10 facts about Obama's new head of the DOE

After a lot of speculation, the official announcement has been made. Ernest Moniz will be President Barack Obama's main man at the Department of Energy pending approval by the Senate. Here are 10 things worth knowing about Moniz, who will run the DOE during Obama's second term.

1. Moniz is a nuclear physicist by training, and an advocate for the safe use of nuclear power as an energy source. In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Moniz said it would be a mistake not to pursue a nuclear friendly energy policy in the U.S.

2. Obama is the second president Moniz has worked for. Moniz was President Bill Clinton's undersecretary of the DOE from 1997 to 2001. He also served as an associate director for science in Clinton's Office of Science and Technology Policy.

3. Moniz has a "wait and see" approach to new techniques in natural gas extraction, like "frakking." He says the risks of such techniques are challenging, but manageable. He has also referred to natural gas as a "bridge" fuel that can take the country to a future low-carbon energy portfolio (i.e. Away from coal).

4. Among the issues Moniz has handled at the DOE are: Oversight of science and energy policy, nuclear weapons proliferation and stockpile stewardship, nuclear fuel cycles (including waste disposal) and solar energy in a low-carbon world.

5. In a Washington Post story about carbon capture and storage, Moniz was quoted as saying in 2009 that there is no credible pathway to meeting greenhouse gas reduction targets without cutting carbon dioxide from existing coal-fired power plants.

6. As director of MIT's Energy Initiative, Moniz has some financial ties to the energy industry via the research group's $125 million in donations from the oil and gas industry since 2006, according to reports. Founding members of the organization include BP, Saudi Aramco and Shell.

7. Unlike his predecessor Steven Chu, Moniz will probably have less funding to work with. Chu's tenure at the DOE was marked by the early passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which significantly expanded the department's operating budget.

8. Moniz's grandparents were immigrants to the U.S. who came from the Azores, an archipelago that is an autonomous region of Portugal. He grew up speaking some Portuguese.

9. Moniz serves in Chu's Blue Ribbon Commission on nuclear energy's future, which was tasked with finding new solutions for storing and disposing of nuclear waste. Moniz advocated transferring spent nuclear fuel from pools to dry casks.

10. On solar power, Moniz said he is "bullish," adding, "It just has so many features, including the fact that even though it's intermittent, at least it tends to be on when you want it." He adds, however, that fossil fuels like oil and gas will remain at the forefront of the world's energy picture for the foreseeable future.

The incredible shrinking solar plant

By Jeff Postelwait
Online Editor

In the U.S. solar power market, developers are looking for access to the cash they need to build large, utility-scale solar projects, but that money is proving hard to find. If this keeps up, makers of solar farms in excess of 20 MW could be eclipsed by firms who put solar panels on rooftops.

In the first quarter of 2012, there were 506 MW of new solar projects that went online — accounting for some $1.9 billion in spending. This is a drop from the last quarter of 2011, which saw $3.1 billion worth of investment.

One factor? Shrinking and disappearing subsidies. Government funding is fading fast, and it's hard to say when Washington might feel like investing in solar power again — particularly with elections looming. It goes without saying that any whiff of uncertainty isn't good for upstart solar companies and their projects.

However, where the industry has recently favored big solar projects like the 290 MW Agua Caliente Solar Project being built by First Solar and NRG Solar in Yuma County, Arizona, we could soon see an uptick in small and medium solar power projects.

A huge undertaking like Agua Caliente was once thought to represent an industry sea change toward big solar power, but even proponents of solar power as a generation source can't deny that Agua Caliente would still be a patch of bare sand out in the desert without the Department of Energy loan guarantee that made it possible.

It's much easier at this point for solar developers to pursue smaller projects, like say teaming up with a big-box electronics store and installing some solar panels on the rooftops of a few stores. The chain gets good press, the solar manufacturers sell equipment, the projects are easier to approve, nobody has to worry about harming the desert tortoise's habitat, and generally everyone goes home happy.

