On a recent morning at Publix Super Markets headquarters, the sun was beating on the roof of a nondescript electrical plant building.
This is good news for Publix, which recently embarked on the latest phase of a solar power experiment.
The building's roof is covered with 4,000 square feet of thin photovoltaic (solar power) laminates. Nearby on the ground, a 15-foot-by-20-foot array of solar panels is soaking up some rays, aided by a tracking system that can turn the panels according to weather patterns.
"This is just a test for us. We're figuring out how we can best utilize this," says Shannon Patten, a Publix spokeswoman. "We love to learn today about what's going to help us tomorrow."
Publix is among the largest area businesses to adopt solar power in recent years, but this is hardly new to Polk County.
The converts include everything from an apartment complex in north Lakeland to a mini-storage facility in Winter Haven.
Lakeland Electric and Tampa Electric are planning major initiatives as well.
What's spurring the commercial use of solar?
Observers say it's a combination of incentives, falling costs and a growing emphasis on alternative energy.
"The biggest resource we have in Florida is our rooftops, and particularly commercial rooftops, because they're so large and flat and not shaded by trees," said Bob Reedy, director of the solar energy division at the University of Central Florida's Solar Energy Center. "It's really a major power source."
Publix's solar effort began last summer when the company installed panels on the roofs of two stores in South Florida.
Officials estimate the panels generate 4 percent of the total power needs at each store; roughly 2 percent is generated by solar at the corporate offices.
Patten says the results are being monitored for the possibility of future expansion.
Bill Cook, who owns a construction business and mini-storage facility on Dundee Road in Winter Haven, installed 213 solar panels on his roof last summer.
Between the panels and high-efficiency LED lighting, Cook said he has eliminated a $1,500 monthly power bill and racked up credits with Tampa Electric through an energy-sharing incentive program.
"The last four months, TECO owes us money," Cook said. "We couldn't be happier."
Cambridge Cove apartments, off Mall Hill Road in Lakeland, recently flipped the switch on an array of panels mounted atop the complex's carports, supplying power to the main office and common areas.
Cambridge's owner, Winter Park-based Atlantic Housing Partners, has installed solar systems at two other complexes in Central Florida, and has three more in the permitting stage.
"We're designing systems for other communities that haven't come online yet," said Scott Culp, Atlantic's executive vice president. "We want to be out ahead of the technology."
The list goes on. Mulberry-based Community First Credit Union will soon finish work on a new South Lakeland branch that features a roof blanketed with solar panels.
Earlier this month, TECO announced plans for a solar plant near Mulberry that will have the capacity to power more than 3,400 homes.
In addition, Lakeland Electric has signed an agreement with Maryland firm Sun Edison to install more than 80 solar power systems here during the next decade.
Sun Edison will front all installation costs and sell the energy to Lakeland Electric, said Jeff Curry, the utility's alternative-energy coordinator.
Some of the systems could be mounted on the roofs of local businesses, which would receive credits on their power bills.
Yet in many cases solar remains a tough sell, with price tags stretching into tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of dollars.
Cook, the Winter Haven businessman, said he spent about $50,000 on his system, after incentives. Atlantic spent roughly $500,000 total for the carports and panels at Cambridge Cove, Culp said.
But "the capital cost of buying and installing systems is diving exponentially," said Reedy, of UCF's Florida Solar Energy Center.
That's mainly because of a surge in demand and sales of solar technology.
In the United States, shipments of photovoltaic components more than doubled between 2005 and 2007, following a federal tax credit that went into effect in January 2006, according to the government's Energy Information Administration.
A $5 million budget for solar rebates in Florida - earning commercial adopters up to $100,000 apiece - was completely expended last year after it attracted a "large volume" of applications, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said.
Both Reedy and Curry say they expect solar to be priced competitively with coal power within the next decade, especially as higher sales volumes lead to lower prices. Reedy said that could happen by 2015, if not sooner.
