_500.jpg)
Dan Barker Fort Morgan Times Leslie Martel Baer, board member for the Colorado Renewable Energy Society, talked about the potential for renewable energy in Colorado during the Energy and the Economy Summit hosted by Progressive 15 at the Country Steak Out in Fort Morgan Wednesday. ( Picasa )
(Editor's note -- This is the second of a three part-series on the Energy and the Economy Summit held in Fort Morgan on Wednesday, June 26.)All kinds of energy are important to rural areas in Colorado, wind power as well as the traditional oil and natural gas.
That was one of the points of the Energy and the Economy Summit put on by Progressive 15 Wednesday at the Country Steak Out in Fort Morgan.
Speakers
_400.jpg)
Dan Barker Fort Morgan Times Don Nunn of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development program talked about grants and loans for agricultural operations and small businesses to put in renewable energy systems in rural areas. ( Picasa )
talked about the potential for renewable energy in Colorado; legislation involving the oil and natural gas industry; how the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development program can help agricultural operations and small businesses to create renewable energy systems; misperceptions of the fracking industry; how electrical companies try to avoid impacts to existing land use when putting in transmission sites; potential legislation on consumer renewable credit; a plan to build a waste-to-energy plant in Morgan County to turn trash into power; and how energy fits into the state's Economic Blueprint.Potential
Leslie Martel Baer, a member of the board of the Colorado Renewable Energy Society and an energy analyst, talked about the huge potential for alternative energy sources in Colorado.
She re-framed how to look at energy use. Often, those who talk about energy look at it from the perspective of how it is used, rather than what it is used for, she said.
They think about residential and commercial use, but she looked at how it is used for electricity, heating and cooling.
In Colorado homes, about 60 percent of power is used for heating or air conditioning. Another 27 percent is used for lighting and appliances, and 13 percent for heating water, Baer said.
Wind power is becoming economical and more available, she said. Currently, Colorado produces about 1,800 megawatts of electricity and another 16,600 MW are planned.
However, there is a potential for the creation of up to 387 gigawatts in the state, although that may not be realistic, Baer said.
Solar photovoltaic systems produce 989 MW in Adams County, she noted, saying it is feasible for the state to produce up to 8.8 million GW of power that way. That would be 30 percent of all the energy used in the U.S. today.
And it would create thousands of jobs in Colorado, Baer said.
Solar thermal systems are five times as efficient as photovoltaic systems, and the use of these could create 1,500 jobs by 2020, she said. There are applications of this technology for agriculture.
Changing over to solar thermal energy pays for itself in five to seven years in many cases when converting from propane or electricity, Baer noted.
Small hydroelectric systems could produce up to 900 MW just using the flows of water in Colorado without impairing the flows significantly, she said.
There is also the potential of geothermal energy, Baer said.
Utilities and communities may want to take part in these kinds of energy systems. For example, Oklahoma and New Mexico are teaming up on geothermal fields already.
If regulations were streamlined, it would be easier to build these kinds of projects, but if they are implemented Coloradans would have more disposable income, there would be more jobs and more tax revenue, Baer said.
One way to reduce the costs associated with energy is to focus on energy efficiency, she noted.
How energy is used can make a big difference. For instance, heat pumps can move heat from one area to another, reducing the need to create heat or cooling. These kinds of heat pumps could reduce the use from 60 percent of the total energy to only 49 percent, and reduce heating water to 6 percent, Baer explained.
This kind of energy efficiency makes homes more cost effective, she said. People could save about 30 percent on the cost of power.
If people did this on a large scale, it could create 12,000 jobs in Colorado, as well as keeping Coloradans' money in the state, she said.
Oil industry issues
Stan Dempsy, a lobbyist for the Colorado Petroleum Association, talked about the positions his organization took on a number of bills proposed during the recent Colorado legislative session.
He said he encountered an anti-oil and natural gas agenda at the legislature.
Dempsy said he heard that Colorado House of Representatives Democrats were told not to work with the industry, because industry spokespeople might convince new legislators of the validity of their positions.
Many of the new bills were introduced by the environmental community, he said.
It seems like legislators want to micro-manage industry regulations, Dempsy said.
There were a couple of good bills, but the majority seemed to impede the oil and natural gas industry, he said.
