer sunshine to warm something at a different time of year, you could not do so without converting it, inefficiently, into another form of energy, such as electricity. There hasn't been an effective way of storing the energy directly in the form of heat and releasing it later, when it is needed.

Mark Hewitt, an architect with Icax, developed a network of water pipes, which were laid under Howe Dell's playground. As the tarmac heats up when the sun shines on it, the heat in the water is pumped away and stored in computer-controlled thermal banks in the ground under the school. The banks are so well insulated that the heat only moves through them very slowly. The stored heat is then released into the school when it is needed – sometimes months later.

The principles of IHT were first demonstrated on the M1 in a project for the Highways Agency at Toddington service station. Heat collected from roads in summer was used to de-ice the same roads in winter.

The same technology can use the cold of winter air and ice to cool the building in thesummer. It's the computer technology, explains Hewitt, which now makes this sort of heat storage possible. "With computers, you can predict very complex movements of energy," he says.

Another factor that made the school possible was the will of the council and its provision of funds to this ambitious project. A building this advanced doesn't come cheap: the contract to build the school was put out to tender and the council hired a company to take on the project for £8.7m. Unfortunately, the company went into administration after six months, having not paid any of the subcontractors. So the project had to begin again and the final bill, part-funded by the sale of Howe Dell's former site and by money from the Carbon Trust, came to £10.4m.

It took eight years to plan and build the school and, while it was being constructed, Howe Dell stayed on its former site: a rectory attached to Hatfield House, a mile and a half away from the new site. When Ofsted inspectors visited, they deemed the rectory not fit for purpose. The threat of closure loomed over the school until the council decided this was the perfect opportunity to move the school to a new site.

For the pupils and head teacher, Debra Massey, the school is more than just a new building, it's an educational resource. The school has an eight-pupil-strong "Eco-Squad" (members change every term), all wearing smart green "Eco-Squad" badges, whose job it is to promote ideas of sustainability. Environmental concerns are second nature to the pupils, who talk me through how they are developing fingerprint technology to replace the old library card system to save on paper.

The school's curriculum also incorporates sustainable education principles and it won the Eco-Schools Green Flag award for the environmentally aware additions to classes. The green section of the curriculum aims to teach pupils the interdependence of peoples and countries, the need to promote sustainable development and an awareness of their personal responsibility for the environment.

The school's sustainability features don't stop at the underground pipes. "The council was presented with a list of green features," says Edward Thompson of Icax. "There were about 10 or so on the list and the council said, 'We'll have the lot.'"

The range of sustainability features incorporated into the building by Capita Architecture is impressive. Solar heating panels warm up water for kitchens and washing. Photovoltaic panels supply some electricity. The architects also designed the school with skylights that flood the classrooms and corridors with daylight, cutting lighting bills, and specified super-thick exterior walls and thick window glass to reduce heat loss.

Classroom sink-tops and splashbacks are made from recycled plastic yoghurt pots while desks are made from recycled drainpipes. And, as Imogen explained earlier, carpet tiles mean that when the carpet wears out only some tiles need to be replaced. A wind turbine is planned for the school's wetland area to contribute electricity.

The sedum roof acts as further insulation, as a habitat for creepy crawlies and serves as a living classroom, where pupils can study biodiversity. Rainwater is collected and used for flushing loos. The school also has boilers, which top up the green heat if needed.

"When I arrived at Howe Dell, work on the building hadn't started," explains Massey. "At times, the project was very vulnerable, so to be here is fantastic. Everyone believes in the same dream – that children need to be educated in green issues."

"At the moment," adds Hewitt, "it is expensive to build something like this. As a society, we need the nerves and the will to invest in buildings such as these."

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/too-cool-for-school-britains-most-ecofriendly-building-806892.html

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

The case against handsets

Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.

Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset.

Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.

Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI from constant texting.

Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com//Cutting_carbon_not_economic_growth_Germanys_path_2104_abstract

Grain Companies' Profits Soar As Global Food Crisis Mounts

By DAVID KESMODEL, LAUREN ETTER and AARON O. PATRICK April 30, 2008; Page A1

At a time when parts of the world are facing food riots, Big Agriculture is dealing with a different sort of challenge: huge profits.

On Tuesday, grain-processing giant Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. said its fiscal third-quarter profits jumped 42%, including a sevenfold increase in net income in its unit that stores, transports and trades grains such as wheat and corn, as well as soybeans.

Monsanto Co., maker of seeds and herbicides,Deere & Co., which builds tractors, combines and sprayers, and fertilizer maker Mosaic Co. all reported similar windfalls in their latest quarters.

The robust profits are emerging against the backdrop of a food crisis some experts say is the worst in three decades. The secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, on Tuesday called for the creation of a high-level global task force to deal with the cascading impact of high grain prices and oil prices. He said that countries must do more to avert "social unrest on an unprecedented scale" and should contribute money to make up for the $755 million shortfall in funding for the World Food Program, which feeds the world's hungry.

