In a section dedicated to the different facets of energy production and consumption, the Wall Street Journal today put together a package that looks at global energy use.
Cities around the world are implementing strategies aimed at reducing energy consumption in an effort to tamp down rising costs and decrease harmful emissions. In its energy section, the Wall Street Journal looks at innovative techniques by nine cities world-wide.
CHICAGO: Starting about 8 years ago, the city began using rooftop gardens on municipal buildings to lower their power usage. Gardens can keep a roof as much as 70 degrees cooler, city officials say, because the greenery reflects heat and provides shade. Since then, nearly 4 million square feet of municipal and private rooftops either have a roof garden or are in the process of getting one, according to Suzanne Malec-McKenna, Chicago's commissioner of the environment. The City Hall garden lowered the annual power bill by 11 percent, or almost $10,000, city officials estimate.
ANN ARBOR, MICH.: Officials swapped standard street lights for light-emitting diodes, which are cooler and last fives times longer than the traditional bulbs, while using about half as much energy, city officials say. The city estimates that replacing the downtown street lights alone will save more than $100,000 in power costs annually and eliminate 294 tons of carbon-dioxide emissions.
PALM DESERT, CALIF.: Edison International's Southern California Edison Co. and Sempra Energy's Southern California Gas Co. together with the city and a nonprofit, formed a partnership called the Energy Coalition, to help cities and utilities work together by creating one of the nation's most aggressive incentive programs for homes and businesses to replace outmoded, energy-guzzling gadgets with energy-saving ones. After one full year, the city saved 27 million kilowatt-hours of power and removed about 3,475 tons of carbon from the air.
AMSTERDAM: The Zuidas section of the city, south of the central city, replaced conventional cooling systems for buildings by harnessing a local man-made lake, the Nieuwe Meer. The project, which provides air conditioning for about 700,000 people, saves $292,000 per year in electricity costs and uses just one-tenth the power of traditional cooling systems.
BEIJING: As part of the city's plan to improve the environment before the Olympics, some big polluters are closing down. Cement kilns, coal mines and chemical plants were earmarked for relocation or closure. Production at Shougang Group's steelworks, a major employer in the city, is being wound down for the Games, with annual output to halve to 4.2 million metric tons of steel during 2008. Operations will cease in 2010 and move to a new, more energy-efficient facility 137 miles away. A result of these efforts is that Beijing has dropped behind Shanghai for energy consumption.
LONDON: Mayor Ken Livingstone has begun moving a quarter of the city's power supply to small, local energy sources and away from the national electric grid, reducing the amount of energy needed to deliver power to customers, as well as electricity lost in transit. The company working with the city estimates that projects already under way will be able to meet about 2 percent of London's energy needs.
ASPEN, COLO.: The Canary Initiative, a project launched to meet the city's goal to use more alternative energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, retrofitted the town's Recreation Center to cut its hefty power use. The city's recreation director said the annual energy bill for the center dropped by nearly 40 percent, or $130,000. The overhaul also will save 713,207 kilowatt-hours of power annually and keep about 640 tons of carbon dioxide out of the air every year.
NEW YORK: Mayor Michael Bloomberg is working with a company to harness the power of waves in New York's East River to generate electricity. Five turbines submerged in 30 feet of water have been producing enough power to meet nearly a third of the electricity needs of a supermarket and parking garage. City officials say as many as 300 turbines could eventually be installed in the East River, providing 10 megawatts of renewable power, which could replace the equivalent of 68,000 barrels of oil per year.
THANE, INDIA: A suburb of Mumbai, Thane is using solar water heaters to deal with huge electricity bills. The approximately $40,500 investment in a project at the main hospital saves about $23,500 per year in electricity costs, meets all of its hot-water needs and is enough to power about 45 homes. The city is encouraging residents to get involved as well (Wall Street Journal online [subscription required]).
The special energy section also looks to the Arctic, reporting in another article that interest in oil and gas reserves in the far north is heating up as summers lengthen and the permanent ice cover decreases, opening the way for potential development.
Energy companies already are seeing a "dramatic difference" in the amount of time they can work in the far north, according to Mike Watts, exploration director at Scotland-based Cairn Energy PLC.
Despite the promise -- one study puts reserves there at roughly 400 billion barrels, or 30 percent of the world's remaining supplies -- there are still technological and political hurdles to overcome. To work in cold temperatures and rough, ice-clogged seas, rigs would need an overhaul to their hulls, heating systems and engines, and diplomats from five nations would still need to work out who owns the Arctic resources. Most of the Arctic's development will not be unlocked until the middle of the next decade at the earliest (Brian Baskin, Wall Street Journal online [subscription required]).
Venture capitalists have been pouring billions of dollars into "clean-energy" start-ups -- producers of solar panels, biodiesel fuel and even eco-friendly drywall.
Many of these investments are capital-intensive long-term bets, meaning it could take years before the companies profit.
Despite this, many venture capitalists continue to look at this sector as the wave of the future. Clean energy represents "the biggest set of new market opportunities to come along in a long time," said Ken Lawler, a partner at Battery Ventures in Menlo Calif., which is devoting 20 percent of its investments to clean-tech companies. "It's something you have to be a part of."
In the first nine months of last year, U.S. venture investors poured $2.6 billion into clean-energy start-ups, more than the $1.8 billion invested in such firms in all of 2006, according to the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Financial.
Electricity "demand response" has been one part of the movement that has profited early. Companies in this sector sell technology and services aimed at improving the efficiency of the U.S. power-distribution grid. Because they do not have to build expensive manufacturing or refining plants, demand-response companies generally require less money to get off the ground than solar and biofuel concerns.
The biofuels sector, meanwhile, has faced challenges as prices for raw materials have soared and critics say the farmland used to grow crops such as corn or soybean could be used to grow food instead (Rebecca Buckman, Wall Street Journal online [subscription required]). -- SG
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