Category Archives: grid

January 18, 2012 · 11:39 am

Is Clean Water Vs. Dirty Air a Good Trade-Off?

Do you need to put 5,000 more cars to the road to get clean drinking water?

I find the trade-offs that arise in energy development, environmental protection and human health fascinating. Over the years I’ve written on this topic a few times:

Energy Technologies and Unintended Consequences

Unintended Consequences, Part II: Air vs. Water

Unintended Consequences, Part III: Electricity vs. Water

Today I want to talk about a 160,000 square-foot new water treatment facility in New York that will be going online this year, and how it’s giving us safer water at the cost of a hefty increase in greenhouse gas emissions. I’m referring to the Catskill/Delaware Ultraviolet Light Disinfection Facility, which is in the final stages of construction just north of New York City. The facility will use ultraviolet light to disinfect an average of 1.3 billion gallons of water per day. It’s also going to use a lot of electricity and, as a result, increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection

The consequences of this project are neither unintended nor unforeseen. The project was required by Federal and State regulations to maintain the safety of New York City’s water supply, which is one of only a handful of major water supplies in the U.S. that remain unfiltered, according to civil engineer Robert Osborne, who is very into water. Having an unfiltered water supply is a kind of badge of honor. It means your water is exceptionally pure. But Federal and state regulations require water supplies to be protected by other means if filtration is not used. (The New York Times reported that a filtration system for this water supply would have cost up to $8 billion to build millions of dollars a year to operate.)

A project of this magnitude, whose costs are estimated at $1.6 billion, undergoes detailed analysis and planning, including an the creation of an environmental impact statement. The environmental impact statement says that the plant will draw an average of 4.45 megawatts of electric power. By my calculations (4.45MW X 24 hours X 365.25 days X 1000), that will equal about 39 million KWh of electricity annually.

You can calculate the amount of greenhouse gases emitted to provide 39M KWh of electricity in New York using EPA’s eGRID methodology (available via a cool tool on amee.com). Using my assumption, it comes to over 25,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. Taking the EPA’s estimate of the average annual greenhouse gas emissions of an average automobile (5.1 metric tons of CO2E per year) you find that these emissions are the equivalent of putting about 5,000 more cars on the road.

I have no doubt that this particular trade-off (cleaner water for dirtier air) is worth it. The project protects over 8 million people who depend on this water supply from the risk of water-borne contaminants that could cause a significant public health crisis. I point it out not to criticize this project but rather to illustrate the kinds of trade-offs policy makers face all the time.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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July 29, 2011 · 5:12 pm

Consumers’ Changing Views of Electric Power

From http://www.inquisitr.com

I was in front of a number of utilities this week presenting my recent research on consumer attitudes about the smart grid. I can’t share the specifics of the research yet except to say that I’m starting to see signs that consumers’ attitudes toward energy in general and electricity in particular may be changing.

With smart meters on the road to near ubiquity, consumers are going to get used to having current information about their energy consumption and its cost. The Internet and mobile computing have habituated us to having all kinds of detailed information at our finger tips. There are some signs that we consumers expect to have rich information on hand to help us choose among the proliferating choices that are offered us. This will extend to the choices that will increasingly be offered to consumers in the electricity sector, ranging from time of use pricing and load shifting to demand response program participation.

I used to think that consumers could not be bothered to maintain awareness of the cost of electricity,much less how it might vary by time of day. But I think consumers will adapt. Smart meters, in-home energy displays, dynamic Web sites operated by their utilities, mobile-phone home energy apps–over time these things will become familiar to consumers. We will start to internalize and act on the pricing signals we are given. And utilities are starting to get savvier in their approach to understanding and marketing to consumers.

Everyone who drives a lot seems keenly aware of the current price of gasoline. There is ample evidence that swings in the price of gas have an impact on driving behavior. I can see the day when the same thing is true for the price of electricity. We consumers seem to want information to help us make informed decisions. The smart grid is going to make this information more readily available. And it’s going to begin to affect our behavior. For the good.

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December 15, 2010 · 7:58 pm

Cleantech Research Roundup, December 2010

Here’s a list of recent research published by leading cleantech research firms, along with brief blurb about the reports written by the firms themselves. If you use other sources for cleantech market research, please let me know. I would like to include them in my list in the future.