But is this the way for the solar industry to finally get off what I've heard energy analysts describe as "the crack cocaine of public subsidies" once and for all and stand by themselves as their own industry? It's hard to say yet because there are still too many factors to consider.

Cheap natural gas is still a fierce competitor to just about any other generation technology, whether it's coal-fired plants or a solar farm. On the other hand, many state governments still have renewable portfolio standards to think about. On the other, other hand, there's the problem of incorporating too much solar energy onto the grid too soon without infrastructure upgrades. On the other-other-other hand, solar still has the advantage of being "sexy," meaning companies who want to look hip or forward thinking are still going to want to invest a little in solar — like Google, Inc. for one example.

Whether solar as an industry is ready to take off the training wheels and pedal without extensive tax breaks and subsidies is too large a question for me to answer. But from the way things are looking now, I expect to see fewer mega-sized solar projects going up in the U.S.

What's the Green Button?

By Jeff Postelwait,
Online Editor

The Internet is buzzing this morning as utilities and energy companies gush their support of an industry-led, White House-spurred energy efficiency program called the "Green Button."

I remember posting about the Green Button first when San Diego Gas & Electric shortly before DistribuTECH 2012 came to San Diego. Here's an outside link to SDG&E's version of the Green Button on their customer website.

But now I'm seeing around a dozen different companies, each with their own announcements either of support of or participation in this program.

Itron, Baltimore Gas & Electric Co., PECO, American Electric Power, Reliant Energy, Oracle, Silver Spring Networks, OPower, Efficiency 2.0, Schneider Electric, FirstFuel were just a few I could find as of press time. These are some of the utilities who will make Green Button functionality available to customers, or else provide some kind of logistical support for the effort.

Announcements of supporting utilities and companies are still going out. A few other major participants include Centerpoint Energy, Glendale Power & Light, Pepco Holdings, Southern California Edison, Dominion Virginia Power, Austin Energy, Commonwealth Edison and PG&E. Click here for a full list of companies that are supporting the Green Button.

What these utilities all seem to have in common is they've each had some kind of large smart meter deployment in their histories, which makes me wonder if those meters might be a part of some new, thus-unmentioned functionality for the Green Button program at some point in the future. Or maybe it's just that these companies want to be seen as both "smart" and "green."

Reports are that this initiative is a response to a White House challenge to American utilities to engage and empower consumers to help them save energy and money while also driving innovation in energy efficiency.

In fact, President Barack Obama, currently on a mini-tour of the U.S. to highlight his ideas on energy policy that included a recent stop in Cushing, Oklahoma to talk oil pipelines, will be talking about the Green Button at Ohio State University later today. So clearly this is a program the administration is proud of.

All told, nearly 30 million customers may now live in the footprint of the Green Button. But what does the Green Button do and how can customers use it?

"By clicking a Green Button, residential and commercial utility customers can download detailed energy usage information in a standardized format to manage consumption and costs," or so say the press releases.

For the Department of Energy's part, the federal agency decided to pony up about $8 million in grant funding to spur the development of "apps for energy" that help customers learn more about how much power they use.

This initiative may just be step one in the effort to educate consumers about their energy use, however. As the process evolves a bit and becomes more automated, it could become easier for electric customers to learn about their energy habits.

Even for a guy like me, who spends most of his waking life online, the process looks a bit involved. It looks like customers will have to start up an account with their utility's website if they don't have one already, then download the data to some kind of third-party application. Maybe a more streamlined process could be in the works.

Still, there could be a sign that the initiative could improve in the sheer number of technology types who are crowing about the Green Button. Google, Intel, GE Energy, Verizon and Johnson Controls, have each sent out letters in support of Green Button.

Lending credence to this theory is the White House's official blog, which said, "Companies are already developing Web and smartphone applications and services for businesses and homeowners that can use Green Button data."

So, assuming this gadget garners any measurable interest from people in these utilities' service territory (and actually use the information to cut demand down a bit), we might hear more about this Green Button thing later on. I'll keep an eye out.