President Bush told reporters on Tuesday that he's "deeply concerned about people who don't have food abroad," and all three presidential contenders have recently cited high food and energy prices as causes for concern. Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate, has said he favors scrapping the 51-cent per gallon ethanol tax credit and a 54-cent per gallon tariff imposed on most imported ethanol, ideas abhorred by farmers and many politicians.

FOOD FIGHT

• Soaring Profits: Even as food prices spark riots and hoarding, some agriculture companies are reaping huge profits.

• Biofuel Debate: One cause of rising prices is the growing use of crops for biofuels, a trend critics say needs to be curtailed.

• Stemming a Backlash: Facing a potential public-image problem, food companies say they plan to use profits to develop technologies that will improve farmers' efficiencies.

The crisis stems from a combination of heightened demand for food from fast-growing developing countries like China and India, low grain stockpiles caused by bad weather, rising fuel prices and the increasing amount of land used to grow crops for ethanol and other biofuels rather than food.

Food companies say they're not to blame for the soaring prices and are committed to working toward a solution. They say bigger profits can be used to develop new technologies that will ultimately help farmers improve productivity. Monsanto says it's designing improved genetically modified seeds that can squeeze even more yield from each acre of planted grain, while ADM says it's investing in tools that can mitigate supply disruptions. "Maybe the question should be not, 'Are you making money?' but, 'What are you doing with the money that you make?'" says Victoria Podesta, vice president of corporate communications at ADM.

Some observers think financial speculation has helped push up prices as wealthy investors in the past year have flooded the agriculture commodity markets in search of better returns.

THE GRAIN BOOM'S BROAD REACH

Total index-fund investment in corn, soybeans, wheat, cattle and hogs has increased to more than $47 billion, up from about $10 billion in 2006, according to AgResource Co., a Chicago-based agriculture research firm. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week held a hearing in Washington to examine the role index funds and other speculators are playing in driving up grain prices.

The Food Chain

Not all food-related companies are benefiting. Companies that work most directly with farmers are gaining the most from higher food and grain prices, while companies further along in the food chain, like meat producers Tyson Foods Inc. and Pilgrim's Pride Corp., are smarting because they've had trouble passing along the increases to consumers.

Tyson, Springdale, Ark., on Monday posted a $5 million loss for its latest quarter, hurt by higher prices for grains to feed its chickens. Earlier this month, Pilgrim's Pride, Pittsburg, Texas, said it plans to cut weekly chicken processing by 5% to counteract higher grain costs.

"Anybody who is early in the chain is going to benefit," says Ann Gilpin, an analyst with Morningstar. "I don't think this is going to last forever, but there are some significant tailwinds to cause this to persist for a couple of years."

Flush with more revenue than they have enjoyed in years, and eager to take advantage of the highest grain prices they've seen in years, farmers are paying more money for seeds, fertilizer and farm gear. That has translated into huge revenue jumps and handsome profit increases for the companies that sell these products. Growing global demand for food has been a boon to companies that buy, process and transport grains.

Monsanto saw its profit in the latest quarter more than double. Rivals DuPont Co. and Syngenta AG recently raised their profit estimates. Deere posted a 55% rise in earnings in its latest quarter. Mosaic's third-quarter net income jumped about 12-fold.

ADM's major rivals are notching big profit gains, too. Closely held Cargill Inc.'s profits jumped 86% to $1 billion in the latest quarter. Bunge Ltd.'s earnings rose about 20-fold to $289 million. Bunge sells fertilizer in addition to processing and storing grains.

Ms. Gilpin, the Morningstar analyst, said some companies are enjoying steep profit margins on certain food ingredients in this "brave new world of commodity prices" in part because of perceived shortages globally for basic foodstuffs like soybean oil. In a telephone conversation with Bunge officials in February, Ms. Gilpin says she was told that "food companies are so panicked about supply," Bunge can charge what it wants for soybean oil.

A Bunge spokesman says "the amount Bunge pays farmers for crops and the amount we charge when selling products to customers are related to prevailing market prices, which are set daily in futures and other markets." He says these prices have gone up "as the world has entered a period of tighter supply and demand."

Food vs. Fuel

Archer-Daniels-Midland's grain merchandising and handling business was its star performer in the quarter ended March 31. Operating profit rose to $366 million from $46 million a year earlier. ADM's bread-and-butter business is procuring grain from farmers and then selling it up the food chain, either by processing it into one of myriad products such as high-fructose corn syrup and ethanol, or packing it on barges and ships to be sent overseas.

Patricia Woertz, the company's CEO, said she empathizes with consumers who are paying more for food, but she directed the blame at gasoline prices that force up food transportation costs, rather than the use of crops for biofuels, saying that the food-versus-fuel debate is "misguided." On a conference call with analysts, Ms. Woertz responded to suggestions that U.S. policies encouraging the production of ethanol should be reconsidered. "Retreat from biofuels is wrong, it's foolish," she said. ADM is one of the nation's largest ethanol producers.