US Geothermal Market Consolidates To Capture Potential
IHS Emerging Energy Research, December 3, 2010

After nearly two decades of stagnant growth, the US geothermal industry remains on an upswing despite facing a temporary set back to growth in 2011. Key findings in this Market Brief include the following:

  • Despite weak market conditions for renewable power, the geothermal project pipeline has continued to expand
  • Experienced geothermal players and foreign entrants led by Ormat, Ram Power, CalEnergy, Terra-Gen, and Enel are driving near-term industry growth
  • 1.4 GW of geothermal capacity will come online between 2010 and 2015

Transmission Clutch for US Wind Growth
IHS Emerging Energy Research, December 3, 2010

In this Market Brief, IHS EER examines over 20 transmission initiatives spanning the United States that will unlock significant wind potential. Key findings include:

  • The top US wind markets begin to feel pain of transmission congestion as wind generation is increasingly curtailed
  • State, regional, and private transmission proposals aim to create new wind cost allocation policies that are critical to the viability of many future wind-focused transmission lines
  • The federal government, utilities, and developers are becoming increasingly involved in transmission planning and development for wind-focused transmission lines

Enterprise LED Lighting: Commercial and Industrial Market Trends, Opportunities & Leading Companies
GTM Research, December 1, 2010

Since general illumination light emitting diodes (LEDs) were first introduced in 1997, the industry envisioned that LEDs with projected performance increases could someday completely replace traditional lighting systems. Today that possibility is very realistic thanks to the acceleration in LED performance over the past few years and a wave of new commercial, industrial and institutional LED fixtures that have hit the market. The US market for commercial and industrial LED lighting, for example, is forecasted to see $330 million of revenue in 2010, with potential to grow next year at over 30%, surpassing $1 billion in annual revenues by 2014. This growth will come from three emerging trends in the industry:

  • Recent LED chip performance advancements, which allow more cost effective designs for replacing existing lighting systems
  • Newly introduced utility energy efficiency financial incentives for converting to these LED-based systems
  • Increased interest from building owners in applying sustainably-oriented lighting retrofits that save money in operation

Technology Selection: Building the Technology Foundation for the VPP
IDC Energy Insights, December 2010

This IDC Energy Insights report examines what it will take for utilities to enable the virtual power plant (VPP). Guidance is provided on what utilities may already have in place, what needs to be modified, and what needs to be added. IDC Energy Insights is confident that the VPP will evolve and that utilities need to take VPP into consideration when approaching their business processes, enterprise architecture, and control systems.

According to IDC Energy Insights Analyst Jill Feblowitz, “Utilities will see the most innovation and development in the enterprise and real-time service bus, in analytics for pricing and resource optimization and, on the far horizon, in the decentralization of processing and optimization with the introduction of microgrids.”

The Smart Grid Utility Data Market
SBI Energy, Dec 1, 2010

The volume of Smart Grid data that will have to be managed by utilities over the next few years is going to surge from 10,780 terabytes (TB) of new data created in 2010 to over 75,200 TB in 2015. Managing, analyzing and visualizing that amount of data will be a huge undertaking, creating a global market worth $2.9 billion in 2015.

Microgrid System Revenues to Reach $1.7 Billion by 2016
Pike Research, December 2010

Microgrids offer a compelling alternative to traditional energy generation and distribution, utilizing smart grid technologies to enable integrated control of distributed power generation and energy storage assets either in parallel to or “islanded” from the utility power grid. According to a new report from Pike Research, there are more than 140 modern microgrid projects totaling over 1.1 gigawatts (GW) of capacity worldwide (and 1.8 GW if legacy petrochemical and university campus systems are included in the tally). The cleantech market intelligence firm forecasts that global revenue from microgrid systems will experience a 64% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next several years, increasing from just $144.2 million in 2011 to $1.7 billion by 2016, under a base case forecast scenario. Under a more aggressive forecast scenario that assumes the alignment of regulatory structures, industry priorities, and public policy supports, microgrid revenues could surpass $3 billion during the same period.

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November 8, 2010 · 3:45 am

How Well Do Utilities Talk About the Smart Grid?

As background for a large Green Research study of consumer attitudes about smart meters and the smart grid, I looked at utility Web sites to see how utilities were talking to their customers about the smart grid.

