Archive for March 19th, 2008

Now that Client-9 is out, back to business for New York State.  Do the elected officials have a plan to address the State’s energy needs?  How will we fight global warming?

The New York League of Conservation Voters has just launched Climate Action PAC and a new website to get action on this most important issue in Albany.

The Climate Action PAC will offer direct financial support and independent campaign expenditures to help elect individuals who have demonstrated their passion and ability to advance strategies to aggressively tackle climate change. The Climate Action PAC will target state legislative seats in 2008 and local races throughout the state - including New York City - in 2009.

This is one of the first PACs in the nation with the specific goal of putting money behind candidates that will fight global warming.   We recommend visiting www.WhatIsNewYorkWaitingFor.com to sign-up and demand action today.

By Stefan Deeran at The Element Agency in New York

By Dennis Arfmann and Adrian Eissler of Hogan & Hartson LLP, today’s guest bloggers

This week Xcel Energy (NYSE: XEL) and the City of Boulder announced that Boulder, Colorado will become the nation’s first “Smart Grid” city. The announcement provides a tremendous boost to the “smart grid” concept, which will facilitate substantial advances in the efficiency of the existing transmission infrastructure and greater integration of renewable energy and plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Xcel describes its vision of a “smart grid” as a fully network-connected system that identifies all aspect of the power grid and communicates its status and the impact of consumption decisions to automated decision-making systems on that network. The smart grid will allow Xcel to refine its distribution and generation management with real-time system information, thereby responding to peak demand loads more efficiently and rerouting energy as needed to meet consumer demand without placing unnecessary strain on the grid.

Customers will gain greater control over their own energy management decisions through availability of real-time information on energy cost, fuel mix, peak grid demand, etc. Perhaps most importantly, the smart grid will allow greater grid responsiveness to and inclusion of distributed renewable generation such as on-site solar installations.

In the City and County of Boulder, updated building codes including stringent Home Energy Rating System (HERS) requirements will frequently require the inclusion of solar power for new construction and significant renovations, in addition to increased energy efficiency in the construction/remodeling. The “greening” of the building codes in conjunction with recent announcements of dramatically reduced prices per watt possible with the newest wave of thin-film PV technology (see AVA Solar, First Solar), suggests a dramatic expansion in demand for on-site solar.

The implementation of Xcel’s smart grid initiative comes at a perfect time to capitalize on these policy and technological advances leading us in the direction of distributed renewable generation. Congratulations to Xcel and the City of Boulder!

Editors note: Dennis Arfmann is Co-Chair of the Climate Change Practice Group at Hogan & Hartson LLP, and Adrian Eissler is Associate in the firm’s Corporate and Securities Practice Group.

The views expressed above are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent The Element Agency. If you are interested in penning guest posts for My Green Element, please email Stefan Deeran via stefan@theelementagency.com.