Bad Incentives For Green Choices

"...free EV charging? Free parking? Higher speed limits for EVs? Discount air travel for EV owners? Complimentary massages?"

A particularly entertaining post on ridiculous incentrives - from economist Severin Borenstein.

Bad Incentives For Green Choices | Energy Economics Exchange:

When we subsidize cleaner electricity, we may get the relative price of green versus brown electricity right, but we get the relative price of electricity versus everything else in the economy wrong.
The fundamental problem is not that green energy has positive spillovers — running your A/C on solar power doesn’t make others better off — but that brown energy has negative spillovers. Thus, when we subsidize green instead of taxing brown, we end up making electricity too cheap overall.[2] Green electricity subsidies also fail to account for how much GHG emissions they actually prevent. Is that wind turbine crowding out coal-fired generation, a gas-fired plant, or another wind turbine? The answer determines the value of the green power, but is not reflected in today’s subsidies.
While renewable electricity standards and subsidies are the big gorillas of green behavior rewards, there is a plethora of smaller reward systems that create further problems. They offer some indirect benefit that creates a new set of distortionary incentives. A perfect example was in the news earlier this year when Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) cancelled its free parking for electric vehicles — which began in the 1990s when EVs were as rare as $4 gas — because the program had become “too successful.”
The advantage of electric vehicles is that they put out less pollution (yes, even counting the electricity generation process), but only when they are moving. Why would anyone think that subsidizing EV parking at LAX gives the appropriate incentive to buy and drive an EV? In fact, it lowers the overall cost of travelling by air, which is itself a GHG-intensive activity. Complimentary massages for EV owners would probably make more sense.

Germany sets new solar power record: so does Ontario

Clean Technica reports that Germany set a new record for electricity generation from solar panels yesterday.    The post based it's report on "SMA Solar Technology’s live solar power output tool for the country."

At its peak at about 1:45pm local time (one hour ago), the output got up to 23.9 GW. (Actually, I thought I saw it reach 24 GW at that time, but the replay isn’t showing it go above 23.9 GW.)
I’m sure an official number still needs to be confirmed, but a full 0.5 GW increase according to SMA’s site makes for a very safe conclusion that we have a new record. It is an estimate based on the output of thousands of SMA solar power systems spread across the country.

The entire article can be read at Clean Technica

It begs the question: What is the record in Ontario and when was it set?

Nobody knows.

Ontario Wind Turbine Production

The past week's heat and humidity was not accompanied by much output from Ontario's wind turbines.

This is a quick post to demonstrate that last week's wind output was a typical level of production for an Ontario July.

---

The capacity factor is determined by calculating the period's actual generation divided by the total generation that would be produced in the units produced at 100% of capacity throughout the period.

Data stuff

The will to power renewably is producing the obvious - surprisingly

There is a lot of news out of Germany's electricity sector adventures lately, and most of it I now view as adhering to my rule of the obvious:

That which must happen, does

The news cited in this column relates to variable renewable energy systems (vRES - wind and solar); the rule of the obvious appears to be considered irrelevant by vRES proponents.

The German Energy blog reported on solar capacity additions in Germany, indicating the pace of annual additions has slowed from ~7,500GWp per year (since 2008); searching through the links it appear the past 12 months have seen less than 5,000GWp added, and growth may still be slowing.

Why?
Because Germany now has feed-in tariff rates that drop with installed capacity, due to rules instituted as solar installations soared.
Apparently the lower rates may be seeing lower new installations.

Ontario's Highest Daily Market Prices in 2013 driven by Quebec?

There are a number of factors in pricing, but the neglected one is consideration of the other regions Ontario is connected to (and the ones those regions are connected to, and ...)

The highest weighted average prices in Ontario thus far in 2013 are January 23, 24 and 25, and July 3rd.

The January highs correspond with a cold snap that did see the highest demand of the winter (and thus far the year) in Ontario, but Ontario had plentiful supply and net exports averaged over 2000MW an hour. [1] 

Quebec didn't just have the highest demand periods of the year - Quebec is a winter peaking jurisdiction, and it experienced the highest demand periods ever.

