Creating a Cool Commonwealth
Posted by Chap at 1/5/2008 2:36 PM and is filed under uncategorized 
Monday at 10:00 a.m., I will be in Richmond with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network to present the Clean Energy Future Act of 2008.
This is more than just another cry in the environmental wilderness. The Act is an integrated plan to "mainstream" renewable energy in Virginia and start us on the road to environmental recovery. The Act has three basic components: 1. renewable portfolio standards for our electric utilites, 2. "demand side management" to reduce our consumption of electricity, and 3. a Clean Energy Fund to promote the reduction in greenhouse gases which is causing global warming.
The CEFA is just one part of my "Cool Commonwealth" legislative agenda in 2008. The other key pieces are bills requiring energy-efficient LEED standards for all state buildings, a "tree save" plan for new development, and a dedicated revenue source for research and development of environmentally-friendly biofuels. In other words, the very ideas we included in our "Virginia 2.0" plan during the campaign.
The purpose of "Cool Commonwealth" is to change the direction of Virginia on environmental and global warming issues. Better yet, it's to establish a direction.
Our press conference on Monday will kick this off. Stay tuned ....
POSTSCRIPT:
We had our press conference this morning (Monday). Very good crowd from both the environmental and student communities. Lots of media including Richmond Times Dispatch, Roanoke Times and WRVA. We even had our own preacher! Keep the ball rolling by contacting your legislator and telling them to support the Act.
With regard to "demand side management," we should make sure we are also ready for "the law of unexpected cosequences." That is, The utilities would love nothing more than to charge residents not only for how much power but also when they use it. Also called "peak demand billing", the power company introduces the variable of time to the measurement of power supplied, in kilowatts. That is, the current scheme for billing is by measuring the value kilowatt hours. If for instance you leave a 100 watt light bulb on for 1 hour, you pay for 0.1 kilowatt hours. If you run a typical, 3 ton air conditioner for 1 hour, you pay for about 5 kilowatt hours (abbreviated kWh). And it doesn't matter when during the day you run it, it's still about 5 kWh x 15 cents per kWh or about 75 cents.
With peak demand billing, when you run your air conditioner matters. At night you may get a really good rate, like 9 cents per kWh. But during the day, you could pay up to 45 cents per kWh. And it changes during the day, and from day-to-day.
This makes the residential consumer more like an industrial customer. It subjects us to commodity pricing. If we were large consumers of electricity, this would give us a pricing and energy management advantage. But in reality, it just plays into the hands of the utilities. The "threaten" to build more plants to meet demand and the enviromentalists correctly (IMHO) want to make usage so painful that the power companies will not have to build more plants.
Renewable energy such as solar, geothermal, tidal and yes, nuclear are the true answers. Electricity, unfortunately suffers from not being able to be stored easily like carbon based fuels. The few techonologies that provide storage such as chemical batteries and fuel cells by their very nature are inneficient compared to generating to meet demand.
Before we sign up for a peak demand billing approach, I would like the power companies to provide "side-by-side" billing data to the customers. That is, I would like to know how much I would gain, or lose, by using peak demand billing. In fact, I would love to just see, based on my electrical usage, the amount of grenhouse gasses, in tons of Cx emission equivalents I'm responsible for, i.e. what is my "carbon footprint?" I say this because, I do use energy conservation methods such as a setback thermostat. But think about older citizens who cannot afford to cool their house in the hottest part of the day based on a peak demand rate.
Please be careful with this!
Brian:
Thanks for your comments. Once the legislation is posted on the Internet, make sure you check it out and let me know your thoughts.