Green Energy

Gary Potwin simply laughs when asked if pursuing renewable energy for his home was the right move.

Gary and his wife Ruth Potwin, of Lowell, had 12 solar panels installed on their Douglas Road home in April 2014 and they are thrilled they did it.

Along with meeting their desire to switch to clean energy, they say the financial savings have been significant.

Based on the statistics the Potwins gathered, they would have paid an average of $674 a year, over the last four years, if they didn’t have the solar panels put on their roof. With the panels, the couple said they actually paid $163.

There satisfaction with the first 12 panels has resulted in the couple planning to place an additional 16 solar panels put on their home’s roof, along with an air-source heat pump, through the Solarize Lowell program.

The city of Lowell is working to transition toward more clean energy options through participation in the Solarize Mass Plus program. After a bidding process, with support from Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, the Solarize Lowell selection team announced North Andover-based ReVision Energy as the program installer.

In addition to allowing Lowell residents to move toward clean energy, Jay Mason, chairman of the Lowell Sustainability Council and a volunteer with Solarize Lowell, said the program brings “deep discounts” on solar and heat pump purchases.

The discounts include a 30 percent federal discount available until the end of 2019, and another 15 to 20 percent discount available through the Solarize Lowell program.

“The incentives we are getting from ReVision Energy and the Solarized Lowell program, we couldn’t pass this up,” Ruth said about their purchase of 16 more solar panels.

The couple appeared on Wednesday night during a Solarize Lowell panel discussion. In hand they had a poster board displaying all their savings and cost statistics, along with a map of their house, showing where the panels are currently located, and where the new batch will be located.

City Councilor Karen Cirillo served as the moderator for the event, attended by panelists including James Manzer, of ReVision Energy, and Sandra Brinquinho, of Enterprise Bank, who discussed financing options for renewable energy options.

Several community residents attended the meeting to ask questions about clean energy options.

“I think we have an opportunity to do something toward a cleaner energy future for our community and our city and the state,” Mason said. “If we take steps in our own back yard, we’re going to get where we need to go.”

Low-income NYC residents pay up to 13 percent of their income on energy costs according to WE ACT, a non-profit organization working for environmental justice.

Solar energy is considered the future for increased energy costs with a lesser damage to the environment but unfortunately, it can be expensive and therefore only accessible to those with a higher income.

In order to change that, We Act launched Solar Uptown Now program, which is currently installing solar arrays on the rooftops of 11 affordable housing buildings across northern Manhattan.

“ We install solar panels to protect northern Manhattan from the climate change and to help residents reduce their energy income,” Cecil D. Corbin-Mark, Deputy Director of We Act, said Wednesday.

Sponsored by the New York City Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, the City University of New York’s Sustainable CUNY, and the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the program focuses on helping residents to choose and install solar to a reduced price.

“Solar both helps these communities to lower their greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change and it also saves money for these people that generally spends a greater portion of their income on energy bills,” Corbin-Mark said.

By bringing people and communities together, Corbin-Mark explains that the program cut solar costs for the participating residents by 10 to 20 percent.

“The solar panels are expected to offset around 4,000 tons of greenhouse emissions, save building residents more than $1.7 million in energy costs and generate power for more than 900 residents throughout their 25-year lifespan,” Corbin-Mark said.

“The residents with solar panels will save $59,000 a year,” Corbin-Mark said.

Together with SolarOne, a part of the project is also to provide unemployed and underemployed members of the community with free solar training.

Corbin-Mark explains that in order to improve the community’s health, it was essential that the program included worker training that brought local residents job opportunities.

“100 people have participated in the training program so far and 90 of those have later been employed and helped out with the solar installations,” Corbin-Mark said.

The program is open for local New York City residents and you can apply at their website by filling in a form.

How to get solar on your building

If you’re the owner of a building in northern Manhattan, the only thing you have to do is to fill in a form and a S.U.N representative will visit your building to help you pick the right solar system.

If you’re not the owner, you can sign up to the community shared solar program where you get to share the costs with your neighbors. Building owners who agree to the community shared solar systems therefore won’t have to pay for the solar system themselves.

“We all need to combat the dramatic climate change and making solar energy more accessible is a big step in the right direction,” Corbin-Mark said.

The Employers’ Organization of Renewable Sources of Energy in Romania (PATRES) expresses its deep concern over the decisions of the Romanian authorities regarding the future of renewable energy in Romania, as reflected by the draft National Energy and Climate Plan.