ADM's stock fell 3.9% Tuesday to $45.58 in 4 p.m. composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange, suggesting that investors may be worried that ethanol subsidies are under fire. "Most investors we speak to feel uneasy about allocating their capital to a business model that relies on government subsidies, however small," Credit Suisse analyst Robert Moskow said in a note to investors.

Cargill's chairman and CEO, Greg Page, said earlier this month that "the dimensions of change in global agriculture are striking" and that the Minneapolis company is doing "an exceptional job measuring and assessing price risk." He said world grain stocks are at their lowest level in 35 years.

Rising food-ingredient costs have hurt some U.S. packaged-food companies. Kraft Foods Inc.'s profit dropped by 6% in the fourth-quarter of last year thanks to high dairy costs that hurt its cheese business. (Kraft reports its first-quarter 2008 earnings Wednesday). Other food companies have fared better by cutting costs, hedging their commodity purchases, passing along price increases to consumers and boosting marketing. General Mills Inc. recently raised its 2008 profit forecast and in March, the Minneapolis-based cereal maker reported fiscal third-quarter profit rose by 60% from the previous year's quarter.

Passing On the Costs

Consumer-products giant Unilever has been particularly hard hit by increases in the price of vegetable oils, such as palm oil, which it uses in margarine and soap. It is passing the costs on to consumers. "We have moved decisively to increase prices across many categories and markets," Unilever Chief Financial Officer Jim Lawrence said on an earnings call with analysts in February.

In Europe, Nestlé SA and Groupe Danone SA, two of the world's largest food manufacturers, have passed on higher prices to consumers with apparently little or no impact on profits. Nestlé increased its average wholesale price for all its products 5.3%.

Like many European companies, Nestlé doesn't release first-quarter profits. But sales rose 6% to 25.7 billion Swiss francs ($24.84 billion) in the quarter from the year-earlier period. Stripping out the effect of currency changes, acquisitions and divestments, sales were up 9.8% -- a big jump for such a large company. "This performance is unprecedented," Nestlé's head of investor relations, Roddy Child-Villiers, said on a conference call with analysts April 21.

Nestlé says it will increase profit margins this year, a sign that it has been able to pass on higher costs to consumers. Nestlé's products begin at relatively cheap levels, with an average price per product around $2. Many consumers may not have noticed they are getting more expensive.

Price rises reduced the amount of milk, yogurt and other fresh dairy products sold by Danone in the first quarter, but the company says revenue still grew. The Paris-based company says it produces one-fifth of the world's fresh dairy products. Higher feed costs have made it more expensive to keep cows, driving up wholesale milk prices.

In the U.S., consumers are being whipsawed by the weak economy as they grapple with higher fuel and food costs. With food inflation running at about 5% in the U.S., the highest level since 1990, some lawmakers are considering action. Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) has scheduled a hearing in Congress on Thursday to examine how high food prices are affecting U.S. families and explore possible solutions.

Some states are growing concerned that ethanol production is pushing up food prices. Missouri lawmakers are weighing whether to roll back a law that encourages ethanol production, while Texas Gov. Rick Perry has asked for a partial waiver of a federal mandate that requires the nation's oil companies to blend 15 billion gallons of corn-based biofuels into the nation's gasoline supply by 2015. That's up from around nine billion gallons today. Mr. Perry's proposal is being cheered by Tyson and Pilgrim's Pride.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120949327146453423.html

San Francisco Hits 70 Percent City Recycling Rate

SAN FRANCISCO, California, April 23, 2008 (ENS)

The city of San Francisco has chalked up a 70 percent recycling rate - the highest in the nation.

Diversion of waste, which includes recycling, composting, and re-use, has increased from 35 percent in 1996, to 70 percent today, Mayor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday.

Diversion accounts for 1,415,159 tons of waste, or 70 percent of the total waste stream.

"San Francisco is making it easier than ever to participate in recycling collection programs, and our new 70 percent diversion rate is proof of our commitment a zero-waste future," said Mayor Newsom.

The mayor now wants to pass a new law that will raise the rate of recycling another five percent by imposing new requirements on landlords, businesses, and event organizers.

"I want to build upon this commitment to waste reduction with legislation that will get us to a 75 percent recycling rate and ultimately support our 2010 Climate Action Plan goal," he said.

The mayor proposed legislation that may require all landlords to provide adequate recycling and composting for their tenants.

It could require businesses that sell takeout food items to allow the public to deposit small amounts of recyclables, compostables and trash in their receptacles.

Under the proposal, event organizers would have to site and manage sufficient groups of recycling, composting and trash receptacles.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom shows students at Leonard Flynn Elementary how their green waste compost becomes flowers. (Photo courtesy Office of the Mayor)

If incorrect materials are found in a receptacle - recyclables in the trash, trash in compostables - the collector shall leave a tag identifying the problem. If incorrect materials continue to be found, the collector can leave a tag and not empty the receptacle.

The measure could require that materials accepted in recycling and composting programs would be banned from the landfill transfer station.

Mayor Newsom made the announcement at Leonard Flynn Elementary School, the 100th school to join the Food to Flowers! program.