On July 3rd three major transmission lines failed in Quebec as a result of forest fires.  The impact in Ontario must have been complex as the Hourly Ontario Energy Price ended the day much higher, but Ontario also experienced it's first hours as a net importer since April.

Indications are the grid is a complex environment we don't often consider.

Endnote:
[1] Which I noted in Ontario's Electricity Exports Surge: Are they killing us? - a column with a comment section where Claude Boucher rewarded my writing with an education in trade.

Not to ignore my normal villains ...
I did also write about how poor wind forecasting was at crunchtime in January - and wind output was feeble on July 3rd too.

Merkel Says She Blocked Car Carbon Curbs to Shield Auto Jobs

This article is pertinent politically, but I'm posting it for the reference to automobile emissions

For Ontario residents: Your average emission level for electricity is 110g CO2 eq / kWh - it strikes me as far easier to cut 1 km of driving that to cut 1 kWh of energy consumption

Merkel Says She Blocked Car Carbon Curbs to Shield Auto Jobs - Bloomberg:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she blocked a draft European Union law aimed at reducing carbon-dioxide emissions from cars over concerns the measure would cost jobs in theauto industry.
A coalition of EU states led by Germany prevented approval of the measure at a meeting of diplomats in Brussels earlier this week. Merkel said that she moved to delay the proposal -- which would cap average carbon discharges by passenger vehicles in the bloc at 95 grams a kilometer in 2020 -- to defend jobs.
...
Merkel’s intervention, made less than three months before federal elections, collided with EU efforts to cap pollution by cars through varying targets for individual manufacturers ranging from Volkswagen AG (VOW) to General Motors Co. (GM) Current EU legislation requires carmakers to cut discharges to 130 grams a kilometer on average in 2015 and sets a non-binding goal of 95 grams for 2020.

Continue reading at Bloomberg

Ontario Smart Grid Fund makes a comeback/remains moribund

For a third time the Ontario government has announced the same funding for something called smarter.

The article is posted first respecting readers who visit for news, and not rants
The backgrounder is a rant that will put the proper context on the article - which is contempt

Ontario Smart Grid Fund makes a comeback | Ottawa Citizen:

OTTAWA — Ontario’s Liberal government attempted to reignite interest behind its flailing $50-million Smart Grid Fund on Tuesday by reopening calls for applications from businesses and educators interested in developing technologies to help the province’s electrical grid in the future.
Ontario Minister of Energy and Ottawa West-Nepean MPP Bob Chiarelli made the announcement Tuesday, calling it the fund’s “second round” of calling for applications and encouraging businesses to examine their eligibility for the program.
The fund was initially introduced as part of the 2009 provincial budget. However, numerous false starts pushed out its official opening until 2011. In June 2012 the province announced 13 projects from companies making Smart Grid technologies that would receive funding, accounting for around $25 million of the fund. Only nine of those actually ended up getting money. Those companies accounted for around $14.1 million of the fund’s total amount, according to Chiarelli.
The energy minister applauded companies that did get funding from the province. Those companies included Energate Inc., an Ottawa software maker focusing on home energy
management, Ecobee, a Toronto thermostat maker, IBM Corp. and General Electric (GE).
...
“It’s awful. It’s embarrassing. It’s an absolute admission that the entire Liberal energy plan is an abject failure in Ontario,” Fedeli said.
...
Chiarelli defended the fund, saying that not only has it helped to create new technology that can be sold by Ontario firms all over the world, but it has also helped to create 600, both direct and indirect, jobs in the province.

Background:

In 2004, a relatively new Premier wanted smart meters forced upon all and by 2011 they were - which was about the time they realized there was no plan to do anything useful with them
A technically ignorant government shaped an equally inept bureaucracy that doesn't understand the most fundamental design aspects of data architecture - like ownership, responsiblity, and portability/communication standards
Recently another charge was added to Ontarians' bills for a data repository it was felt the increasingly suspect IESO should manage - according to the IESO's 2012 Annual Report (note 10) their approach has been to run up a debt primarily by contracting out to consultants - Substantially to IBM

It has also been over a year since the government announced a group of people they perceived as smart constituted a "Clean Energy Task Force" (see "Green is the Old White") to:

facilitate collaboration within Ontario’s clean energy industry to identify export markets, marketing opportunities and approaches to demonstrate Ontario’s advanced clean energy systems.

