Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Press

Denmark’s Renewable Energy Island Comes of Age

2017-10-23T09:09:39-04:00

Wind turbines on the island of Samsø. Photo credit: Philip Warburg

At a time when President Trump and his followers in Congress are hell-bent on dismantling the clean energy architecture of the Obama era, many Americans are looking beyond Washington, and even abroad, for solutions to our climate crisis. I recently witnessed one of these transformative gems on a visit to the Danish island of Samsø, which just passed the twenty-year mark in a campaign to supply all of its energy needs from local renewable resources.

Home to some 3,700 year-round residents and tens of thousands of summer visitors, Samsø is a micro-scale lab for energy innovation. In 1997, the island won a national competition that set as its goal 100 percent renewable energy reliance within ten years. At the time, the island’s electricity came via undersea cable from Denmark’s grid, with coal supplying most of the power. Oil shipped from the mainland was the primary feedstock for heating Samsø’s homes and businesses, as it was for virtually all transportation on the island.

A lot has happened since then to transform the island’s energy economy. Søren Hermansen, son of a Samsø farmer and founder of the Samsø Energy Academy, has been the guiding force behind the island’s shift to renewable energy. Gray-haired and bespectacled, he looked surprisingly youthful in his blue jeans, hoodie, and sneakers when he greeted our group of visitors—a delegation of Washington State policymakers who were exploring sustainable energy infrastructure in Denmark and Sweden. Hailing from Boston, I was the sole East Coast interloper.

“Think local—act local” is the expression Søren uses to inspire his fellow islanders’ efforts to achieve their own brand of energy independence. It’s no surprise that wind power is a central feature of this initiative. The wind blows steadily across Samsø’s gentle terrain and the waters of the Kattegat surrounding it. To witness this power source, Søren leads us into an open field where we observe five neatly spaced one-megawatt turbines, modestly-scaled by modern standards. They are Danish-built, like so many of the turbines that have fueled the global wind revolution.

At first the rollout of windpower had some island residents worried. Noise was one concern; the visual prominence of turbines was another. Søren recalls the discussions that ensued. Having grown up locally, his Samsø roots helped in persuading farmers to share ownership of their turbines with nearby landowners. “When we started talking as a community,” he says, “we found we could do things that we couldn’t do individually.” With a hint of mischief, he adds: “When you own part of a wind turbine, it sounds better. It looks better.”

Samsø’s onshore turbines—eleven in all—generate enough electricity to meet the island’s overall electric needs when averaged over the course of a typical year. Though wind is an intermittent energy resource, matching the turbines’ output with local power demand at a given moment isn’t necessary since Samsø retains its connection to the Danish grid. Any shortfall in local electricity is filled by grid-supplied power, and surplus windpower is absorbed by a transmission network that links Denmark to much of Europe. In this sense, Samsø differs from many islands around the world that are cut off from outside power sources and have to find their own local means of balancing electricity supply and demand.

This same grid connection makes it easy for Samsø to offset the island’s still-high carbon emissions from the transportation sector. In the village of Tranebjerg (pop. 824), Søren shows us a 120-kilowatt solar carport that charges the Samsø island municipality’s small fleet of electric vehicles. He readily admits, though, that most cars, trucks, and buses on Samsø still rely on gasoline or diesel fuel. Dwarfing the carbon emissions from those vehicles are the diesel-powered ferry boats that regularly ply the waters between tiny Samsø and the Jutland peninsula, to the west, and Denmark’s most populous island, Zealand, to the east. While one boat has been converted to liquid natural gas and there’s some talk of switching others to biogas, these vessels remain the number-one generator of carbon emissions on the island.

To neutralize its transport-related carbon emissions, Samsø has invested in an array of ten offshore wind turbines whose primary function is to feed clean electrons into the grid. Five of these are owned by the Samsø island municipality; three are privately owned; another two are under cooperative ownership. Taking this infusion of renewable electricity into account, Søren estimates that Samsø residents have a per capita carbon footprint of minus 3.7 metric tons per year. Compare that to the 16.5 tons of carbon emitted annually by the average American, or even the 5.9 tons of carbon a year emitted by the average Dane!

And what about all those homes and businesses that were heated with oil at the outset of the energy project? Today, most islanders rely on four district heating systems that use local crop waste as their feedstock. We visited one of these plants, in a high-roofed metal shed just outside the village of Ballen, where our ferry landed.

Søren Hermansen shows American visitors straw – the feedstock for Samsø’s Ballen-Brundby district heating plant.

Inside the shed, we stand in the shadow of giant bales of straw stacked six high. Each weighs roughly 1200 pounds. The bales are sent through a mechanical shredder and from there, via conveyor, the straw is fed into a blazing furnace. Wheat straw happens to be used in this particular plant, but barley, oat, and canola straw can also be efficiently burned. Waving a long steel probe in front of us, Søren tells us that the electronic read-out on this wand measures the straw’s moisture content, which mustn’t exceed fifteen to twenty percent.

One visitor asks: “How much straw can be taken from the fields without depleting the topsoil?” Søren has a ready answer: half of it. “Only so much organic matter can be composted in topsoil,” he tells us. Before Samsø’s district heating plants were built, farmers used to burn the excess straw in their fields—far more polluting than the combustion of straw in the carefully controlled furnaces at district heating plants. Moreover, with a ban on open burning in place, farmers welcome the chance to sell their excess straw to the heating plants. They have no other ready use for it on-island, and shipping straw for sale off-island is far too costly.