Food to Flowers! uses assemblies and standards-based curriculum to educate students about the importance of protecting nature and how composting and recycling can help.

Green and blue carts are placed in the cafeterias so students can compost and recycle during lunch.

City schools began composting with the green cart in 2000. All Food to Flowers! schools have free access to the compost that is created from the program.

Food to Flowers! is responsible for diverting 3,300 tons of solid waste a year. The program is part of the San Francisco Environment Department's award-winning School Education Program that reaches 20,000 students annually.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2008/2008-04-24-092.asp

Watch for climate flaws in fixes, experts warn

John Brecher / MSNBC.com Antarctica's interior has been shielded from the global warming pattern because of the ozone hole above the continent. Two new studies reveal that climate change and ozone depletion are closely tied.

Be careful — be very careful — when tinkering with Mother Nature. That's the lesson from two new studies that involve climate change, ozone holes, the Arctic and Antarctica.

One study warns that the idea of "geoengineering" a warming solution by injecting sulfur compounds into the air could wipe out the Arctic ozone layer and delay recover of the Antarctic ozone hole by as much as 70 years.

The other study warns that recovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica — a recovery helped by a global ban on CFCs and one required to shield humans from radiation — will trigger warming in Antarctica's interior, an area now protected by a cooling effect from the ozone hole.

In the sulfur study, researchers tested the notion that one could reduce temperatures by increasing clouds and haze that would reflect sunlight. The reasoning is that when volcanoes spew lots of sulfur, months or more of cooling often follows.

“Our research indicates that trying to artificially cool off the planet could have perilous side effects,” said Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

“While climate change is a major threat, more research is required before society attempts global geoengineering solutions,” said Tilmes, lead author of a paper appearing in Thursday’s online edition of the journal Science.

Mimic Mount Pinatubo?
The idea of reversing global warming by injecting sulfates into the air was suggested by eruptions such as the 1991 blast by Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, which produced a brief cooling.

The massive 1815 eruption of Tambora in what is now Indonesia produced such a strong cooling that 1816 became known as the “year without a summer” in New England, where snow fell in every month of the year.

But Tilmes knew that volcanic eruptions also temporarily thin the ozone layer, which protects people, plants and animals from the most dangerous ultraviolet rays from the sun.

So she and colleagues calculated the effect of suggested sulfate injections and concluded that the result, over the next few decades, would be to destroy between one-fourth to three-fourths of the ozone layer above the Arctic. This would affect a large part of the Northern Hemisphere because of atmospheric circulation patterns, they said.

The sulfates would also delay the expected recovery of the ozone hole over the Antarctic by about 30 to 70 years, or until at least the last decade of this century, they said.

“This study highlights another connection between global warming and ozone depletion, which had been thought of as separate problems but are now increasingly recognized to be coupled in subtle, yet profoundly important, ways,” said study co-author Ross Salawitch of the University of Maryland.

The research was supported by the United Kingdom Meteorological Office, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and NASA.

Ozone hole cooled Antarctica's interior
In the Antarctica ozone hole study, experts found that a full recovery of the ozone hole could modify climate in the Southern Hemisphere and even amplify Antarctic warming.

The findings come from scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA. Their paper is scheduled for publication in the peer-reviwed Geophysical Research Letters.

KNMI / ESA

A 2007 satellite view of the ozone layer over Antarctica, where black and blues represent the thinest ozone and pinks and white represent the thickest regions. The 2007 hole was 30 percent smaller in size than in 2006.

Although temperatures have been rising worldwide, there has been cooling in the interior of Antarctica in summer, which researchers attribute to the depletion of ozone overhead.

“If the successful control of ozone-depleting substances allows for a full recovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica, we may finally see the interior of Antarctica begin to warm with the rest of the world,” said Judith Perlwitz of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and NOAA.

The authors used a NASA supercomputer to model interactions between the climate and stratospheric ozone chemistry. A return to pre-1969 ozone levels would mean atmospheric circulation patterns now shielding the Antarctic interior from warmer air to the north will begin to break down during the summer, they concluded.

Humans tied to wetter Arctic
Meanwhile, in a separate paper in Science, researchers said human activities are at least partly responsible for the Arctic having become a wetter place over the last half century.

Seung-Ki Min of Environment Canada, and colleagues, studied rain and snowfall patterns in the arctic and the factors affecting them.

They concluded that human-induced greenhouse gases have contributed to the increased precipitation rates observed in the Arctic region over the past 60 years.

They warned that this “Arctic moistening” could occur more quickly than current climate simulations indicate.

Their work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Canadian International Polar Year Program.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24296008/


Pine beetle outbreaks turn forests into carbon source By CATHERINE TSAI – Apr 23, 2008

DENVER (AP) — An outbreak of mountain pine beetles in British Columbia is doing more than destroying millions of trees: By 2020, the beetles will have done so much damage that the forest is expected to release more carbon dioxide than it absorbs, according to new research.

