Green Energy

When then-candidate Donald Trump visited West Virginia in May 2016, he vowed to put miners in coal country back to work. “[Y]ou’re going to be so proud of your president,” Trump told a crowd gathered at a civic center in Charleston, West Virginia.

The reality is that coal dominance of the U.S. energy sector ended a long time ago—more than 60 years ago, to be exact, when it was surpassed by natural gas. Now a new report suggests cheaper and more abundant renewable energy is knocking coal down a peg, too.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s most recent numbers found that in April, renewable energy—including wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and hydroelectric—surpassed coal in energy generating capacity for the first time in American history. That means that for the first time ever, clean energy could produce more power than coal.

Trends in the FERC’s monthly reports and other similar reports suggest renewable energy capacity and production are going nowhere but up—and coal is going nowhere but down. That decline is largely driven by the affordability of natural gas and the declining costs of building clean energy projects. This year, the percentage of total capacity available from coal has declined down to 21.55 percent, from 22.73 percent in April 2018.

Meanwhile, renewables continue to grow. With new renewable projects coming online, total generating capacity from renewable energy facilities increased to 21.56 percent of all available installed electrical capacity in the U.S. That’s just a hair more than coal’s 21.55 percent, but it’s still something. While generating capacity is not the same as actual energy generation (not all generating capacity is used all the time), it is a signal that energy sector is moving increasingly into renewables.

That doesn’t mean clean energy is on the verge of overtaking the behemoth of natural gas in total capacity or generation. Natural gas still makes up about 44 percent of energy capacity. But it does mean that wind and solar are growing faster than any other source—including natural gas. There are expected to be 2,510 new solar power units and 543 new wind units added by 2022.

Not all of them will be built, but with those new units, the FERC expects wind and solar to make up at least than 54 percent of newly added capacity by 2022.

An analysis of the FERC report by the Sun Day Campaign, a nonprofit group researching sustainable energy, found that total generating capacity from more traditional fuels like natural gas, coal, oil, and nuclear could actually decline by 2022 as plant retirements exceed new projects. If the ERC’s projections remain accurate, that means that renewable sources of energy could provide one-quarter of the power in the U.S. by that same year, according to the Sun Day Campaign. A major push for clean energy investment between now and then could tip the scales even more.

Twenty-five percent clean-energy production is not where most scientists and climate activists say the country needs to be to avoid the worst effects of climate change. But at least the ball is rolling.

Elon Musk is suggesting that the new version of Tesla’s solar roof tiles will be even less expensive and it will roughly be the equivalent of the cost of a comp shingle roof and the electric utility bill, which the solar roof will slash through solar energy generation.

When Tesla launched its Solar Roof Tiles in 2017, the automaker said that they would start volume production and installation in 2018.

However, the rollout turned out to be much slower and installations have been limited to the homes of some executives and a few customers.

Tesla later delayed volume production to 2019.

CEO Elon Musk said that they had to make some changes to the product in order to make sure it will last for 30 years.

At Tesla’s 2019 shareholder’s meeting, Musk said that they are now completing a third version of the Tesla solar roof:

“We are about to complete version 3 of the solar roof. This is actually quite a hard technology problem to have an integrated solar cell with a roof tile, have it look good, and last for 30 years.”

The CEO explained that they had difficulties doing accelerated testing on the roof, but they now feel more confident.

With the third version, Musk appears confident that Tesla can lower the cost to an impressive level:

“I am very excited about version 3 of solar roof. We have a shot at being equal to a comp shingle roof plus someone’s utility cost or being lower than that. That’s one of the cheapest roofs available. So you can have a great roof with better economics than a normal fairly cheap roof and your utility bill.”

When launching the product, Tesla said that the “typical homeowner can expect to pay $21.85 per square foot for a Solar Roof.”

It’s a fairly expensive product, but it comes with a lifetime of the house warranty and 30-year power generation guaranteed.

After the electricity production, Tesla estimated that its solar roof will be cheaper than a non-solar tile roof of a similar style or virtually pay for itself through electricity savings.

But that style was a tile roof style, which is much more expensive than a comp shingle roof – indicating that Tesla would have made cost improvements.

A shingle roof can cost as little as $4 per square foot while a tile roof can cost up to $20 per square foot.

Ameresco, Inc., an energy efficiency and renewable energy company, today announced that it has partnered with the Town of Westport, Massachusetts to install a 622 KW-dc ground-mounted solar panel system at Westport’s closed landfill. Ameresco will be responsible for the design, construction, operations and maintenance of the solar farm, at its own expense.