House Bill 1267, which passed both the House and Colorado Senate raised the maximum fines for adverse violations of oil industry regulations to $15,000, Dempsy said. Legislative leadership seemed to want to do things its own way without the input of the industry.
Fortunately, HB 1269 failed. It would have prohibited the appointment of industry appointees to boards and would have removed industry members from boards, he said.
House Bill 1278 passed, and it lowers the threshold of spill reporting. Even one barrel of exploration and production waste could be reported, Dempsy said..
Another bill will increase the numbers of oil field inspectors in order to inspect each well each year. CPA opposed that bill, because it would increase costs, he said.
There were a number of bills that also failed, Dempsy reported.
Dempsy said he3 expected there will be massive rulemaking this summer based on the new laws.
Energy office
Jeff Ackerman, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, talked about some of the things his office is involved with.
CEO has a mission to promote sustainable economic development in Colorado which will advance the energy market and industry, and create jobs, he said. It has project related to transportation, financing, energy efficiency in buildings, "green" government and weatherization.
Ackerman noted that oil production has grown by 124 percent since 1999 and natural gas production has grown by 83 percent.
The oil and natural gas industry is the backbone of energy in Colorado, and it is back to the levels of employment before the recession, he said.
While Colorado is a net importer of oil, it is a net exporter of natural gas, which offers an opportunity to promote the state economy by promoting liquid natural gas, Ackerman said. There already seems to be a market for its use in vehicles, especially fleets of vehicles. A case can be made for its competitive cost.
The state is ready to support natural gas vehicle development and is trying to move that market forward, he said, although the office is trying to see what the state's role should be.
Ackerman said his office is not taking sides in what kind of energy should be used, since it is also supporting electric vehicles through an infrastructure.
An important effort is creating a revolving loan fund to take ideas from the drawing board to profitable business, he said.
There is a gap in financing for new ideas if they seem too risky to traditional financing, Ackerman said. This is an area in which the loan fund could help.
His office is looking for ways to move energy development forward, whether through energy-efficient buildings or vehicles, he said.
A relatively new project is a memorandum of understanding with real estate appraisers regarding buildings' energy efficiency. Some progress is being made in getting appraisers to include that in their analysis of homes and commercial properties, Ackerman said.
Also, real estate listing services are beginning to mention energy efficiency in the descriptions of homes, he said. This enables buyers to consider that as an aspect of the homes they want -- bringing that information into the marketplace.
CEO also offers technical advice for people or organizations that want to make energy performance contracts, Ackerman said.
This is when a company puts in energy-efficient systems and promises they will pay for themselves over a period of years, he said.
The state is also encouraging reduced usage of electricity through demand-side management to delay or avoid the construction of new power plants, Ackerman said.
Unfortunately, this reduces utility sales, which is pretty foreign to the common business model, he said.
So far, the Public Service Co. has avoided 90 MW of investment with this program, Ackerman said.
Electric generation has changed over the last decade in Colorado, he said. In 2000, almost all electricity was produced with the use of coal. Now some of that has been replaced with natural gas and wind power.
Small renewable
Agricultural producers and small business that want to put renewable energy into their businesses may be able to get grants and guaranteed loans through Rural Development's Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), said Don Nunn of USDA-RD.
For ag operations this is only available in counties with 50,000 or less residents, and 51 percent of the company's income must come from a rural area. Small Business Administration rules apply to businesses, he said.
Grants and loans can help develop wind, photovoltaic, biomass, geothermal, hydrogen and hydropower systems, Nunn said.
Systems must be commercially available, not experimental, and users must show they can do the maintenance and operations after the systems are installed, he said.
Grants can only cover 25 percent of the cost, with a maximum grant of $500,000. The maximum loan is $25 million and lenders to the applications, Nunn said.
There may be funding for feasibility studies in some cases, he said.
There are environmental requirements if dirt is disturbed, and there might be issues over systems' effects on wildlife, Nunn warned.
(Editor's note -- The third and final part of this series will look at how energy fits into Colorado's Economic Blueprint.)
-- Contact Dan Barker at business@fmtimes.com
glee masters live frozen four Rehtaeh Parsons National Sibling Day march madness Masters Leaderboard 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.