There are nearly as many benefits of smart meters as there are utility companies, according to my survey. Across 25 utility company Web sites, some 20 or so distinct benefits were listed, from improved meter accuracy to saving money.

It was interesting to see how utility claims aligned with consumer attitudes, and where they didn’t.

The most popular claim from the utilities I looked at, by 14 of the 25 utilities, was that smart meters would enable consumers to manage their own electricy use better. Some examples:

Southern California Edition – “…you can better manage your electricity use through new tools, programs and services”

Georgia Power – “You’ll be able to better manage your energy usage and control your energy bill.”

American Electric Power -  ”It is designed to give customers greater control over their energy usage and ultimately their bills…”

Duke Energy – “…provide customers with additional information that may help them use energy more efficiently…”

My research suggests that these utilities are right to promote the ability of smart meters to help consumers better manage their energy use by giving them better information. Consumers in the focus groups we conducted responded very favorably to the idea that better information would give them greater control over their energy use. And nearly two-thirds of consumers nationally who already have smart meters in their homes say they find the benefit of receiving actual rather than estimated bills “extremely valuable ” or “very valuable.”

The ability of smart meters to enable new rate plans was the second-most common benefit touted on utility Web sites. Eleven utilities made that claim, including these:

Alliant Energy – “New and improved rate options and programs”

Dominion – “In the future, Dominion may offer dynamic rates which will help you save on your monthly bill if you conserve power during high-demand periods.”

Alabama Power – “Once the program is installed, we’ll be able to offer innovative rate options that meet your lifestyle.”

Consumers are keen on saving money, and if they believe they can do so with time of use plans, they will be interested. About half the smart meter consumers in our study said they found the prospect very or extremely valuable. On the other hand, the most widespread concern consumers have about smart meters is that they may lead to higher bills. And a quarter of the respondents to our survey who cited such concerns said their concerns would be allayed if they were not forced to switch to a a time of use plan. Utilities need to proceed with caution when they speak about time of use plans.

Despite well publicized concerns about privacy risks associated with smart meters and consumer data, utilities deploying smart meters often make the claim that smart meters can actually improve consumer privacy, by making it unncessary to send workers to consumers’ property to read their meters. Nine of 25 utilities looked at made this claim. Apparently, the claim is plausable to consumers. Over 40 percent of smart meter consumers say they find such a benefit very or extremely valuable.

San Diego Gas & Electric – “More Privacy: Because smart meters send information electronically to SDG&E daily, SDG&E’s meter readers will no longer have to enter your property.”

DTE Energy – “…less intrusive for you. Once installation is complete, DTE Energy will not enter your yard, home or business on a regular basis.”

Oncor – “Eliminates a person coming to read meter at your property”

Our research discovered that consumers want to understand not only how they might benefit from smart meters but why utilities are backing smart meter deployments. Utilities would do well to emphasize that the smart grid can help them operate more efficiently and respond faster to power outages. Only 6 of the utilities we looked at emphasized faster outage response time as a benefit.

If you’d like to know more, or are interested in tailored program to improve your understanding your own customers’ attitudes, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line.

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September 17, 2010 · 6:07 am

Fears of Higher Bills with Smart Meters Are Overblown

The vast majority of households with smart meters report no increase in electric bills following the installation of their smart meter, according to a new study we just completed. Eighty percent of U.S. smart meter consumers said their bills had either decreased or stayed the same or that they had not noticed any change post installation. Just 8 percent of consumer said their electric bills had increased a lot after a smart meter was installed in their home.

Utilities with smart meter deployment programs need to make hay of this finding, especially after the bruising that PG&E got over reports (eventually disproved) that their smart meters were ripping off customers .

Consumers’ number one concern about smart meters is that they may lead to higher bills. Utilities need to do a better job explaining how they work and how they will affect consumers bills over time.

Have you seen any examples of excellent utility communication? I’d like to hear about them for a study of utility messaging.

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September 16, 2010 · 11:01 am

Just Completed a Major Smart Grid Consumer Study

This was a fun summer at Green Research. We just delivered a major consumer research study that focused on the smart grid and smart meters. We learned  a lot about consumer attitudes and developed some insights that will be very useful to utilities seeking to develop support among their customers for smart meter programs. I hope to share a few findings over the coming weeks.

