Renewable energy- wind and solar

Renewable Rush on Federal Land: Target in Covid Relief Bill

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Here’s a story from Bloomberg:

President-elect Joe Biden’s ambitious climate agenda got a shot in the arm with the Covid relief bill, environmental attorneys say, particularly with provisions that will open up wide swaths of federal land to renewable energy development.

The measure, which President Donald Trump signed into law on Sunday, requires by 2025 an increase of at least five times the amount of solar, wind and geothermal energy production currently on federal land. It also creates a new office in the Bureau of Land Management to coordinate renewable energy permitting among all federal lands agencies, including those in the Interior and Agriculture departments

I was wowed by the idea quoted “requires by 2025 an increase of at least five times the amount of solar, wind and geothermal energy production currently on federal land.” But that’s not actually what the bill says.

Here’s the actual text for the goal:

SEC. 3104. NATIONAL GOAL FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY PRODUCTION ON FEDERAL LAND.
(a) IN GENERAL.—Not later than September 1, 2022, the Secretary shall, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and other heads of relevant Federal agencies, establish national goals
for renewable energy production on Federal land.
(b) MINIMUM PRODUCTION GOAL.—The Secretary shall seek to issue permits that, in total, authorize production of not less than 25 gigawatts of electricity from wind, solar, and geothermal energy projects by not later than 2025, through management of public lands and administration of Federal laws.

Seeking to issue permits is not exactly requiring production, which is just as well, given that that seems to be an unrealistic target.

We’ve been following the Chokecherry Sierra Madre project, so I thought I’d try to relate that to this target. CSM would produce 3 GW, so we would need maybe eight of those in five (target 2025, this is 2021 so maybe actually four) years. That doesn’t seem too difficult…except folks have been working on our example project since 2006.

BLM says “As of March 2018, there were 35 BLM-approved wind energy projects on public lands with 3,284 megawatts of total installed capacity, enough to power one million homes.” so it’s clear that CSM is more giant project. But it has a big footprint, also.

Here’s BLM on solar:

The BLM approved its first project to generate solar energy on public lands in October 2010, and as of March 2018 had approved 25 solar projects, totaling 6,319 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity.

The Western Solar Plan guides development of utility-scale solar energy development on public lands. The plan established an initial 17 Solar Energy Zones in 2012 with access to transmission corridors and areas with high solar potential. Two additional Solar Energy Zones were designated in 2013. If fully built-out, projects in these zones could produce as much as 27,000 MW, enough to power eight million homes.

This plan is complimented by the BLM’s Solar and Wind Energy Rule, which became effective on January 18, 2017. The rule brings down the near-term rates and fees paid by solar developers on BLM-managed land, ensures transparency and predictability, and allows for competitive bidding processes. The rule also reduces land and resource conflicts by incentivizing the development of solar projects in designated leasing areas (DLAs). These are areas that are the most amenable to solar development from both a remediation and a generation standpoint.

Where might these places be: here’s a link to the Solar Energy Zones.
Here’s a link to BLM’s mapping of wind energy areas, mapped with restrictions.

Three points.. First is that FS land does not seem to be part of BLM’s mapping?

Second is that wind areas seem to overlap with sage grouse habitat, to some extent, in the Interior West.

Preventing solar and wind power from harming the ecosystems and their plants and animals was one of the Obama administration’s biggest challenges with renewables, and it may be one for the incoming administration as well, said Danny Cullenward, an energy economist and lawyer at Stanford Law School.

“The incoming Biden administration will have to balance pressure to identify a clear path for building new clean energy infrastructure with ongoing concerns about the dilution of federal protections for wild lands and critical habitats,” Cullenward said.

Third, it will be interesting to see what this level of pressure will do to analysis and permitting efforts.

Renewable Energy on Federal Lands: The Chokecherry-Sierra Madre Wind Project

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Green energy and/or “industrialized landscape”? You decide.

I happened to run across the Chokecherry-Sierra Madre Wind Project while driving around the Medicine-Bow National Forest and noted a road that seemed completely out of character for the area (i.e., paved). So I wondered why and discovered the Chokecherry-Sierra Madre Wind Project and the associated Transwest transmission line project. I hadn’t seen much about it in the press; I guess getting the 300th of 900 state/federal/county permits is not too exciting for anyone outside of Carbon County. And there isn’t much controversy, and if there were it wouldn’t be along the traditional narrative lines. After all, it is corporate, industrializing the landscape, has wildlife impacts and so on.