Søren Hermansen shows visitors the straw-fired furnace at Samsø’s Ballen-Brundby district heating plant.

Hot water produced by district heating plants travels through a closed loop of steel pipes to homes and businesses that can be as much as a few miles away. Søren estimates that about a quarter of the heat energy is lost en route even though the pipes are buried and insulated. While this is significantly greater than the heat loss from a typical home furnace, Samsø’s district heating plants have vastly reduced the island’s reliance on fuel oil. Only a minority of islanders continues to heat their buildings with oil—those that are too remote to be connected to district heating or those whose owners have simply refused to give up their old oil burners.

Two decades have passed since Samsø set its sights on a renewable energy future. To an impressive degree, that future has arrived. To be sure, using surplus windpower to offset the transport sector’s ongoing dependence on fossil fuel masks a missed step in the island’s energy transformation. Might islanders opt for electric passenger vehicles as their next car purchase? With a host of new electric vehicle models flooding the global market, perhaps, but given the recent rightward shift of Denmark’s ruling coalition, major incentives accelerating the adoption of EVs are less than likely, according to policy analysts we met. Could locally produced biofuel serve the needs of farm equipment that can’t be durably operated on electric batteries? Failed past attempts to launch a biofuel industry on Samsø don’t give much ground for hope in this regard either. Yet, even with these flaws, Samsø householders, farmers, and businesses have made their island a model—albeit imperfect—for locally-based renewable energy reliance.

About the Author

Philip Warburg is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy. His recent books include Harvest the Wind and Harness the Sun, both published by Beacon Press. Formerly he served as president of the Conservation Law Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @pwarburg and visit his website.

It’s Our Turn to Lead: A Reading List for Earth Day 2015

2015-04-22T17:36:50-04:00

By Christian Coleman

2015 marks the 45^th anniversary of Earth Day. This could be the most dynamic year in environmental history. Economic growth and sustainability, once mutually exclusive, have begun a symbiotic relationship. Citizens and experts have set up defenses for their homes and the survival of other species from the encroaching effects of ecological devastation and extinction. New business ventures have transformed renewable energies into a viable market. As challenging and daunting as these issues are, it has become more apparent that we still have a chance of preserving our home. This Earth Day, we at Beacon Press are featuring titles that showcase individuals and organizations taking a stand for our home and encourage readers to take the stand with them.

Environmental journalist Fred Pearce presents a unique twist on a taking the lead on progress. In The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation, he implores environmentalists of the twenty-first century to celebrate the dynamic nature of invasive species and the new ecosystems they create. The case for keeping out invasive species is not only flawed, but also contradictory to the environment’s capacity for change, accelerated now by climate change and widespread ecological disaster.

California’s limited water resources have made headlines at the start of this year. It won’t be long until the rest of the country is affected by threats of shortage. Journalist Cynthia Barnett calls for the simplest and least expensive call to action in Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis. Selected as one of the Boston Globe’s top ten science books of 2011, it outlines a water ethic to reconnect Americans with our rivers, aquifers, and other freshwaters . This blue movement will turn us to “local water” the way the green movement turned us to local foods.

Sapped water resources are but a piece of what threatens the health of our home. Veterinarian Michelle Bamberger and pharmacologist Robert Oswald have written The Real Cost of Fracking: How America’s Shale-Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food togive voice to the people at ground zero of the fracking debate. Small farmers lose their livelihoods and livestock to contamination at drilling sites. The property value of rural families sinks as drillers invade their towns. And with the health of their animals beset by pollution sounding the alarm, these small farmers and rural families band together to recover their communities.

Animals in the wild live in the same precarious situation as their domesticated cousins on farms. Luckily, Nancy J. Merrick carries on the tradition of her former professor and colleague, Jane Goodall, to advocate for the lives of chimps. In Among Chimpanzees: Field Notes from the Race to Save Our Endangered Relatives, Merrick recounts her human paradigm shift when she discovers the civilizations of chimpanzees as a field assistant in Goodall’s famous Gombe Camp. Merrick returns to Africa decades later after working with Goodall to find that human agriculture and logging have driven chimps to extinction in four of the continent’s countries. She connects with primatologists and conservationists to turn the protection of our relatives a humanitarian cause.

Lastly, Philip Warburg’sHarvest the Wind: America’s Journey to Jobs, Energy Independence, and Climate Stability shows how a transformative industry fights for sustainability as hard as activists. In Cloud Country, Kansas, Meridian Way Wind Farm stands as a beacon of green economy. Farmers, factory workers, biologists, and high-tech entrepreneurs come together to combine innovative technologies and practical solutions in a quest to take on global warming while investing in the future of our planet.

A State of the Union Reading List

2015-01-22T17:30:00-05:00

President Obama delivered a fiery State of the Union earlier this week, immediately making headlines (and exploding the Twittersphere) for a now-famous ad-libbed line about winning both elections. Chatter about the unplanned quip, however, threatened to overshadow the more substantive parts of the President’s speech, in which he promised to tackle inequalities in income, education, and immigration as well as offering concrete measures for slowing climate change, benefiting veterans, closing tax loopholes, and the like. It was also, notably, the first time a President has used the word transgender during a State of the Union address.

For those looking for deeper insight into some of the issues Obama spoke about, we’ve created a State of the Union reading list, and highlighted a few specific titles below:

“Middle-Class Economics”

Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?