The study, led by Werner Kurz of the Canadian Forest Service, estimates that over 21 years trees killed by the beetle outbreak could release 990 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — roughly equivalent to five years of emissions from Canada's transportation sector.

The outbreak has affected about 33 million acres, or about 51,562 square miles, of lodgepole pines. Bark beetles also have killed huge swaths of pines in the western United States, including about 2,300 square miles of trees in Colorado.

"When trees are killed, they no longer are able to take carbon from the atmosphere. Then when dead trees start to decompose, that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere," Kurz said.

That could exacerbate global warming that contributed to the outbreaks in the first place. Warmer temperatures have allowed beetles to survive farther north and at higher elevations.

"This is the kind of feedback we're all very worried about in the carbon cycle — a warming planet leading to, in this case, an insect outbreak that increases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which can increase warming," said Andy Jacobson, a carbon cycle scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo.

Boreal forests in Canada generally have been steady "carbon sinks," absorbing more carbon dioxide than they emit. Kurz's team expects the forest it studied to recover, but says that even by 2020 it may not be the carbon sink it previously was.

"This long-term effect, personally I find it frightening," said Jacobson, who was not involved in the study, which is being published this week in the journal Nature.

Using computer models, Kurz's team estimated that the maximum annual beetle impact in the study area in south-central British Columbia was 20 megatons of carbon. Forest fires in all of Canada produce an average of 27 megatons per year.

Kurz's team says the effect of pine beetles and other insects is significant and should be included in models of how much atmospheric carbon the world's forests can store.

"Many other insects also impact the forest carbon cycle," Kurz said. While outbreaks of other insects such as spruce beetles may be much smaller, their cumulative effect is significant, he said.

"If events such as this occur in other geographic parts of the world, then they really ought to be accounted for," Kurz said.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gOzeP0rcO0-e41K-5AdFcuUfPL-gD90801BO0

Save money and the planet?

We look at the planet in a new way with Worldmapper

Green campaigners encourage us to buy less non-essential ‘stuff’, but would that cause an economic crash?

Whether it’s an iPod, a new jumper or a set of saucepans, everything we buy has a carbon footprint. From manufacture to distribution, our purchases are a significant source of CO2 emissions and other environmental damage.

Given the impact of global warming and the current global credit crunch, checking into retail rehab doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. But even if buying less helped save the planet and our purses, what would it do to the economy?

Economists and journalists tell us that the economy is imperilled whenever retail sales look set to fall. A fall in consumer spending of just 3 per cent in the early 1990s helped cause the biggest recession since the Second World War and pushed unemployment above three million.

So would going green mean pushing the country into the red?

Out one wallet, into another

Economists since the Great Depression have recognised that incomes and spending are two sides of the same coin. John Maynard Keynes showed that the goods and services we buy generate income for the firms and workers that sell it to us. When spending drops, there will not be enough work to go round and unemployment will rise.

And it’s not just unemployment we’d have to worry about - tax rates might shoot up as well. In the process of buying and working to pay for things, we pay the taxes that fund public services. If we wanted less stuff but the same level of service in public services, we'd need to raise tax rates to get the same amount of money from less work and less spending.

Secondly, the relative cost of some things would change. With less money around to be spent on them, things in fixed supply – like land, houses and natural resources – would tend to get cheaper.

Thirdly, with mortgages fixed at their current levels, the resulting fall in house prices could push some homeowners into negative equity. And more generally, the fall in spending could reduce company profits and therefore share prices, thereby threatening the solvency of our pension schemes.

In other words, our economic wellbeing seems to depend to a great extent on the willingness of the general public to go out and spend. In 2007, as the American economy began to falter, George Bush went so far as to say “I encourage you all to go shopping more”.

Spending without the stuff

With all these impacts in mind, it would be hard for policymakers to recommend that we as a nation cut back on shopping overnight. But is it, in the longer run, possible to maintain a healthy economy while buying less stuff?

Of course, it’s not only ‘stuff’ that causes carbon emissions. The main drivers of climate change are things you can’t put in a box or a shopping trolley – things like heating, power and travel. But it is true that factories and shops emit a lot of carbon.

One way to square this circle might be to shift our spending away from goods and towards services, although not all services are eco-friendly. Paying a taxi driver to take you somewhere you could easily reach on foot wouldn’t necessarily reduce emissions compared with spending the fare on, say, a new item of clothing.

But many services do allow economic activity at minimal cost to the environment. Attending a French class, paying a cleaner or joining a hockey club – all of these generate employment without generating very many greenhouse gases.

Of course, we’ll always need to purchase some physical goods – services alone won’t feed us or furnish our homes. So a more obvious way to reduce the impact of our spending is to ensure that the stuff we do buy is as green as possible. For example, chicken is more climate-friendly than beef, and a sustainably sourced wooden table far less environmentally damaging than an aluminium one.

Rethinking the economy

Shifting our spending to services and eco-friendly products is all well and good, but to create a truly sustainable economy we might need to reduce overall spending too. With careful planning, there may be ways to achieve this while reducing the painful effects that some economists and politicians fear.