As part of this agreement, Ameresco is leasing the land housing the solar panels from Westport and making an annual Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) to the town. Westport did not put up any capital and will not need to expend any operating funds tied to the project.

“Using the closed landfill for a solar project has been an objective of the Town, the Board of Selectmen and the Energy Committee for 10 years,” said Town Administrator Tim King. “The Town is utilizing a non-productive asset (the closed landfill) for a revenue-generating activity. The Town is furthering our energy goals by supporting a renewable energy source on town property. We have been very pleased with this partnership. Ameresco has been a supportive and collaborative partner to us throughout the entire process.”

The project is anticipated to reach commercial operation in August 2019.

The vast Sahara Desert in Africa is inhospitable to plants and animals, but quite suitable for movie sets such as Luke Skywalker’s desert home planet of Tatooine in Star Wars. But it could be home to so much more.

It’s so sunny and hot in the Sahara all year round that scientists have started to suggest that a small part of the large desert could turn into one giant solar power project capable of powering Europe and even the world.

Theoretically, the Sahara desert has huge potential to be the world’s biggest renewable energy source. But in practice, there are technological, regulatory, environmental, and political hurdles to turning the Sahara into one giant solar park.

According to Amin Al-Habaibeh, Professor of Intelligent Engineering Systems at the Nottingham Trent University, the total solar energy available in the Sahara desert exceeds 22 billion gigawatt hours (GWh) annually. To put this in context, if all the Sahara were one giant solar farm, it would generate 2,000 times more energy than the largest power station in the world, which generates 100,000 GWh annually, Al-Habaibeh writes in The Conversation.

Theoretically, solar energy generated in the Sahara desert could meet all of Europe’s electricity needs with a low-carbon renewable energy source.

Professor Al-Habaibeh argues that there are two solar power technologies that could be used—concentrated solar power (CSP) tech and the most common type of solar generation in the world, photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. But each of those two systems has their drawbacks. CSP would be ideal in the hot and always sunny weather, but its lenses and mirrors used to concentrate the power in one spot could be dusted by sand storms and would require water to clean. The heat from CSP generates electricity from steam turbines, which are still a complex technology to use in solar-powered generation.

PV solar panels, on the other hand, see their efficiency drop when they are too hot, and it’s often very hot in the Sahara, Al-Habaibeh says. PV solar system would also need water to clean the panels, which could end up covered in sand after sand storms.

Then there is the issue with harmonized regulation and legislation because there are several countries in the Sahara desert, including a restive Libya which is currently fighting a civil war.

Next, there is the problem with what experts call ‘climate justice’.

According to Olufemi Taiwo, a philosopher who researches climate justice at Georgetown University, sub-Saharan Africa’s potential power exports to Europe may boost European energy security but will do very little to help a still vast portion of the African population who don’t have access to electricity.

Huge solar and wind installations in the Sahara desert could also have unintended consequences, which should also be taken into account, Alona Armstrong, Senior lecturer at Lancaster University, wrote in The Conversation last year, citing a study which suggests that huge solar and wind installations would raise local temperatures and increase rainfall and later—vegetation. While turning parts of the Sahara green for the first time in several thousand years may be a good thing, the study suggests that experts and researchers should take into account the unintended consequences of large-scale solar and wind deployment in the region.

The political and regulatory landscape in the countries lying in the Sahara desert should also be considered in any project, Armstrong says.

“Though mass amounts of cheap Saharan energy sounds like a great thing, it is not clear it would be a secure enough investment for the economics to add up,” she writes.

One previous attempt to have large solar and wind systems in the Sahara power Europe has already failed. A Germany-based company, Desertec, proposed in 2009 a massive project to export electricity from the desert to Europe. A few years later, however, many of the shareholders backing the project called it quits, because of very high costs and because they were not so interested in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

In the United States, theoretically, a small part of a sunny U.S. state could power the entire country with solar panels, Elon Musk said in 2017.

“If you wanted to power the entire U.S. with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States,” Musk said at the National Governors Association Summer Meeting in July 2017. “The batteries you need to store the energy, to make sure you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile. That’s it.”

In theory, large-scale solar projects could power entire countries and continents, but in practice there are still high barriers to making this a reality.

America’s coal industry has already been left in the dust by natural gas. Now it’s under immense pressure from the renewable energy boom.

The renewable energy sector had slightly more installed capacity than coal in April, according to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report.

