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1. What's in Store for Energy in the House-Senate Stimulus Showdown
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2. Clean Tech Open Goes National, Lures Startups With New Grand Prize
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3. Can A New Jersey Utility Succeed Where Duke's Struggling?
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4. Do the Clean Power Bump
What's in Store for Energy in the House-Senate Stimulus Showdown
Josie Garthwaite - Policy
With the House version of the economic stimulus bill settled weeks ago and the Senate finally agreed on its own version, we’re closing in on a showdown between the two houses of Congress. Now that Senate has ended its internal wrangling, it will meet with the House to hash out a final bill for the president’s signature. After that, it’s dole time.
The biggest fight, the New York Times reports, is expected to arise over the Senate’s proposal to cut $40 billion in state aid from the House version — but there are plenty of differences in energy, infrastructure, and vehicle spending (we’ve already noted a few key energy and efficiency cuts here) that will also be on the negotiating table.
And of course, it doesn’t end with the final compromise. As hedge fund manager T. Boone Pickens said in a release following the Senate’s vote this morning, “[W]e need to make sure that we remember that this is only the start of the effort on energy.” However many billions come out of this thing, there’s a long road ahead. Here’s some of the differences in the bills:
Hybrid Vehicles for Federal Employees: - House: $600 million - Senate: $300 million
Hybrid Vehicles for the Military: - House: $0 - Senate: $200 million
State and Local Government Energy Efficiency, Conservation Grants: - House: $6.9 billion - Senate: $4.7 billion
Biorefinery Assistance: Loans and grants for developing advanced biofuels. - House: $0 - Senate: $200 million
Rural Energy Projects: Loans and grants for the agriculture sector and rural small businesses to improve energy efficiency and use more renewable energy. - House: $0 - Senate: $50 million
Mass Transit and Rail Projects: - House: $12.4 billion - Senate: $11.5 billion
Weatherizing Homes: - House: $6.2 billion - Senate: $2.9 billion
Each package contains too many appropriations for us to list them all hear. For a full dollar-by-dollar rundown on the proposals, check out readthestimulus.org. We agree with their tagline: “$850 Billion, 1588 pages, and counting…somebody needs to read it.”
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Clean Tech Open Goes National, Lures Startups With New Grand Prize
Josie Garthwaite - Startups
For those of you interested in competing, there are six categories: Air, Water and Waste; Energy Efficiency; Green Building; Renewable Energy; Smart Power; and Transportation. We’d love to share more details, but they won’t come out until the official Clean Tech Open launch taking place next month in San Jose. After that, startups have until May 30 to submit applications.
Can A New Jersey Utility Succeed Where Duke's Struggling?
David Ehrlich - Big Green
Newark, N.J.’s Public Service Electric and Gas announced today that it wants to put solar panels pretty much everywhere — on utility poles and streetlights, on the roofs of schools and municipal buildings, on public housing, as well as in some ground-mounted systems — all part of a $773 million proposal to feed 120 megawatts into the grid.
But last month, Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Energy said it wanted out of a similar solar project, claiming that the local regulator was restricting ways in which it could pay for the plan. The $50 million project to generate 10 MW of power from rooftop solar installations had already been cut down from $100 million and 20 MW after critics called the utility-owned plan anticompetitive.
Duke planned to recoup its costs entirely through rate hikes, drawing the ire of the North Carolina Utilities Commission, which ruled that Duke could get the solar power at a lower cost from third-party providers.
So how does PSE&G, part of the Public Service Enterprise Group, plan to pay for its much larger proposal? Well, customers will end up taking a hit on their monthly bills, but the bulk of the cash will come from new bonds and equity from the Public Service Enterprise Group. The global credit crunch could make that difficult, but Ralph Izzo, CEO of the group, told the New York Times that he doesn’t expect his firm to have a problem issuing the bonds.
The project, called Solar 4 All, will only account for about 1 percent of the power used in the Garden State, but PSE&G said it will satisfy almost 7 percent of the state’s renewable portfolio standards requirements through 2020.
We may have to wait a while to find out if the plan passes muster — the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities has 180 days to take action on the proposal — but PSE&G said it hopes to start installations this year, with the entire program rolling out over the next five years.
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Do the Clean Power Bump
David Ehrlich - Automotive
Start aiming for the potholes! Engineers on both sides of the Atlantic have come up with different ways to get the cars of the future to generate power just from hitting a few bumps — a cleantech dream, an evil plot from the makers of Dramamine, or a trend in harnessing kinetic energy?
In the U.S. students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created shock absorbers that can harness energy when a vehicle hits a bump. And at the same time a designer in the UK has created speed bumps that can generate power when bumped.
Hydraulics for clean power. And even better as a combo — picture driving cars with energy generating shock absorbers over roads covered in power generating speed bumps. Sales of drive-thru coffee might drop, but clean energy goes up.
The folks at MIT are testing out their new shocks on the king of the off-roaders, the Humvee, lent to them by Humvee maker AM General. The students have formed their own company, called Levant Power, to develop and commercialize the new shocks.
They’re still in the testing stage, but so far the MIT team found that in a 6-shock heavy truck, each shock absorber could generate up to an average of 1 kilowatt on a regular road. They said that’s enough power to completely displace the large alternator load in heavy trucks and military vehicles.
And as far as those bumps in the road, Peter Hughes, the inventor of the cleantech speed bumps, told the Guardian that the bumps are expected to power street lights, traffic signals and electronic road signs in a pilot project in west London. The speed bumps are designed to be raised and lowered, and can work even when they’re laid flat (which does no good for the clean power shock absorbers, or our dreams of synergy).
But no worries, MIT said the shocks have already drawn interest from the U.S. military as well as several truck makers. And the cleantech speed bumps could be rolled out by 2010, potentially going nationwide after that. Hold onto your hats. And your stomachs.
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