State leaders for renewables

I'm happy to be in one of the higher rated states, Minnesota. Staying there is an ongoing fight between those supporting the oil, gas and coal extractive industries, on the one hand, and wind and solar industries, on the other hand.

Woo hoo! 8% in PA. No wonder my state and local taxes are so much lower than yours. [emoji12]

MN is not known as a low tax state, but as citizens we get a lot for that tax money.

I am not surprised Maine is #1 by percentage..... we have a ton of biomass generation... and a ton of small to medium scale hydro... lots of single mast wind power...The Saco River has it's water *just* about worn out by the time it hits tide water. There's a bunch of fighting over a couple large wind projects that nobody really wants tho...

We have no coal, gas or oil.... so we use the "fuels" we have...

Bret Chase said:

I am not surprised Maine is #1 by percentage.....There's a bunch of fighting over a couple large wind projects that nobody really wants tho...

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Those Maine projects are moving along, my wife tells me a new collection of wind turbines went up in Oakfield this summer. I'll take those over a nuclear plant any day. When my wife and I drove through Presque Isle in May, I made a point of stopping, getting out of the car, and walking across the soccer field to listen to the wind turbine UMPI has. I'll take listening to a wind turbine over living next to a coal fired plant, or oil/gas fired turbine generator power plant. Certainly, nothing is as quiet as a PV system, which is why I'll be installing a PV system on our farm in Maine. Feeding the oil fired beast in the basement is a lost cause...

Meanwhile, Florida the "Sunshine State" has no plan for renewables.

Where2 said:

Those Maine projects are moving along, my wife tells me a new collection of wind turbines went up in Oakfield this summer. I'll take those over a nuclear plant any day. When my wife and I drove through Presque Isle in May, I made a point of stopping, getting out of the car, and walking across the soccer field to listen to the wind turbine UMPI has. I'll take listening to a wind turbine over living next to a coal fired plant, or oil/gas fired turbine generator power plant. Certainly, nothing is as quiet as a PV system, which is why I'll be installing a PV system on our farm in Maine. Feeding the oil fired beast in the basement is a lost cause...

Meanwhile, Florida the "Sunshine State" has no plan for renewables.

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Well Maine Yankee is long gone....As far as the sound of a wind turbine.... don't ask the people of Biddeford.... who groan non stop about the whir whir whir of the one Saco installed just across the line at the train depot....

Where2 said:

Meanwhile, Florida the "Sunshine State" has no plan for renewables.

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It'd be interesting to plot funding for renewables in each state versus the age distribution of wealth in that state. I suspect most wealthy residents of Florida have aged out of environmental activism.

Is there still no state income tax in Fla?

Ashful said:

It'd be interesting to plot funding for renewables in each state versus the age distribution of wealth in that state. I suspect most wealthy residents of Florida have aged out of environmental activism.

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Interestingly, Maine has the oldest mean population of any state in the U.S. and I suspect that wealth is similarly skewed to the older age cohorts. Environmental activism is probably more related to the culture of an area than it is to the age of the population - at least it feels like that up here.

dznam said:

Interestingly, Maine has the oldest mean population of any state in the U.S. and I suspect that wealth is similarly skewed to the older age cohorts. Environmental activism is probably more related to the culture of an area than it is to the age of the population - at least it feels like that up here.

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It has little to do with environmentalism.... we use the fuels we have. For example: If you've got a paper mill with a 100' tall pile of bark covering an acre.... you're going to burn that in a biomass plant, vs paying for oil or coal to be hauled in... same with hydro.... the "fuel" is there and "free" with most of the dams being paid for long, long ago (even with the stupidly expensive fish ladders that had to be added).

The funny thing is a lot of this "green movement" is simply going back to what farmers used in the late 1800's...

Yet in Virginia we have counties suffering from the downturn in coal use, and with some of the best wind power potential in the country,that are banning renewable installations, primarily wind and PV.
Natural selection at work on a regional scale I guess.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...349002-3091-11e5-8f36-18d1d501920d_story.html

Great quote from the article:
“Gotta love people who claim wind turbines are unsightly, but never objected to blowing up mountains!”

Bret Chase said:

It has little to do with environmentalism.... we use the fuels we have. For example: If you've got a paper mill with a 100' tall pile of bark covering an acre.... you're going to burn that in a biomass plant, vs paying for oil or coal to be hauled in... same with hydro.... the "fuel" is there and "free" with most of the dams being paid for long, long ago (even with the stupidly expensive fish ladders that had to be added).

The funny thing is a lot of this "green movement" is simply going back to what farmers used in the late 1800's...

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It is a truism that "we use the fuels we have" - as does everyone, everywhere. Perhaps you meant to add the word "locally"? No doubt that local availability of fuel influences its use as it will tend to have lower transportation costs - but it is not dispositive. Maine also has the highest residential use of home heating oil of any state - is that a fuel "we have" locally? Pipeline gas use is growing quickly in the southern part of the state - is that a fuel "we have" locally?

While economics (not the "fuels we have") are the most important driver of everyone's energy mix, concern for the natural environment has an impact at the margin in this state (particularly in the populous and more affluent southern part of the state) and all others and is reflected locally in the behaviors of individuals (buying habits,etc.) and more broadly in local,and national energy (and other) policy debates and in the policy decisions of lawmakers, among others. That is all we are discussing in this data - marginal differences in energy sources - because the overwhelming sources of energy across the US are the old standbys.

The movement toward alternative energy, while still in its early stages in the US is growing at a meaningful rate due to concerns about environmental impact. To suggest that it is only driven by what "we have" doesn't fairly reflect the broader thinking that is changing energy source trends in the US, or in Maine. I don't think this data could be used to support the energy virtuousness of any state and any energy sourced locally may have a slight input cost advantage, but that is a small part of the overall cost of many of the energy choices we have.