The European Commission will most likely recommend to Romania to revise its Energy Strategy and the Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan in order to achieve a renewable energy share of at least 32% (versus 27.9% as envisaged in the draft Plan sent by the government to the EC). PATRES proposes 35% share of renewable energy in Romania by 2030, slightly above the 32% overall target set for whole EU.

The European Commission published on November 28 the long-term strategy for de-carbonising the EU economy, a strategic vision for a prosperous, modern, competitive, climate-neutral economy by 2050 – “A Clean Planet for All “. The priority objective is full de-carbonisation of the electricity generation sector and Romania, as a European country, will have to eventually comply with this, PATRES stressed. By 2050, Europe will have to quit fossil fuels completely in electricity generation and rely on 80% of E-RES.

An analysis, Investing the Economic Value of Flexible Solar Power Plant Operation, done by Energy+Environmental Economics, in cooperation with First Solar and Tampa Electric Company (TECO), found that adding increasing levels of flexibility can provide savings for rate payers while allowing significantly greater levels of solar penetration.

As seen in the chart below, this means moving from from the inflexible Must-Take mode into Curtailable and Downward Dispatch and finally Full Flexibility.

The above chart suggests that in the Must-Take scenario (where solar power will always run, and other hardware will pull back), solar power cannot be greater than 13.9% of the demand on TECO’s relatively isolated grid. As the greater levels of flexibility are added, the models show increasing penetration and total demand delivery. Having Full Flexibility would allow 2.4 GW of solar power to be installed (almost 28% of all demand) – and delivering greater than 24.5% of all electricity without changing the current power grid at all, or adding storage.

Additionally, as the flexibility increases – even with greater amounts of solar electricity not being produced to make room for less flexible resources – the savings for customers continues to increase as penetration levels increase toward 28%.

And of course, we have long known that solar power plants can do these things from a technical standpoint, and now it is clear that they can do so economically as well.

One analysis from Minnesota has suggested that oversizing solar power for winter power generation would be cheaper than either seasonal storage or gas, while a study in California at a First Solar power plant, along with National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), tested a 300 MW utility scale photovoltaic power plant in California and found that the that utility-scale solar power plant could provide grid reliability services that are significantly better than fast-ramping gas turbine technologies.

The power plant was equipped with advanced power controls by combining multiple power-electronic inverters and advanced plant-level controls. The test demonstrated that PV plants can have the technical capabilities to provide grid services such as spinning reserves, load following, voltage support, ramping, frequency response, variability smoothing, frequency regulation, and power quality improvement.

This research of a large scale plant followed similar research in distributed solar in Hawaii making use of Enphase and SolarEdge hardware, also directed by NREL.

When we combine these thoughts and recognize that ‘inefficient’ over sizing of solar power, as is noted in Minnesota, is still better financially than gas or seasonal storage, then it becomes quite obvious that flexible, and efficient usage of solar power – even when we shut it off at times to let the fossils lumber – is going to dominate.

A requirement for new homes built in California starting in 2020 to include solar rooftop panels is now formally part of the state’s building code. It follows approval Tuesday by the California Building Standards Commission of a plan endorsed in May by a state energy panel.

The action by the state building standards commission came in a unanimous 8-0 vote and makes California the first state in the nation to mandate solar-energy installations on most single-family homes as well as multi-family residential buildings up to three stories, including condos and apartment complexes. However, the solar rule has raised concerns the cost to build new homes will soar and further erode home affordability statewide.

The solar requirement is expected to add on average about $9,500 to the cost of new houses but is projected to be offset by about $19,000 in energy savings over a 30-year period, according to the California Energy Commission. Back in May, the energy policy and planning agency approved the requirement for solar panels for most new California homes built starting in 2020.

“Today’s unanimous vote was the culmination of more than two years of work by SEIA, it’s partner organizations and of course policy makers in the Golden State,” said Sean Gallagher, vice president of state affairs for the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade association of the solar energy industry. “We hope other states will look at what California has done and consider similar policies to encourage clean and low cost solar energy.”

The state has estimated that solar standards applying to most homes and many commercial structures could save California residents and businesses millions in energy costs. The new standards require solar photovoltaics on new residential single-family buildings and multifamily buildings up to three stories high.