That means US power plants can produce more energy from clean sources than coal for the first time in history, according to the SUN DAY Campaign, a nonprofit research group supporting sustainable energy. The breakthrough reflects the plunging cost of solar and wind as well as heightened environmental concern about coal.

“Coal has no technology path,” said Jeff McDermott, managing partner at Greentech Capital Advisors, a boutique investment bank focused on clean energy. “It’s got nowhere to go but extinction.”

The clean energy revolution is on the verge of a tipping point.
Also in April, the renewable energy sector was projected to have generated more electricity than coal, according to a separate report published by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. That transition was partially driven by seasonal issues.

At the same time, America has drastically cut back on its appetite for coal. Since peaking in 2008, US coal consumption has plunged 39% to the lowest level in 40 years, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

The milestones come despite President Donald Trump’s promise to prop up the coal industry by cutting environmental rules. Analysts say that’s because the shift toward renewables is being driven more by economics than regulation.

“The government can tap on the brakes or accelerate this movement — but this progress will continue moving forward,” said Matthew Hoza, senior energy analyst at consulting firm BTU Analytics. “For the most part, the public is calling for renewables.”

Solar and wind boom

Coal was dethroned by natural gas as the king of the power industry in 2016. That move was caused in large part by the shale boom, which left the United States with an abundance of cheap natural gas to burn for power.

In April, the total available installed generating capacity of coal stood at 257.48 gigawatts, according to the FERC report.

Renewable energy — including not just solar and wind but also water, biomass and geothermal steam — narrowly overtook coal by climbing to 257.53 gigawatts of installed capacity, FERC said.

Not surprisingly, the shift was driven by the rise of solar and wind.
While no new coal-fired power plants were added this year, the FERC report showed solar units increased by 102 units, or 1,473 megawatts. Wind also grew by 18 units, or 1,545 megawatts.

The FERC report measured capacity, not the actual amount of power generated. And renewable energy typically has a lower capacity utilization than other fuel sources. In other words, just because renewable power has the potential to generate this much electricity, doesn’t mean that it actually will — at least not yet.

Renewable generation isn’t expected to surpass coal on an annual basis for several years.

Hoza noted the FERC report’s findings have not yet been matched by the more closely watched numbers published by the EIA — but he expects that to change soon.

“We’re going to eventually see renewables surpass coal across the country,” said Hoza.

Given these trends, McDermott, the Greentech Capital Partner, called the Trump administration’s efforts to save coal a “ridiculous concept” akin to trying to save the rotary phone.

“The public doesn’t want it. And the world can’t take it,” McDermott said

“The Trump administration is playing political favorites, trying to prop up an industry that is technologically obsolete.”

Renewables take aim at natural gas

Power companies are increasingly relenting to pressure from customers and states to adopt cleaner energy.

Con Edison (ED), one of the largest investor-owned utilities, acquired solar and wind projects worth $2.1 billion last year. The company is now the second largest solar producer in North America.

Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy (XEL) has gone from a coal-first power company to one aiming to deliver zero-carbon electricity by 2050.
Renewables are even starting to put pressure on natural gas, which is a cleaner-burning fossil fuel.

Wind and solar power generation scheduled to come online could displace up to 1.42 billion cubic feet per day of gas demand for electric power, according to a report published on Monday by energy analytics company Drillinginfo.

“Renewables are going to get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. We’re not done,” said McDermott.

Tesla is currently installing its solar roof product in eight states, according to Elon Musk, speaking at the Tesla Annual Shareholder Meeting on Tuesday. The solar roof-tile project has had a relatively long genesis since being unveiled three years ago, in 2016.

In 2017, the company claimed its first-ever installations of the Tesla solar roof, after opening up orders for the product in the second quarter of that year. Musk noted during the company’s Q2 2017 earnings call that both himself and Tesla CTO JB Straubel had the tiles installed and operating on their homes.

The company also announced last year that it had entered into a partnership with Home Depot to sell its solar panels, along with its PowerWall home battery, but that was about its traditional panels specifically, not the new tile product. The tiles are designed to look like high-quality home tiles people use currently, with integrated solar panels that are not easily identified from ground level, in order to provide a more aesthetically pleasing solution.

In addition to having installations run in eight states, Musk said the solar roof product is currently on version three, and that this version is very exciting to him because it offers a chance of being at cost parity with an equivalent entry-level cheap traditional tile, when you include the cost of utilities you’d be saving by generating your own power instead.

Regarding timelines for wider rollout of the solar roof products at the costs he anticipates, his own words probably say it best: “I’m sometimes a little optimistic about time frames — it’s time you knew,” he joked at the meeting.