Billionaires’ Ball: Gluttony and Hubris in an Age of Epic Inequality
by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks

Between 1980 and 2008, the incomes of the bottom 90 percent of Americans grew by a meager 1 percent compared to a whopping 403 percent for the top .01 percent. We tend to regard these large fortunes as proof of a meritocracy, yet there is no evidence that members of today’s super-rich are any more talented or hardworking than were the elite of a generation ago. Via vivid profiles of billionaires—ranging from philanthropic capitalist Bill Gates and the infamous Koch brothers to brazen private equity baron Stephen Schwarzman—Billionaires’ Ball debunks the notion that they “deserve” their grand fortunes, when such wealth is really a by-product of a legal and economic system that’s become deeply flawed and is now threatening the quality of life and very functioning of our democracy.

(Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class
by Nan Mooney

The first book to exclusively target the struggles of the professional middle class-educated individuals who purposely choose humanistic, intellectual, or creative pursuits, Nan Mooney’s (Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents is a simultaneously sobering and proactive work that captures a diversity of voices.

Drawing on more than a hundred interviews with people all across America, Mooney explores how stagnant wages, debt, and escalating costs for tuition, health care, and home ownership are jeopardizing today’s educated middle class. Despite this difficult reality, Mooney offers concrete ideas on how individuals and society can arrest this downward spiral.

Education Reform

By the end of this decade, two in three job openings will require some higher education. Two in three. And yet, we still live in a country where too many bright, striving Americans are priced out of the education they need. It’s not fair to them, and it’s not smart for our future.

The Opportunity Equation: How Citizen Teachers Are Combating the Achievement Gap in America's Schools
by Eric Schwarz

Parental wealth now predicts adult success more than at any point in the last hundred years. And yet as debates about education rage on, and wealth-based achievement gaps grow, too many people fix the blame on one of two convenient scapegoats: poverty or our public schools. But in fact, low-income kids are learning more now than ever before. The real culprit for rising inequality, Eric Schwarz argues in The Opportunity Equation, is that wealthier kids are learning much, much more—mostly outside of school. In summer camps, robotics competitions, sessions with private tutors, and conversations around the dinner table, children from more affluent families build the skills and social networks that propel them to success.

In The Opportunity Equation, Schwarz tells the story of how he founded the pioneering Citizen Schools program to combat rising inequality by bringing these same opportunities to children who don’t have access to them.

The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in America
by Lani Guinier

Goaded on by a contemporary culture that establishes value through ranking and sorting, universities assess applicants using the vocabulary of private, highly individualized merit. As a result of private merit standards and ever-increasing tuitions, our colleges and universities increasingly are failing in their mission to provide educational opportunity and to prepare students for productive and engaged citizenship.

To reclaim higher education as a cornerstone of democracy, Guinier argues that institutions of higher learning must focus on admitting and educating a class of students who will be critical thinkers, active citizens, and publicly spirited leaders. Guinier presents a plan for considering “democratic merit,” a system that measures the success of higher education not by the personal qualities of the students who enter but by the work and service performed by the graduates who leave. Guinier argues for reformation, not only of the very premises of admissions practices but of the shape of higher education itself.

Immigration Reform

Yes, passions still fly on immigration, but surely we can all see something of ourselves in the striving young student, and agree that no one benefits when a hardworking mom is taken from her child, and that it’s possible to shape a law that upholds our tradition as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.

Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal
by Aviva Chomsky

In this illuminating work, immigrant rights activist Aviva Chomsky shows how “illegality” and “undocumentedness” are concepts that were created to exclude and exploit. With a focus on US policy, she probes how people, especially Mexican and Central Americans, have been assigned this status—and to what ends.

Blending history with human drama, Chomsky explores what it means to be undocumented in a legal, social, economic, and historical context. The result is a powerful testament of the complex, contradictory, and ever-shifting nature of status in America.

Dreamers: An Immigrant Generation's Fight for Their American Dream
by Eileen Truax

Of the roughly twelve million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, as many as two million came here as children. They grow up here, going to elementary, middle, and high school, and then the country they call home won’t (in most states) offer them financial aid for college, and they’re unable to be legally employed. In 2001, US senator Dick Durbin introduced the DREAM Act to Congress, an initiative that would allow these young people to become legal residents if they met certain requirements. More than a decade later, in the face of congressional inertia and furious opposition from some, the DREAM Act has yet to be passed. In recent years, this young generation of Dreamers has begun organizing, and with their rallying cry “Undocumented, unapologetic, and unafraid,” they are the newest face of the human rights movement. In Dreamers, Eileen Truax illuminates the stories of these young men and women, who are living proof of a complex and sometimes hidden political reality that calls into question what it truly means to be American. (Forthcoming March 2015)

Climate Change

The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe. The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it.

Harvest the Wind: America's Journey to Jobs, Energy Independence, and Climate Stability
by Philip Warburg

In Harvest the Wind, Philip Warburg tells the story of America’s energy future as it has not been told before. Cloud County is home to the Meridian Way Wind Farm, whose turbines are boosting farm incomes and bringing green jobs to a community that has watched its children flock to more exciting lives and less taxing jobs elsewhere. This remote corner of Kansas is the first stop on an odyssey that introduces readers to farmers, factory workers, biologists, andhigh-tech entrepreneurs--all players in a transformative industry that is fast taking hold across America and around the globe. Warburg describes America’s race to keep pace with competitors in China and Denmark, and looks closely at the health and environmental concerns that have aroused some angry wind-farm neighbors. He also describes what it will take to make wind energy a serious alternative to conventional fuels and nuclear power. Warburg draws from his work as a lawyer and policymaker on energy and environmental issues, and on his skills as a journalist to convey the human side of a story about bringing the American heartland back to life.

Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World
by Amy Seidl

In Early Spring, ecologist and mother Amy Seidl examines climate change at a personal level through her own family’s walks in the woods, work in their garden, and observations of local wildlife in the quintessential America of small-town New England, deep in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

Seidl’s testimony, grounded in the science of ecology and evolutionary biology but written with beauty and emotion, helps us realize that a natural upheaval from climate change has already begun: spring flowers blossom before pollinators arrive, ponds no longer freeze, and animals begin migrations at unexpected times. Increasingly, the media report on melting ice caps and drowning polar bears, but Seidl brings the message of global warming much closer to home by considering how climate change has altered her local experience, and the traditions and lifestyles of her neighbors, from syrup producers to apple farmers.

Get Ready for the People’s Climate March: Five Climate Awareness Titles

2014-09-19T11:45:00-04:00

This Sunday, September 21st, concerned citizens from across the globe are convening in New York City for what’s being called the largest climate march in history. Over 100,000 participants will march two miles through the streets of Manhattan “to demand bold action on climate change.” For those who are planning to march, or for those who wish to take action from afar, we’ve compiled a list of essential titles that raise awareness about impending climate change—the most pivotal environmental crisis humankind has yet to face:

In Harvest the Wind, Philip Warburg tells the story of America’s energy future as it has not been told before. Cloud County is home to the Meridian Way Wind Farm, whose turbines are boosting farm incomes and bringing green jobs to a community that has watched its children flock to more exciting lives and less taxing jobs elsewhere. This remote corner of Kansas is the first stop on an odyssey that introduces readers to farmers, factory workers, biologists, and high-tech entrepreneurs—all players in a transformative industry that is fast taking hold across America and around the globe.

Across the country, fracking—the extraction of natural gas by hydraulic fracturing—is being touted as the nation’s answer to energy independence and a fix for a flagging economy. Drilling companies assure us that the process is safe, politicians push through drilling legislation without a serious public-health debate, and those who speak out are marginalized, their silence purchased by gas companies and their warnings about the dangers of fracking stifled. The Real Cost of Fracking pulls back the curtain on how this toxic process endangers the environment and harms people, pets, and livestock.

Americans see water as abundant and cheap: we turn on the faucet and out it gushes, for less than a penny a gallon. We use more water than any other country in the world, rarely considering the consequences for our rivers, aquifers, and other freshwaters. Blue Revolution exposes the truth about the water crisis—driven by a tradition that has encouraged everyone, from homeowners to farmers to utilities, to tap more and more.

In Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, Fred Pearce surveys his home and then sets out to track down the people behind the production and distribution of everything in his daily life, from his socks to his computer to the food in his fridge. It’s a fascinating portrait, by turns sobering and hopeful, of the effects the world’s more than six billion inhabitants have on our planet and of the working and living conditions of the people who produce most of these goods.

While much of the global warming conversation rightly focuses on reducing our carbon footprint, the reality is that even if we were to immediately cease emissions, we would still face climate change into the next millennium. In Finding Higher Ground, Amy Seidl takes the uniquely positive yet realistic position that humans and animals can adapt and persist despite these changes. In looking at climate change as an opportunity to establish new cultural norms, Seidl inspires readers to move beyond loss and offers a refreshing call to evolve.

Joe Nocera's Fracking Rorschach Test

2013-10-08T09:25:03-04:00

By Philip Warburg. This post originally appeared on his blog.

In the October 5th edition of the New York Times, columnist Joe Nocera—a self-avowed fracking enthusiast—seeks to allay environmental concerns about the greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas fracking operations. He cites a study released last month by a group of scientists at the University of Texas that found on-site methane leakage at fracking wells to be lower than previous studies had assumed. According to this study, only 0.42% of the gas produced by fracking ends up in the air as "upstream" methane emissions—i.e. gas releases at and around the wellhead.

As Nocera suggests in the title to his editorial, "A Fracking Rorschach Test," proponents and opponents of fracking tend to cherry-pick data to support their polarized positions. This is easy to do in the midst of what may be America's last big fossil fuel bonanza, in which many hundreds of companies are hustling for a piece of the action—way ahead of thorough scientific surveys that can offer a comprehensive look at the true impacts of this technology. But there's something unsettling about a study funded by nine big oil and gas companies including ExxonMobil, looking at a small, skewed sample of the hundreds of thousands of fracking sites in America today. Only 489 wells and 27 fracking events were examined by David T. Allen and his colleagues.

Fracking Drill Rig (Source: Public Domain)

Nocera reassures readers that the companies cooperating with and supporting the U. Texas study "in many cases were using the best available well-completion technology" at the studied sites. Good for them. But how representative are they of the half-a-million or more fracking operations now stretching across dozens of states, often run by small, independent companies with little effective government oversight?

Physicians & Engineers for Healthy Energy, an independent group of professionals that formed in response to New York State's fracking boom, offers a useful critique of the micro-sampling methodology and other flaws in the U. Texas study. It's worth the read.

Also worth reading is a new report by the Conservation Law Foundation, looking at the massive "downstream" leakage of methane through our poorly maintained and under-monitored gas distribution network. In my home state of Massachusetts alone, the report says 8 to 12 billion cubic feet of methane are released into the atmosphere each year from leaky distribution lines. As methane is 20 times more powerful than CO₂ as a greenhouse gas, this neglected infrastructure is not just wasting a valuable fuel; it's a major contributor to global warming.