“While per capita electricity consumption in the U.S. has increased steadily over the last 40 years, California’s per capita consumption has remained flat, due in large measure to building and appliance efficiency standards,” California Energy Commission Executive Director Drew Bohan said in remarks Tuesday before the building standards panel in support of the new solar mandate. “The new standards presented today will guide the construction of buildings that will continue to keep costs down, better withstand the impacts of climate change, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

The approved standards still allow new home construction to continue with some natural gas but the state is pushing to reduce gas need over time and facilitate a shift to high-efficiency electric appliances, such as heat pump water heaters.

“These highly energy efficient and solar-powered homes will save families money on their energy bills from the moment they walk through their front door,” said Kelly Knutsen, director of technology advancement for the California Solar and Storage Association, an industry trade group. “Homebuyers will also have a solar plus storage option, allowing their home-grown clean energy to work for them day and night.”

The California Building Industry Association estimates that only 15 to 20 percent of the single-family homes built in California have solar panel installations. At least seven cities in the state, including San Francisco, already have solar mandates of one form or another on new buildings.

Back when Tim Nash was studying economics at Dalhousie University in Halifax, he found himself starting to question what he was being taught. Travel to India showed him what extreme inequality and poverty looked like. And digging into research on climate change made him consider how much environmental responsibility rested on the shoulders of corporations and investors.

But according to his professors, social and environmental issues were “externalities,” falling outside conventional economic calculations. That didn’t sit right with Mr. Nash, who today is a Toronto-based economist, blogger and investment advisor specializing in cleantech investments. He started to ask tough questions in class.

“My economic professors, they kind of shut me down, to be honest,” he says. “I graduated with my BA in economics with way more questions than answers.”

While Mr. Nash may have once felt somewhat alone in his thinking, times are changing, and that is particularly evident in investors’ portfolios. Investing in green or clean energy is no longer just for tree-huggers – instead, it’s going mainstream, with younger investors particularly interested.

A few years ago, when investors heard the words “responsible” or “sustainable,” they tended to tune out, Mr. Nash says, equating those investments with lower financial returns – and not always unreasonably so. Exchange-traded funds incorporating wind and solar power companies with whimsical ticker symbols such as FAN and TAN offered lacklustre returns.

But as global demand for energy continues to rise, more attention is being paid to hydro, wind and solar options. A report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance indicates that by 2030, solar and wind will account for 16 per cent of global generation capacity, up from 3 per cent today. Meanwhile, fossil fuels will see their share of total power generation drop to 46 per cent from 64 per cent.

Mr. Nash’s preferred ETFs these days are the First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Index Fund (QCLN), which tracks the performance of clean-energy companies, and the Invesco Cleantech ETF (PZD), which offers a broad mix of green technologies including LED lighting, smart grids and batteries, rather than simply focusing on renewable energy generation, which he predicts could run into trouble.

“The price of renewable energy is just falling so quickly. The price of solar panels and wind turbines is dropping, which is great for consumers and for the planet, but is not always so great for those companies,” he explains.

Investors who want “consistent returns without having the volatility of the stock market” might consider green bonds from Montreal-based CoPower, which lends money for clean energy projects, Mr. Nash says.

Canadians who want to invest in green energy will find options harder to come by, given the country’s long love affair with fossil fuels. “I think Canadian investors are so used to investing in mining, oil and gas and pipelines that they struggle when it comes to this energy transition,” Mr. Nash says.

Among the solid Canadian offerings, he says, are the power producers Brookfield Renewable Partners LP, Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. and Boralex Inc.

Joel Clark, chief executive officer and portfolio manager at Toronto-based KJ Harrison Investors, says investors should do their homework before investing. His company’s clients tend to be older, wealthy professionals and business owners, and they are not beating down his door to move their portfolios to clean energy stocks and bonds.

“Our clients are quite interested in the well-being of themselves and the world,” he says. “But they’re more motivated by making sure we meet their objectives, and how we do that is less relevant to them.”

In other words, every investment within a portfolio has to tick the boxes: Does it have a sound business model and quality management? What’s the valuation, and is there opportunity there? If it’s green, that’s just a bonus, Mr. Clark says.

“It’s like dividends. You don’t buy stock just for the dividend alone – it’s got to fit your thesis,” he says. “And you have to be able to see that you can make money in it.”

There are other ways to support green companies, he says. “Look at all the people who have bought electric cars and the impact that has had. It’s a win-win,” Mr. Clark says.

“There are so many things you can be doing at the consumer level that would have a bigger impact.”