Take working hours, for example - a fall in spending will tend to reduce the number of jobs. But if more of us sought to work part time, we could share out the work between more people and avoid mass unemployment as we think of it today.

A change like this would reduce gross domestic product and economic growth, but not necessarily our quality of life. Economists like Paul Ormerod and Richard Layard have argued that, beyond a certain level (which we reached some time ago), more wealth does not make a nation any happier.

Time for radical change?

But such a radical change would require careful planning. Think of a firm that has just borrowed money to build a shiny new shopping centre. If no one were to shop there, that firm might well end up going bust, along with the bank that lent it the money.

Such business failure would have knock-on effects on the wider economy and perhaps on the political landscape, too. In a time of recession, a government focused on protecting the climate, rather than driving economic growth, may be less likely to get elected.

The key to a less painful and more politically popular transition would be to make it predictable and gradual enough so that businesses and government could plan for the effects. This would mean doing things like adjusting their business plans, investments and pension schemes.

On the other hand, if the changes were too gradual, we may miss our window of opportunity to avoid runaway global warming. After all, some experts think we only have a decade or so to slash our emissions.

Balancing the twin threats of climate change and economic disruption should be a leading consideration for governments in coming years. In the meantime, we can all do our bit by making sure that when we do buy ‘stuff’, we opt for goods and services with the lowest carbon footprint possible.

http://www.bbcgreen.com/Money/buy-less-stuff


Quote Of The Week [T]he bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon. ~Bill Strickland

Technology Corner

'What is' Smart Grids?

Smart Grid is a transformed electricity transmission and distribution network or "grid" that uses two-way, broadband communications, advanced sensors and computers to improve the efficiency, reliability and safety of power delivery and use. Smart Grid is called several other things, including "Smart Power Grid," "Smart Electric Grid," "Intelligrid," "FutureGrid," etc. Deploying the Smart Grid became the policy of the United States with passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (Title 13), but Smart Grid is being promoted by the European Union and nations all over the world.

The term Smart power grid may best be defined as bringing the power of broadband communications and advanced computing to the grid itself to upgrade the current electric power grid so that it can operate more efficiently, reliably and safely. Such an upgrade is equivalent to bringing the power of the Internt to the transmission, distribution and use of electricity - it will save consumers money and reduce CO2.

Today's alternating current power grid was created in 1896, based on Nikola Tesla's design published in 1888. Many implementation decisions that are still in use today were made for the first time using the limited emerging technology available 120-years ago. Specific obsolete power grid assumptions and features (like centralized unidirectional electric power transmission, electricity distribution, and demand-driven control) are the result of experimental 19th century possibilities.

The development of modern micro-electronics, and especially the entry of the microprocessor, opened new ways to significantly improve power grid control. The evolutionary integration of intelligent, distributed, and highly-adaptive control systems made available with microelectronics is being referred as the smart grid in Title XIII of the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

This evolving intelligent power distribution network includes the possibility to reduce power consumption at the client side during peak hours (Demand Side Management), facilitating grid connection of distributed generation power (with photovoltaic arrays, small wind turbines, micro hydro, or even combined heat power generators in buildings, grid energy storage for distributed generation load balancing, and improved reliability against many different component failure scenarios (in contrast to today's catastrophic widespread power grid cascading failures).

Overview

The electrical grid is an interconnected system of power plants, power lines, wires, etc. moving and delivering electricity from power plants to end users. Also referred to as a transmission and distribution (T&D) network, today’s grid faces challenges to keep pace with the modern digital economy and information age, which require higher load demands, uninterruptible power supplies, and other high-quality, high-value services. Additionally, microprocessor-based technologies can alter the nature of the electrical load and result in electricity demand that is incompatible with a power system that was built to serve an “analog economy.” This can lead to electric service reliability problems, power quality disturbances, blackouts, and brownouts. However rapid advances in communications and information technology now provide electric utilities with opportunities to invest in critical grid infrastructure that can serve the growing demand for high quality, “digital-grade electricity.”

Simply put, Smart Grid is the application of broadband/wireless communications and high-speed computing to the electric power transmission and distribution networks themselves. Smart grid is more than smart meters, which entails replacing analog mechanical meters with digital meters. Smart meters are transformed when connected to a real-time, broadband and Internet-enabled Smart Grid that extends from the generation plants to each electrical outlet (smart sockets) or device attached to the grid.

The original power grid technology has its control systems embedded in the generating plants, transmission lines and substations; information flows one way, from the users and the loads they control back to the utilities. The utilities attempt to meet the demand and succeed or fail to varying degrees (brownout, rolling blackout, uncontrolled blackout). The total amount of power loaded by the users can have a very wide probability distribution which require a lot of spare generating plants in standby mode to respond to the rapidly changing power usage. This one-way flow of information is expensive; the last 10% of generating capacity may be required as little as 1% of the time, and brownouts and outages can be costly to consumers.

