The untold story behind the EPA coal ash decision

Today the EPA issued new regulations on the much debated coal combustion particles [0], better known as Coal Ash or Fly Ash. And while we linger over the EPA’s decision not to classify coal ash as hazardous waste, regulated by the feds, but leave significant decisions on enforcement and implementation to states themselves, we should take a second to remember a few less known facts about this toxic sludge – and think about the alternatives.

The 286 billion pounds of coal ash comes from burning over 2.4 trillion (with a ‘t’!) pounds of coal. And while other forms of energy have ways to travel by sea, pipeline, and wind or through our atmosphere from the sun, coal needs to be hauled. And hauled it is.

A conservative estimate puts the amount of miles driven by heavy-weight coal-hauling locomotives burning polluting diesel fuels in the US, at over 1.5 trillion miles. Stopping the transport of coal alone would cut fuel consumption in the US with the equivalent of over 1.7 million cars. And that’s diesel, not your average “green”, high-octane gasoline. And that’s just if we weren’t transporting it. If we stopped burning it all together, it would reduce carbon dioxide emissions – also soon to be regulated by the EPA - by the equivalent of 715 million cars – three times the entire US car fleet.

Getting back to our lead character, coal ash: Coal ash was named the “second-largest industrial waste stream in the U.S., after mining wastes” by the American Physicians for Social Responsibility, who also note that coal ash “commonly contains some of the world’s deadliest toxic metals: arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium and selenium [which] can cause cancer and neurological damage in humans”[1]. This is not your average backyard compost.

So what can we do? With the new EPA ruling, it will be up to States to implement and enforce these rules. Two ways remain to deal with it then:

One, we keep on keeping on burning coal, emitting toxic particles and storing the waste under golf-courses, in concrete walls or under children’s playgrounds [2] at over 1400 dump sites in the US. [3], or two, we make a concerted effort to get rid of coal ash altogether.

Renewable energy production would completely remove the need for burning fuels like coal, and in fact, if we replaced the entire US electricity production from coal, with solar energy, we could cut waste production from energy by 99.8%(!) using our rooftops and unused lands for producing clean, coal-ash- free, solar power.

You think it’s impossible? In fact, just a small fraction of surface area would be needed - 1% of the California desert would do.

Here’s to clearing the air, by looking to the sun.

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Picture: In 2008, an earthen wall holding back a huge coal ash disposal pond failed at the coal-fired power plant in Kingston, Tennessee. The 40-acre pond spilled more than 1 billion gallons of coal ash slurry into the adjacent river valley, covering some 300 acres with thick, toxic sludge and destroying three homes.

Shooting the Moon with "Solar Waste"

I wanted to take a little time to address a recent concern by opponents of solar energy. Solar Waste. Journalist Jason Dearen at the Associated Press drew attention to the fact that solar energy production does indeed have waste, and that the problem lies in the fact that it needs to be hauled out of State to waste treatment facilities. But before you start selling your solar stocks and ripping the panels of your roof, let me put things into perspective.

"If solar were to produce the same amount of electricity as coal is today, the solar waste would be less than five hundredth (0.2%) of the total amount of coal hauled around the country today"

Dearen highlights the problem in waste water and "toxic sludge" as he calls it, although later admitting that "there was no evidence it has harmed human health". A problem he sees to point out is that 46 million pounds of waste is produced in the nation's leading solar manufacturing State, California, 1.4 million of which goes out of the State to other waste facilities.

Solar:
So that's 46 million pounds (23,000 short tons). 700 tons of these went out of California State from 2007 to beginning of 2011. Thus on average in that period, 155 tons of waste went out of the State per year.

Coal:
In 2011, the US produced 42% of its electricity from coal. Over 1.1 billion tons (2,200,000,000,000 pounds) of coal were produced that year of which approx 100 million tons were exported. Out of this coal came 130 million tons of Coal Combustion Residuals (or Coal Ash).

So lets compare the numbers: 
An average coal train carries about 150 cars each carrying 143 tons of coal, meaning that every year over 51,000 full train loads of coal are driven across the United States. According to a publication by the University of Texas in Austin, the average coal haul distance in 1980 was 275 miles. Assuming this figure has remained roughly the same, the astounding result is that coal is hauled approximately 303 billion ton-miles every year.

