Once again, the bad news on clean energy coming out of Washington is matched by the good news showing the success of a state clean energy program.
What was the latest bad news on clean energy in Washington last week? Congress could not muster the will to extend the production tax credit for wind, the primary financing tool for wind projects across the country. Congress's inaction threatens to derail the future of the wind industry in this country.
What was the latest news from the states on clean energy? It's about Michigan's renewable energy law which requires 10% of the state's power to come from renewable sources. That state policy has helped bring down the price of renewable energy to levels cheaper than coal, and has created millions of dollars in new economic development.
This striking news about the positive economic results from renewable energy development was included in a report from the Michigan Public Service Commission. Like other progress on clean energy at the state level, this report shows why energy officials in Washington need to work harder to cooperate with the states as clean energy leaders, rather than wait for progress out of a stalemated Congress.
Michigan's 2008 renewable portfolio standard (RPS) law required the state commission to report on how the law was working in practice. The February 15, 2012 report was a report card on the remarkable success of that state's RPS law. It stands in marked contrast to many of the critics of state renewable laws like Grover Norquist who don't get their facts straight and claim that these laws raise rates, force ratepayers to buy more expensive renewable power, and don't create any economic benefits.
So what did the Michigan energy experts say about the progress of their law after three years in operation?
First, they said the law has generated over $100 million in investments in the state, spurred manufacturing, and created jobs.
Second, the law has led to more than 100 megawatts of new renewable capacity in the state, putting it on track to meet its 10% requirement. So the law is working.
Third, and this might be the most dramatic point made by the Commission, the cost of these new renewable projects -- including, wind, solar and hydro -- is less than the cost of a new coal plant.
That deserves to be repeated. In contrast to the critics who complain about the high cost of renewable power, according to the Commission, "the cost of energy generated by renewable sources continues to decline and is cheaper than a new coal-fired generation." The Commission determined that new coal plants would cost ratepayers about 13.3 cents per kilowatt hour. But the new renewable plants under contract were coming in at about 9.1 cents per kilowatt hour.
In other words, renewable power in Michigan is coming in at about 30% percent less than the cost of a new coal plant.
Those figures are truly remarkable and show the dramatic declines in the cost of renewable power because of state renewable laws that create markets for these clean energy technologies.
So while Congress can't get its act together on clean energy, the states again are showing how they can lead the way. With federal gridlock, it is more important than ever for policymakers and advocates do all they can to focus on the real leaders: the states that continue to make clean energy policy in a smart, bipartisan way.
The Administration should look for new ways to work with the states to make their progress broader and deeper. It is not too late for the Administration to pivot from the stalemate in Washington and pursue a new decentralized clean energy policy with the states all across America.
Michigan and other states are showing the way. Washington just needs to find the right path to this new "clean energy federalism."
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There is a wind farm being built (it was authorized anyway) off the Rhode Island coast and the initial per kwh charges not including distribution costs came in at about $0.33 per kwh and that's with subsidies.
The real cost of wind power is 30 cents a kwh when including 5 times sized transmission plant and filthy deadly gas backup providing almost 100% of the energy in the renewable/gas backup scam killing hundreds of state residents annually from air pollution. Solar and 40 cents a kwh to that.
Replace the gas backup with green storage add another buck a kw
You put them windmills in the wrong back yard
And you got a war on your hands.
We can get renewable energy costs down by making investments in geothermal and solar mirror farms. We can install a DC transmission system to get this electricity to the areas we need it. We can invest in Thorium based nuclear energy and replace corn ethanol with coal ethanol. There are lots of things we can do but we need to keep it real.
Coal ethanol? Even if coal ethanol existed on a larger than bench scale, it's not a renewable source of energy, as the carbon in that ethanol is coming from coal. If you want cheap future power, on a less than 50 year timescale, you're not going to invest wisely in thorium koolaid.
you are NOT a "green party" anything if you are supporting nukes and mass wilderness death and ignoring the enormous potential of the built environment to produce and conserve non-deadly energy. please take Green Party out of your microbio!
Eco-science maintains man is "suicidal" when he kills ecosystems for any reason. The only way solar and wind are even close to being green is when they are utilized where man actually lives and on already dead planet, like on rooftops, buildings, shopping centers, parking lots.
A shopping center in my town just placed house-sized solar panels in the parking lot! We don't have to kill Earth to stabilize the climate -- if we remember the big green, the first green, the only green that separates Earth from Mars, the salvation and protection of Earth's ecosystems and their biodiversity, the strands in the web of all life. If it's a wild, natural landscape, it's the eco-nomy of life itself! In Wildness!
Its the best they can do. The Wind to max out their benefits require being located
where the wind is. North Dakota to North Texas. We need a whole new grid to
accommodate this opportunity and the DARK CLOUD gets BLACK from the heavy
CO2 tonnage releases in deploying this grid. The fossil fuel folks have the subsidies
and have dodged their responsibility to public safety through the years with weak(n wink)
regulations on air quality{13,000 deaths a year and mercury contamination}. The
strategy is presented in the coal2nuclear. http://www.coal2nuclear.com/
The Earth Mother is sending a BIG HINT burying the Rare Earth Elements needed in
making the generators in these Earth Friendly Wind Mills in mounds of Thorium. Thorium
the natural fertile radioactive isotope (no enrichment necessary) is one of the fuels used
by the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor{LFTR}
New big turbines use electomagnet generators (just like conventional powerplants), as the fixed magnets have become too expensive.
The development costs and energy expended in office buildings working to make a whole new class of nuclear plants safe and secure would dwarf the grid-construction costs.
5000 miles of new 2GW grid would cost $1.5-5bn, scaling less than linearly with capacity.
http://www2.internetcad.com/pub/energy/technology_abb.pdf
$2B/GW peak or $8B Gw avg
So add $8B/Gw to the $15B/Gw unsubsidized cost of wind just for area supply cables.
Since almost all the energy in the wind/gas backup scam comes from gas there are no GHG savings.
By contrast the 500MW Indian nuke waste burning fast breeder unit first of 5 to 2020 is coming on line this year, at $2B/Gw. No need for thorium as existing nuke waste in these type of reactors can power the world for a thousand year.
Giving federal dollars may be nice for the people of the state of MI, but it sucks money from all the other states to pay for it.
However, not implementing clean air standards does have costs. Epstein 'Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1219: 73–98.' did a cost accounting of coal and estimated coal's externalities to be between $0.17 - $0.27 per kWh in addition to the price paid. In Michigan the price of electricity is about $0.08 kWh with addition $0.06 for transportation. So the cost of coal the consumers pay is only about 25% of true cost.
Having such a small amount of the cost of a good reflected in the market price results in a huge market failure. As a free market guy, can I assume you would support a Pigouvian tax on coal of about $0.25 / kWh?
Is not cheaper
Putting regulations on the competition does not make it more expensive
Stop the con job.