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February 20, 2010 · 4:00 am

Future Cleantech Execs Gather in NYC

This week marked the kickoff of the CleantechExecs program at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU (NYU-Poly). The program will last 10 days spread over several months and will include appearances by an array of speakers from industry, finance and government.

The program is intended to prepare mid-career executives for a transition to the cleantech industry. I am among the first cohort of 30 participants, who come from varied backgrounds including banking, media, IT, law and the non-profit sector.

Our tuition is paid by NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which is seeking to foster the development of the cleantech industry in New York and sees this program a means of building the ranks of experienced executives in the industry.

Yesterday we reviewed a case study of Verdant Power, a developer of marine power generation projects and technology. The company achieved an important milestone when it fielded a pilot project in the East River of New York City involving 6 underwater turbines that are providing power to the grid using the renewable power of the tides, generating no emissions and without harming acquatic life. Ron Smith, CEO of Verdant Power, listened in on a freewheeling analysis of his business and then took the floor to tells us about his company and to field our questions.

For many of us, the inspiring story about the company and its mission were overshadowed by the realization of just how difficult the regulatory environment is for startups such as Verdant Power. The company has spent a significant share of its limited resources seeking regulatory approvals and has had modest results to show so far. The company also illustrated just how nascent its industry is. Although the company has a staff of only twenty, it must perform technology design and development, resource assessment (identifying appropriate sites), and project development because suitable partners are few and far between.

There is a lot of enthusiasm on day two of the program. Some 2/3 of my class are interested in starting their own businesses, and I am hearing some pretty interesting ideas in the halls. I’ll post more on the program and what I learn in the coming weeks.

If you are familiar with similar programs in other locations, please leave a comment–I’d love to hear about them.

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December 2, 2009 · 2:33 am

Marketing Home Energy Management Without Utilities

After completing a study of the home energy management market I spoke last week with a strategy guy at large consumer electronics manufacturer. The company is looking at the home energy management market and evaluating various product and market entry strategies.

Many of the vendors of in-home energy displays are focused on working with utilities. Utilities have the customer relationships. In many cases utilities now have money to spend on in-home displays (a million of them in the U.S. according to the recent federal Smart Grid awards). And many have powerful motives to promote the adoption of energy information displays, ranging from fostering energy conservation, greasing the wheels for demand response programs, and dressing up smart grid investments with something the rate payer can see and touch.

Is there a path to market that bypasses the utilities and speaks directly to consumers? This is one of the questions my new strategist friend is looking at. It’s an interesting one, and one that Google raised when it announced that, along with trying to sign up utilities to share customer consumption data through its PowerMeter application, it is partnering with device makers like Energy, Inc. to capture and report on home energy use without the involvement of the utilities at all.

Perhaps consumers don’t trust utilities to help them manager their energy consumption. It is noteworthy that, according to a Pike Research report earlier this year (subscription required), some 30% of U.S. consumers were uninterested in demand response programs because of the “‘big brother’ aspect” and another 12% “don’t trust the electric company.”

Still, I think utilities are the key to the development of the market for energy information displays over the next 3 to 5 years (even though longer term I believe a consumer market for the devices will develop). And I suspect, based on the data I have, that the segment of consumers that would be motivated by distrust of their utility to buy an energy information device to be relatively small.

According to the Pike study, for instance, of those interested in energy information displays, over 80 percent said they would consider using their electric utility as a provider of energy management services that included one. An IBM study last year of consumer attitudes about energy consumption suggested that nearly 70 percent of consumers would be interested in a “participatory network” in which they share responsibility for energy management with utilities.

Utilities have an opportunity and an imperative over the next few years. They must convey to their customers the benefits of getting more engaged in their own energy managaement. And they must develop a more dynamic relationship with their customers. But utilities have their work cut out for them. Both the IBM study and a Gartner study released over the summer suggested that utilities have room for improvement in how they market new energy programs such as those relating to energy efficiency or green power: awareness and uptake of existing programs remain low in many cases.

So my sense is that this consumer electronics company may well be able to out-market the utilities, but would have little success building a market based on of distrust of them. A promising path forward might include a co-marketing arrangement, which could give the utilities a needed boost in their communication skills.

