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An article from Information Week starts out, “Continuing its efforts to implement socially responsible technology, Google on Tuesday said that its Google Energy subsidiary had completed a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement with NextEra Energy Resources to buy clean power.”

It talks about how the commitment to purchase wind power enables the energy producer. “By contracting to purchase so much energy for so long, we’re giving the developer of the wind farm financial certainty to build additional clean energy projects,” he said in a blog post. “The inability of renewable energy developers to obtain financing has been a significant inhibitor to the expansion of renewable energy.”

Regardless of the motivation behind Google’s commitment to be carbon neutral, good on ‘em.

By CATHERINE TSAI

The Upper Scioto Valley School District in Ohio, battered by a slowdown at a nearby Ford Motor Co. plant, wanted to explore alternative energy when it developed a plan to fix its budget and create jobs.

It had a square mile of land where it could put wind turbines and tap some of the best wind resources in the state. It just needed the money.

That’s where Boulder, Colo.-based NexGen Energy Partners came in.

NexGen builds and maintains onsite wind and solar systems for customers, sparing them construction and maintenance costs. Using renewable energy grants and credits to defray its costs, it makes money selling power to customers over long-term contracts.

NexGen erected two 100-kilowatt turbines for Upper Scioto Valley schools, which paid $35,000 in upfront costs for some of the power and an engineering fee, Assistant Superintendent Jim Bowser said. The district projects the turbines will save it about $1.7 million over 15 years on utility bills.

“Are we breaking even? You bet. And we’re making money,” Bowser said.

The district is looking at adding more turbines, a solar power system, and possibly turning biomass into energy with other corporate partners.

Having someone else build a renewable energy system and buying just the power is becoming more common for nonprofits, businesses and local governments and agencies looking to switch to wind or solar. The model makes the most sense when customers own the properties where equipment is installed, where they pay high utility rates for conventional power, and when projects can qualify for incentives or tax credits.

Schools and other government entities don’t qualify for tax credits, but 14 states allow third parties that aren’t a regulated utility to sell power, according to the Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy, or DSIRE. Those third parties often qualify.

“It’s the only way government incentives can effectively be used,” said MP2 Capital CEO Mark Lerdal. The San Francisco-based solar project developer has a power purchase agreement with the city-owned Denver International Airport, where it owns and operates a new solar power system.

There are other options for minimizing upfront costs. Eighteen states allow loan programs where homeowners or businesses pay off the costs of a solar project over time through a special assessment on property, according to DSIRE.

“It’s really interesting to see how much innovation is happening in the clean energy space in terms of financing,” said Karlynn Cory, the renewable energy finance team lead at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. “It’s helping to accelerate the pace of development.”

The key for NexGen is finding projects where it can build on site, with no need for complex transmission systems to deliver power.

“If we can deliver energy on site, whether it’s a school, college or small town, all that infrastructure is already in place. We just have to bring in the actual equipment. We don’t have to build tens of millions of lines,” said NexGen President John Brown, formerly of NREL.

The private company, founded in 2007, doesn’t reveal its finances but said it was profitable last year and is on track to make a profit this year. It has about two dozen customers in Ohio, California, Kansas and Hawaii, said Ted Rose, vice president of business development and public affairs.

Partners invested $20 million in NexGen last year and could invest about $30 million this year, Brown said.

For years, Eldorado Artesian Springs Inc. in Louisville, Colo., wanted to add renewable energy, but paying about $400,000 to install its own solar panels was never an option, Chief Financial Officer Cathy Shoenfeld said.

NexGen has provided Eldorado with solar panels that should generate close to half of the bottled water company’s electricity needs. Under a multiyear contract, NexGen will sell the power to the company at rates comparable to what the utility Xcel Energy charges. (Xcel also generates some of its power from renewable sources.)

“It’s not going to cost us any more than what we would pay for power from Xcel,” Shoenfeld said. “In a situation like this, there’s really not a lot of risk.”

Links:

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9FFE24O1.htm

Utilities must now get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by
2020. The bill increases that to 30 percent over the same time, a standard
just below California’s 33 percent requirement. Most other states with
renewable energy standards are in the 20 percent range.

The bill requires that 3 percent of a utility’s power sales be spent on
power from solar installations at homes and businesses. That’s aimed at
creating more business for Colorado’s estimated 230 small solar
installers.

Opponents said annual assessments based on information from the U.S.
Department of Energy and the U.S. Census Bureau say American families are
spending 20 percent or more of total income to cover energy expenses, with
a significant impact on low-income families.

In 2009, Colorado households with annual incomes below $50,000 spent an
average of 15 percent of their after-tax income on energy.

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The Peetz Wind Farm, also known as the Peetz Table Wind Energy Center, is a 400 MW power station in north-eastern Colorado, owned by NextEra Energy Resources. The Peetz Wind Farm is capable of generating enough electricity to power nearly 120,000 homes using 267General Electric wind turbines. The wind farm has about 20 full-time employees.

Congresswoman Betsy Markey today announced that nearly $100 million has been awarded to NextEra to expand the Northern Colorado Wind Energy farm in Peetz, Colorado.

Read more here: Markey: $99M For Peetz Wind Farm

On November 20, Congresswoman Betsy Markey was today joined by Congressman Erik Paulsen (R-MN) in introducing the Renewable Electricity Integration Tax Credit Act (REITC), which will provide a tax credit for utilities to integrate more wind and solar into their energy portfolios.

