Updates

After eight years of energy policy dominated by Dick Cheney and his secret meetings, President Obama – from his inauguration on January 20, 2009 – began charting a New Direction for Renewable Energy.

In his inaugural address, President Obama cited the development of a national upgraded electric grid as a key element in harnessing solar, wind and geothermal energy and thus a critical component in rebuilding our economy.

“The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act – not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.”                               – President Barack Obama                                     Inaugural Address January 20, 2009.

Several days later, in his first Saturday Radio Address, President Obama described the need to build a National Smart Grid to move clean solar and wind energy from generation sites in the Southwest and the Plains to America’s cities and industrial heartland.

"To accelerate the creation of a clean energy economy, we will double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, and biofuels over the next three years. We'll begin to build a new electricity grid that lay down more than 3,000 miles of transmission lines to convey this new energy from coast to coast."                               – President Barack Obama                                     Saturday Radio Address, January 24, 2009.

“The energy challenges our country faces are severe and have gone unaddressed far too long. Our addiction to foreign oil doesn’t’ just undermine our national security and wreak havoc on our environment—it cripples our economy and strains the budgets of working families all across America.” - White House

We Need a National Grid

Streamlining the updating, siting, and construction of a fully-integrated nationwide ‘smart electric grid' system is key to economic recovery and national energy security.

However America's Current Grid is Not Up to the Task

• The current national electric grid is not connected. In the Lower ’48, electricity transmission is divided into three parts: The Western Interconnection, the Eastern Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection.
• Such fragmentation of transmission lines is the energy equivalent of a highway system where the road ends abruptly and you are unable to drive from Los Angeles to Houston or Sacramento to New York.
• The current grid system is highly inefficient.
• The construction of a national smart grid is essential for our transition to clean and renewable energy.
• One of the major hurdles we face with renewable energy is inconsistent availability. We need a way for wind energy produced in the plains to be able to compensate for cloudy days in the Southwest when solar energy cannot fully meet regional energy demands, and vice versa.

Building a New Grid is necessary for our national defense and security.

The Defense Policy Board has concluded that military installations are “almost completely dependent on a fragile and vulnerable commercial power grid, placing critical military and Homeland defense missions at unacceptable risk of extended outage” An updated and interconnected national smart grid would alleviate some of these risks because it would allow for an easier transfer of electricity.

A Smart Grid can also help to alleviate power outages because its digital smart technology can notify utilities when equipment has failed, or when it is about to fail, and allow them to take preventative measures.

Building a New Grid Creates High Wage Jobs.

Additionally, the National Smart Grid has the potential to be the job-generating venture the national highway system was for Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A study by the computer company IBM found that over 239,000 jobs could be created in 2009 by investing $10 billion in smart grid technology.

Increasing clean energy production also increases job creation. Building each megawatt of a solar plant generates 37 jobs. Building each megawatt of a wind plant generates 22 jobs.

Building a New Grid is the first step towards making renewable energy a reality, along with the millions of jobs which can be created as America transitions to a renewable energy future.

Congress Acts on President Obama’s Renewable Energy Agenda

On February 13, 2009, Congress enacted the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which authorized over $11 billion to begin building a Nationwide Smart Electric Grid to transport renewable energy. In his Saturday Radio Address, President Obama highlighted how the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act is a “major milestone on our road to recovery,” citing “the work that needs to be done” as: "The work of building wind turbines and solar panels and the smart grid necessary to transport the clean energy they create"                               – President Barack Obama                                     Saturday Radio Address, February 14, 2009.

Upon Signing the American Economic Recovery and Investment Act

“Because we know we can't power America's future on energy that's controlled by foreign dictators, we are taking a big step down the road to energy independence and laying the groundwork for a new green energy economy that can create countless well-paying jobs. It's an investment that will double the amount of renewable energy produced over the next three years and provide tax credits and loan guarantees to companies like Namaste Solar, a company that will be expanding, instead of laying people off, as a result of the plan I am signing..

The American Renewable Energy Act:

Congressmen Ed Markey (D) has introduced legislation to achieve President Obama’s call for 25% of our electricity be generated from renewable resources by 2025.