What are your thoughts?

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October 28, 2009 · 10:36 pm

Smart Grid Grants Favor Meters and Energy Displays

Yesterday President Obama announced $3.4 billion in grant awards for smart grid investments under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the stimulus law passed earlier this year.

Among the goals of this spending are infrastructure improvements to make it easier to integrate renewable energy sources into the power grid; improve grid reliability and reduce outages, which the President said cost Americans over $150 billion per year; and eventually reduce consumers’ energy bills. (The cost of power outages is something I cited as support for grid investments in an earlier post on the smart grid.)

Smart Meters a Favored Technology

The president’s talk of reduced energy bills is a reference to the strong support for smart meters reflected in the grant awards. Most of the projects the government is supporting with these grants involve the installation of smart meters.  As the president said,

Smart meters will allow you to actually monitor how much energy your family is using by the month, by the week, by the day, or even by the hour. So coupled with other technologies, this is going to help you manage your electricity use and your budget at the same time, allowing you to conserve electricity during times when prices are highest, like hot summer days.

The “other technologies” he mentioned include in-home energy displays, the focus of a market research study I am currently wrapping up and which should be published in the fourth quarter of this year.

One Million In-Home Energy Displays

According to an administration summary of the grants, the funded projects, when fully implemented, “install more than 1 million in-home displays, 170,000 smart thermostats, and 175,000 other load control devices to enable consumers to reduce their energy use.”

These grants are a boon for the winning utilities and the vendors they have selected as suppliers and implementers. And, assuming these projects largely deliver on the hope-for benefits, these projects will prime the pump for large-scale deployments over the next 5-8 years in the U.S. and, over a longer time period, globally.

Stimulus Temporarily Stalled the Smart Grid Market

Over the last couple of months, I’ve spoken to many technology vendors in this space, as well as utilities that had submitted smart grid proposals. The general consensus among this group about the impact of the stimulus was that it had the comically ironic effect of putting the smart grid market in a state of suspended animation.  With billions of dollars of grants in the balance, any utility that had been contemplating making an investment in smart grid technologies had every reason to put it on hold until it learned whether the government was going to foot part of the bill.

So the vendors watched and waited (after helping their prospective customers with their grant applications).

Some Utilities Will Proceed Even Without Grant Money

I spoke to one utility today who had ambitious plans for smart meter and in-home deployments in its service area. The utility, a cooperative, did not receive a hope-for grant to fund half of the over all expense. They are disappointed but say the intend to press forward with their plans, albeit on a slower deployment schedule. And they hope to submit a revised grant proposal for a second phase of awards.

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September 26, 2009 · 2:06 am

The Multidisciplinary Challenges of Clean Tech

I am having a blast covering clean tech from a research and consulting perspective. What is it that makes clean tech such a stimulating area?

The panel discussions at the excellent Financial Times conference on the U.S. energy business yesterday prompted me to reflect on this question. (You can see my conference tweets here.)

Yes, the opportunities are huge. And yes, the core problems the sector is tackling, including climate change and energy availability, are critically important. Beyond that, though, there’s this: the hurdles facing this set of industries are high. If you like hard challenges, clean tech has a lot to offer. Consider these challenges, all of which surfaced in discussion at the conference.

Image representing A123Systems as depicted in ...
Image via CrunchBase

Scientific and technical. Researchers are working to break new ground in areas ranging from basic materials science in photovoltaics and batteries to engineering and systems design in smart grid. No new scientific breakthroughs were announced at the conference but there was buzz about the successful IPO of battery maker A123 Systems. It was observed that this IPO was not a mere liquidity event for the investors. It was a critical capital infusion necessary to enable the business to scale up while continuing to perfect its technology.