In effect, it means that the total distance that coal was hauled in the US in 2011, was the equivalent of transporting all of California's 155 tons of exported solar waste to the moon and back again. Not one time. But 4,000 times! 4,000 trips to the moon and back again! Now can we talk about coal again?

Even if solar were to produce the same amount of electricity as coal today, the equivalent amount of solar waste would be less than five hundredth (0.2%) of the total amount of coal produced and burned today,not even accounting for the remaining 130 million tons of coal ash and coal sludge left over after combustion.

Assuming For 150-car coal trains with 5 locomotives each, the distance traveled by coal-hauling locomotives is 1.5 trillion(!) miles per year. Using the industry's own conservative gallons per ton-mile mileages figure, replacing coal production with solar would save the equivalent amount of hauling fuel as taking 1.7 million cars off the streets. A little unrelated but consider also that stopping the burning of coal entirely would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of taking 715 million cars of the road, three times the entire US car fleet!

In Dearen's defense, he did shortly mention that solar is significantly cleaner than fossil fuels, but I wanted to tell you exactly how significant. Solar is very clean. Although there are byproducts in production, like any other product, the amount of waste is infinitesimal in relation to the toxic sludge of coal ash, sulfur, phosphor and volatile particles released not only in the burning but in the transportation of coal in the US.

I want to make clear that I am not saying we should not pay attention to solar waste, but lets get our priorities in order here, and deal with the big issues first. More solar means less waste.


Solar for Everyone!


Andreas Nicolet
www.solarnodes.com
ACNicolet@Twitter.com
SolarNodes@Twitter.com
facebook.com/SolarNodes

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Sources & appendix:
http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/CRS_Rpt_R42847.pdfhttp://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec7_5.pdf
http://www.coaltrainfacts.org/docs/Key-Facts-booklet.pdf
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_1_a
http://www.sciencebuzz.org/blog/freight-train-miles-gallon
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11

A few facts on Coal Ash
From the Physicians for Social Responsibility: http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/coal-ash.pdf

"Coal ash is the second-largest industrial waste stream in the U.S., after mining wastes."

"Coal ash commonly contains some of the world’s deadliest toxic metals: arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium and selenium [which] can cause cancer and neurological damage in humans. They can also harm and kill wildlife..."

"Coal ash is disposed in approximately 2,000 dump sites across the nation: at least 629 wet ash ponds and 311 dry landfills at power stations, at least 100 offsite dry landfills, and 750 inactive dumps, and hundreds of abandoned and active mines (as fill)"

Picture: In 2008, an earthen wall holding back a huge coal ash disposal pond failed at the coal-fired power plant in Kingston, Tennessee. The 40-acre pond spilled more than 1 billion gallons of coal ash slurry into the adjacent river valley, covering some 300 acres with thick, toxic sludge and destroying three homes.

SolarNodes! Can this movement challenge Big Oil?

"We are tired of fossil fuel subsidies and we want to change the American energy system to one that supports clean, cheap, reliable and renewable fuels such as solar!"

Americans favor solar energy over any other energy source. So why are we stuck with oil & gas? SolarNodes is an initiative aimed at helping solar energy surmount the challenges of a fossil-fueled economy.

In 2012 the Solar Energy Industries Association of America revealed a SEIA-sponsored survey suggesting that 9 of 10 US voters (92%) believe it is "important for the United States to develop and use solar power". 85% ranked solar "Very Favorably" or "Somewhat Favorably". 2 out of 3 voters agree that solar should receive Federal support before any other energy source!

There is staggering support in the US for solar, but why do we only see oil & gas ads on television? And how did the failure of one strategically flawed company, Solyndra, become the talking point in congress for 18 months all the while the US solar industry, through private AND government funding, continued to provide steady jobs growth throughout 2000-2012, reaching over 120,000 US workers in 2012 (Higher than the national number of Coal workers!)? Why are there a myriad of laws and regulations that hinder the spread of solar energy in the US, while fossil fuel companies have tax-laws and emissions regulations that give them an edge over solar?

