GLOBAL CLIMATE DEBATE

 

[McGINNIS]  Hello, and welcome to "Clean Skies Sunday," a weekly half-hour look at energy issues facing Washington and America.  I'm Susan McGinnis.  This week, would you go "Wheego"?  We Whip around Atlanta in the new electric Wheego Whip and we meet the man with the very first one.  We'll show you why this is just the customer electric vehicle makers are targeting.

 

Then we'll show you a country tapping heat from the earth to power homes and businesses.

 

And we do all we can to conserve energy at home, but what about at work?  Now, office building managers are making green a priority.

 

First, in the news this week, the bipartisan energy bill now pending in the Senate is cosponsored by Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, but she is now fighting for her political life.  She appears to be losing a cliffhanger primary race with newcomer Joe Miller.  That Senate bill supports both clean energy and conventional oil, gas, and nuclear.  

 

The White House says stimulus funds are working for energy.  Vice President Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu say the $100 billion investment in energy, science, and technology has helped push America to the forefront of clean energy technology.

 

[CHU]  Advanced batteries with perhaps 100 times the current energy storage capacity.  Three times less cost.  Solar panels, which now cost $3.50, $4 per watt.  We're aiming to get there within 10 years or less to a dollar a watt so they can be put up on many rooftops without subsidy.  A smart grid that lets appliances talk to the power grid, optimizing electricity use and saving consumers money.  These innovations are all closer to happening thanks to the investments made possible by the Recovery Act.

 

[McGINNIS]  The moratorium on deepwater drilling could be lifted sooner than expected.  The Interior Department's head regulator says the ban could be gone before December for some rigs.  And the ban may not have cost as many jobs as feared.  Only two of thirty-three deepwater rigs sidelined by the ban have sailed for other fields.  Most companies are waiting to see what develops with the moratorium before they make any critical decisions.

 

And the Tennessee Valley Authority says it may sideline some of its oldest and dirtiest coal burners and get electricity instead from a new nuclear unit and natural gas.  TVA now gets 60% of its power from coal.  This move would let TVA avoid putting costly pollution controls on the old plants.

 

Well, showrooms across the country will be charged up over electric vehicles in the next few months, but if you want to take one home, what can you expect?  What special equipment might you need?  Clean Skies' Shawn Shepard takes us to Atlanta, Georgia, to meet two men who already know what it takes to go electric.

 

[STEPHEN CURRY]  And we're off...to make the Internet a better place for everybody.

 

[SHEPARD]  Stephen Curry lives in Atlanta, Georgia.  He works for an Internet service provider and was the first in the city to own the all-electric Wheego Whip, a low-speed vehicle that seats two passengers and gets 30 miles to the charge.  He's also exactly the type of customer manufacturers of electric vehicles, or EVs, are targeting.

 

[CURRY]  One thing that I was happy about when I bought it, and even more so, is because of the situation in the Gulf.

 

[SHEPARD]  His concern for the environment led him to purchase an EV.  But along with his duty to be green, he had more practical motives.

 

[CURRY]  I kind of thought, hey, this will be a good test to see how real these are and if it's really something that's going to happen in the future.

 

[SHEPARD]  A future that's fast approaching.  In a few months, Nissan is releasing the all-electric Leaf; Chevy, the Volt; Tesla's Roadster has already hit the market; and Ford will have an all-electric version of its popular Focus available next year.  

 

But when it comes to EVs, people want to know, "How, when, and where will I be able to charge up?"  A recent report from the Electric Power Research Institute showed that most people would prefer to charge their car at home.  That's how Curry is doing it.

 

You pop this in and just let it go overnight?

 

[CURRY]  That's exactly right.

 

[SHEPARD]  This is called level-one charging.  Curry plugs into a standard 110-volt outlet and the juice flows.  He says it takes eight hours to charge the battery from 20% to 100% and that when it comes to charging, you have to develop a routine, one he admits to sometimes falling out of.

 

[CURRY]  Lo and behold, I'll forget to plug it in at night and I'll come out the next morning to go to work and realize my car's not charged.

