Modeshift

The New York Times is catching up to the grassroots opposition to big energy projects, clean energy or dirty. Today the paper reported on the developing push back to big oil pipelines, big electrical transmission lines, and other energy transport projects of scale.

The dimensions of what needs to be done to push the country from high-carbon energy production to lower carbon production is as vast as anything the nation has attempted. That’s why it’s going much more slowly than most environmentalists and business executives anticipated. Not only are there technical gulfs to be crossed, there also are social oceans to navigate.

Among the most important is a basic American revulsion to size and scale in the clean energy sector that is expressing itself in every part of the country. Here in northern Michigan, for instance, Duke Energy late last year abandoned its plan to build 112 utility-scale wind turbines in Benzie and Manistee counties, principally because of revulsion by enough summer and full-time residents to their size.

As we’ve reported here for several years, there aren’t too many American clean energy sector projects of scale that haven’t come under pressure at the grassroots simply for being big. Big wind. Big solar. Big geothermal. Big transmission lines.

The clash over the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would extend from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast, also involves scale to some extent. It’s the first big individual infrastructure project of the new era of unconventional fossil fuel development that has attracted such public upheaval, though the water-intensive hydro-fracking production technology that led to the higher oil and gas production also is generating pointed criticism.

The oil and gas industry will have a much easier time moving their products to market, as the developments in North Dakota, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and the mid-Atlantic show. Americans are more comfortable with the fuels they know. And most of the pipeline infrastructure is already in place and simply needs to be extended to reach the new gas and oil fields. There’s almost $17 billion worth of pipeline construction, just completed or now occurring in the U.S. without the $7 billion Keystone XL and its earlier completed $5 billion Keystone project.

Completed and Proposed Oil and Natural Gas Pipelines in U.S.

Alberta Clipper — $3.3 billion

Southern Access Extension — $350 million

North Dakota System Expansion – $100 million

Enbridge Bakken Expansion – $560 million

Bakken Marketlink – $140 million

Bakken North -  $200 million

High Plains Expansion – $220 million

Northern Gateway Pipeline — $5.5 billion

Rocky Mountain Express gas pipeline — $4.5 billion

Proposed Cochin natural gas connector — $550 million

Quintana Capital Group oil pipeline: $250 million

Monarch pipeline —  $1 billion

Texas Longhorn — $275 million

Clean energy is encountering more difficult circumstances. The big solar and wind projects, for instance, that only a few years ago were viewed as low-carbon savior technologies by the American environmental community, are now seen as threats — to viewsheds, endangered species, public health, whatever. Transmission lines across wild lands are now viewed as dangerous and unsightly.

The public push-back points to a new stage of development, from centralized power generation in big plants, to decentralized clean energy production. That means installing solar arrays on individual business and residential rooftops, or building small wind generating stations that fit into neighborhoods and communities. While the concept may seem attractive, implementing such a scheme will take at least a generation even if it doesn’t run into any new civic opposition.

In the meantime, America is pushing as hard as it can to perpetuate the fossil fuel era, and losing momentum to China and Europe in clean energy production. The 750 kv transmission line in Gansu Province, China (above), which I photographed a year ago, transports power from new wind and solar installations in the northwestern deserts to the interior, and encountered no opposition.

In contrast, just last week in Michigan, Energy Conversion Devices, the parent of United Solar Ovonic, announced its plans to file for bankruptcy. United Solar Ovonic, the maker of thin-film photovoltaic panels, was for a short time one of the darlings of Midwest clean energy manufacturing sector.

– Keith Schneider

I’ve been writing for the New York Times since February 1981, covering all manner of people and places and events. Most recently, much of that work has focused on interesting real estate developments around the country. The latest article, featuring the University of Wisconsin’s work to construct a new entrance corridor on the east side of campus, was posted and published today:

MADISON, Wis. — A century after it was first proposed, a broad pedestrian corridor that will serve as a new gateway to the University of Wisconsin here is close to its final form.

A seven-block pedestrian corridor links the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison to rental apartments and businesses.

The corridor, called the East Campus Gateway, includes private developments, university buildings and two public gathering places, one owned by the university and the other by the city. A recent burst of construction has given students a new services center and a shopping mall geared to their needs called University Square.

And, in a city with a vacancy rate of less than 3 percent, hundreds of new rental apartments are filled with both students and town residents.

“The idea was to create a new front door to the university,” said Gary Brown, the director of campus planning and landscape architecture, and one of the two university staff members who played central roles in managing the recent construction.

Pieces of the seven-block stretch from Regent Street to Lake Mendota were installed episodically over the decades, including the Memorial student union (built in 1928) along the lakeshore that has long been one of this capital city’s favorite warm-weather gathering spots; a public square one block off the lake; and a collection of campus buildings dating to the 1950s and ’60s.