Curry said a Lakeland Electric program that gives credits to solar users had just five participants, both commercial and residential, two years ago, but has nearly tripled since then.
"We all recognize that legislators are breathing heavy when it comes to renewable energy," Curry said. "We know it's becoming a cultural requirement."
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
House fast-tracks major changes on energy and climate
Congressional Democrats have launched a bid to shift the United States into greener energy technologies, while protecting US consumers and jobs during a difficult transition.
The draft plan, released Tuesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, moves one of President Obama’s key campaign pledges onto a fast track on Capitol Hill. It also opens a debate over how America powers its economy – one that crosses party and regional lines – at a time of deep economic stress.
“This legislation will create millions of clean-energy jobs, put America on the path to energy independence, and cut global warming pollution,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D) of California in a statement.
The bill’s main elements
The bill has three main elements: developing clean energy sources, dramatically boosting energy efficiency, and capping and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The bill also aims to protect US consumers and industry during the transition to a clean energy economy.
Development of wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy, smart-grid efforts, and new transmission lines would be accelerated, and there would be a new standard for utilities to meet regarding use of renewable sources for generating electricity. Utilities in all states would be required to gradually increase the proportion of renewables to 25 percent by 2025. The measure would also set a low-carbon standard for transportation fuels and push to reduce coal emissions by developing technologies to capture and sequester carbon.
As expected, the bill unveiled Tuesday is getting mixed reviews. Critics, including many Republicans, charge that the plan will kill jobs and add thousands of dollars to the average family’s utility bill.
“Tuesday’s cap-and-trade bill marks a triumph of fear over good sense and science, and it couldn’t come at a worse time, because it proposes to save the planet by sacrificing the economy,” said Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the energy panel.
Citing a recent University of Massachusetts study, he added that new jobs associated with boosting domestic oil and gas supplies, which would be hard hit by the proposed bill, pay twice as much as jobs associated with green investment. “It’s not hard to guess which line of work most people would choose, especially if they didn’t have the foresight to be born into money,” he said.
Energy-efficiency advocates, on the other hand, are generally enthused. The bill contains a number of reforms that strengthen the US Energy Department’s authority to set energy standards for energy guzzlers that currently don’t have any standards, such as hot tubs, says Andrew Delaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which is sponsored by several environmental groups.
“This is a pragmatic bill that tries to balance a historic opportunity to unleash clean energy to rebuild our economy and stop the climate crisis, with the diversity of views on the Energy & Commerce Committee,” says Emily Figdor, director of the Federal Global Warming Program at Environment America, a coalition of environmental groups.
The draft bill includes strong clean-energy standards that reflect the latest climate science, Ms. Figdor notes. “But on the flip side, we’re disappointed that the bill includes sky-high levels of carbon offsets, which provide less-certain reductions in emissions, and lavish subsidies, including for ratepayers, for still-unproven carbon capture and storage technology.”
Business backing
The bill draws heavily on recommendations by the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a coalition of business groups favoring climate legislation. As a result, it may be more likely to attract moderate lawmakers.
The draft legislation is “a strong starting point for enacting legislation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,” according to a statement from USCAP, which includes Alcoa, ConocoPhilips, Duke Energy, and General Motors, among other corporations.
“A number of compromises and proposals were already hammered out,” says David Doniger, policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “It’s not a bill crafted just by environmentalists, but with all the interests in mind.”
The cost of the bill hasn’t been assessed yet by the Energy Information Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency.
The cost of cap-and-trade
“It would be reasonable to anticipate that, overall, the climate portion would cost, at most, 1 percent of GDP [gross domestic product],” says Robert Stavins, an environmental economist and director of Harvard’s environmental economics program. “That’s a big number, but I don’t see it pushing us into another recession.”
“Still,” he adds, “it will be difficult to deal with during an economic downturn.”
A big facet of the cap-and-trade portion of the legislation involves the allocation of pollution permits – one permit per ton. Many environmental groups have supported the idea of auctioning 100 percent of the permits.