 

[SHEPARD]  He says, when that happens, he drives his gasoline-powered Volvo.  But routines like the one Curry is talking about take effort and repetition.  People want ease and convenience when it comes to their cars, and with it only taking a matter of minutes to fill a gas tank, EVs are a tough sell.

 

[Telephone rings]

 

[DON FRANCIS]  So, how can I help you?

 

[SHEPARD]  Don Francis is the coordinator for the Atlanta Clean-Cities Coalition.  He has over 40 years of automotive experience, many of them in the electric vehicle industry, so it's no surprise when people ask him...

 

[FRANCIS]  How long does it take to charge the car?  What I usually tell them is 15 seconds.  Because that's about how long it takes me to get the plug out of the charging station and put into the vehicle and I come back in the house.  Do I care it takes six hours to charge the car?  No.  I'm just a typical user.  The time factor is not an issue.  It's education.

 

[SHEPARD]  Francis is working to get charging stations into the homes of future EV owners.  This is familiar territory for him.  In the '90s, he was head of Georgia Power's now defunct Electric Transportation Program.  During that time, he installed over 78 charging stations around the state, stations that were to serve electric vehicles on their way to market.  Trouble is, they never made it.

 

[FRANCIS]  The new SAE J1772 standard.

 

[SHEPARD]  But he says that even back then, they realized home charging was critical to the success of EVs.  The charging station, or "electric vehicle supply equipment," is the interface between the vehicle and the power in the house.  It controls when and how the vehicle is charged.

 

[FRANCIS]  What I tell people is, think of it as putting a dryer outlet in your garage.  That's how difficult it is.  Because that's the kind of power you would pull out to the garage.  You're going to put this appliance -- the EVSE -- on the wall, connected to that power supply.

 

[SHEPARD]  But installing one of these comes with a hitch.  You need a permit, which in some cases can take weeks or months.  There's also the issue of capacity.  You see, the electric vehicle load, or how much power it pulls, is significant.  It falls somewhere between a water heater and a heat pump.  Newer homes will probably be able to handle the increased loads, but older ones may need some upgrading, which can get expensive.

 

And speaking of cost, how will all of this charging affect a homeowner's electric bill?  Stephen Curry has carefully tracked his since owning his EV.  The result?  

 

[CURRY]  I've seen about an $8 or $9 monthly increase from charging my car versus when I didn't have it.

 

[SHEPARD]  Not bad -- but remember, he charges his vehicle using a standard 110-volt outlet.  And the Whip's battery capacity is much smaller than, say, that of the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt.

 

You also have to take into account driving habits.  Curry mainly drives his back and forth to work.  A person that drives more often for longer distances and at higher speeds will require frequent charge-ups...which leads to the question about charging away from home.  With only months remaining before the arrival of the Volt and the Leaf, can a charging infrastructure be developed in time?

 

[FRANCIS]  We're starting to talk to employers, to apartment complex operators, about putting charging stations in again.  Does it have to happen quickly?  Pretty much.  People will have to move pretty rapidly.  But, if you get the charging stations in at home, that gets everybody up and running.

 

[SHEPARD]  As for Curry, well, he's an EV believer.  He says he'll bump up to the Whip's full-speed version scheduled to be released this fall.

 

[CURRY]  The fact that the full-speed vehicle can go on the highway and get a little bit better range -- I think if I had that, I would never drive my other car.  I think I would be exclusively driving the Wheego.

 

[SHEPARD]  Reporting from Atlanta, Shawn Shepard, Clean Skies News.

 

[McGINNIS]  Francis says there will be level-3 fast-charging systems available, but not for your home.  They'll need high voltage to work.  Manufacturers will look to place them in commercial locations like restaurants and shopping malls.  

 

With the excitement surrounding electric vehicles right now, let's not forget, this is not the first time America has seen an EV extravaganza.  In the late '90s, automakers rolled out electric vehicles, mostly in California to meet air quality standards there, but once those laws relaxed, so did the EV programs with the automakers.

 

Well, despite protests from EV enthusiasts, the EV1 made by GM was collected from leaseholders and destroyed by the automaker.  There are only two EV1s known to have survived the shredder.  One is at the Los Angeles Auto Museum, the other at the General Motors Tech Center.  That's where Clean Skies' Lee Patrick Sullivan picks up the story.

