Go Green

By John Sutter

I’m a fan of an analogy in the New York Times’ recent story about how wind power’s “dirty little secret” is the fact that there’s no energy transmission infrastructure to get wind power from the Great Plains (ie here) out to the coasts. An official tells the paper we need a “superhighway” system to truck all this power around the United States:

The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.

“We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

While the United States today gets barely 1 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, many experts are starting to think that figure could hit 20 percent.

Achieving that would require moving large amounts of power over long distances, from the windy, lightly populated plains in the middle of the country to the coasts where many people live. Builders are also contemplating immense solar-power stations in the nation’s deserts that would pose the same transmission problems.

By John Sutter

Billionaire oil tycoon turned alt. energy advocate T. Boone Pickens took his wind power advocacy to a whole new level this week with a public relations campaign he’s calling the “Pickens Plan.”

Check out the video above. You’ll see Pickens go into teacher mode as he draws on a marker board and talks over graphs about our nation’s energy usage. His plan would involved a $1 trillion government investment in wind energy. That would enable the country to produce 22 percent its electricity from wind, freeing up natural gas for use in automobiles. Bada bing! Less dependence on foreign oil, he says.

Of course, Pickens stands to benefit from such a proposition. As The Guardian points out, he’s invested $12 billion on a wind farm in the Texas Panhandle. Compared to that number, the price of his “Pickens Plan” campaign seems small: $58 million, reportedly.

The PR blitz is all over the internet. Pickens has set up a Facebook page, a YouTube channel and there’s an entire Web site devoted to his plan.

In interviews with other news media, Pickens has said his advocacy for wind power is not motivated purely by profit. Environmental groups seem to be loving his stances.

What do you all think?

(Here’s a good analysis of how other media are covering this story, from the Knight Science Journalism Tracker)

By John Sutter

Couple of interesting articles on T. Boone Pickens. He’s got more on his plate than predicting oil prices and writing fat checks to Oklahoma State.

First, from Business Week, a story about his water rights purchases in Texas:

If water is the new oil, T. Boone Pickens is a modern-day John D. Rockefeller. Pickens owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property.

Then, from a WSJ blog, more on wind power debates in Congress. The “choicest remarks” in the debate came from Pickens, the blog reports. Pickens owns the world’s largest wind farm, located in the Texas Panhandle:

If we take the natural gas we’re using for electrical generation and move it to transportation, we can replace 38 percent of our foreign oil imports. And that, sports fans, is a real number. (Pickens)

As Oklahoma energy companies make plans to greatly expand their wind power production, they’ve been dealing behind the scenes with environmentalists who want to protect a tiny bird that may become quite confused when bunches 300-foot wind turbines start sprouting up in bigger numbers out in western Oklahoma.

In this week’s environment podcast, I talk to environmentalists, government representatives and and an OG&E spokesman about what wind turbines mean for the lesser prairie chicken, which is a pretty unique creature in its own right.

Environmentalists fear the prairie chicken’s habitat will become fragmented, which could stop the bird from participating in its elaborate mating dances. Populations are already in decline, according Jay Pruett of the Nature Conservancy in Oklahoma. He said the birds may become confused by the turbines since they’re naturally afraid of tall things. It’s an evolved response, he said, since the birds think raptors and other predators could be perching on anything that’s very tall. On the empty plains of western Oklahoma, the turbines certainly will be noticeable to the birds, he said.

Pruett said the lesser prairie chicken and wind farms certainly can co-exist, but energy companies and wind farm developers must take the bird into account as they develop Oklahoma’s wind resources. That’s happened so far, he said, adding that this is the perfect time to talk about these ecological issues — before all of the plans are permanent.

To help in the efforts, the Nature Conservancy has developed maps of Oklahoma that show areas where wildlife would be threatened by wind farms. You can look for more on this story in future editions of The Oklahoman.

John

What would the world look like if everyone lived like me?  

This is the question that American Public Media is asking visitors to its sustainability page at publicradio.org.

And what a question it is!

If you follow the link above, you’ll find an interactive game called Consumer Consequences, which illustrates the impact of our lifestyles on the Earth. The game asks a series of questions about your lifestyle, including how many miles you drive per month, how much food you eat and how often you buy new items of clothing or shoes (yikes!).With every question you answer, the game provides information and tips on how you can improve your score. You can even create your own character to play the game, and your own neighborhood to play it in.