About the Author

Philip Warburg is the author of Harvest the Wind. His writings have appeared in numerous policy journals and newspapers including the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post. He lives and works in Newton, Massachusetts.

Iowa Lawmaker Combines Errands

2013-09-03T11:25:49-04:00

By Philip Warburg. This post originally appeared on his blog.

Iowa State Senator Rob Hogg

Iowa State Senator Rob Hogg decided to combine errands this past week. Along with dropping his son off at Harvard, he decided to deliver an important message to New England—about climate change. With son Robert and daughter Isabel in tow, he made his pitch across four states. No venue was too small or too modest: a nature center here, an ice cream parlor there, small-town bookstores here and there, and places of worship of various stripes.

I heard Rob speak last Monday at a synagogue in Brookline, MA. Though only a dozen people gathered to meet him on that balmy summer evening, he delivered his message with passion and determination—qualities that run through the brief, persuasive book he has written: America's Climate Century. Every person in the room was a climate change activist in the making, in his view. This is not an issue that we can afford to be passively concerned about; it demands broad public engagement. Nothing less, he feels, will stir a polarized Congress out of its short-sighted paralysis.

Rob Hogg's awakening to the urgency of climate change dates to June 2008, when his home turf—Cedar Rapids—was inundated by a record-breaking flood that devastated more than 5,000 homes, closed down hundreds of businesses, and destroyed the city library's book collection—the biggest library disaster in US history, he told us. Rob's geographical sweep extends far beyond Iowa, however, to the Russian drought of 2011 that decimated the country's grain crop and just may have precipitated Egypt's political chaos. He tells of Russia, a major exporter of wheat to Egypt, turning the trains around to keep limited food staples at home. Predictably, grain prices in Egypt shot up and popular outrage built to a crescendo.

A view of 1st Ave W in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, during the flood of 2008. Image source: Wikipedia, user Interiority

This plainspoken Great Plains lawmaker may not be tilling new ground with his findings and prognoses, but he brings a direct and earnest message that we all should hear. "Climate change is the defining challenge of our generation," he says. "We need to make it our new national purpose." He rattles off the names of groups that are working to bring climate change into the public sphere. Along with well-known environmental groups like Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, he highlights the organizing efforts of Climate Parents, 350.org, Grannies for a Livable Future, Energy Exodus, and the Great March for Climate Action. (On the latter, which is planning a transcontinental march in the Spring of 2014, I suggested that Tom Hanks should be recruited as an articulate messenger, bringing 21st-century currency to Forrest Gump's legendary Vietnam-era cross-country treks.)

Just one final word about how this concerned Iowan made his way to New England: in a Prius loaded with two kids plus college-bound luggage. He gave up plane travel several years ago, knowing its giant carbon-generating impacts. This isn't a move he insists others must take, however. "You don't have to give up comfort," he says. "You do have to speak up."

About the Author

Philip Warburg is the author of Harvest the Wind: America’s Journey to Jobs, Energy Independence, and Climate Stability. He is currently writing a book about solar energy’s American ascent. Visit his website, www.philipwarburg.com, for further details.

Photo by Maya Warburg

Cool as a Cucumber, But Do We Need to Be?

2013-07-25T16:25:04-04:00

An environmental attorney, Philip Warburg served as president of the Conservation Law Foundation from 2003 to 2009. He is the author of Harvest the Wind: America’s Journey to Jobs, Energy Independence, and Climate Stability. Visit his website at www.philipwarburg.com.

Last week I participated in a lively workshop at Iowa State University, looking at ways to make our energy, transportation, and water infrastructure more resilient and sustainable. Clean-energy options for generating electricity and fueling our cars, trucks, and buses were among the topics examined. Mechanisms for integrating ever-greater amounts of solar and wind power into our electric grid were creatively explored. Yet, on a hot midsummer day, we all sat in a conference hall so frigid that those smart enough to bring sweaters were soon wearing them.

I hadn't been so smart. As I shivered through the workshop's morning sessions, I struggled to keep my mind from wandering to that longed-for sweater, still neatly folded in a suitcase back in my hotel room. Finally I made a run for it. (To be honest, I made a drive for it.) Twenty minutes later, I was back at ISU's Memorial Union, finally able to focus on things weightier than my body's battle against the mechanical chill.

A few weeks earlier, on a trip to scout out solar installations in New Jersey, I checked in to New Brunswick's Hyatt Regency Hotel, now the proud operator of a 421-kilowatt photovoltaic power system that the hotel's management expects will spare us 10,000 tons of carbon emissions over the next 30 years. As I rode the glass-enclosed elevator up to my room, I peered down admiringly at the 1800-plus panels elegantly arrayed across the garage's expansive roof.

There, too, arctic summer struck despite the searing outdoor heat. The hotel's lobby was uncomfortably cold, and its super-sleek restaurant was bone-chilling -- surely no more than a few degrees above 60. Fleeing to my room to grab a jacket, I couldn't help wondering how many thousands of tons of CO2 Hyatt could save simply by setting its A/C to a bearable 75 to 78 degrees.

In the Boston Globe this past Sunday, Leon Neyfakh argues for jettisoning what UC Berkeley architecture professor Gail Brager calls the "thermal monotony" of our air-conditioned lives. It's well worth the read, if only to remind us how thermally resilient we all used to be.

Cloud County Revival: Wind Power's Ascent in Rural Kansas

2012-10-18T13:03:01-04:00

An environmental attorney, Philip Warburg served as president of the Conservation Law Foundation from 2003 to 2009. He is the author of Harvest the Wind: America’s Journey to Jobs, Energy Independence, and Climate Stability. Visit his website at www.philipwarburg.com.