From the BLM project page (just for grins I bolded all the documents):

This project represents the largest proposed onshore wind energy facility in North America (my bold); when fully operational; the project will be capable of generating up to 3,000 megawatts of clean, renewable power, enough to power nearly one million homes.

In March, the BLM prepared and released for public review an EA analyzing the potential impacts of constructing and operating 500 wind turbines on mixed ownership land. After reviewing public comments, the BLM has now refined and improved the analysis in the EA, which tiers to a 2012 Environmental Impact Statement that the BLM prepared to evaluate the potential impacts of the project as a whole.

The BLM administers approximately half of the land associated with the project site; the remainder of the site is made up of privately owned and state lands. Only a portion of the total land area would be used for or disturbed by the project. No ground-disturbing activities associated with the turbines can begin until the BLM issues a Right-of-Way (ROW) grant and Notice to Proceed.

The Power Company of Wyoming LLC (PCW), which will develop and operate the project, has consulted closely with the BLM and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to design an Avian Protection Plan and an Eagle Conservation Plan for this project. These plans include measures to avoid, minimize and compensate for impacts to avian and bat species. In addition, the project will avoid Sage-Grouse Core Areas and includes a conservation plan that accommodates ongoing ranching and agricultural operations. The developer also will avoid sensitive viewsheds in the project area to protect tourism and outdoor recreation values. Permits to build the project will be contingent on implementation of wildlife protection measures.

In addition, the BLM will coordinate issuance of a Notice to Proceed for Phase I of turbine development with the FWS’s decision regarding issuance of an Eagle Take Permit for Phase I of development. An Eagle Take Permit would allow for the non-purposeful take of eagles associated with construction and operation of the project. To support its decision, the FWS has prepared an Environmental Impact Statement to analyze the potential impacts of issuing an Eagle Take Permit.

A person has to wonder whether some of the federal analyses/permitting might have been combined and/or streamlined. But there are other issues as well:

No turbines have been installed and none will be available for installation for another three years. According to Jacobson, 2022 is being projected as the year when PCW would begin raising wind turbines. Jacobson stated the reason for the turbine’s delay is the project is waiting for transmission lines to be available to carry their power to consumers.

While 2024 is the projected date for the wind farm to start generating electricity, final completion is set to take a further two years, according to Jacobson.
The schedule and delay requests were the same as presented to the Industrial Siting Council earlier in the year.
Should the current dates hold, the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farm project will have spanned more than a decade without including the enormous burden of planning the project.

And the transmission lines..?

Besides the TransWest and Chokecherry projects, there are at least two other transmission projects being worked on to carry power from Wyoming westward, including the Zephyr Power Transmission Project, which has been in the works since 2011, and the proposed Gateway West and Gateway South projects from utility Rocky Mountain Power.

About two-thirds of the TransWest route lies on federal land, Choquette noted, and the process of obtaining the federal environmental analysis, rights-of-way, easements and licenses to build on that land stretched from 2008 to last year. Wyoming was the last state in its path to grant approval, and the project now has to secure approval from the counties in Utah and Nevada it will cross before it can be built, she said.

These kind of operational timeframes don’t bode well for climate targets that need large renewable contributions from federal lands to hit 2030 targets.

Rare Earth Mineral Production, Federal Lands and American Minerals and Security Act, S. 1317

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This article from the Colorado Springs Gazette talks about a bipartisan bill to encourage mining of rare metal deposits. They reported on a Colorado School of Mines professor, Morgan Bazilion, testifying to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee.

Bazilian is director of the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden.

He testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee as it considers legislation that creates incentives for U.S. mining companies to extract more of the minerals to make rechargeable batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and consumer products.

Manufacturing them often requires use of rare earth elements such as lithium, cobalt and yttrium.

Most rare earth minerals used in the U.S. come from China, where regulatory and environmental obstacles are less stringent and costly. Minerals commonly are extracted from open pit mines that are unlikely to win permits from U.S. regulatory agencies.

Nevertheless, new clean energy technologies cannot do without them, Bazilian said.