“Our corner of Colorado is today what Silicon Valley was in the 1980s,” [said] Rep. Markey. “We are on the cusp of a revolution in American energy production that will break our dependence on foreign oil and take control of the way we power America. People will look to Colorado as a leader because we’ve been doing it longer and better than anybody else. It’s time for America to take back control of our energy, our security, and our jobs.”

Read the whole story here.

Does Colorado state government mandate that the utility companies buy back power by home owners and businesses that produce their own? Or do the utils credit energy producers voluntarily, perhaps knowing it makes the best business sense? Something to research.

Apparently the state of California does mandate that their utils credit energy producers. This was Posted: 30 Oct 2009 01:36 PM PDT in GetSolar.com

Yesterday saw a surprisingly positive new chapter in California’s net metering saga roll out. PG&E is voluntarily expanding its net metering program in the absence of new legislation that would mandate such a move. PG&E customers can continue to explore solar as a valuable investment for some time to come now–without this move, many were predicting that PG&E would reach its net metering cap by first or second quarter 2010.

The broad situation is this: California electric utilities are rapidly approaching the mandated cap for the percentage of their energy portfolio that can be supplied by the electricity garnered from net-metered solar projects (2.5 percent of peak demand). Once that cap is reached, the utilities are no longer required give home or business owners credit on their electric bill for any net excess electricity generated by their solar panel arrays. PG&E is raising that cap within their own portfolio to 3.5 percent. The reason this comes as such as a surprise is that the utility was one of the strongest voices in opposing a legislated net metering increase earlier this year (failed House bill AB 560).

Net metering is one of the cornerstones of any incentive package for solar, and is a huge part of the reason projects can be financially attractive–in essence, the utility is acting as a giant, completely efficient battery. Net metering ensures that every kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by your solar panels is helping offset your grid-purchased electricity, either by directly reducing the amount of energy you need to purchase (because you’re producing it on-site) or by offsetting the energy you do still need to purchase (by means of credit on your bill).

So, to make a short story probably longer than you feel up to reading on a Friday afternoon, PG&E’s announcement yesterday to voluntarily expand their net metering program came as a huge relief to the solar industry, and its timing could not have been more apropos as Solar Power International, the country’s largest solar conference, finished up in Anaheim.

From TreeHugger.com we got this:

Here’s one more reason to feel good about heading out to Chipotle for a burrito: The Denver-based Mexican restaurant chain has just announced that is making a big solar power push, partnering with Standard Renewable Energy to install solar panels at approximately 75 of its restaurants over the next year:

20,500 Tons of CO2 Avoided Annually
Installation of the solar panels is currently underway in Denver, Colorado and Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio, Texas. All together, Chipotle says the solar power initiative is expected to avoid some 20,500 tons of CO2 emissions of the life of the project — and that when completed Chipotle can boast being the largest direct producer of solar power in the restaurant industry.

Keep in mind, that’s not all of the restaurants’ electricity usage, but it’s certainly a good start.

Eco-Commitment Extends Beyond Food Sourcing
Touting his restaurants’ green efforts, Chipotle founder and co-CEO Steve Ellis said,

Our effort to change the way people think about and eat fast food began with our commitment to serving food made with ingredients from more sustainable sources. Today we’re following a similar path in the way we design and build restaurants, looking for more environmentally friendly building materials and systems that make our restaurants more efficient.

Regarding the eco-friendly building materials part: Chipotle soon will have three LEED-certified buildings in its chain, one in Illinois (with an on-site wind turbine), one in Long Island, and one in Minneapolis (pending certification).

Links

• Chipotle
• Chipotle Mexican Grill Opens With On-Site Wind Turbine
• Standard Renewable Energy
• 92% of Americans Want Solar Power… Now!
• Eco Depot USA

Larkburger, the Vail Valley and Boulder-based quick-gourmet burger restaurant, announced today that wind-power now generates 100% of the electricity needs for its two Colorado restaurant locations.

As of September 1, 2009, the company is offsetting electric energy use through wind-power broker Renewable Choice Energy Inc. of Boulder, Colo., which

“…connects wind-power producers with wind-power consumers.”

Larkburger has purchased 201,000-kilowatt hours of wind-power, to date.

“Larkburger is committed to minimizing its environmental footprint, and using a renewable energy source reinforces this,” said Larkburger President Adam Baker. “From all-natural ingredients to compostable corn cups and containers to reclaimed wood paneling on walls to purchasing wind-power credits, it’s important to us to be as progressive as we can.”

They probably don’t have enough parking lot space to put up their own small wind turbines, but at least they they’re doing everything they can.  Good for them, all of us.

Links

• larkburger
• The elepahantjournaldotcom
• Renewable Choice Energy, Inc.
• Eco Depot USA

According to the article, “Under a power purchase agreement, the wind development firm Deerpath Energy would own the turbines and Wal-Mart would buy the power they produce.”

Wind as a power source is part of an energy trend in the American landscape.

Last year, 10,000 small turbines were sold to homes, farms and businesses nationwide, said Ron Stimmel, who specializes in small wind systems at the American Wind Energy Assn. in Washington, D.C. The figure represents a 78% increase over the previous year, attributed in part to cheaper prices and federal tax credits. The systems are concentrated in states with the best rebate policies — and a good supply of wind — including California, Wisconsin, New York, Ohio and Vermont.

“Small wind systems have a similar potential for growth as the solar industry,” Stimmel said. “This is very well on its way to becoming mainstream.” — Palmdale parking lots to double as power plants — latimes.com

Related Links

• American Wind Energy Association (AWEA)
• DeerPath Energy (Marblehead, MA)
• Eco Depot USA (Chaffee County, CO)