“Ruin and Revival” is the theme of this season’s Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments. Tapping into the happier half of this theme, the journal includes an updated version of the first chapter of Harvest the Wind under the title, “Cloud County Revival: Wind Power’s Ascent in Rural Kansas.”

In late July, I had the chance to revisit Cloud County with my wife Tamar. This remote corner of north-central Kansas was the starting point for my wind power research back in 2009, and I have maintained close ties with people in the community ever since.

The occasion for our visit was a book talk hosted by EDP Renewables North America, owner of a 201-megawatt wind farm that was built in 2008, and Cloud County Community College, home to one of the nation’s leading wind energy technology training programs. A good-sized crowd gathered for the talk, undaunted by the 105-degree mid-afternoon heat during a drought that tested the nerves and strained the budgets of many Cloud County farmers and ranchers.

Income from the Meridian Way Wind Farm offers a much-valued hedge against turbulence in the Cloud County farm economy. In summers like this past one, crops may wither and cattle may need to be shipped out to feedlots earlier than planned, but wind farm hosts can rely on the continuity of lease payments for wind turbines and access roads on their property. These annuities amount to tens of thousands of dollars for many landowners.

In addition, Cloud County benefits from a voluntary contribution made each year by EDP Renewables, to be used for economic development projects. During the past few years this payment has amounted to $200,000, and it is expected to rise to $300,000 next year.

Beyond these economic gains, wind power development has brought a renewed sense of pride to Cloud County Community College. The college’s wind energy program is now in its fifth year, with over a hundred students enrolled today. In addition to kids coming straight out of high school, the program has trained retired Army careerists, former schoolteachers and office administrators, and many from the construction trades that were hit so hard by the recession.

In the article that appears in Terrain.org, readers can look more closely at the lives of Cloud County farmers, ranchers, educators, and wind farm operators - all beneficiaries of the boost that wind power has brought to their community.

Wind Power: Real Energy, Real Jobs

2012-07-19T13:05:26-04:00

An environmental attorney, Philip Warburg served as president of the Conservation Law Foundation from 2003 to 2009. He is the author of Harvest the Wind: America’s Journey to Jobs, Energy Independence, and Climate Stability. Visit his website at www.philipwarburg.com.

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has been outspoken in deriding President Obama’s efforts to give wind and solar power the prominence they deserve on America’s energy agenda. “In place of real energy, Obama has focused on an imaginary world where government-subsidized windmills and solar panels could power the economy,” he wrote in a Columbus Dispatch editorial earlier this year.

It’s hard to square candidate Romney’s muscular assertions with current reality, where wind power has provided 35 percent of all new U.S. power production over the past half-decade and already accounts for 10 percent or more of the electricity generated in five U.S. states. In South Dakota, 22 percent of power generation comes from wind; Iowa produces 19 percent of its electricity from wind. Even big-oil Texas taps the wind for 8.5 percent of the electricity controlled by the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which accounts for 85 percent of the state’s electricity. And it’s worth noting that Texas consumes considerably more electric power than any other state in the Union – nearly twice as much as California.

Wind power is not simply a fantasy perpetrated by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, as Romney would like American voters to believe. After all, it was George W. Bush who, as Texas governor, introduced the Lone Star State’s first renewable portfolio standard, setting ambitious targets for the introduction of wind power and other renewable energy sources – goals that the state has since far surpassed. And it was President George W. Bush whose Department of Energy (DOE) published a landmark report in July 2008, mapping out a pathway to achieving a fifth of America’s power from wind by 2030.

In charting a course toward 20 percent reliance on wind by 2030, the DOE did not flat-line U.S. electricity use between now and then. To the contrary, it assumed a 39 percent increase above total consumption in 2005. If we actually became a nation that valued energy conservation more than we do today, the three hundred gigawatts of installed wind power slated for 2030 could end up providing well over 20 percent of the nation’s power needs.

Listen to Philip Warburg on Texas Public Radio's TPR Green.

Under the 20% Wind Energy by 2030 scenario, manufacturing jobs directly related to producing wind turbine components and subcomponents would top 30,000 by 2021, peaking at 32,835 in 2028. While factory work would somewhat slacken thereafter, ongoing expansion in onshore and offshore wind-generating capacity as well as the need to repower aging wind plants would guarantee a continued high level of employment in the manufacturing sector. In construction, jobs would average over 70,000 a year from 2019 through 2030. And in wind farm operations, total jobs would reach 76,667 by 2030 – about 28,000 in on-site operations and another 48,000 in utility services and subcontractors. Adding them all up, DOE foresees about 180,000 new jobs per year directly linked to wind energy as the 2030 target date approaches.

Beyond all of the “direct” jobs in the wind energy economy, DOE also explores the “indirect” employment benefits of growing this sector. These jobs include the producers and suppliers of steel, fiberglass, and other materials that are used to build wind turbines; the companies that manufacture the parts that go into a typical turbine’s 8,000 components and subcomponents; and the providers of banking, accounting, legal, and other services to wind turbine manufacturers and wind farm contractors. These indirect jobs are expected to number about a hundred thousand annually in the years leading up to the 2030 target date.