But the bill, while it avoids specifying how the permits would be allocated, does set aside 15 percent of them to be allocated to energy-intensive industries such as steel, concrete, paper, and glass, which would be immediately hit by higher energy prices and foreign competition.
“Our view is that some measure of free allocation to companies that can’t pass along their cost – [that] are very energy-intensive and trade-exposed – is appropriate,” says Mr. Doniger of the NRDC.
Power companies are emerging as early critics of the plan.
Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a trade group representing power companies, says, “There is an open question as to whether … the bill is based on sufficient energy and economic modeling.”
He cites the bill’s “silence” on how emissions permits will be allocated and notes that the recession will make “an across-the-board increase in energy prices all the more difficult.”
Business and environmental groups have been gearing up for an overhaul of US energy policy for years.
To succeed, the bill will need bipartisan support
But even with Mr. Obama in the White House and with Democrats holding majorities in the House and Senate, lawmakers will have to structure a bill that can cross regional and party lines, as well as win some business support, to get a bill to the president’s desk.
Early on, Democrats signaled a concern for those hardest hit in adjusting to the new law.
“It creates new green-collar jobs, creates a reliable market for private-sector investment, promotes energy efficiency with stronger fuel and renewable-energy standards,” said House majority leader Steny Hoyer in a statement Tuesday. “And it also helps businesses comply and be part of the transition to a clean energy future, which we think is absolutely critical.”
For the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), that means adjusting rebates and border controls to makes sure that foreign competitors are also held accountable for their contributions to greenhouse emissions.
‘A global solution is an imperative’
“Greenhouse gases are a global problem, and a global solution is an imperative,” said AAM executive director Scott Paul in a statement. “The last thing Congress should want to do is offshore jobs and production to foreign manufacturers that have significantly larger carbon footprints, undermining the aim of climate change policy.”
Environmental groups, which generally support the broad plan, want to see how – exactly – a proposed cap-and-trade system would function.
“They haven’t worked out exact allocation schemes,” says Sarah Saylor, legislative representative for Earth Justice. “This has been the sticky piece of this legislation.”
The House Energy panel plans hearings on this draft proposal after a two-week recess that begins next week, with a goal of moving to a floor vote by the end of May.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee began a markup of energy legislation Tuesday and is aiming to pass a bill out of committee by Memorial Day. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is preparing stand-alone legislation on global warming.
The draft plan, released Tuesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, moves one of President Obama’s key campaign pledges onto a fast track on Capitol Hill. It also opens a debate over how America powers its economy – one that crosses party and regional lines – at a time of deep economic stress.
“This legislation will create millions of clean-energy jobs, put America on the path to energy independence, and cut global warming pollution,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D) of California in a statement.
The bill’s main elements
The bill has three main elements: developing clean energy sources, dramatically boosting energy efficiency, and capping and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The bill also aims to protect US consumers and industry during the transition to a clean energy economy.
Development of wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy, smart-grid efforts, and new transmission lines would be accelerated, and there would be a new standard for utilities to meet regarding use of renewable sources for generating electricity. Utilities in all states would be required to gradually increase the proportion of renewables to 25 percent by 2025. The measure would also set a low-carbon standard for transportation fuels and push to reduce coal emissions by developing technologies to capture and sequester carbon.
As expected, the bill unveiled Tuesday is getting mixed reviews. Critics, including many Republicans, charge that the plan will kill jobs and add thousands of dollars to the average family’s utility bill.
“Tuesday’s cap-and-trade bill marks a triumph of fear over good sense and science, and it couldn’t come at a worse time, because it proposes to save the planet by sacrificing the economy,” said Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the energy panel.
Citing a recent University of Massachusetts study, he added that new jobs associated with boosting domestic oil and gas supplies, which would be hard hit by the proposed bill, pay twice as much as jobs associated with green investment. “It’s not hard to guess which line of work most people would choose, especially if they didn’t have the foresight to be born into money,” he said.
