Well-to-wheels analysis of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions of plug-in hybrid EVs

AG, I'll ask again:

Is TX's clean energy fraction greater than the RPS ?
A simple no, or yes by xx kwh is the answer I am interested in.

In case you are curious, the follow-up question if you answer 'yes' is: what fraction of clean energy is wholesaled at coal sourced costs or less ?

 

That part wasn't there when I replied. The answer is, if RPS was where we are, then green choice would be a failure. Foturnately RPS is being blown away by the added capacity and green choice has been a great sucess in Austin. The usefullness of the program here is over, but the texas grid would green even faster if Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston improved their programs to our levels.

That' great to hear, don't listen to the nay sayers.

exactly, the volt isn't perfect but it is a step in the right direction. I think for both of us a phv with 30 mile range would be great. I don't need room for 5, would like a trunk, and the ability to not need a second car for the 20 times a year I go over 100 miles.

yes, you will even use less gas and produce less pollution The report did talk about situations like yours.

 

I think capacity is a little over 1GW more than the mandate for 2015 and well on the way to the wind portion of 2025. The legislature will likely raise RPS again but not until the economy is in recovery. I'm not sure how many GW hours that makes it.

Because of the grid constraints West Texas residents often pay 0/kwh because there is too much power to pass back to our utilities. The grid problem is being worked on. For those of us in central or eastern texas, I don't think it ever gets cheaper than coal, but we are trying to get rid of coal. Wind did get cheaper than ng for a while, and made the total cost of energy less. Locking in for 10 years did protect you from price spikes. I think someone just signing up now will pay about 20% more for green choice, but the differential is highly dependent on the price of natural gas. In other cities the price for green choice may have been less as our utility prices are lower. Unfortunately they did not offer the same programs that we did.

 

If you look at coal power output, that is the only segment of the industry which has declined in output over the last few years. Everything else has either gained share or dropped.

The Oil Drum | US electrical generation - Where we are now

So at least it seems to me that as more low carbon generation capacity has come online, coal utilization has dropped.

 

Well three things really. 1) The operator is really green, and would rather be getting everything from renewables. 2) The added cost gets passed to the customer as per the regulation so financially they will close it as fast as they can without upsetting the regulators or customers 3) Its an aging plant so has been depreciated.

Really with the likelihood of carbon legislation the percentage of coal should be going down not up.

 

This graphic is from a Texas gov website (same as the earlier link):
Looking at 1995/2006, Texas coal use has grown faster than the US average -- despite having a relatively progressive RPS standard.

 

I'd like to try and clarify (and stay on mini-topic): I am arguing that
The success of a 'green energy puchase' program can only be viewed as effective once regulatory and "natural" competitive market growth have been accounted for.

As an example of the latter, look at wind in Texas. Wind is cost competitive with coal once the transmission infrastructure is in place. So any conclusions that wind was sourced due to retail consumer green dollars is misplaced. In effect, when e.g Texas legislation builds transmission corridors for wind generation, this is no different than increasing the RPS, except that clean generation will occur in spurts as wind miners flock to the area.

fwiw, I think Texas is doing *exactly* the right thing, the right way, using taxpayer dollars (or everybody's dollars through higher electrical rates) spent on green infrastructure. I'm galled that it is happening under Rick Perry, while Obama is paving roads. Digression aside, account for mandated clean energy growth (direct or indirect, regulatory or legislative), and I am pretty confident you will then find that paying extra to your utility has not gained you one extra kwh.

 

If the chart included data through 2009, I'm sure the drop in coal power would be much larger...

 

Drees, what drop ? Not in the graphic I provided.

 

This pdf says that Texas consumed 139*10^9 kwh of coal in 2009. I'd say that AG is premature in saying that coal use in decreasing as green plants come online.

 

Looking at the percentages...

And look at what happened to total coal production in 2009 country wide when compared to the rest of the country (image from my earlier link):



Overall generation dropped in 2009 to 2004 levels, but coal generation dropped back to at least 1996 levels.

 

And clean energy dropped to 2000 levels. May I suggest looking at the trends instead ? Coal only dropped yoy once, in 2009, the same year *every* source dropped. That is graphic is hardly an argument for clean energy displacing coal. In fact, your graphic shows that the lion's share of increased electrical demand has been supplied by NG, not clean sources.

Is NG allowed into RPS in areas of the country ? That would not be inconsistent with my cynicism.

 

Where did you get that information from?

Clean energy (nuclear, hydro, other renewables) didn't drop a bit in 2009.

Nuclear has slowly been climbing (mostly from improving utilization of existing plants), hydro has been steady the last 10 years and other renewables are climbing.

 

No, the graphic shows that in 2009 coal dropped (still the biggest overall producer), NG/hydro stayed relatively constant and other renewables continued it's steady climb (though it's hard to tell from the chart because the slice is so small).

 

My mistake reading the graphic. Coal dropped in 2009, accounting for most of the total consumption drop. Not a trend certainly, but do you know why it happened ?

I wonder about this chart. Using 300 million populace, the chart total numbers work out to 1333 kwh/person*year in the US. That just strikes me as too little.

I'm happy to continue chatting about this graph, but it says nothing about AG's contentions regarding the effect of green dollars sent to utilities causing more green production to come online.

 

Unfortunately, I do not.

Your math is off by a factor if 10.

 

ahh, quite right. Thanks

Isn't that amazing, to think that *just* electric use is over 1000 kwh/person/month ?

 

The EIA seems to think it was for two primary reasons: Increases in renewable generation and drop in natural gas prices.

EIA - U.S. Carbon Emissions in 2009: A Retrospective Review




Historical natural gas prices for the past 5 years. 2009 had a pretty big drop:

U.S. Natural Gas Prices

 

Fairly disgusting. I know our consumption (two people) is 300kwh a month at home, so industry/commerce must consume an awful lot.

 

Ah, that well known penchant for british understatement.

I'm shooting for 100 kwh/month for our 2 people home. Total home energy use, not just electricity. I'm lucky that I live in a fairly mild climate with ample sun, but the amount of national waste is hard to grasp.