There's been no report from the clean as your brightest whites team - we don't even know if they have yet selected an American firm  to outsource their task to.

 

New Report recommends Ontario consider a moritorium on generation procurement

I don't endorse the Mowat Centre's Getting the Green Light: The Path To Public Support for Ontario's Power Plans, but I certainly respect it's positions on transparency, statistical availability (Tom Adams deserves recognition for raising this), and the role of the Ontario Power Authority.

Getting the Green Light: The Path To Public Support for Ontario's Power Plans | The Mowat Centre

Good Governance

• Define the role of ministers and elected officials and limit the use of ministerial directives. 
• Require a provincial energy plan prepared by an independent expert agency. 
• Enhance the Ontario Energy Board’s (OEB) review criteria.
• Give the OEB the ability and resources to review and approve the Ontario Power Authority’s (OPA) procurement plans and leave-to-construct applications for new generation, as it does for transmission and distribution; or alternatively, create an independent generation siting board.

Green Energy Bust in Germany

"The Energiewende is not the swift, bold advance that greens imagine but a slow, timid, and inadequate response to the crisis of climate change. It represents a failure of nerve, a failure of imagination, and a failure of arithmetic. It is visibly failing now, and if it succeeds in all its stated goals it will still fail."

-Will Boisvert

Green Energy Bust in Germany | Dissent Magazine: 

If Germany keeps up with the 2012 pace—a big “if”—it will meet its current target of raising the renewable share of electricity production to 35 percent by 2020. Yet the really important target isn’t the share of renewables on the grid but the share of “low-carbon” generation—both renewable and nuclear generation. By that metric, Germany will be at a standstill for quite some time.
At the planned and current rate of expansion, when the last German nuclear plants shut down in 2022, renewables will be generating about 38 percent of the electricity; with no more nukes in operation, that will be the total share of low-carbon electricity. But that’s almost exactly the same share of low-carbon electricity Germany produced in 2010, when the share was 38.8 percent—22.4 percent nuclear and 16.4 percent renewable. The next ten years will be a lost decade for German decarbonization efforts. Meanwhile, Germany’s coal and gas plants will spew as much pollution, methane, and carbon dioxide as ever.
But the German policy of favoring renewables over nuclear has been in effect for thirteen years now, so it’s more like a lost generation. In 1999, a peak year for nuclear power, the low-carbon share of electricity was 36 percent, with nuclear contributing 31 percent. Thus, during a twenty-three-year period of shuttering nukes and subsidizing renewables, from 1999 to 2022, Germany will have managed to decarbonize all of 2 additional percentage points of its electricity.

Read Will Boisvert's entire article at Dissent Magazine

The site also contains a response rebutting the thrust of the article, by Osha Gray Davidson. and ...
A response to the rebuttal from Will Boisvert

German Renewables Surcharge for 2014 to Increase from 5.277 to 6/6.5 ct/kWh?

A forecast for 2014's renewable surcharge in Germany.

Coming alongside news that Germany's wholesale rate hit a new monthly low in June (2.8 cents), I am skeptical the increase would be only 15-25%, but ...

German Renewables Surcharge for 2014 to Increase from 5.277 to 6/6.5 ct/kWh? « German Energy Blog:

The renewables surcharge added to German electricity bills may rise to around 6 to 6.5 ct/kWh in 2014, the newspaper Rheinische Post (RP) reported on Saturday. The EEG surcharge would then be getting close to twice the average market price in May 2013 of 3.257 ct/kWh for power from renewable sources.
RP referred to energy experts among them Andreas Löschel, head of the expert committee “Energiewende” (energy transformation) set up by the government.
A rise of the EEG surcharge to 6.5 ct/kWh would mean an extra EUR 3 billion on top of the current electricity bills for German consumers
...
If, when and to what extent EU law might (also) force a change of the EEG remains to be seen. The Commission is in the process of investigating compliance of the EEG feed-in tariff scheme and the EEG surcharge exemptions with EU state-aid and free movement of goods rules. At the same time three middle-sized textile companies have brought lawsuits against the EEG surcharge, which they consider unconstitutional.

The entire article can be read at the German Energy Blog