One answer to this question that we suggest is, that there is quite simply no unified and/or centralized effort on behalf of solar energy. While coal, oil, and gas companies are gigantic, vertically integrated multinationals with vast sums of money collected over decades, the renewable energy (RE) industry is one of the people, fragmented and spread out. The RE-industry brings control of energy resources to the people. The downside is, that there is no big voice, or tank of money to draw from to sponsor political action groups or lobby politicians. In short, it's an uneven playing field.

SolarNodes is how we hope to change that.

We want to create a network and organization of individuals and small businesses who can unify their message and resources to make their voices heard. In congress and politics, many small and differing messages rarely make it to the table, so why not create ONE big voice of solar energy in the US. Let's stand together and deliver one message in one voice: "We are tired of fossil fuel subsidies and we want to change the American energy system to one that supports clean, reliable and renewable fuels such as solar!"

By no means are we close to being there yet. But with your help, we can grown the network, create the message, bring solar energy industry organizations together with the people and stand up and "free the sun"! Share this page, and share the message.

Like us at: www.facebook.com/SolarNodes
www.solarnodes.com

Join the energy transition!

/Andreas Nicolet

Will Jeb Bush be "Disruptive" in 2016?

"I know what I need to know ... to run for President" - Jeb Bush.

Setting the Stage

Today, a good friend from school invited me to a speaker series to which he had a spare ticket. The event was in Oakland, California and was entertained by the moderate conservative, former governor of Florida, Jeb Bush. It's been contemplated for some time that he will run for President in 2016 and this night's speech, came with an interesting revelation.

I don't want to talk to much about Bush and his past, but there was one thing in particular that I did want to relay. Something he said, and something he didn't say. Something about the power of "Disruption". His speech on this night, focused on Education and Immigration. Both subjects have obviously been hot topics in media, and Bush himself has been a stark opponent and foe of the teachers' unions, something he somewhat reluctantly had to admit at a full Paramount Theatre in "liberal Oakland".

"He opposed the Kyoto Protocol which would have been the largest disruption to an ailing oil & gas economy one could ever have imagined."

Good Ideas

A key word of this speech was "Disruption". According to Bush, his work as a governor had allowed him to disrupt a dysfunctional educational system to boost its performance, and he argued that getting rid of teachers unions was a natural part of a changing and disruptive market economy. Government and Unions: Bad.

So "Disruption" is the way forward.

Driverless cars, Bush mentioned. "I don't know if you have this around here" he proclaimed, and went on to describe the concept of ride-sharing and the wonders it could entail: Billions saved in highway construction, lower fuel consumption and thousands of lives saved from - arguably - fewer traffic accidents(!) As he said: Cab companies wont be happy, "but who would you rather root for". Positive change and new ideas or a group of disgruntled cab drivers, hiding behind regulations and legislation concerned with losing market share? Asked and answered.

Disruption is good.

Here's my beef.

I sat with my friend on the balcony, in this marvelous Art Deco building that is the Paramount Theatre, and listened to what came across as an extremely moderate position, and then noted that even though Bush mentioned energy at the beginning of his speech as an "important issue", we never got to it. Why? I was waiting for that moment when he would take it up, but it never came.

"He's an oil man" said my friend. Oil. There it was.

Disruption

In the middle of Jeb Bush's clever, sometimes even left-leaning argument for free-market capitalism, improved incentive structures and disruption of over-regulated markets. A giant elephant, seemingly ignored, in the room. A mountain of an omission the size of the Florida everglades. What about oil? Is Oil not a "Disgruntled cab company" hiding behind a wall of regulations and institutionalized practices that has been built over the last one hundred years?

Oil man, Jeb Bush. Climate change skeptic, in favor of "national energy policy ... increasing supplies of oil and gas inside the United States", who despite his voiced support for restoring US coastlines, opened the lid on increased exploratory drilling in the Mexican Gulf. Jeb, who is still actively supporting his son, and active oil man, George P. Bush in seeking office also endorsed GOP candidate and Keystone XL-supporter Mitt Romney and before that, the "Drill-baby-drill" McCain nomination. Jeb Bush has called repeatedly for incentives for more use of natural gas in transportation and called the environmentally criticized natural gas extraction method,  hydrofracking, the "coolest dang thing that’s ever happened in the last 10 years".

In fewer words. Jeb Bush is willing to disrupt the teachers unions and the cab companies and apparently is going at public transportation with his driverless car analogy, but nothing so far suggests that this man would in any way shape or form, help to tear down the wall of oil barrels, keeping US in the shade.