Demand Side Management (DSM) is the next step in sophistication. This can be as simple as timers to switch off electric water heaters during peak-demand periods, but such systems are unable to respond to contingencies. The full Smart grid allows generators and loads to interact in real time, using modern information and communications technology. Managing demand to eliminate the peak fraction of demand eliminates the cost of generators, cuts the wear and extends the life of equipment, and allows users to get more value from the system by putting their most important needs first.

Purpose

The major driving forces to alter the current power grid can be divided in four, general categories.

Increasing reliabilty, efficiency and safety of the power grid (prevent outages, lower CO2, lower electricity bills).
Enabling decentralized power generation so homes can be both energy client and supplier (provide consumers with interactive tool to manage energy usage).
Inclusion of flexibility to power consumption at the clients side and supplier selection (enables distributed generation, solar, wind, biomass).
Increase GDP by creating more new, "clean" energy jobs related to renewables, plug-in electric vehicles, etc.

Safety and uptime increase

Connection scheme

Although multiple routes are proclaimed as typically a smart grid feature, it isn't. Although the initial power lines in the grid were using a radial approach, later on the connectivity was guaranteed via multiple routes, as referred as a network structure. This however also includes a new problem: if the load is too heavy for one substation, it will fail, and this extra load will be drawn from the other route(s), which eventually may fail also, causing a domino effect. A technique to prevent this is islanding or rolling black out.

Decentralisation of power consumption

enable decentralisation of power generation (private power generation via solar/windmills)

Flexibility on client and supplier side

Load adjustment

The total load connected to the power grid can vary significantly over time. Although the total load is the sum of many individual choices of the clients, the overall load is not a stable, slow varying, average power consumption. Imagine the increment of the load if a popular television program starts and millions of televisions will draw current instantly. Traditionally, to respond to a rapid increase in power consumption, faster than the start-up time of a large generator, some spare generators are put on a dissipative standby mode. A smart grid may warn all individual television sets, or another larger customer, to reduce the load temporarily (to start up a larger generator) or continuously (in case of limited resources).

With mathematical prediction algorithms it is possible to predict how many standby generators need to be used, to reach a certain failure rate. In the traditional grid, the failure rate can only be reduced at the cost of more standby generators. In a smart grid, the load reduction of even a small part of the clients may enlight the problem.

Pricing mechanism

In many countries, including the Netherlands and the UK, the electric companies installed double tariff electricity meters in many homes, to encourage people to use their electric power during night time, when the overall demand from the industry was very low. During night time the price was reduced significantly, enabling users to save money for washing etc. This idea will be further explored in a smart grid, where the price could be changing in seconds and electric equipment is given methods to react on that. Also personal preferences of customers e.g. to use only green energy, can be incorporated in such a new power grid.

Electrical energy counter with double index to distinguish power consumption during day and night time

General economics developments

As customers can choose their electricity suppliers, depending on their different tariff methods, the focus of transportation costs will be increased. Reduction of maintenance and replacements costs will stimulate more advanced control.

A smart grid precisely limits electrical power down to the residential level, network small-scale distributed energy generation and storage devices, communicate information on operating status and needs, collect information on prices and grid conditions, and move the grid beyond central control to a collaborative network. a summary comparison of today’s grid with a 21st Century Smart Grid of the Future.

Smart Grid of the Future

20^th Century Grid	21^st Century Grid
Electromechanical	Digital
One-way communications (if any)	Two-way communications
Built for centralized generation	Accommodates distributed generation
Radial topology	Network topology
Few sensors	Monitors and sensors throughout
“Blind”	Self-monitoring
Manual restoration	Semi-automated restoration and, eventually, self-healing
Prone to failures and blackouts	Adaptive protection and islanding
Check equipment manually	Monitor equipment remotely
Emergency decisions by committee and phone	Decision support systems, predictive reliability
Limited control over power flows	Pervasive control systems
Limited price information	Full price information
Few customer choices	Many customer choices

Some defining functions of a smart grid include:

“Self-healing” – Using real-time information from embedded sensors and automated controls to anticipate, detect, and respond to system problems, a smart grid can automatically avoid or mitigate power outages, power quality problems, and service disruptions.
Empower Consumers – A smart grid incorporates consumer equipment and behavior in grid design, operation, and communication. This enables consumers to better control “smart appliances” and “intelligent equipment” in homes and businesses, interconnecting energy management systems in “smart buildings” and enabling consumers to better manage energy use and reduce energy costs. Advanced communications capabilities equip customers to exploit real-time electricity pricing, incentive-based load reduction signals, or emergency load reduction signals.
More Secure – Technologies better identify and respond to manmade or natural disruptions. Real-time information enables grid operators to isolate affected areas and redirect power flows around damaged facilities.
Accommodate Generation Options – As smart grids continue to support traditional power loads they also seamlessly interconnect fuel cells,renewables, microturbines, and other distributed generation technologies at local and regional levels. Integration of small-scale, localized, or on-site power generation allows residential, commercial, and industrial customers to self-generate and sell excess power to the grid with minimal technical or regulatory barriers. This also improves reliability and power quality, reduces electricity costs, and offers more customer choice.
Optimize Assets – A smart grid can optimize capital assets while minimizing operations and maintenance costs. Optimized power flows reduce waste and maximize use of lowest-cost generation resources. Harmonizing local distribution with interregional energy flows and transmission traffic improves use of existing grid assets and reduces grid congestion and bottlenecks, which can ultimately produce consumer savings.