BP p.l.c.
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Political. This area is way more political than IT or even financial services, two areas where I’ve spent a good chunk of my career. From BP America chairman Lamar McKay arguing for the “equitable” distribution of costs of moving to a low-carbon economy to PSE&G president Ralph LaRossa complaining of his utility’s struggle to get a permit to run a transmission line on an existing right of way, so much of the commercial and environmental promise of clean tech depends on clearing political hurdles.
Financial. The financial needs of the clean tech sector present a variety of challenges. A few examples:

  • Most consumers and businesses are not prepared to make capital investments to obtain electric power. So new financing mechanisms have had to be invented to make it easier for businesses and consumers to buy solar power, rather than solar panels.
  • Given the importance that coal is expected to continue to have for a long time, carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an experimental technology that is drawing  a lot of interest. But, as Alan Salzman of VantagePoint Venture Partners observed at the conference, it does not fit the model of venture capital investing.At least it’s been tough for start ups in this area to attract much VC.
  • Energy is a giant business, and most energy generation technologies need to be able to scale up to enormous volumes to be practical. Salzman’s panel was in agreement that while VC investments might be able to help get some of these companies to $100 million in revenue, they will need some kind of bridge financing to get them to the billion-dollar level that can establish their long-term viability.

Behavioral and Attitudinal. Some clean tech plays depend on changes in consumer behavior:  electric vehicles, for instance, obviously require a change in how consumers fill up their cars. Home energy management, a promise of the smart grid,will require a change in consumer attitudes too. According to a consumer survey conducted earlier this year by Pike Research, some 30% of consumers felt that “demand response” programs smack of “Big Brother.” (Demand response programs allow utilities, with the consent of consumers, to turn off or turn down certain power loads at consumer homes.) LaRossa of PSE&G said his customers were not ready for it.

Clean tech is a highly interdisciplinary field, and not only because the definition is broad. It’s also because its future depends on tackling challenges across science, finance, politics and consumer behavior. What more fun could you ask for?

If this post inspired any thoughts, please consider leaving a comment.

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August 6, 2009 · 10:05 pm

Reading on Smart Grid

Greentech Media’s research group recently released a free 145-report on smart grid. If you are new to smart grid, it’s a good tutorial on the issues. It features a helpful taxonomy [] of building blocks of the smart grid.

And it’s a handy reference guide to the vendors with profiles on over thirty companies that are active in this area.

The report provides an overview of dozens of issues in this area, but one that stands out for me is the persistent challenge of crafting a business model that appropriately compensates all participants in the energy ecosystem for energy conservation. The report cites demand-response vendors Comverge and EnerNoc, who are building a business out of reducing energy demand. But it appears that most utilities still don’t have an investment framework that will support investments in efficiency.

And if you want to see latest exploration of smart grid, have a look at this post. And if you know of good material on this topic, consider leaving a pointer to it as a comment.

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July 28, 2009 · 7:02 pm

My Clean, Green, Sustainable Reading List

Over the last few months I’ve been reading through the literature on clean tech, energy and sustainability. In case you are looking for suggestions, I can recommend any or all of these. If you have any reactions or suggestions for further reading, please consider leaving a comment.

Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry
Solar Revolution” provides an excellent overview of the spectrum of solar energy technologies and the prospects for the growth of solar energy. It is the

most thorough treatment I’ve ever read on the subject. Travis Bradford presents a holistic model comparing the total cost of solar energy with grid-based electricity alternatives and finds that solar is already more cost effective than many people realize. He also develops a sophisticated and persuasive model of the growth of the solar industry to show convincingly that solar is destined to become “the preferred energy choice for a large majority of locations and applications.”

Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming
Interesting and inspiring overview by Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund, of the many technologies that are pointing the way to a carbon-free future and a chance of averting environmental catastrophe. Plenty of specific examples and some colorful characters as well. The book returns repeatedly to the importance of creating a cap and trade system in the U.S. It’s logic is as good as any I’ve seen, but it gives the carbon-tax approach short shrift (which is the author’s prerogative.) An engaging read for folks newly wondering how the world will get past fossil fuels.

Harvard Business Review on Green Business Strategy (Harvard Business Review Paperback Series)
Good collection of some classic and more recent articles on the topic of Green Business Strategy, including must-read “A Road Map for Natural Capitalism” by Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins and Paul Hawken.

Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution
Charming and witty look at how sustainability happens–and doesn’t–at real companies. Real-world, nitty-gritty examples mixed with some punditry and policy, this book is a good complement to the literature about greening and sustainability. And author Auden Schendler is an engaging storyteller.

Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts (Business)
Dry but systematic and tailored to the needs of executives and corporate sustainability professionals. Recommended for those kicking off or managing corporate sustainability initiatives.