Energy-efficiency advocates, on the other hand, are generally enthused. The bill contains a number of reforms that strengthen the US Energy Department’s authority to set energy standards for energy guzzlers that currently don’t have any standards, such as hot tubs, says Andrew Delaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which is sponsored by several environmental groups.
“This is a pragmatic bill that tries to balance a historic opportunity to unleash clean energy to rebuild our economy and stop the climate crisis, with the diversity of views on the Energy & Commerce Committee,” says Emily Figdor, director of the Federal Global Warming Program at Environment America, a coalition of environmental groups.
The draft bill includes strong clean-energy standards that reflect the latest climate science, Ms. Figdor notes. “But on the flip side, we’re disappointed that the bill includes sky-high levels of carbon offsets, which provide less-certain reductions in emissions, and lavish subsidies, including for ratepayers, for still-unproven carbon capture and storage technology.”
Business backing
The bill draws heavily on recommendations by the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a coalition of business groups favoring climate legislation. As a result, it may be more likely to attract moderate lawmakers.
The draft legislation is “a strong starting point for enacting legislation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,” according to a statement from USCAP, which includes Alcoa, ConocoPhilips, Duke Energy, and General Motors, among other corporations.
“A number of compromises and proposals were already hammered out,” says David Doniger, policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “It’s not a bill crafted just by environmentalists, but with all the interests in mind.”
The cost of the bill hasn’t been assessed yet by the Energy Information Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency.
The cost of cap-and-trade
“It would be reasonable to anticipate that, overall, the climate portion would cost, at most, 1 percent of GDP [gross domestic product],” says Robert Stavins, an environmental economist and director of Harvard’s environmental economics program. “That’s a big number, but I don’t see it pushing us into another recession.”
“Still,” he adds, “it will be difficult to deal with during an economic downturn.”
A big facet of the cap-and-trade portion of the legislation involves the allocation of pollution permits – one permit per ton. Many environmental groups have supported the idea of auctioning 100 percent of the permits.
But the bill, while it avoids specifying how the permits would be allocated, does set aside 15 percent of them to be allocated to energy-intensive industries such as steel, concrete, paper, and glass, which would be immediately hit by higher energy prices and foreign competition.
“Our view is that some measure of free allocation to companies that can’t pass along their cost – [that] are very energy-intensive and trade-exposed – is appropriate,” says Mr. Doniger of the NRDC.
Power companies are emerging as early critics of the plan.
Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a trade group representing power companies, says, “There is an open question as to whether … the bill is based on sufficient energy and economic modeling.”
He cites the bill’s “silence” on how emissions permits will be allocated and notes that the recession will make “an across-the-board increase in energy prices all the more difficult.”
Business and environmental groups have been gearing up for an overhaul of US energy policy for years.
To succeed, the bill will need bipartisan support
But even with Mr. Obama in the White House and with Democrats holding majorities in the House and Senate, lawmakers will have to structure a bill that can cross regional and party lines, as well as win some business support, to get a bill to the president’s desk.
Early on, Democrats signaled a concern for those hardest hit in adjusting to the new law.
“It creates new green-collar jobs, creates a reliable market for private-sector investment, promotes energy efficiency with stronger fuel and renewable-energy standards,” said House majority leader Steny Hoyer in a statement Tuesday. “And it also helps businesses comply and be part of the transition to a clean energy future, which we think is absolutely critical.”
For the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), that means adjusting rebates and border controls to makes sure that foreign competitors are also held accountable for their contributions to greenhouse emissions.
‘A global solution is an imperative’
“Greenhouse gases are a global problem, and a global solution is an imperative,” said AAM executive director Scott Paul in a statement. “The last thing Congress should want to do is offshore jobs and production to foreign manufacturers that have significantly larger carbon footprints, undermining the aim of climate change policy.”
Environmental groups, which generally support the broad plan, want to see how – exactly – a proposed cap-and-trade system would function.