Technology

Smart grid development does not require large-scale technological innovation. Many smart grid technologies are already used in other applications such as manufacturing and telecommunications. Smart grid development for the most part can use existing technologies, applying them in new ways to grid operations. In general, smart grid technology can be grouped into five key areas:

Broadband, 2-way Integrated Communications technologies have the potential to enhance grid communications. Many are already in use but not yet fully integrated. These include: substation automation, advanced meter reading, demand response, distribution automation, supervisory control and data acquisition , energy management systems, broadband over power line, wireless technologies, power-line carrier, and fiber-optics. High-speed or "broadband" integrated communications will allow for real-time control, information and data exchange to optimize system reliability, asset utilization, and security.

Sensing and Measurement technologies are essential to evaluating equipment health, grid integrity, energy theft prevention, congestion relief, and control strategies support. Technologies include: advanced microprocessor meters (smart meter) and meter reading equipment, wide-area monitoring systems, dynamic line rating, electromagnetic signature measurement/analysis, time-of-use and real-time pricing tools, advanced switches and cables, backscatter radio technology, and digital relays.

Advanced Components are responsible for the electrical behavior of the grid, applying the latest R&D in superconductivity, fault tolerance, storage, power electronics, and diagnostics. Technologies within these broad R&D categories include: flexible alternating current transmission system devices, high voltage direct current, first and second generation superconducting wire, high temperature superconducting cable, distributed energy generation and storage devices, composite conductors, and “intelligent” appliances.

Advanced Control technologies are devices and algorithms that enable rapid diagnosis of and precise solutions to specific grid disruptions or outages. These technologies rely on and contribute to each of the other four key areas. Three technology categories for advanced control methods are: distributed intelligent agents (control systems), analytical tools (software algorithms and high-speed computers), and operational applications (SCADA, substation automation, demand response, etc.).

Improved Interfaces and Decision Support provide operators and managers with the tools and training required to operate a smart grid. They convert complex data into easily understood information for decision making. Technologies include visualization techniques that reduce large quantities of data into easily understood visual formats, software systems that provide multiple options when systems operator actions are required, and simulators for operational training and “what-if” analyses.

How Does a Smart Grid Get Built?

The Smart Grid is ready to be built now. Deploying Smart Grid to the entire United States and other countries will, however, take place over several years as the system evolves through the incremental deployment and integration of “Smart Grid” technology. For example, a utility might change out its conventional electro-mechanical house meters with solid state, two-way communicating meters. These advanced meters will provide enhanced service to customers while providing the utility with new capabilities for operating and maintaining the grid. Installing advanced meters is one step in a utility’s evolution towards a smart grid. But before a utility installs an advanced metering system, or any type of smart system, it must make a business case for the investment. Most utilities find it difficult to justify installing a communications infrastructure for a single application (e.g. meter reading). Because of this, a utility typically must identify several applications that will use the same communications infrastructure – for example, reading a meter, monitoring power quality, remote connection and disconnection of customers, enabling demand response, etc. Ideally, the communications infrastructure will not only support near-term applications, but unanticipated applications that will arise in the future. Regulatory or legislative actions can also drive utilities to implement pieces of a smart grid puzzle. Each utility has a unique set of business, regulatory, and legislative drivers that guide its investments. This means that each utility will take a different path in creating its smart grid and that different utilities will create smart grids at different rates.

The Future and the Consumer

Evidence of changing consumer attitudes comes via a survey conducted in the summer of 2007. The survey interviewed almost 100 utility executives and sought the opinions of 1900 households and small businesses from the U.S., Germany, Netherlands, England, Japan and Australia . The results are quite revealing. One finding: Consumers are awakening to the concept of choice, and they welcome it. Consider these examples:

83% of those who cannot yet choose their utility provider would welcome that option
Roughly two-thirds of the customers that do not yet have renewable power options would like the choice
Almost two-thirds are interested in operating their own generation, provided they can sell power back to the utility

The real-time, two-way communications that would be available with a true Smart Grid will enable consumers to be compensated for their efforts to save energy and to sell energy back to the grid through net-metering. By enabling distributed generation resources like residential solar panels, small wind and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, smart grid will spark a revolution in the energy industry by allowing small players like individual homes and small businesses to sell power to their neighbors or back to the grid. The same will hold true for larger commercial businesses that have renewable or back-up power systems that can provide power for a price during peak demand events, typically in the summer when air condition units place a strain on the grid. This participation by smaller entities has been called the "democritization of energy" -- it is similar to former Vice President Al Gore's vision for Smart Grid.


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