by jboullion | Sep 11, 2012 | Uncategorized
More information
Don Wichert
Executive Director
608.255.4044, ext. 1
dwichert@renewwisconsin.org
Utilities Get C on Renewable Energy Report Card
No Wisconsin utility graded higher than a B/C on a report card issued by a renewable energy advocacy group, and C was the overall average for the state’s five major utilities.
We Energies, headquartered in Milwaukee, earned a C (2.4 out of 5) on the report card for its renewable energy efforts in 2011 and had the lowest score of all utilities graded. The state’s other major utilities received similar or slightly higher grades: Alliant (aka Wisconsin Power and Light), C (2.6); Madison Gas & Electric, B/C (3.0); Wisconsin Public Service Corporation, C (2.7); and Xcel Energy, B/C (3.0).
“2011 was a year in which Wisconsin’s investor owned utilities cut back on their previous good performance supporting renewable energy,” said Don Wichert, RENEW Wisconsin’s executive director and the report card director. “At this point in 2012, it appears that this poor performance trend continues.”
“It’s surprising because recent opinion surveys indicate that the vast majority of Wisconsin’s population, including utilities ratepayers and stockholders, prefer renewable energy,” according to Wichert.
RENEW graded utilities on six criteria: amount of renewable electricity sold; green energy purchasing programs; ease of connecting to the utility system; prices paid for renewable electricity; legislative activities; and other programs offered voluntarily to customers.
Wisconsin utilities performed best in meeting the state’s renewable electricity standard, the amount of renewable electricity sold to its customers. All of the utilities already meet or expect to meet the 10% standard by 2015, although some have the majority of the power coming from out of Wisconsin.
We Energies scored at the bottom, because it had “agreed with RENEW and other groups to spend $6 million/year over 10 years to encourage the use of renewable energy in its service area. As part of the program, over 100 nonprofit organizations installed renewable energy systems. In 2011, however, WE simply announced the end of the program after only five years,” said Wichert at a news conference in from of a Milwaukee church that had a solar electric system installed as party of We Energies now-discontinued program.
RENEW gave the state’s investor owned utilities the following grades: C Alliant, Madison; B/C Madison Gas & Electric, Madison; C We Energies, Milwaukee; C Wisconsin Public Service Corporation, Green Bay; B/C Xcel Energy, Eau Claire.
This was the first time RENEW conducted a grading system, but RENEW plans to continue the process in the future because people are interested in how well their utilities support renewable energy.
“The annual survey can be used by Wisconsin utilities and others to see which areas are lacking and how they can improve their grades. Adoption of renewable energy supports local jobs, lower emissions of pollutants, and energy security. These are attributes everybody wants. There is no reason that Wisconsin has to lag the rest of the country in clean energy,” said Wichert.
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RENEW Wisconsin is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that leads and represents businesses, organizations, and individuals who seek more clean renewable energy in Wisconsin. More information on RENEW’s Web site at www.renewwisconsin.org.
by jboullion | Sep 6, 2012 | Uncategorized
From an article in BizTimes:
“Menomonee Falls-based Kohl’s Department Stores today announced the company will expand its electric vehicle (EV) charging station initiative with 36 new stations across 18 additional Kohl’s locations by the end of fall 2012.
The expansion spans three new states, including Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, and adds additional locations to the company’s Texas EV program.
With the expansion, Kohl’s shoppers will be able to take advantage of a total of 101 charging stations at 52 Kohl’s locations across 14 states. Each of the participating Kohl’s locations will have two or three parking spaces reserved for EV drivers to charge at no cost while they shop.
The new locations in Wisconsin will include: one station at Kohl’s headquarters in Menomonee Falls; two stations at the Menomonee Falls Credit Center; two stations at Bayshore in Glendale; three stations at Madison West; and two stations in Johnson Creek.”
Read the full article here.
by jboullion | Aug 24, 2012 | Uncategorized
A thank you letter from RENEW Executive Director Don Wichert:
Thanks for stopping by the RENEW Wisconsin booth or talking with me at the Polk County Energy Fair.
RENEW is the organized voice for clean renewable energy in Wisconsin, and as a membership organization, we critically need your support to effectively advocate for businesses, organizations, and individuals who seek more, clean renewable energy in Wisconsin.
We have an aggressive agenda for the remainder of 2012, and by working together we can organize to implement positive change in Wisconsin’s renewable energy landscape.
Despite the many challenges we face, RENEW continues to advance the following positive policy agenda to expand renewable energy for everyone in Wisconsin:
- Build a coalition in support of our Clean Energy Choice initiative, which would allow customers to purchase renewable energy from systems located on their premises and owned by third parties;
- Represent renewable energy stakeholders at the PSC and with the Focus on Energy administrators to offer proactive options for the renewable energy program;
- Improve the state’s outdated interconnection requirements. We are proud of our work to organize Wisconsin’s renewable energy stakeholders into a community that speaks with one voice. But we need your active participation to advocate on your behalf.
Please become a RENEW member by making a tax-deductible donation to RENEW: Join RENEW. Help us push the renewable energy envelop in Wisconsin to a new level for the remainder of 2012.
Feel free to contact me with suggestions or if there are ways that RENEW can assist you.