Would he ever be in favor of disrupting the billions of dollars in direct and indirect incentives for the oil & gas industry? He opposed the Kyoto Protocol, which would have been the largest disruption to an ailing oil & gas economy one could ever have imagined. "No thank you", Kyoto.

New ideas

How about disrupting the regulations of hundreds of electric utilities in the US resisting reform of solar energy-interconnection rules, keeping power generation in the hand of the centrally controlled utilities. How about disruption of tax-regulation that has for decades favored fossil fuel projects over renewable energy projects? (Master Limited Partnerships is one example). How about disruption of the common practice of essentially providing free federal insurance to nuclear power plants by limiting the maximum liability in case of disaster. How about supporting the taxation of externality costs such as lung desease caused by coal energy, a cost recently assessed by the Harvard Medical School to be close to half a trillion dollars per year or 1,600 dollars for every American, every year! A cost levied on the public, not the coal industry.

A real disruption, would be for Jeb Bush, to finally come out and denounce his past in dirty energy and admit that what needs to be disrupted is Big Oil and Big Energy.

So this is what I think we will see in 2016. After listening to the man speak, there is no doubt in my mind that he is running. I am just afraid that in all his moderate talk of reforming education, welfare and immigration, we forget the elephant in the room, our climate.

A few thoughts on solar energy today

Why EVER give tax break to a billion dollar oil company? Give those breaks to small businesses and those who need it!

While some politicians are supporting dirty energy and causing more than a fuss over tax credits to green industries - some of which survive and evolve at the grace of the tax-breaks - other politicians are supporting green and clean energy which will rid America's dependence on imported and expendable fuels.

The question isn't even about politics anymore. It's about lobbyism. I will argue that any informed person, with a common sense, who doesn't take oil money as campaign donations, would agree with the notion, that the transition to green is good. Coal, oil, nuclear and gas is either destroying our climate and/or becoming increasingly expensive. The transition to the green and renewable energy economy is happening and we should help it along, not fight it with campaign ads and political banter.

Facts:

• 2012 saw more solar workers than coal workers
• Solar industry grew 40% per year from 2000 to 2010, with a minor slowdown in 2010-2012 due to the recession, 
• Employment in the solar industry grew over 12% in 2012, the fastest growing industry in the US.
• Cost of solar panels fell over 50% from 2010 to 2012 and solar energy is now cheaper than electricity bought from the grid in several US States.

Support the politicians in your district or state who support the clean energy transition. Don't let the US fall behind and don't let big oil and the energy utilities control the agenda.

Could solar power be replacing fossil fuels?

Over the next two decades. The residential Solar Power industry is set to create up towards a quarter of a million jobs. It will replace over 40 coal power plants and provide tens of millions of Americans with billions of dollars in savings on their electricity bill. How do we make this happen? We simply need to look at the numbers and tell regulators and investors to get with it, face the facts, remove red-tape and stop clinging to an aging fossil energy infrastructure. The technology is finally mature and ready. Solar energy is a significant if not dominating part of the U.S. energy future.

Solar is becoming cheaper than regular household cost of electricity.

Solar system prices have dropped consistently over the last two decades, and many researchers believe we are not done yet:

•  Increasing supply of solar modules will continue to drive down prices.
• Module efficiency is increasing, producing more energy per dollar of cost.
• Mounting racks, tracking devices, inverters etc. are also demonstrably becoming cheaper.
• Cost of red tape such as interconnection regulations and permitting is twice as high in the U.S. as in Germany and will and should come down.

So prices are falling. What about cost of regular electricity?

• Regular electricity prices are projected to continue to rise with demand.
• U.S. is moving away from cheap but dirty coal towards already more expensive natural gas and nuclear.
• Oil, coal and uranium prices are increasing.
• Emissions regulations are likely to increase for fossil fuel generation in the longer term.

Americans are quickly getting the idea, money saved is money earned!

“Why is all this important?” you may ask. It is important because the cost of a solar system and the cost of electricity are the two major (if not only) elements that drive the level of solar installations in the U.S. in the long run. Subsidies, grants and tax credits cannot always be around.