“The future energy system will be far more mineral- and metal-intensive than it is today,” he told the Senate committee. “Many of these advanced technologies require minerals and metals with particular properties that have few to no current substitutes.”

U.S. Geological Survey studies show large rare metal deposits in Colorado, particularly in the Wet Mountains and San Juan Mountains.

A leading legislative proposal in Congress to encourage more U.S. development of rare earth minerals is the American Mineral and Security Act, S. 1317.

It would require the Interior Department to maintain a list of minerals critical to U.S. economic prosperity and national security. Regulatory agencies also would be charged with improving processes to find, develop and use the minerals for industry.

You can see if there are rare earth minerals spotted by the USGS on these maps. Which even an old GIS-impaired person can use. Some appear to be on FS, although to what extent the FS would regulate vs. it being a locatable mineral, I don’t know.

I think it’s interesting because it’s one of a list of products (1) is something people need and (2) it can be produced from US lands but (3) the choice is to pay folks in other countries with potentially less stringent environmental regulation, and who may not always be inclined to sell them to us. On the pyramid of pristinity, of course, mining is possibly the lowest.

It seems to me that a rational approach would be to suggest:
(1) our country’s demand and use is the ultimate source of environmental damage, not the producer. By buying resources from other countries, we are implicitly accepting our responsibility for their environmental damage. This decoupling of responsibility seems to be assumed.
(2) there is some utility to being diverse and resilient to market forces and not dependent on other countries (especially when there are relatively few).
(3) if we produce, we can regulate in a way that is meaningful to us,
(4) if we produce, we get jobs (seemingly high paying), taxes, and if it’s on federal land, $ back to the feds (and for oil and gas, the states).
(5) to me, it’s conceptually different if we have it and don’t produce it, compared to not having the resource at all, which necessitates trade as a source.

For those of us who remember the oil crises of the past, we may not understand all the ins and outs of the geopolitical consequences of dependence for today, but our experience has not been good.

But what if we decided to take environmental responsibility for our own demand (in cases where we have that resource), and produce what we consume ourselves, or at least enough to make us resilient to market and geopolitical forces?

And what should be the role that federal land would play in that? Politician wise, we have the current Gov. of Colorado who called for less regulating of solar and wind on federal land, and we have current Presidential candidates who want to stop oil and gas leasing on federal land. Should the openness to activities on federal land depend on The Pyramid of Pristinity or the Pyramid of Climate Utility?

California national monuments pay off, and are intact so far, but not DRECP

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Here’s some anecdotal evidence supporting the economic arguments for national monument designation.

Two years ago today, President Barack Obama created three new national monuments in the California desert: called Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains. Supporters held a community event to celebrate, noting that tourism to the area has increased significantly, as people come to see Joshua Tree National Park and then, go on to explore the new monuments.

Then there’s the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan.

Under Zinke, the Bureau of Land Management recently filed a notice of intent to reopen the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which sets aside land for conservation, recreation and energy development.  “Lands that were set aside for conservation may now be open to inappropriate uses like mining and renewable-energy development, when there was already a consensus on areas where those sorts of uses would be appropriate,”

Another example of Trumpling the interests of locals in favor of reducing the “burdens on all domestic energy development.”  Another case where the recreation industry (and others) will have to battle the resources of the energy industry (instead of working with the industry as they did in DRECP).  Who is your money on?

Study finds transatlantic pellet trade results in SIGNIFICANT GHG REDUDUCTIONS over fossil fuels

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Selected quotes from Biomass Magazine article summarizing a joint study conducted by U. Ga., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Yale:

– “A new study … has determined that the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of a unit of electricity generated in the U.K. using imported wood pellets is at least 50 percent lower than the GHG intensity of grid electricity derived from fossil fuels”

This study addresses the shortcoming of previous studies as follows: “those studies have typically assumed the feedstocks for pellet production were sourced from either nearby forest for from a wood processing facility located at a fixed distance to the pellet plant. The researchers also stressed that existing studies have considered only one harvest cycle when determining GHG savings, which has raised concerns among environmentalists and others.”

