In livable, human-scale cities, a lot of cargo can be moved more efficiently by bike. The EU is funding a pilot project called CycleLogistics to collect data on just how effectively human powered cargo can be scaled up. With modest electrical assistance, loads can scale up to as much as 250 or even 500 kg, and stay human scale. It’ll be very interesting to see the results.
Category: linkstream
A running log of all the links/bookmarks I share.
Minneapolis eyes way to push utilities to be greener
Minneapolis is Xcel’s home town, and a much bigger market than Boulder. The city is now talking about allowing their franchise agreement to lapse, in order to pursue more aggressive renewable energy policies than state law will allow if they’re served by the monopoly utility. The article gives a nod to Boulder’s votes over the last two years to explore the alternatives to franchise agreements, including the formation of a municipal utility. It’s great to see another much larger city looking at its options, and as far as pushing the overall utility business model to change, it’s great to see this happening within Xcel’s service territory. There’s a threshold out there somewhere, beyond which the current arrangement is no longer stable, and even the utility will start begging for something different. The faster we can get there, the better.
Why Are Residential PV Prices in Germany So Much Lower Than in the US
A presentation from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, exploring Why Rooftop PV is so much cheaper in Germany than the US. Their feed-in tariff started out quite generous, and has declined predictably over the last several years, which has resulted in the rooftop PV market growing enormously, while installers have been forced to dramatically reduce costs. To the point where today, it’s about half the cost per-watt-installed to get PV in Germany that it is in the US. The physical hardware is the same price, but the process is much easier, and the businesses involved in it much leaner. Good old fashioned German engineering at work, but in the policy realm.
Designing Feed-in Tariffs
NREL took a nice long look at different ways to design feed-in tariffs (PDF) in July of 2010, based on the past decade’s worth of experience, both in the EU and several US states. It’s 144 pages long and aimed at policymakers… so, not exactly light reading. But if you really want to know how these things work (or fail), it’s great.
2011 Wind Market Report from LBNL
Lawrence Berkeley National Labs has put out a report on the state of the wind energy industry, as of the end of 2011. I didn’t realize that the price trend had been so uneven over the last decade. The cost of wind power was dropping in the early 2000s, and then rebounded, peaking in 2008/2009 due to shortages in the turbine supply chain, before again dropping in the last year or two. I started looking into these prices because I’m reading a Renewable Energy Policy by Paul Komor (2004) and the prices he quotes ($40-$50/MWh) seem low, relative to the numbers from Xcel’s ERP and the recent bids I saw in Michigan (more like $60/MWh), but the book was written right at the wind price bottom. I’m also shocked at how wide the spread in costs is, even in just the last couple of years. California is paying $100/MWh for huge projects, and in the wind belt some projects are coming in more like $25/MWh. That’s got to be largely policy driven, and it indicates we’ve got a woefully inefficient market for wind.
What is the EROI for Solar PV?
The IEEE Spectrum magazine has a preview of a book looking at the EROI (energy return on investment) for solar PV, based on 3.5GW of actually installed capacity in Spain. The authors suggest that based on their case study, the EROI for utility-scale PV, when all the associated energy expenditures are accounted for, is substantially lower than the value of ~7 which is commonly cited. It’s worth noting, however, that EROI is not something being optimized for right now. We’re very much focused on the plain old ROI, and in a world without a meaningful carbon tax (and, indeed, many subsidies for fossil fuels) even if you’re building renewable energy installations, you’re going to tend to use the cheapest energy available in that pursuit. The article also points to another study, suggesting that an EROI of 12 or so is necessary to support “modern society”… but that has to depend pretty intimately on how efficiently you utilize your energy, and what you think constitutes “modern society”. Either way, the EROI for fossil fuels is steadily declining as we pursue more and more “unconventional” reserves, so we’ll have to come up with a new solution, whether we want to or not.
Hot Air About Cheap Natural Gas
When people compare the cost of gas-fired electricity and renewables, they usually don’t price fuel cost risks, and at this point that’s really just not intellectually honest. Risk-adjusted price comparisons are very difficult because nobody will sell a 30 year fixed price gas supply contract, and that’s what you’d need to buy to actually know how much your gas-fired electricity will cost. Even a 10 year futures contract doubles or triples the cost of gas. You can’t buy renewables without their intrinsic fuel-price hedge, and that hedge is valuable. The question shouldn’t be “Is wind the absolute cheapest option right now?” it should be “Given that wind will cost $60/MWh, are we willing to live with that energy cost in order not to have to worry about future price fluctuations?” And I think the answer should clearly be yes, even before you start pricing carbon.
Cutting dependence on cars isn’t anti-car, it’s common sense
The problem with cars in an urban context isn’t (just) related to sustainability… It’s a problem of space, and the best way to allocate it in the pursuit of a high quality of life. Even if you don’t care about oil dependence or climate change, dedicating vast tracts of urban real-estate to car storage doesn’t make sense, because it degrades the functionality of the city.
Quantifying Community Garden Crop Yields
An informal study looking at the urban farming yields, by Mara Gittleman. 67 gardens, with a total area of 1.7 acres in NYC generated 87,000 lbs of food, with a market value of roughly $200k in 2010. This is equivalent to about $3/square foot. Just looking at the financial aspect, if we’re talking about land which could be developed, the net present value, discounting at 5%, of $3/sq ft, is (even if we go out 100 years) only about $60/sq ft. If you build a 5 story building, then property values need only be greater than $12/sq ft for the urban farming not to make (economic) sense, and I’m going to go out on a limb, and guess that property values in most of NYC are, um, substantially higher than $12/sq ft.
Land Value Capture and City Finance
A long post about urban infrastructure finance via “Land Value Capture” from Next American City. The general idea is that the provision of public goods — roads, sidewalks, transit lines, sewers, utility lines, etc — adds value to the property which it serves. This value pertains to the location, not the improvements any developer might have built (or refrained from building) on the property. Land value capture mechanisms seek a slice of that incremental value to re-pay (or finance) the provisioning of those improvements. It’s a feedback loop that results in density without lots of debt financing on the part of the city.