Comment Log Display

GHG 3. Electricity and Natural Gas
West Valley Citizens Air Watch (WVCAW) Comments:

a. Solar: Photovoltaic. Clean, easy, almost maintenance free,
lasts decades or more, good rebates. Just put it up and the sun
does the rest. 

The Appendices (C-54) state that 32/3 to 3/4 of electricity
consumed in California is generated within state with the rest
being imported from other Western states.

How much electricity does California use per year? How much total
electricity do homes use per year? What is the average amount of
electricity used by each home per year? What is the approximate %
of owner occupied homes? What is the average income per owner
occupied household? What if 20% of owner occupied homes installed
photovoltaic panels on their roofs, how much electricity would be
saved from the grid? What is the value of the top 20% of homes?
What % of income would an average size array cost, e.g. 2.5kwh @
$15,000? What if those with an income of $125,000 and above had
1/2 the rebate of those making less than $50,000 with a tiered
system? The other 1/2 of that rebate could go to lower income
homeowners. 

If every school system in California put up one solar array on one
school to start with approximately how much electricity would be
saved from the grid? What if every municipality put a solar array
on either their city hall or other building to start with how much
electricity would be saved from the grid? Over time, it would pay
for itself and greatly reduce or eliminate electric costs.

Why is it taking so long for even a million solar roofs to be
installed? It is easy as the contractor works with the homeowner
to decide on the size of the array based on use and budget, does
the work, arranges the paper work, can directly arrange to get the
rebate so the homeowner does not need to put up all the money, only
the non-rebated portion, installation is relatively straightforward
as is connection to the grid and does not take much time, is
outside the house, so almost no interruption of every day life
need take place, it is a benefit to the planet, and it brings
ongoing great satisfaction.

Of course, for the majority of people cost is still the first
obstacle. However, for a very large amount of Californians,  based
on their incomes, and the size of their houses, and southern and/or
western exposure that appears not to be an obstacle.

So it seems that most of those who could afford it are not
participating. Yet most people are now aware of global climate
change. Most people enjoy participating in helping out. What is
the disconnect?

Our guess is that people do not understand how easy it is, and --
for those who could afford it -- perhaps do not understand that
for them it is affordable. So education. Public Service
Announcements (PSA with punch.

However, there is another problem. From looking at the parameters
for individual and small business photovoltaic systems, it appears
there would be monetary incentive from the private and/or
stockholder owned corporations to keep homeowner generation down.
This needs to be deal with in this process. If the following
information from the web from 2000 is still correct, the limit of
the systems’ size in California is 10 kWh. The limit on overall
enrollment is 0.1% of 1996 peak demand. Why limit the size and
amount of solar arrays? Why not have as many homeowners and small
business owners and schools and cities put as much solar power on
their roofs as they want? Let’s generate as much solar power as
people are willing to produce above what they use per year!

We note that Iowa has no limit of the size of renewable systems
and no limit on overall enrollment.

Another issue is that in 2000 (and now), net metering customers
are billed annually (good);however, excess generation is granted
to the utility (counterproduction and disincentivizing).
 Our understanding is that there was
litigation settled approximately 2 years ago that now requires
PG&E to pay 15˘ per kWh generated above net metering use per year
and added into the grid (we do not have time to verify and
document this). Better, but still not market rate. Why not
incentivize people to generate extra solar electricity to put back
into the grid by paying the same rate PG&E charges. On top of that,
solar electricity is generated at peak daytime hours making it even
more valuable both monetarily and energy-grid wise.

Right now individual home owners and others are subsidizing a
giant private corporation and their stock owners. Net metering
good, not getting paid retail for generating electricity and
adding it to grid, unacceptable. Also disincentive. Real monetary
compensation would create monetary incentive for homeowners,
schools, municipalities, small businesses and small farms to
install photovoltaic systems which produce electricity beyond
their net metering zero out needs thus creating thousands of small
generators contributing clean, renewable energy to the grid for all
to use.

Those of us who generate extra electricity, above net, back to the
grid are glad to contribute clean energy to the grid; however,
since the electric company is a private for-profit corporation,
they should pay us just compensation. No matter how much extra
electricity we send to the grid per year, we still pay a charge
each month to connect to the grid. It makes sense to pay to
connect to the grid, but not if we are uncompensated for our
contribution of clean energy to the grid.

On top of that, we’ll guess that the clean energy claimed by PG&E
includes the extra electricity they get from our photovoltaic
systems which we paid for ourselves (except for CA rebates --
thanks for making it possible!) and whatever infrastructure and
subsidies to the utilities the taxpayers have paid for also.

Many members of West Valley Citizens Air Watch have installed
solar photovoltaic systems on their own home roofs, some as long
as 11 years ago.

We ask CARB to allocate a majority portion of any moneys generated
by carbon fees to helping fund photovoltaic systems for homes,
small businesses, schools and municipalities. Solar is a truly
renewable resource abundant in California. Solar home and business
installations will probably soon be able to be used to power forms
of transportation such as plug-in hybrid vehicles, a convenient
method of reducing GHG emissions from transportation and one which
homeowners will be able to do themselves. 

A significant portion of the moneys generated by carbon fees
should also go towards helping fund wind turbines on the many
small farms in California and rural dwellings. Of the 76,000 farms
and ranches in California, it is surprising and heartening to learn
that nearly half are classified in the smallest category. It is an
asset to California to have and keep these farms viable. So solar
and wind subsidies to these small enterprises in the middle and
long run as the wind and solar investments pay for themselves
(which will happen sooner as energy prices from the grid rise),
will help enable them to keep them going. While, “one megawatt of
solar panels installed on land can take eight acres or more, a one
megawatt wind turbine would need only one acre of land.”(California
Institute for the Study of Specialty Crops report, Chapter 3, p.
18) 

Again, it appears that the available rebates, subsidies and tax
deductions are underutilized. Again, it is our guess this could be
ameliorated through disseminating an understanding of the easiness
of installation and connection to the grid, where possible, and
the affordability based on available funding and future carbon fee
fundings and pay back and especially benefit to the owner, society
and the environment over the decades of use. These systems over
time will appreciate in value for their owners.

The agglomeration of the energy produced from all these small
installations will add up to a significant amount of reduction in
GHG and toxic air emissions.

b. Natural Gas: In the short term, many if not most of the cement
plants in California could substitute natural gas for the much
higher CO2 and toxic air contaminant producing fossil fuels such
as coal and petroleum coke.

In a meeting with the BAAQMD and in subsequent written
correspondence, the BAAQMD confirmed to WVCAW that Hanson Cement
is equipped today to switch immediately from using petroleum coke
to natural gas. It already has all the natural gas lines in place
in the kiln and in fact currently uses a small amount of natural
gas. This would greatly reduce in the short term both the CO2
emissions (see CARB CO2 chart) and the toxic air contaminants and
small particulates.