Strategies for the Green Economy : Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business
Nice, crisp and current overview of green/sustainability from corporate and corporate marketing perspective by long-time pundit and consultant Joel Makower.

Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
Packed with light case studies and some handy frameworks. If you are doing corporate sustainability you should probably read it, but but I suspect it works best as a lead generator for the authors’ consulting business.

The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity
Good overview of the clean tech space.

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power
Liked it a lot. See my thoughts at elsewhere on this blog.

I welcome your comments on the above or your suggestions for other reading.

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May 19, 2009 · 12:51 am

The Dumb Grid: Nigeria’s Appalling Electric Infrastructure

With all of the attention that “smart grid” technology is getting lately, the article a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal about Nigeria’s power sector was bracing.

The article described a plan by the Nigerian government to spend over $5 billion to repair its power sector.  That outlay represents 40% of the country’s rainy-day excess crude-oil account.

Why the giant investment? Only a minority of Nigerians are even connected to the electric grid. And those that are suffer from frequent and unpredictable blackouts.

According to the Bretton Woods Project, a British group that analyzes the activities of the World Bank and the IMF,

Many parts of the country go for days without access. Power is often rationed, meaning that communities receive electricity only on alternate days, and rarely for the full day when they do. Bills are generally issued on the basis of arbitrary estimates, often charging consumers for much more than they have consumed. Mass disconnections of entire communities are common, on the grounds that some households in the area have been facilitating illegal tapping or refusing to pay their bill. This obliges all those affected to either pay a hefty bribe and/or reconnection fee. Often out of desperation to access a supply of energy that many simply can not afford, illegal tapping, vandalisation of power lines and non-payment of bills is common.

According to Wall Street Journal article, some big companies operating in Nigeria have resorted to running their own power generators, driving up their costs some 10% to 20% compared to operations in neighboring countries. “Other foreign companies have pulled out of Nigeria, citing high energy costs as one of the primary reasons for doing so.”

Over the years, billions of dollars have been channeled to the power sector by the previous Nigerian government, but most of the money went accounted for, according to the article. Government corruption and misallocation of funds in resource-rich developing countries is all too common. According to the brilliant book The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, “over the last thirty years Nigeria has received something on the order of $280 billion [in oil revenues]. This is far larger than any realist scale of aid to a bottom-billion country. Yet Nigeria has depressingly little to show for it.”

The Nigerian government intends to increase power production by a factor of 3x to 5x by the end of 2010.

The smart grid has been one the most popular topics on this blog. And it’s the subject of some sexy promotion by big infrastructure vendors such as General Electric and IBM. IBM has recently touted its big smart-grid project in Malta. Nigeria’s needs dwarf those of Malta’s for sure. And what they need as much as or more than smart technology, is smart and honest governance to enable them to deploy their billions for the benefit of their citizens and businesses. I wish them luck.

[More coverage of the Nigeria electric power sector's challenges here.]

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March 24, 2009 · 7:32 am

Getting Ready for Electric Vehicles

In an effort to promote the development of a market for electric cars, the Rocky Mountain Institute is working to identify and eliminate the barriers that stand in the way. They’ve just released a “menu” (pdf)  of actions that cities and other stakeholders can take to get themselves ready for a future of electric mobility.

The Institute’s work flows from a multi-stakeholder confab/brainstorm they held late last year and is moving forward under the rubric Project Get Ready.

If you are interested in the future of electric vehicles, their material is worth reading and tracking. It’s both visionary and pragmatic.

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January 30, 2009 · 1:33 am

How Energy is Like Web 2.0

Web 2.0 and Alternative Energy Sometimes Share a Stage

If you travel in Internet circles and are tracking developments in clean tech or alternative energy, you have noticed that Web 2.0 and energy have sometimes shared a stage.

We had, for example, climate change fighter Al Gore speaking at O’Reilly’s recent Web 2.0 Summit (update: produced with TechWeb). At least one energy-related play took the stage there as well. Elon Musk, founder of electric-car maker Tesla was there as well.

The Link Between Energy and Web 2.0 Seems Tenuous

Al Gore and others have cited the potential of Web 2.0 to reach, connect, galvanize and organize consumers and social entrepreneurs to fight climate change.