“They haven’t worked out exact allocation schemes,” says Sarah Saylor, legislative representative for Earth Justice. “This has been the sticky piece of this legislation.”
The House Energy panel plans hearings on this draft proposal after a two-week recess that begins next week, with a goal of moving to a floor vote by the end of May.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee began a markup of energy legislation Tuesday and is aiming to pass a bill out of committee by Memorial Day. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is preparing stand-alone legislation on global warming.
BP Solar Cuts 140 Frederick Jobs; Other Area Firms Make Trims
The solar technology firm BP Solar said yesterday that it will sharply curtail manufacturing operations around the world, a cost-saving move that will result in the loss of 140 jobs at an assembly plant in Frederick and 480 at two factories in Madrid.
The company's reductions were among several production cuts announced yesterday by Washington area firms. Osiris Therapeutics, a Columbia firm specializing in stem cell therapy, said it was eliminating 80 jobs as it completes the sale of one of its product lines to a company that will move manufacturing elsewhere. And American Woodmark announced that it would close a furniture plant in Berryville, Va., but officials would not say how many workers -- if any -- would be let go.
The moves by BP Solar, which casts silicon into parts that are assembled into solar panels in Frederick, come as companies in the green-energy industry attempt to slash expenses in light of global economic pressures. The companies, according to analysts, are struggling to remain competitive with the price of petroleum, which has fallen from its record highs in the last several months, and are dealing with a credit crunch that has restricted consumers' ability around the world to buy the products.
"This comes at a time when solar markets are unsettled by the impact of the global economic environment, an over-supplied market, increased competition and rapidly falling prices," BP Solar chief executive Reyad Fezzani said in a statement.
BP Solar officials said the job cuts would help the company reduce product costs by 20 to 25 percent, though they declined to say how much money the company would save.
Company officials said they will halt assembly of the solar modules at plants in Frederick and Madrid, outsourcing the operations. The Frederick plant will continue work associated with casting the silicon into parts.
The outsourcing company "will end up doing the assembly and distribution in Europe and America," said Mike Petrucci, vice president for global operations, who would only say that the firm is based in the United States. "This is very similar to what the PC industry did," he said -- manufacturing the computers in-house before going outside.
Osiris Therapeutics is cutting half the workforce at its Columbia factory, eliminating 80 jobs by April 10, as it completes the sale of its Osteocel product line to San Diego company NuVasive.
Last year, NuVasive acquired the product, which grows bone from stem cells, by agreeing to pay $35 million in cash plus milestone payments of up to $50 million in cash and stock, Osiris officials said.
"We sold the product line to NuVasive," said Erica Elchin, Osiris's manager of corporate affairs. "This is a decision they made to get another company to manufacture the product."
Citing the housing slump, American Woodmark officials said they would close the Berryville factory, the oldest of three plants in Virginia. The company said it would temporarily close a plant in Tahlequah, Okla., until economic conditions improve.
"The on-going economic recession, particularly in the housing sector, has significantly reduced demand for the company's products and services," Kent Guichard, American Woodmark's president and chief executive, said in a statement. "While we have gained market share, the overall drop in consumer activity has created excess capacity that is simply too expensive to maintain."
BP officials said they expect demand to eventually grow for their products in light of the Obama administration's focus on green energy and its move to expand incentives for taxpayers to install energy-efficient products in their homes.
But for now, Brad Collins, executive director of the American Solar Energy Society, said green-energy companies are grappling with excess capacity of product not sold in Europe, which is sparking prices to plummet "in the 25 to 30 percent range."
The company's reductions were among several production cuts announced yesterday by Washington area firms. Osiris Therapeutics, a Columbia firm specializing in stem cell therapy, said it was eliminating 80 jobs as it completes the sale of one of its product lines to a company that will move manufacturing elsewhere. And American Woodmark announced that it would close a furniture plant in Berryville, Va., but officials would not say how many workers -- if any -- would be let go.