 

[SULLIVAN]  When you enter the lobby of the new General Motors Battery Lab in Warren, Michigan, you are greeted by a ghost of production past.  It's the only vehicle to be marketed as a General Motors car and not one of its divisions, like Chevy or Buick.  It's the EV1, the first mass-produced electric car, that hit the roads and the imagination of Californians in the mid-1990s.

 

[WOMAN]  The electric car is here.

[TEXT ON SCREEN]  EV1 from General Motors.

 

[SULLIVAN]  The car was only available by lease and had top celebrities counted among its customers.

 

[PETER SWEATMAN, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE]  The EV1, there was almost a hysterical kind of cool factor associated with that.  There's something about electric vehicles, you know.

 

[SULLIVAN]  And when General Motors ended the lease program in 2002, it spawned an independent film.  EV1 owners even held a mock funeral for the beloved electric car.

 

[ED BEGLEY JR.]  The electric vehicle is not for everybody.  It can only meet the needs of 90% of the population.

 

[SULLIVAN]  GM officials say no one killed the electric car; it was just in hibernation.  Inside the Battery Lab, the very first EV1 battery stands guard, like some kind of religious idol of the electric car world.  That's because some of the same engineers that worked on EV1 are trying to get the Chevy Volt to market.  

 

[DENISE GRAY, HEAD OF BATTERY TECHNOLOGY, GM]  A lot of the people from the EV1 days, from the supply base to General Motors in general, worked on EV1 and the technology, as well as the people are working on the Chevy Volt today.

 

[SULLIVAN]  And those people are benefiting from some of the technology developed for the EV1, which include regenerative braking, the electric drive system, the way a vehicle takes a charge, and most importantly, a network of electric car parts suppliers that was set up for the EV1.  

 

And the most talked-about feature of the Chevy Volt, the small internal combustion engine that gives the car an extended range, was developed by EV1 engineers, who were impatient waiting for the batteries to charge while they were testing the car.  

 

[ROBERT KRUSE, VP, ELECTRIC AND HYBRID VEHICLES, GM]  Actually, the EV1 experience enabled the Volt to come to market.  When we were developing the EV1, one of the things the engineers needed to do is they needed to develop the vehicle while electrically powered.  Well, there's a large charge cycle to be able to do that, so what the engineers did at the time is they took small motorcycle engines and generators, put them on trailers, and hooked them up to the EV1 so that they could create their own power plant so that they could drive indefinitely electrically, for more development time.

 

[SULLIVAN]  For all the technology the EV1 gave to the Volt, for some it was a black eye for General Motors, who EV1 advocates say gave up and set the development of the electric car back at least a decade.

 

[GRAY]  Yes, people wanted their EV1s.  They wanted to ensure that they were a part of emissions-free driving, gas-free driving.  And they wanted to be a part of the new technology.  And that's very encouraging.  I'm looking for those same kind of enthusiastic buyers for the Chevy Volt.  We want those same enthusiastic customers to buy these vehicles as well.

 

[SULLIVAN]  In the end, GM officials say it was cost that killed the EV1 program.  In less than four years, the company spent more than $1 billion making 800 cars, and they say, at that rate, they would have to charge $200,000 a vehicle just to turn a profit.  In Washington, Lee Patrick Sullivan, Clean Skies News.

 

[McGINNIS]  And still to come on "Clean Skies Sunday," a nation getting virtually all its electricity from renewable sources.  Can Iceland be an example for the U.S.?

 

Plus, buildings and offices under new pressure to save on energy.  What does it mean for your workday?

 

[BREAK]

 

[CARYL STERN]  My name is Caryl Stern and I'm the president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.  The floods of Pakistan have left nearly 4 million children at grave risk of dying.  These children have lost everything.  They need clean water, medicine, and shelter to survive.  UNICEF is there, but we can't reach every child without your help.  Please donate $10 now by texting "Floods" to UNICEF, or visit unicefusa.org.

 

[KRISTI YAMAGUCHI]  Meet the faces of influenza, groups who should be immunized every year.