And Web 2.0 and energy technology have both attracted lots of investment in recent years.

Nonetheless, the link between Web 2.0 and energy would seem to be tenuous. Indeed, as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch noted about Musk’s appearance at the Web 2.0 conference, “What do space flights and electric cars have to do with Web 2.0? Absolutely nothing.”

Future of Energy Depends on Some Principles at the Heart of Web 2.0

But Arrington missed an important connection between energy and Web 2.0 at the level of the principles that are driving both.

Web 2.0 means different things to different people but at its core there are a few phenomena that underpin the success of some of today’s biggest internet businesses and have accounted for a large changes in consumer behavior. These phenomena include

  • The long tail
  • Broadcasting to consumers gives way to dialog
  • User participation & empowerment; the rise of consumer-created content

(Here I face an audience problem. If you are a reader from the Internet world—the types of folks I talked to every day at Jupiter and Forrester, the list above needs no explanation. If you are a reader from the energy world, this may seem like impenetrable jargon. Sorry about that I hope that what follows clears things up a little.)

You can see these phenomena at work in the coming energy environment.

The Long Tail. The premise of The Long Tail is that blockbuster products are not the only interesting ones. With the Internet reducing the cost of discovery and distribution, viable marketplaces can be created by aggregating a large number of niche products which collectively attract a large number of consumers.

What we see in the energy world is a gradual expansion beyond blockbuster sources of energy (coal, gas and oil) to a more diverse set of energy sources including wind, solar and biomass. According to the US Department of Energy, 87% of energy production in 2006 was from top 4 sources but that will drop to 82% by the year 2030. Niche sources of energy are arriving on the seen that complement the dominant sources and may create a Long Tail energy market. The New York Times recently reported one whimsical but technically feasible example: biodiesel made from coffee grounds.

The Internet is an enabling technology for Long Tail markets and no real analog exists in the energy sphere. But visions of an upgraded electrical grid will certainly lower electricity distribution costs and create more liquid markets for electricity that could make small-scale providers viable.

From Broadcasting to Dialog. In the old world of media and marketing, marketers and media companies broadcast their messages to passive consumers. In the Web 2.0 world, consumers are understood to be active participants in the creation of brands and of media itself. Utilities today have a broadcast relationship with their customers. Utilities provide power and opaque monthly bills and expect nothing but payment from their customers.

But we are moving toward a world in which power customers will be in dialog with their suppliers. They will receive regular or even real-time information about electricity pricing and demand, and will be able to manually or automatically adjust their energy demand to take advantage of variable pricing. Utilities are deploying smart meters with this scenario in mind. (A recent post of mine discusses this.) Consumers will also be able to see how their power consumption compares to the averages in their area and with the power of this collective intelligence modify their demand. A startup called Greenbox is working on this.

User Participation. Online user participation this can refer to user comments and ratings, blogging and user-generated advertising, among other things. In the energy sphere it includes phenomena like user-generated power sources—such as rooftop solar panels or personal wind microturbines–being connected not only to homes but back to the power grid, so that consumers can sell excess power back to utilities when they don’t need it themselves.

Overall, a lot of what I see happening in energy involves exploiting connectivity, communication, decentralization, and the aggregation of small-scale inputs. Another one that has been theorized along these likes has to do with plug-in electric cars, whose batteries, by the millions, could be used as a distributed form of electrical storage available to local or even regional power users when cars are idle, fully charged and connected to the grid in their garages.

Power at an Intimate Scale

Some of these ideas were explored a few years back by Rebecca Willis, an independent researcher and Vice-Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, in a great “pamphlet” titled “Grid 2.0: The next generation”.

Her vision of how electric power generation will change in the future can be captured in a couple of quotes from the document:

In Grid 2.0, much more power will be generated at community and household level through renewable and low-carbon technologies like solar and wind power, small-scale combined heat-and-power, heat pumps and biomass boilers.

Microgrids, peer-to-peer networks linking generators within a village, housing estate or university, for example, will allow efficient use of smallscale generation

I have not seen her ideas cited much over here, perhaps because they were locked up in a PDF file; perhaps because she’s UK-based. But her work is worth reading.

Do you buy the idea that the future of energy will exhibit some of these Web 2.0 characteristics? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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