Finally, DOE draws an even wider circle around the “induced” job impacts resulting from consumer spending by people directly and indirectly employed in the wind energy sector. A wind turbine factory worker buys a new pair of jeans in a local store; a wind farm technician takes her family out to dinner; a crane operator stays at a local motel. The DOE team attributes another two hundred thousand jobs per year to these induced economic activities.[i]

Folding induced jobs into the assessment of wind energy benefits may go farther down the speculative road than some are ready to travel. But even setting that outer circle of employment impacts aside, we are looking at a roster that rises to more than a quarter-of-a-million direct and indirect jobs if we pursue the DOE’s 20% by 2030 ambition.

Today about 75,000 Americans are employed directly by the wind industry, though analysts warn that, if Congress allows the federal production tax credit for new wind farms to lapse at the end of this year, we will lose about 37,000 of those jobs. The production tax credit, providing 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour of wind-generated power, is costing us far less than the $4 billion-a-year that President Obama proposed cutting earlier this year from the enormous, decades-old subsidies for oil and gas. Because Congress blocked the President’s long-overdue proposal, the traditional fossil fuel subsidies remain untouched, along with massive ongoing federal support for the nuclear power industry.

A technology commitment that advances America’s energy independence and reduces our nation’s carbon footprint while creating hundreds of thousands of new, skill-based jobs – isn’t this a path worth taking?

Photo courtesy of Philip Warburg. A version of this post appeared at CSRWire.

[i] Specific numerical projections underlying DOE’s data were provided to the author by Suzanne Tegen, Ph.D., Senior Energy Analyst, Strategic Energy Analysis Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Renewable Energy Can Provide 80% of U.S. Power by 2050

2012-07-05T14:17:53-04:00

Philip Warburg is the author of Harvest the Wind: America's Journey to Jobs, Energy Independence, and Climate Stability.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has just released a study of enormous importance. In its four-volume Renewable Electricity Futures Study, NREL carefully examines the role that wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, hydropower, and ocean energy can play in shifting U.S. power generation to renewable energy resources.

NREL's methodology is painstaking and its conclusion is unambiguous: "[R]enewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the United States." Nearly 50% of our overall power needs by that year can be supplied by wind and solar photovoltaics, the study team predicts.

Along with looking at the abundance of renewable power resources within our reach, NREL focuses on the need to expand our grid to tap those resources where they are most abundant, often in remote land areas and off our shores. The study also probes the importance of smarter demand management and a stepped-up investment in hydro, battery and other storage technologies that can make the best use of variable sources of power like wind and solar.

Three NREL infographics dramatize key aspects of the pathway to a U.S. energy future where renewable resources supplant fossil and nuclear power. The first shows the distribution and intensity of different power sources across the continental United States, taking viewers from 2010, when coal, gas, and nuclear dominate, to 2050, when wind, solar, and other renewables prevail. The second uses pulsing orbs of different colors to reflect the hour-to-hour availability and use of different power resources in 2050. Then, in the third visualization, a macro view of our transmission grid tracks the hourly flow of electrons across the U.S. from major sources of supply ("power exporters") to major centers of demand ("power importers") from January to December 2050. All three infographics can be accessed on the Futures Study home page.

This far-reaching study goes a long way toward exploding the myth that electricity generated by renewable energy is destined to play second fiddle to traditional U.S. fossil fuel and nuclear power sources.

Earth Day 2012: Harvest the Wind

2012-04-21T10:00:00-04:00

Philip Warburg is the author of Harvest the Wind: America's Journey to Jobs, Energy Independence, and Climate Stability. In honor of Earth Day, we asked him "What is today's most pressing environmental issue?"

Curbing global warming is the overarching environmental challenge we face. Wind and solar power offer promising ways to wean ourselves off precarious and outmoded energy resources. With the right “smart grid” investments, these two renewable energy resources could meet well over half of America’s power needs by mid-century. During the past half-decade, wind has supplied 35 percent of all new U.S. electric-generating capacity. Will this continue? Not if we succumb to the allure of “fracked” natural gas as the new American panacea. Cheap it is – at least until stepped-up global market demand drives up its price. Environmentally sustainable it’s not. Leaving aside the under-studied hazards of fracking, even the best of gas-fired turbines produce nearly half as much CO₂ as conventional coal plants.

Denmark is determined to rid itself entirely of fossil fuels by 2050. The Danish Commission on Climate Change Policy expects that shedding fossil fuels will reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent, at the same time that Denmark’s GDP is projected to double. What America needs is a vision of similar magnitude. We have the resources to make it happen, but we need to summon the political will to internalize the crippling costs of our reliance on fossil fuels.

Wind power is not only an effective way to address our reliance on fossil fuels, it holds promise as a way to revive the economies of America's small towns, a topic Warburg explores in Harvest the Wind.

Winds sweeping through the Great Plains once robbed the Farm Belt of its future, stripping away overworked topsoil and creating the dreaded Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Today, those winds are bringing new hope to the declining rural communities of the central United States. Nowhere is wind's promise more palpable than in Cloud County, Kansas, where the soaring turbines of the Meridian Way Wind Farm are boosting incomes and bringing green jobs to a community that has, for decades, watched its children drift away.

In Harvest the Wind, Philip Warburg brings readers face-to-face with the people behind the green economy-powered resurgence in Cloud County and communities like it across the United States. This corner of Kansas is the first stop on an odyssey that introduces readers to farmers, factory workers, biologists, and high-tech entrepreneurs-all players in a transformative industry that is taking hold across America and around the globe.

In this illuminating book, Warburg reveals both the remarkable growth of a breakthrough technology and the formidable challenges it faces. He visits epicenters of anti-wind opposition as well as communities that have embraced wind farms as neighbors. He guides readers through an Iowa turbine assembly plant that is struggling to compete in a global marketplace dominated by European and Chinese manufacturers. And he looks at the thousands of miles that wind-generated power will need to travel to reach American consumers.