“With our economy in crisis, renewable energy can create hundreds of thousands of new green jobs, revitalize declining manufacturing sectors, and decrease global warming pollution. If we follow an ambitious clean energy path, American families will save money, construction and manufacturing workers will be back on the job, and our environment will be safer for generations to come. Massachusetts and over half of our country already have renewable energy standards and so should our entire nation.”

The American Renewable Energy Act, introduced by Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts, is long overdue. To read the actual bill, click here

The American Renewable Energy Act sets a National RPS and is quite ambitious. Usually, a RPS is set based on the production capacity of available renewable resources. The American Renewable Energy Act’s targets however are based on actual electricity produced by a renewable resource facility. This distinction recognizes the difference in potential productivity versus actual productivity for a given resource or technology.

The required annual RPS percentages begin in 2012 at 6% and continue through 2025.

The following chart maps out the percentage of our energy that will be generated from renewable sources by a given year if this legislation is enacted:

The American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act
-A New Direction for Renewable Energy and a National Transmission Grid-

The White House announced that the Act would result in:

Doubling renewable energy generation over the next three years. This is more than has been done over the past 30 years!

Creating a Clean Energy Finance Authority and Renewable Tax Credits to leverage $100 billion in private investment for renewable energy projects.

Investing $150 billion in new infrastructure, including “an unprecedented effort to upgrade our nation’s electricity grid.”

An important provision of the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act is the Renewable Energy Transmission Study.

The Renewable Energy Transmission Study, to be performed by the Department of Energy, will:

• Analyze significant sources of renewable energy that are constrained by a lack of adequate transmission capacity.
• Analyze the reasons for failure to develop the adequate transmission capacity.
• Recommend what needs to be done to achieve adequate transmission capacity.
• Analyze the extent to which challenges at the state and federal level are delaying the construction of transmission necessary to access renewable energy.
• Explain the assumptions and projections for energy efficiency improvements, the location and type of new generation capacity, and the projected deployment of distributed generation infrastructure.

---

The Road Ahead - Creating a National Transmission Authority

President Obama’s ambitious renewable energy agenda can be achieved only if barriers to building a new National Transmission Grid are removed.

Building a new renewable energy grid requires the creation of a National Transmission Authority (NTA) charged with upgrading the electricity grid. The upgraded grid will include direct current transcontinental transmission lines and smart grid technologies that can manage and transmit power from widely dispersed renewable plants, e.g. wind, large solar, and geothermal. The NTA would have the following powers.

Siting authority for transmission corridors and renewable power plants.

The authority to direct grid owners to undertake the projects needed for grid upgrades.

The authority to negotiate agreements with private investors to fund needed grid upgrades, together with  the power to levy a per KwH charge on users of the grid sufficient to service the resulting debt.

---

Along these lines…
 

“Our landscape is dotted with renewable projects, but until now, few have been connecting the dots. The way to connect these dots is with a smart transmission grid, using new technologies developed and built here in America, to connect the places that produce renewable energy with the places that will use it.”

Our nation’s lack of access to transmission lines is a major hurdle in developing a robust clean energy portfolio.

To solve this problem, U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has introduced S. 2076, the Clean Renewable Energy and Economic Development Act (CREEDA).

S. 2076:

• Provides additional funding opportunities for building new transmission lines and interconnections to areas rich with renewable energy resources
• Establishes a streamlined planning and siting process for transmission lines to cut out some of the bureaucracy that makes updating our infrastructure so difficult. Specifically, S. 2076 requires the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to establish regulations to:
       1. Provide private investment financing for renewable electricity connection facilities in designated            Clean Energy Zones, including cost recovery.
       2. Assure that at least 75% of the capacity of new transmission facilities and lines is used for electricity            from renewable sources.
       3. Issue construction permits, possibly invoking the right of eminent domain, for green transmission            projects that meet specific conditions

• Integrates Smartgrid technology so that consumers can easily conserve energy and pay lower utility fees for making use of non-peak rates
• Creates a research and development program to acquire and demonstrate electric and hybrid vehicles and related technologies as part of utility companies’ vehicle fleets

REAP supports the passage of S.2076.