In the last decade, university architects and administrators, working with Madison’s planners, have been more purposeful. Prompted by trends in urban design that emphasize closer ties between retail stores and cultural institutions, open space, recreation and stronger neighborhoods, the university and the city developed a more definitive construction plan. When it is finished, the 2.45 million-square-foot project is expected to have cost nearly $500 million.

Beyond that aesthetic consideration, four blocks of the gateway are completed, including the latest project, an 81,000-square-foot addition to the university’s Chazen Museum of Art that opened in October. Projects under construction on the remaining three blocks include a hockey center, to be called the LaBahn Arena, and a 104,000-square-foot meeting center and student dining facility. Both are scheduled to open next year.

“We wanted to link where people lived, and where they were coming from, to where they needed to go,” said Julie B. Grove, the university architect and project manager, who worked closely with Mr. Brown.

See more.

– Keith Schneider

Prompted by President Obama's unexpectedly cheery assessment of America's energy outlook in the State of the Union, the Washington Post asked whether the surge in fossil fuel production was real. Yes, the paper concluded, but not for very long. The Post, it appears to me, is too pessimistic.

U.S. oil production peaked in 1970s at about 9.6 million barrels per day. It dropped to 4.96 million barrels a day in 2008, the lowest production since the late 1940s. But since 2008, production has steadily climbed, reaching around 6 million barrels per day as the year ended and steadily moving upward.

The Energy Information Administration projected oil production will grow to 6.7 million barrels a day by 2020, and will remain above 6 million barrels daily through 2035. Because the transportation sector is growing more energy efficient, principally from new fuel mileage standards, oil consumption is expected to remain close to where it is today at less than 20 million barrels a day.

Oil imports are anticipated to fall to 37 percent of domestic supply by 2035, a level not seen since the 1980s. And when increasing domestic supplies of natural gas for transportation, manufacturing, and electrical generation are taken into account, the EIA predicts, overall fossil fuel imports will fall to 22 percent of supply, a level that the agency said is close to the national goal of achieving "energy security."

It's for those reasons  that in the State of the Union the president celebrated the highest levels of oil production in eight years, the lowest level of oil imports in 16 years, natural gas supplies that could last a century, and "a future where we're in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren't so tied to unstable parts of the world."

While the new supplies of oil and gas provide what clearly appears to be an economic reprieve, there's little comfort in the environmental costs the boom is producing on land, water, and the climate.

In the last weeks of 2011 and first weeks of 2012, a flurry of reports produced by the Energy Department and prominent research institutions both confirmed the immensity of the oil and natural gas reserves that are opening around the nation, and the potential for considerable harm.

In November, a special panel of experts convened by the Department of Energy to advise the government on shale gas production urged the government to embrace a 20-step program to make the development safer for air and water. The advisory board was chaired by John M. Deutch, a former director of central intelligence in the Clinton administration, former acting assistant secretary of energy during the Carter administration, and a member of the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1970. During a lecture last year at MIT, Deutch called the boom "the biggest energy story that's happened in the 40-plus years that I've been watching energy development in this country."

He's not unaware, though, of the safety and environmental issues. The advisory committee called on the federal government to embrace the E.P.A.'s draft air quality rules, introduced in July and scheduled to be made final in April, and to support the EPA's work eliminate the use of diesel fuel in fracking fluids.

In December, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published a separate study on the effects of shale gas on the economy, and especially to innovation and manufacturing in the alternative energy economy. The study concluded that the huge reserves of natural gas "makes a big difference," said Henry Jacoby, co-director emeritus of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, and co-author of the study, The Future of Natural Gas. "It helps lower gas prices, it stimulates the economy and it provides greater flexibility to ease the cutting of emissions. But it also suppresses renewables."

"People speak of [natural] gas as a bridge to the future, but there had better be something at the other end of the bridge," he said.

In mid-January, the Baker Institute at Rice University held a one-day energy conference in Houston that is a must-read, must-view for anybody interested in understanding the economic, environmental, and cultural dimensions of the energy surge.

Deutch summed up the promise and perils in a compelling talk that opened the day. "This morning," he  said, "I wish to make three points to frame the discussion. First, the potential positive impacts of this increase are enormous, but as yet not fully appreciated by the public, business, and the nation's political leadership. Second, we should be cautious in assuming that the appearance of such an opportunity will necessarily lead to a favorable outcome. There are significant environmental challenges."

He added: "Absent serious action to reduce the environmental impact, not just talk about the need for such action, we run the risk of losing the public's confidence in this technology and delaying or prohibiting its growth. Third, the U.S. government should adjust its policies, and industry should adjust its practices to maximize the benefits of this welcome new energy opportunity. Unfortunately, my impression is that neither government nor business is doing what needs to be done."

-- Keith Schneider