Harvest the Wind is an earthly antidote to loftier treatises on global warming and green energy. By showing us how practical solutions are being implemented at the local level, Warburg offers an inspirational look at how we can all pursue a saner and more sustainable energy future-while at the same time investing in the nation's infrastructure and jumpstarting its economy.

Read an excerpt of Harvest the Wind on Scribd.

Philip Warburg was president of the Conservation Law Foundation, New England's leading environmental advocacy group, from 2003 to 2009. Earlier, he ran the Israel Union for Environmental Defense in Tel Aviv and was an attorney at the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C. He has also worked with governments and citizen groups on anti-pollution initiatives in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, and across Eastern Europe. Visit his website, PhilipWarburg.com.

Wind Power: America's New Harvest

2012-01-10T15:53:51-05:00

Philip Warburg is the author of Harvest the Wind: America's Journey to Jobs, Energy Independence, and Climate Stability, forthcoming in April from Beacon Press.

In December, yet another global climate change conference – this one in Durban, South Africa – failed to bind the world’s greatest polluters to specific, quantifiable curbs in their greenhouse gas emissions. Sadly, America was among the leading forces fighting the adoption of greenhouse gas reduction targets, just as we fought these targets in Bali the previous year, and in Copenhagen the year before that.

Even as America shirks its responsibility before the international community, there is a lot we can do here at home to reduce our nation’s massive carbon footprint. Boosting renewable energy’s share of our electricity supply should be at the top of that agenda.

The Congressional uproar over the failed federal loan guarantee to solar manufacturer Solyndra shouldn’t be allowed to cast a shadow over our government’s broader efforts to stimulate renewable energy growth. Nowhere have federal energy incentives been more effective than in launching American wind power. Part of that success hinges on a production tax credit that gives wind manufacturers and wind farm developers enough confidence to break into a field still dominated by underpriced fossil fuels and heavily subsidized nuclear power.

Today wind supplies a relatively modest three percent of our electricity, but it’s growing fast. The Department of Energy projects that wind, with the right incentives, could supply a fifth or more of our power by 2030. Others see as much as half of our electricity coming from wind by mid-century. Wind farms already account for 17 percent of Iowa’s electric output and nearly 7 percent of power generated in Texas, America’s biggest electricity user.

Unlike the battering that U.S. solar equipment producers have suffered at the hands of Chinese and other Asian competitors, America is well on its way to building a robust domestic manufacturing platform for wind. General Electric makes over half of the turbines sold in America, and a smaller U.S. firm, UTC-owned Clipper Windpower, contributes further to U.S. sales. Several non-U.S. turbine companies have also built factories here. Given what it costs to ship bulky equipment like giant blades and multi-ton steel towers across the seas, wind manufacturers realize big savings by producing this hardware on U.S. soil.

Looking at the American wind industry’s overall supply chain, the story gets even better. Hundreds of companies employing thousands of skilled and semi-skilled workers are now involved in manufacturing components and subcomponents for turbines. American labor today creates about 60 percent of the value of a typical turbine sold in the United States. Rust Belt stalwarts like Ohio-based Timken, maker of the “million-mile bearing” for the automotive sector, have made a major strategic shift toward wind. The rugged weather endured by turbines is a perfect match for Timken’s super-high standards.

Add to manufacturing jobs the thousands of people who build our wind farms. Truckers, crane operators, electricians, concrete suppliers, and civil engineers are all finding new jobs in wind farm construction. And once these farms are in operation, thousands more are employed keeping turbines running reliably.

Roughly 75,000 Americans now have jobs in the wind industry. The Department of Energy predicts that over a quarter-of-a-million people will be gainfully employed by this sector as we approach the 2030 date for supplying a fifth of our power from wind. As important as the number of jobs is where many of those jobs are located – in rural communities where it’s been hard to find work even in good economic times.

In an ideal world, power suppliers would compete in a marketplace that reflected the true costs of each technology. The European Union is moving in this direction, with a carbon emission-trading regime that has begun to monetize the global-warming impacts of coal and other fossil fuels used by electric utilities and other major industries. In America, fossil fuel producers and users do not pay for the environmental devastation they cause. To the contrary, they benefit from billions of dollars in subsidies each year, nurtured for decades by an army of well-paid lobbyists.

Faced with these imbalances, renewable energy producers are fighting an uphill battle. Federal incentives, like the 2.2 cent-per-kilowatt-hour production tax credit for wind that is due to expire at the end of this year, are essential to leveling the playing field. Thanks to this tax credit, wind farms can compete with proposed new coal plants, and even with electricity from new natural gas facilities in some locations. If the tax credit expires, many wind developers will hold off on siting new wind farms, and wind turbine manufacturers will have to scale back production. Aside from the lost environmental opportunity, tens of thousands of people now employed by the wind industry risk losing their jobs.

In a rare bipartisan move, 23 governors – Republicans and Democrats – have appealed to Congress to renew the renewable energy production tax credit. Their motivation may have little to do with taming the global-warming juggernaut, but these savvy politicians are fully aware of the economic benefits that a vibrant wind industry can bring to their constituencies.

Many years may pass before Congress summons the resolve to cap America’s greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, extending the renewable energy production tax credit – a measure that has already proven its worth to our economy and the environment – is a worthy step.

"Windmill on the Sunset" photo from Bigstock.