The impact of your lifestyle is then calculated in terms of how many Earths it would take if everyone lived as you do. You can compare your lifestyle with others and modify your answers to reduce your impact.

In an effort to encourage you to play the game, I will share my results: 

My character sported a top hat, a furrowed brow, a wedding dress and a very long handlebar moustache. I played in the downtown-looking neighborhood.

There are 4 people living in my household (OK, my parent’s household. I did just graduate from college, remember!). It is a single-family home that is 2000 to 2500 square feet. We live in Oklahoma, and I figured our gas and electricity costs are above the state average. We do turn off the lights in my house (my Dad makes me walk back up the stairs and turn out every light in my room if I forget) and close the doors, so I guess we try to conserve energy as often as possible. We probably throw out 2-3 garbage bags per week, and we recycle everything.  I drive (by myself) to work every day, but I do have a hybrid (if that counts for anything!). I don’t ever take the bus, train or fly anywhere. My car gets 60 miles per gallon (woot!) and I probably drive about 1000 miles per month. I don’t eat as much as the average person, but I do eat out a lot. I will admit, I have yet to get into the groove of buying locally grown and organic products. After this game, I definitely will be making a trip to the Farmer’s Market! The shopping habits are really what gets me in trouble. I can’t help it! I love to shop! 

Calculation: It would take almost 5 Earths to sustain my lifestyle if everyone lived like me! Yikes! This game is a huge wake-up call. My shopping and my eating habits were the worst on my list.

So there. I shared my embarrassing score. Now it’s your turn! 

I challenge everyone to play this game and share their Earth count here on the Go Green blog page. Leave me a comment and let me know what your results were and how you plan to change your lifestyle!

-Lisa 

EDMOND — In March, I wrote a story about how less than 3 percent of Edmond Electric’s customers had subscribed to receive wind power from the utility’s Pure & Simple wind power program. The program markets wind as a cleaner way to generate energy in comparison to “traditional” generation from fossil fuels such as coal.

Well, 3 percent makes the municipally-owned utility’s wind program sound pretty meek, right?

But recently, a study was released by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory that seemed to shed the facts in a different light. 

The study ranked Edmond Electric as the No. 1 provider of “green” power as a percentage of the utility’s total retail electricity sales. Translation: Edmond Electric’s wind power sales in 2007 accounted for a larger chunk of its total electric sales than any other utility in the country. Or at least, compared to the 800 utilities that participated in the study.

The utility’s wind power sales accounted for 5.7 percent of their total sales in 2007, the study shows.

Not only that, but the study listed Edmond Electric as having the lowest price premium for green energy in the country. Translation: Edmond Electric, like many electric utilities, attaches an added charge per kilowatt hour for “green” power, or wind, in this case. Charlie Burgett, Edmond Electric’s executive director, says the added cost is due to the fact green energy is an attractive, therefore marketable feature.

Disclaimer: Edmond Electric buys its power generation from the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority. The authority owns the wind farms where the wind power is produced near Woodward. The authority charges Edmond Electric, as well as the other cities they service, a premium for the wind power. Thus, Edmond Electric passes that charge onto the consumer.

In the end, Burgett said, the high rankings in the laboratory’s study can mostly be attributed to Edmond Electric’s largest wind power customer, the University of Central Oklahoma, which buys 100 percent of its electricity from the Pure & Simple program.

“We are pleased to be the power supplier to a great university such as UCO and to be able to help them achieve recognition as one of the nation’s leaders in environmental awareness,” Burgett said.

- by Micah Gamino, Edmond business reporter

A windmill farm near Weatherford captures wind to make energy. By David McDaniel The Oklahoman

EDMOND — The wind that comes sweeping down Oklahoma’s plains isn’t powering nearly as many Edmond homes as it could be, officials say, even though signing up for the service is as easy as filling out a one-page online form.
“I wasn’t even aware of it,” longtime Edmond homeowner Vivian Smith said when asked recently if her home is powered by wind energy provided by Edmond Electric. “I didn’t even know it was available.”

Since the inception of the wind power program in 2004, Edmond Electric has advertised it as a “pure and simple” option for customers, saying that using 100 kilowatt hours — enough to power 100 light bulbs for 100 hours — of wind energy per month for a year has the same environmental benefit as planting a third of an acre of trees or not driving a car for 1,800 miles.

But Edmond residents don’t seem to be buying into the idea.

- To read this full article, click here -

- Micah