Climate Change and Alternative Energy Program – Part 6

This is the final entry from the trip, and thanks to a hectic final day in Washington State, it’s been written on my first day back in the office in the UK.

An early start to the day as we were bundled into our van at 08.00 to drive across to the Washington State capital, Olympia. Our first meeting was with State Senator Karen Fraser, which was held in the magnificent State Capital building. Karen was kind enough to give us a US politics 101 class at the start of the meeting which helped clear up some things that had been confusing me (that’s not me saying I now understand everything by the way!). I’ll not delve into this here, but it is worth noting that each US State has its own Constitution, and that any law passed must be in line with the Constitution or it can face legal challenge. It’s also worth noting that States have freedom to act where there is an absence of a National initiative; the emergence of State level GHG initiatives (such as cap and trade schemes) is an example of this. Washington State has not yet passed a cap and trade initiative, although one is in the legislative pipeline (it has been knocked back once already).

In a wide ranging discussion, a number of interesting points arose. The first is that people are feeling oppressed by the level of US debt and therefore there is a pushback on new spending programmes. Action on climate change is being directly affected by this. It is easier to deal with water and air quality issues as these are more tangible to the public.

Washington State is somewhat distrustful of nuclear power, due to a rather chequered history. The State has one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in America, and there is a perception of significant feet dragging at Federal level over clean up of the site. It was noted that a failed bond scheme for new nuclear build has further soured public opinion.

Regarding other power sources, I’ve already mentioned that the State derives around 60% of its power from hydro. Coal is unfavourable in the State and in fact there is only one coal power station in Washington. Natural gas is less disfavoured than coal. I’ve also mentioned previously the existence of NIMBY opposition to wind power as well as issues of grid connection. The fact that certain power sources are disfavoured is important because elected Representatives and Senators tend to represent their districts more strongly than there parties (because elections come around so frequently), so a strong local bias is likely to be reflected in the voting on Bills.

Our next visit was to the Washington Department of Ecology (DoEc), where we had an interesting discussion on climate change adaptation. Washington has 2200 miles of coastline and is already experiencing erosion problems and models are predicting further pummelling through storms and waves. Currently the DoEc is hoping to incorporate some forward planning into a forthcoming State Act (I missed the title) to help mitigate against these impacts.

In Colorado we heard that there are potentially serious problems relating to water availability and I asked if the same was true in Washington. From models, it appears that the overall quantity of freshwater will not change appreciably; but there less snow melt and more rainwater as things warm up. Additionally there may earlier low river flow in summer, which is bad news for salmon, which are already in trouble in the State.

We heard that the DoEc is being encouraged to save energy, as are other Departments within the State. What was interesting was that the DoEc will be allowed to keep up to 50% of the savings as long as they reinvest into energy efficiency. All Departments have targets, but there isn’t really a penalty of missing them - other than the shame factor.

Dave Sjoding, from Washington State University, described some of the DoEc energy from waste projects. As with many places, the State is running out of landfill space and is therefore examining options to reduce waste being buried. What I liked about this CHP proposal was that it was more holistic than simply burning rubbish; co-products were considered, such as phosphorus and nitrogen for fertiliser.

We headed back to Seattle for the final formal meeting of the day, which was with Kevin Schneider, a smart grid expert from the Pacific North West National Laboratory. Kevin gave an absolutely fantastic overview of the US power system and noted that idea of a smart grid is somewhat of a misnomer. He suggested that it is more likely that a smart grid will be a way to operate the electricity system in a more flexible way utilising communications and information technology. He suggested that such a grid would have more information on how electricity is consumed, would have better utilisation of assets and would integrate renewables.

He noted an experiment in the Olympic Peninsula – a community that is served by a single power line that is rather congested. Smart devices were deployed to each dwelling that relayed information to a central computer and had the ability to control certain household devices, such as hot water, heating systems, fridges and dryer loads. Consumers were supplied with a simple dial that allowed them to set it to “more comfort” or “more saving”. Each dwelling had an account set up into which a portion of their previous energy bill was placed, and were told that any money remaining in the account at the end of the project would be theirs (i.e. there was a fiscal incentive to save energy). The master computer then conducted real time auctions between the dwellings, based on the dial settings. At times of peak, dwellings set to "more saving" could have applicances turned of briefly to flatten the demand. The result of the one-year trial was threefold:

1. There were no interrupted load complaints
2. Peak load was reduced by up to 30%
3. The power demand was much smoother – in fact during one 12-hour period it was almost completely smooth, which is virtually unheard of!

Kevin noted that Smart Grids may not necessarily cut bills, but they can make a difference in power quality and infrastructure use efficiency. He also noted that it is expensive to install such technologies in the house and perhaps in the short term better gains might be had through smart control of the T&D infrastructure.

Hype and overselling has been a key feature of Smart Grids and fears about invasion of privacy (e.g. the Government is controlling your AC unit) or overstated benefits (e.g. a report estimated vehicle to grid technologies could earn EV owners up to $6,000 per annum, when the figure is likely to be closer to $50) have set its reputation back somewhat.

Our final appointment was a social engagement in the hotel bar with Craig Gannett , a local lawyer working in the field of renewable energy.

All in all a fantastic trip with some great highlights! Many thanks to the US Embassy in London and the US State Department (and ultimately the US tax payer) for hosting us and to the various local bodies in Washington, Denver and Seattle who arranged the programme. I’m absolutely sure that all I’ve learned will be useful in the future, although right now I haven’t quite worked out what to apply it to!