BTW, Hydro in this state has been progressively dismantled over the last decade over concerns regarding its impact on spawning. The windmills on the hilltops in western Maine aren't there because they provide the lowest kwh energy cost - read the transcripts of the permitting debates. Rooftop solar has spread rapidly in the southern part of the state even though the narrowly-defined economics ($/kwh) have not been particularly compelling. Despite their initial expense, the superinsulated house movement in the US has deep roots here. BTW, biomass residual from paper mills has declined precipitously as an energy source as over half of the paper mills that existed in 1980 have shut their doors as demand for their paper has fallen meaningfully in our internet driven world.

The key difference between us and those farmers is that they didn't have these choices to make (nor did they have electricity!). It is the fact that we have choices (and a very big and complex world) that makes this debate so complicated.

dznam said:

The key difference between us and those farmers is that they didn't have these choices to make (nor did they have electricity!). It is the fact that we have choices (and a very big and complex world) that makes this debate so complicated.

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It is becoming increasingly rare in new construction for oil heat to be installed, where I live in the southern part of the state (3 miles from the ocean). most new installations are gas (LPG or NG) or air source heat pumps. Driving around town though, it becomes obvious that there still a HUGE amount of people that burn biomass, be it wood or pellet.

Using the farmer argument, let's look at my house... built in 1865... it's first source of heat was wood, then coal in the No1 Ideal Redflash boiler that is still sitting in the cellar after almost 100 years. then the boiler was converted to oil (at 200 gallons per week).... then... a wood stove was hooked back up, until a chimney fire ruined the masonry chimney, and K1 MPI monitors were put in... until they were removed by me (when K1 was $4+ a gallon), a new class A chimney installed... and wood went back in. The choices involved in the BTU source were economic, which is what I was trying to get at.

Farmers of that time period has many choices depending on location... they had wood, wind, water, coal, gas (coal gas), kerosene, etc... the only one they really didn't have was electricity.

Great post, Bret. Although I disagree with your closing statement. Rural farmers did not always have many choices in fuel at various times, due to transportation cost. Whereas coal furnaces were popular in the late 1800's for town folk, a farm at any distance from the closest town might still be stuck with wood as the only economically feasible fuel.

Ashful said:

Great post, Bret. Although I disagree with your closing statement. Rural farmers did not always have many choices in fuel at various times, due to transportation cost. Whereas coal furnaces were popular in the late 1800's for town folk, a farm at any distance from the closest town might still be stuck with wood as the only economically feasible fuel.

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I did say depending on location... I will admit coal gas was a very urban utility... coal and kerosene were largely dependant on how close you were to a train depot and the general store that was always near by.

Farms required water... and frequently used wind to pump it. The dairy farm on which I spent my teens to mid 20's on, still had a windmill that powered a simple plunger pump, that pushed water (when it was still hooked up) into a very large cistern in the 3rd mow of the barn, providing pressurized water.

I would love to put a similar system in here, but there's no way it would be code legal, esp because the cistern requires overflow recirculation to the well.

My region of NH is entirely renewable to the point where the plants have to be slowed down as there is no way to get rid of it due to transmissions line limits. We have several run of the river hydroelectric plants with upstream storage, one large wind farm with a smaller one going in soon and a 70 MW biomass power plant. Supposedly when the big east coast blackout happened in the sixties, this region never blinked, the breakers opened on the main line the light stayed on.

By the way Bret mentioned Coal Gas, that product was responsible for toxic waste sites all over northern new England. Once the gas was driven off coal the remaining waste product was loaded with heavy metals and since folks didn't know how bad is was it tended to get dumped everywhere. Portland Maine has acres of this toxic land right on the waterfront near the big bridge.

At least dairy farmers can have cow power. One cow will put out enough manure to generate 100 watts, swine are about 30 to 40 watts and fowl are about 3 to 5 watts. I always tell folks that once they visualize a cow with 100 watt bub stuck up its rear they will remember the 100 watt conversion. Unfortunately most cow power plants need 500 head but there are small biogas units designed for third world applications that work on household scale, they unfortunately need a warm climate to work.

peakbagger said:

My region of NH is entirely renewable to the point where the plants have to be slowed down as there is no way to get rid of it due to transmissions line limits. We have several run of the river hydroelectric plants with upstream storage, one large wind farm with a smaller one going in soon and a 70 MW biomass power plant. Supposedly when the big east coast blackout happened in the sixties, this region never blinked, the breakers opened on the main line the light stayed on.

By the way Bret mentioned Coal Gas, that product was responsible for toxic waste sites all over northern new England. Once the gas was driven off coal the remaining waste product was loaded with heavy metals and since folks didn't know how bad is was it tended to get dumped everywhere. Portland Maine has acres of this toxic land right on the waterfront near the big bridge.

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There's a lot more than one biomass plant in the north country... Berlin, Plymouth, Tamworth, Whitefield, Bethlehem, etc, etc, etc do you guys even have a coal or gas plant up there?

PSNH's linework is that region is sloppy at best...

Coal gas production sites were/are nasty!
Apologies for diverging but I found it interesting that you could generate your own gas for home use: http://www.oldhouseweb.com/blog/gas-lighting-beyond-the-city/

The I did miss Whitefield and Bethlehem, they are part of the undersized Coos loop, the other plants are on different part of the grid which has some capacity.

The only fossil plant is a gas turbine peaker over in Lost Nation. I don't even know if it runs. Wausau Paper has a gas turbine but that's long gone.

Too much coal propaganda in our state, "war on coal" the politicians say. Slow to move away from tobacco and its' health issues and slow to move away from fossil fuels into renewables.......

Wisconsin has changed from progressive to third world in a few short years. Renewable, forget it. Thanks ALEC.