In 2012, a SEIA poll showed that 92% of Americans believe the US should develop and use more solar energy. Look now at the projected trend for unsubsidized solar system electricity prices, predicting them dipping below regular electricity prices nation-wide, within the next five to ten years.

Remember then that business models exist in the U.S. already that allow households to have solar systems installed on their roofs without paying a penny out of their pocket, and that these business models can already save people 20% on their electricity bill every year. Companies such as SunRun, Solarcity and Sungevity pick up the tab in exchange for a yearly leasing fee, which is lower than what people paid for their electricity before.

With this in mind, it’s hard not to imagine that the growth in solar systems installations is going to continue at a rapid pace!

So here’s the pitch!

If just a third of these 92% of Americans decide over the next two decades, before 2030, to save money on their electricity bill, without having to move a muscle, there will essentially be about 35 million households with solar systems in 2030. 35 million!

Assuming that system sizes stay about the same on average, that’s a total of $543 billion in investment into an energy source that is clean, non-volatile, predictable and that creates jobs.

Assuming a total of 30 hours per installation and 2 hours in yearly maintenance, this scenario would create about 180,000 full-time jobs before 2030. And that not counting the numerous jobs in administration, financing, transmission, production and support that come with it which would likely bring it over a quarter million.

The total energy produced would be enough to replace over 40 coal power plants!

"So what are you saying?"

Many will point to often-cited arguments against solar such as grid reliability or back-up generation. But for every argument you find against, there are people who can explain you how those problems are handled. Long-distance power transmission, energy demand response and 24-hour solar generation are among them.

So what am I saying? I’m saying that the solar industry is grossly underestimated by the media and lacks more informed investors. It has the potential to be a trillion dollar industry over the next decades. It brings power generation into communities and away from dirty fossil fuel plants. It provides energy security and energy independence. And it does all this cheaply while creating hundreds of thousands of domestic and non-outsourceable jobs. If you think I’m being too optimistic, try reading the book “Solar Trillions” by Stanford Professor, Tony Seba, who is on the same page.

Let’s get behind this, support energy regulations supporting this revolution, remove red-tape, tell our friends and colleagues. Corporations such as Deutsche Bank, Google and Walmart are among some of the private institutions who are getting it and getting in early, and more are coming. Let’s go!

/Andreas Nicolet

Assumptions and calculations:

Sources:

[1]  http://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-market-insight-report-2012-q2

[2]  http://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-industry-data

[3]  http://www.seia.org/research-resources/us-solar-market-insight-report-2011-year-review

[4]  2012 Census

[5]  http://www.seia.org/research-resources/national-solar-survey

Wind craze

I recently fell upon a discussion on a wind energy forum. Someone was trying to figure out how much power he would be able to generate if somehow he could tap into the jetstreams of the uper-atmosphere. Now, initially, most people react with astonishment and scepticicm when they hear such ideas - and I'm writing today to tell you that those people would be right! A back of the envelope analysis reveals the cold (or shall I say hot) truth.

A small sized wind generator raised into the upper atmosphere would not only be facing a problem just having it float in the air, but the power would most likely never get to the ground.

Using the thickest cable on the American Wire Gauge (A measure of cable thickness) reveals that we would lose over 16% of the power to so-called "resistive heating" in the cable. Now, this would be acceptable if the copper-cable wouldn't weigh almost 10 metric tonnes, or the same as two large Boeing 747 jet engines!

 The smaller the cable, the lower the weight obviously but also the higher the power loss. The cut-off point comes at around AWG5 (The weight only HALF a jet engine) where the power loss would surpass 100%. 

Now remember, I'm not saying that we should not experiment with new ideas or concepts. The point I'm trying to make here, is that sometimes we get so focused on being innovative that we get our heads stuck in the clouds (pun intended) and forget the basic facts and physics that surround us. There are plenty of down-to-earth ways we can be innovative today: Google has been experimenting with investments in flying wind turbines, and they have succeeded fairly nicely with low-altitude flying wind turbines such as this.
 
So, sure there a probably ways we can think about concepts like these in a plausible way, low-weight superconductors, microwave transmission and so on, but let's focus on the low-hanging fruits of sustainable and renewable development for now. Space-beams, and jetstream wind can wait a little longer.

Makani's prototype flying wind turbine.