 

[MAN]  I have a chronic medical condition.

 

[WOMAN]  Diabetes.

 

[BOY]  Asthma.

 

[MAN]  I have COPD, a serious lung disease.

 

[WOMAN]  Pregnant during influenza season.

 

[WOMAN]  We live with a baby under 6 months old.

 

[GIRL]  I'm 4 1/2 years old.

 

[BOY]  I'm 14.

 

[MAN]  I'm 50.

 

[WOMAN]  I'm over 50 years old.

 

[WOMAN]  Way over 50.

 

[WOMAN]  Care for someone at risk.

 

[BOY]  I live with someone at risk.

 

[GIRL]  I live with someone at risk.

 

[YAMAGUCHI]  The American Lung Association asks, do you see your family or yourself here?  As one of the many faces of influenza, you and I and those close to us need to get vaccinated.  In an average year, about 36,000 people die from influenza and its complications.  See your health care provider about getting vaccinated.  It's a safe and effective way to prevent influenza.  Visit facesofinfluenza.org.  Influenza isn't the common cold.  It's serious.

 

[ANNOUNCER]  When every moment matters and a life is saved, when someone gives blood, when a hand reaches out, that moment when heartbreak turns to hope, you're there, through the American Red Cross.  Down the street, across the country, around the world.  You help save the day, every day.  Your support truly matters.  You can help today.  Visit redcross.org.

 

[END BREAK]

 

[McGINNIS]  Welcome back to "Clean Skies Sunday."  One big sticking point in pending energy legislation is how much of the nation's electricity should come from renewable energy sources, like solar, wind, geothermal, and others.  The House passed a bill calling for 20% to come from renewables within 10 years.  What if more like 80% or more of our power were to come from domestically produced renewable energy?  Tyler Suiters takes us to one country that's doing that now.

 

[SUITERS]  While the whole of Iceland is unique, natural aspects of this island can strike a familiar chord with Americans.  The mountains that might stand west of Denver, the hills that would fit into the heart of San Francisco, the bay water that could fill a quiet corner of the Boston Harbor.  But the extent to which Iceland now uses these natural aspects -- its glaciers, its rivers, its underground heat -- all to generate electricity, that is something that is undeniably unfamiliar to the States.

 

[OLAFUR RAGNAR GRIMSSON, PRESIDENT OF ICELAND]  When I was growing up in Iceland, and into the '50s and the early '60s, over 80% of our energy came from imported oil and coal.  Now, as you said, 100% of the electricity is from domestic clean energy resources, almost 100% of the heating of the houses.  

 

[ELRIKUR HJALMARSSON, REYKJAVIK ENERGY]  This energy revolution that the world is looking for now, we have actually underwent that revolution in many aspects.

 

[SUITERS]  Hydroelectricity provides the overwhelming majority of power generation here in Iceland, and Reykjavik Energy operates two hydro plants in the country, including this one behind me.  It generates 3.8 megawatts of electricity every single year, the very same capacity it had when it first opened, all the way back in 1921.

 

[HJALMARSSON]  We are still tapping into hydro, and as a matter of fact, we are seeing some similar developments right now as we did in the early days of hydroelectricity.  There are farmers and landowners putting up small plants for domestic use and giving the rest or tapping the rest into the national grid.

 

[PIERRE GAUTHIER, PRESIDENT, ALSTOM U.S.]  Hydro's a great energy.  Absolutely.  I mean, it's the only way you can really store large amounts of energy, okay, true hydroelectric power.  It has also the big advantage of being able to put back into the network very quickly.  Turbines just, you know, you flick the switch and the power comes on.  And that is an absolute must, I'd say, if you have other sources which are -- like the renewables -- intermittent.  So wind power, for instance.  If you can couple wind power and hydro, you really have it made.

 

[SUITERS]  Iceland, though, has little room or need for the intermittent renewables Gauthier referred to -- solar and wind.  Already, virtually 100% of the country's electricity comes from carbon emission-free generation.  The U.S. Energy Information Administration says in 2008, nearly 3/4 of Iceland's electricity came from hydro generation, and geothermal sources accounted for almost all of the remaining quarter of generation.  According to the EIA, that 24% is the highest percentage of geothermal generation in the entire world.  And Iceland's power sector intends to grow that total in leaps and bounds.