The moves by BP Solar, which casts silicon into parts that are assembled into solar panels in Frederick, come as companies in the green-energy industry attempt to slash expenses in light of global economic pressures. The companies, according to analysts, are struggling to remain competitive with the price of petroleum, which has fallen from its record highs in the last several months, and are dealing with a credit crunch that has restricted consumers' ability around the world to buy the products.
"This comes at a time when solar markets are unsettled by the impact of the global economic environment, an over-supplied market, increased competition and rapidly falling prices," BP Solar chief executive Reyad Fezzani said in a statement.
BP Solar officials said the job cuts would help the company reduce product costs by 20 to 25 percent, though they declined to say how much money the company would save.
Company officials said they will halt assembly of the solar modules at plants in Frederick and Madrid, outsourcing the operations. The Frederick plant will continue work associated with casting the silicon into parts.
The outsourcing company "will end up doing the assembly and distribution in Europe and America," said Mike Petrucci, vice president for global operations, who would only say that the firm is based in the United States. "This is very similar to what the PC industry did," he said -- manufacturing the computers in-house before going outside.
Osiris Therapeutics is cutting half the workforce at its Columbia factory, eliminating 80 jobs by April 10, as it completes the sale of its Osteocel product line to San Diego company NuVasive.
Last year, NuVasive acquired the product, which grows bone from stem cells, by agreeing to pay $35 million in cash plus milestone payments of up to $50 million in cash and stock, Osiris officials said.
"We sold the product line to NuVasive," said Erica Elchin, Osiris's manager of corporate affairs. "This is a decision they made to get another company to manufacture the product."
Citing the housing slump, American Woodmark officials said they would close the Berryville factory, the oldest of three plants in Virginia. The company said it would temporarily close a plant in Tahlequah, Okla., until economic conditions improve.
"The on-going economic recession, particularly in the housing sector, has significantly reduced demand for the company's products and services," Kent Guichard, American Woodmark's president and chief executive, said in a statement. "While we have gained market share, the overall drop in consumer activity has created excess capacity that is simply too expensive to maintain."
BP officials said they expect demand to eventually grow for their products in light of the Obama administration's focus on green energy and its move to expand incentives for taxpayers to install energy-efficient products in their homes.
But for now, Brad Collins, executive director of the American Solar Energy Society, said green-energy companies are grappling with excess capacity of product not sold in Europe, which is sparking prices to plummet "in the 25 to 30 percent range."
Solar producers feeling the heat
The solar industry may have an assured future as part of the world's energy mix, but suppliers must weather the effects of the economic downturn if they are to share in it, writes Ian Lewis
GLOBAL solar generating capacity is continuing to grow at a rapid rate, despite the economic downturn. But this is doing little to ameliorate tough times for companies across the industry's supply chain, whose business plans were based on assumptions of even faster growth and who, as a result, find themselves selling to an over-supplied market.
The 20 largest solar-panel manufacturers alone are forecast to produce around 7 gigawatts (GW) of capacity in 2009, according to US research and brokerage company Gabelli & Co. But total global demand for solar products for the year is estimated by research firm New Energy Finance (NEF) at only around 5-7 GW – a spectacular increase in cumulative installed capacity, which stood at around 14 GW at end-2008, but nowhere near enough to soak up supply.
GLOBAL solar generating capacity is continuing to grow at a rapid rate, despite the economic downturn. But this is doing little to ameliorate tough times for companies across the industry's supply chain, whose business plans were based on assumptions of even faster growth and who, as a result, find themselves selling to an over-supplied market.
The 20 largest solar-panel manufacturers alone are forecast to produce around 7 gigawatts (GW) of capacity in 2009, according to US research and brokerage company Gabelli & Co. But total global demand for solar products for the year is estimated by research firm New Energy Finance (NEF) at only around 5-7 GW – a spectacular increase in cumulative installed capacity, which stood at around 14 GW at end-2008, but nowhere near enough to soak up supply.
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