– “the researchers determined relative GHG emissions savings for electricity generated in the U.K. using imported wood pellets under 930 different scenarios. The analysis considered three types of woody feedstocks, two forest management choices, 31 plantation rotation ages and five power plant capacities. Depending on the power plant capacity and the rotation age, the results found relative per unit GHG savings in the range of 50 percent to 68 percen”

– “According to the information published in the study, the results of the analysis contradict the general belief that the use of wood pellets from 10 to 15 year old pine plantations in the southern U.S. do not provide GHG savings in Europe. Rather, GHG savings were found to be at least 50 percent, even at lower rotation ages.”

The full study can be found on IOP Science/Research Letters

What Are the Europeans Up To and Should We Emulate Them? EDF and Pinchot on European Biomass; Also Bob Berwyn’s Observations in Europe

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You may not have looked at the comments on the Bye-Bye Biomass post; but thankfully Alex knew of a study by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Pinchot Institute so I thought I would post it directly below. Here is the link.

Also I provided a link to a Bob Berwyn piece on the scale of wind in Germany. I noticed that a few years back in driving around Thuringia. It makes me wonder about the question of scale and what drives that. Perhaps because we have so much public land, it could be a barrier in certain parts of the country. For example in Vermont, a 15 turbine facility raised controversy.. certainly that is the same size as in Germany, yet it appears that it is being litigated.. Here’s one story about it.

New Approach Promotes Pathways to Forest Sustainability
As Demand for U.S. Wood Pellet Production Grows

Image from Pathways to SustainabilityEuropean utilities are using trees grown in the United States to make electricity. Well, not the whole tree. But lots of the tree is used to make the little wood pellets that are then shipped across the ocean, mostly to the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Denmark, and Belgium. It is these wood pellets that are burned with coal or in stand alone biomass boilers to produce energy.

Why is Europe able to make electricity from U.S. trees when domestic utilities are cancelling wood biomass projects? Answer: Europe has a strong renewable energy policy.

Watch the video: Wood Biomass Goes to Europe

The EU Renewable Energy Directive passed in 2009 sets a target for EU member countries to collectively achieve 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020. Many utilities are increasing the use of biomass as a low-cost means of producing renewable energy. But Europe doesn’t have enough forest or agricultural land to meet the increasing demand. To fill that gap, European utilities are importing wood pellets (a form of chipped and compressed wood) from North America and increasingly from the Southern United States — European imports are projected to increase to as much as 60 million tonnes annually by 2020. The growing demand for U.S. wood biomass is raising questions about the sustainability of the country’s forest resources.

Two reports from Environmental Defense Fund, in conjunction with colleagues at the Pinchot Institute for Conservation and the University of Toronto, examine economic, environmental, and public health impacts from the expanding wood pellet market. European Power from U.S. Forests (download report PDF) documents how the EU policy is shaping the transatlantic trade in wood biomass. For the U.S. export market to benefit from the large potential capacity for pellet production, producers in the U.S. will need to meet or exceed sustainability standards of the EU and individual European countries. Some type of forest management or pellet supply chain management system (e.g. forest management certification and/or chain-of-custody certification) is likely to be required.

Image from Pathways to SustainabilityPathways to Sustainability (download report PDF ) evaluates the programs and practices available to U.S. pellet producers to meet European buyers’ sustainability expectations and policy requirements, concluding that few of the pathways completely meet the standards.

Specifically Pathways to Sustainability: (1) explains the uncertainties of existing import requirements and the options that can help this sector avoid controversial sourcing; and (2), presents the ways companies can reduce actual or perceived risks that sourcing may have on biodiversity, water resources, and other natural resource values.

Sustainability will remain a pivotal issue as EU member countries, the European Commission and various stakeholders seek to harmonize sustainability requirements. European bioenergy companies often view biomass sustainability as the largest unquantified risk in their supply chains. The supply chains for wood pellets are being formed now. Developing Pathways to Sustainability for biomass supply chains now will reduce economic risk and encourage market development both here in the U.S. and for use of wood pellets abroad.

Here’s a link to the story by Bob Berwyn about renewable energy in Germany.

Here’s a piece on the Interior solar siting plan and mixed reactions of green groups. (note the author admits he has a bit of a bias).

But as we’ve talked before, I think that one of the reasons driving “industrial scale” is the size of the renewable requirement to the large utilities. To have a plan to reach 30% or whatever by a certain date, you can’t depend on the “kindness of strangers, ” or “efforts by communities to have small scale” on land with mixed ownerships. Unintended policy consequences?