 

Hellisheidi is the crown jewel in Reykjavik Energy's geothermal ring.  Boreholes like these behind me will bring the generating plant's capacity up to 300 megawatts within the next two years, but the company isn't stopping there.  Within this very region, the southwestern region of Iceland, the company has plans for two or three more geothermal generation plants, tapping into what it calls a virtually limitless domestic energy supply.

 

[DAN REICHER, CLIMATE AND ENERGY INITIATIVES, GOOGLE.ORG]  Geothermal's interesting because there's both the current technology, the traditional technology, where you drill a well down to a pocket of steam or hot water, whether it's in Iceland or Northern California or several other places around the world, and you bring up that steam and make electricity.  The issue -- in fact, the opportunity, really -- is, where else can you do geothermal where you don't have those pockets of steam and hot water?  And that's where this newer technology called "enhanced geothermal systems," EGS, comes in.  Essentially, that says, drill literally anywhere deep enough, you'll get to hot rock.  There probably won't be water there, but if you can fracture the rock, put water down there, bring it back up, then you can make electricity.

 

[HJALMARSSON]  That technology is still in development and it is that type of technology that, for example, the United States are mainly looking at because you have very advanced drilling technology given your history in tapping into fossil fuel resources.  But just a little shift of your focus in drilling and advancing your technologies, you can use that resource.

 

[SUITERS]  But even though Iceland's renewable resources are emission-free -- not to mention import-free -- they nonetheless come at some environmental cost.

 

[HJALMARSSON]  There are growing concerns, environmental concerns regarding the footprint, the environmental footprint, both of hydro and of geothermal.

 

[SIGURDUR GISLASON, UNIVERSITY OF ICELAND]  With the present technology, you know, there is not a public acceptance for doing that.  Because some of these high-temperature geothermal systems are in beautiful areas.  And we want to preserve them for, you know, future generations.  We don't want to put wells into all these areas.

 

[GAUTHIER]  I think the big case against hydro is really the damming of rivers and creating reservoirs.  I think that has been the traditional case.  Uh, I mean, hydro has been built for many, many years -- I mean, we know how to mitigate the environmental impacts of this today.

 

[SUITERS]  So perhaps there's an Icelandic lesson, as the U.S.  Congress prepares to take up climate legislation again in the new year, bills that would limit our country's carbon emissions and put a premium on domestic renewable resources, bills that could mimic Iceland's approach and maximize the use of these natural resources across America.

 

[GRIMSSON]  The United States is blessed with having enormous resources of geothermal nature.  And the M.I.T. report which came out a few years ago estimated that, given the present technology and the skill to drill down into the ground that we have today, it would be feasible to create geothermal power production in America that would be tantamount to twice the present electricity consumption in the United States.  For me, it's become almost a moral mission to try to make America realize that this transformation is something which is not just urgently needed but is also very good business, makes economic sense, and is a fundamental pillar in American global competitiveness in the 21st century.

 

[SUITERS]  In Reykjavik, Iceland, Tyler Suiters, Clean Skies News.

 

[McGINNIS]  Reykjavik Energy says, because of Iceland's vast reliance on renewable energy, its customers pay three to four times less than their European neighbors.  You can see Tyler's full conversations with two Icelandic scientists now leading the CarbFix Project, a new international carbon capture effort, at CleanSkies.com.  Still ahead, energy efficiency may be going with you to the office.  We'll tell you why your workplace may have new requirements for saving energy that could impact you.

 

[BREAK]

 

[Man panting]  Mike!  Anna!  Ahh!  Ahh!  Whoo!  Hee!  Hee!  Forgot your lunch.  Gimme.  Ohh!  [Breathes into paper bag]

 

[ANNOUNCER]  You don't have to be perfect to be a perfect parent.

 

[MAN]  I'm okay!

 

Because kids in foster care don't need perfection, they need you.