Sincerely,
Don Wichert
Executive Director
RENEW Wisconsin
by jboullion | Aug 16, 2012 | Uncategorized
RENEW Wisconsin invites our members and other renewable energy supporters to our membership meeting at the Polk County Energy Fair, 1:00 p.m., August 18, in St. Croix Falls. If you are not yet a member, please Join Today!
![](https://www.renewwisconsin.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2012_polk_energy_poster.jpg)
For the meeting’s highlight, I’ll release an evaluation of major Wisconsin utilities’ commitment to renewable energy — Xcel actually does reasonably well — and invite area media to cover the evaluation announcement, meeting, and fair.
I’ll also report on the progress RENEW has made in advancing three statewide priorities that should be beneficial in northwest Wisconsin as well:
- Build a coalition in support of our Clean Energy Contract initiative, which would allow customers to purchase renewable energy from systems located on their premises and owned by third parties;
- Represent renewable energy stakeholders at the PSC and with the Focus on Energy administrators to offer proactive options for the renewable energy program;
- Improve utilities’ outdated interconnection requirements.
RENEW thanks the sponsors of the meeting:
Chippewa Valley Alternative Energy, a small, family-owned business in west-central Wisconsin, has been involved in the alternative energy field in for over 25 years, and has been heavily involved in many aspects of thermal, pyrolation and gasification energy technologies; and, Jeff Peterson, a RENEW member, are sponsoring RENEW’s membership/public meeting at the Polk County Energy Fair, August 18, at 1:00 pm in St. Croix Falls.
by jboullion | Aug 15, 2012 | Uncategorized
August 10, 2012
A commentary by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin, Director, Policy and Programs:
After skidding below $2.00/MMBtu this winter, wholesale natural gas prices are now creeping toward the $3.00 mark. This upward movement is the result of below-normal volumes of natural gas going into storage for the winter heating season. The latest report, released August 16th, marks the 16th straight week where injection volumes lagged significantly behind the five-year average.
Notwithstanding this mild rebound, everyone in the energy industry, including the traders themselves, knows that $3.00/MMBtu is well below the cost of producing natural gas, and cannot deliver a return that can support future drilling efforts. This is particularly true with shale gas, the so-called “game-changer” that industry flacks contended would topple King Coal’s reign over the electricity sector.
High-profile shale gas producers like Chesapeake Energy are now running out of ways of concealing their financial distress. Consider the following developments that occurred over the last fortnight.
- Chesapeake Energy announced plans to reduce domestic gas production in 2013 by 8%;
- BHP Billiton wrote down $2.84 billion on the value of Fayetteville shale gas assets it had acquired in 2011; and
- The most recent count of rigs drilling for natural gas in the United States is 495, down 70% from the record-setting levels seen in September 2008.
“Write down” is a fairly bloodless way to describe the loss of $3 billion; “carnage” is better at conveying the pain that now grips the natural gas sector. This begs the question: why are wholesale natural gas prices still under the $3.00/MMBtu level?
I believe that there are two reasons for this phenomenon. The first is that energy traders, like virtually everyone else in this country, are truly convinced that the United States is awash in shale gas, thanks to a brilliant industry-led public relations campaign. Lower prices help reinforce the popular belief that cheap gas will be with us for another century. Unfortunately, federal energy agencies and universities have also bought into this view of the supply picture big-time, leaving little room for skeptics and agnostics to influence public perceptions.
This overarching belief has been unintentionally reinforced by local and regional controversies over the practice of hydraulic fracturing solid rock to obtain the shale gas trapped inside. Virtually unheard of four years ago, “fracking” has vaulted into the public consciousness, and in doing so, sustains the society-wide belief that natural gas can be accessed almost anywhere in the United States.
Ironically, the myth of abundance that E&P companies so carefully cultivated–and bankrolled–is now clearly working against their short-term interests.
The other factor that keeps prices so low is the traders’ fear of large demand swings. For example, the phantom winter of 2011-2012, which cut demand for heating fuel by more than 25%, creating a colossal oversupply that sent wholesale prices crashing. The supply pendulum is now swinging the other way, and more than half of the bulge has melted away. Assuming a continuation of smaller-than normal injections, natural gas inventories should be in line with the five-year average by mid-December.
Traders attribute the ongoing reduction in inventories to a hotter than normal summer, prompting utilities to switch on more gas generators to meet system peaks. But weather isn’t the only thing that influences the storage picture; output does as well. But as long as traders and speculators subscribe to the myth of nearly limitless supply, they will discount the possibility that declining output is also responsible for lagging storage volumes.
The paradigm shift ushered in by the fracking phenomenon won’t go away easily. But in the not-very-distant future, the reality of reduced drilling activity and capital spending, along with rapid decline rates in shale gas plays, will bite deeply into natural gas supplies and cause yet another overturning of expectations in this sector. For electric utilities as well as end-users, the results will not be pretty.
Michael Vickerman is program and policy director of RENEW Wisconsin, a sustainable energy advocacy organization. For more information on the global and national petroleum and natural gas supply picture, visit “The End of Cheap Oil” section in RENEW Wisconsin’s web site: www.renewwisconsin.org. These commentaries also posted on RENEW’s blog: http://renewwisconsinblog.org and Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog: http://www.madisonpeakoil-blog.blogspot.com