 

[TEXT ON SCREEN]  AdoptUsKids.org

1-888-200-4005

 

[EVAN WOLF, GULF COAST CLEAN UP, LOUISIANA NATIONAL GUARD]  When I signed on with the National Guard, I did it to help protect America from our enemies, like in the Persian Gulf -- not to clean up an oil company's mess here in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

We'll do whatever mission we're given, and do it well, but America needs a new mission, because whether it's deep-drilling oil out here or spending a billion dollars a day on oil from our enemies overseas, our dependence on oil is threatening our national security.

 

The thing is, a clean American energy plan would cut our dependence on oil in half.  It's more power for America, made here in America, putting our people to work using all the resources we have.

 

Some folks in Washington say now's not the time for clean American power.  I got to ask, if not now...when?

 

[TEXT ON SCREEN]  You.  Children who need your help.  Jasmine Akhter bridges the gap.  Help healthcare workers, like Jasmine, save children all over the world.  Save the Children.  See where the good goes.  GoodGoes.org.

 

[END BREAK]  

 

[McGINNIS]  More of us are paying attention to energy savings at home -- turning off lights, unplugging gadgets, and using more efficient appliances.  But do you take that same care at the office?  If not, you may soon.  Dan Goldstein tells us about offices' being required to track energy use, which could very well trickle down to your cubicle.

 

[GOLDSTEIN]  If you work in the District of Columbia and want to know how green your office is, now you can, thanks to a law this year for buildings over 50,000 square feet.  That means property managers like Kathy Barnes are getting ready for big changes.

 

[KATHY BARNES, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, AKRIDGE]  So, the new law is going to require office buildings to have Energy Star certification, which means that they need to benchmark their buildings and sort of manage the electrical consumption that their building is consuming.

 

[GOLDSTEIN]  Barnes is senior vice president with Akridge in the District.  Her company has 10 energy certified properties in the city.  The new law isn't an unfunded mandate from bureaucrats, she says, but an opportunity.

 

[BARNES]  The Energy Star label sort of designates your operating expenses and your building as sort of being affordable.  That's one of the things that's so good about it.  Utilities are the largest single controllable cost that we have in a building.  And if you're a building owner and you're not focusing in on that, then you're going to let yourself fall out of the market.

 

[GOLDSTEIN]  And it's a competitive advantage, she says.  Akridge saves about a third on energy costs by making their buildings compliant, savings they can pass on to their tenants, especially when office vacancies in the city are more than 10%, even in the high-demand office market of Washington.  

 

That's doubly important in a government town like D.C., with one out of four tenants working for Uncle Sam.  If you want to sign a federal tenant to a lease, your building has to be at the highest end of the Energy Star ratings.  

 

And it's not only cities like Washington, D.C., that are requiring commercial buildings to show how they're going green -- other cities are getting into the act as well.

 

[CLIFF MAJERSIK, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR MARKET TRANSFORMATION]  In terms of cities, you have Washington, D.C.; New York City; Austin, Texas; and Seattle.

 

[GOLDSTEIN]  Cliff Majersik of the Institute for Market Transformation, which wrote the D.C. law, says a commercial property's value could soon be enhanced, or hurt, depending how much or how little it does to reduce global warming.

 

[MAJERSIK]  The S.E.C. recently ruled that climate risks need to be disclosed to shareholders.  And what that means is that if a company owns a lot of inefficient buildings, and those buildings' property value could be impaired by rising energy prices or climate change, then they're going to need to disclose that to the public, to their shareholders.

 

[GOLDSTEIN]  The law's backers say the new mandate won't be a burden on business.  Getting an Energy Star rating can be as simple as the janitor just switching off the lights at night or not running air conditioning on the weekends.  Small changes could save more than just dollars and cents.  Dan Goldstein, Clean Skies News.

 

[McGINNIS]  The 2007 energy law signed by President George W. Bush requires federal tenants to lease space in only those buildings that are Energy Star compliant.

 

That does it for us for this edition of "Clean Skies Sunday."  I'm Susan McGinnis.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend.  We'll see you right here next Sunday morning.  Until then, we'll see you at CleanSkies.com.  Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  Have a great day.

 

[END SHOW]