DOE's Chu plugs solar and building efficiency

WASHINGTON--Energy Secretary Steven Chu is an accomplished scientist, but he's apparently happy to use low-tech home energy-efficiency tricks, too.

Chu was one of the featured speakers at the opening ceremony of the Solar Decathlon, a contest among 20 colleges to create the best solar-powered home. Student teams from the U.S., Canada, and Europe build homes powered only by solar energy and reconstruct them on the National Mall where they are judged in ten categories and opened to the public for viewing.

Enenergy Secretary Steven Chu speaks at the opening ceremony of the Solar Decathlon contest on the National Mall on Thursday.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

At the ceremony, Chu announced $87 million worth of Department of Energy funding in solar energy, including training for installers and studies on the use of solar in urban areas and the impact on the grid of large amounts of solar electricity.

One of the continuing barriers to solar adoption is that solar-generated electricity is costs more than getting electricity from coal or natural gas before government subsidies. Chu said that prices are falling steadily but more costs need to be wrung out, particularly the cost of installation. Solar electricity for commercial buildings is now about $4 a watt installed and more for residential buildings but once the cost drops below $2 a watt, "magic will happen," Chu said.

Although the focus of the Solar Decathlon is clearly solar energy, Chu noted that energy efficiency is a core goal of the competition.

When he was director of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab researchers concluded that adopting existing technologies--excluding solar--and inventing more would allow new buildings to be 75 percent more efficient than current practices. About 40 percent of the energy in the U.S. goes to buildings, which is about the same percentage around the world, Chu said.

He said that in nearly all the many homes he has lived in, making the houses more energy efficient "became a little hobby of mine." Chu and his wife used to ask to see the energy bills of the previous homeowners and made a game of trying to reduce the bills by 50 percent. Most of the changes are simple and cost hundreds, not thousands of dollars, he said.

"I started doing this long before I knew about climate change. And I have to confess the only reason I was doing that is because I'm fundamentally cheap," he joked.

Chu, who visited the California House on Wednesday and the Cornell University House on Thursday, said some of the things on display are likely to deployed while others probably won't be. "Mostly what you see are young, bright, dedicated people, totally caught up with idea that yes, we can make wonderful homes that eventually will be cost effective," he said.

The homes that are on the National Mall are expensive, with many costing in the neighborhood of $500,000. But they were designed to be transported and many generate more electricity and hot water than they need.

Improvements in building design and technology are making net zero energy homes for new construction feasible. Earlier this week, the Obama administration issued an executive order (PDF) that all new federal buildings built by 2030 needed to be net energy zero.

After Chu spoke, a DOE official announced that there will be the first Solar Decathlon outside the U.S. will be held in June 2010 in Madrid, Spain.

Photos: Solar homes take root at Solar Decathlon

[William Crow]

If he wants to save energy fast, Obama would do well to eliminate the government departments that do little or nothing. One example, go with a Fair or Flat Tax and most of the IRS could be eliminated. Turn off those lights. Turn off the heat. Eliminate thousands of make-work jobs that offer retirement after only 25 years.

The list for this type of immediate efficiency potential is very long.

But wait...I would venture to say that most government employees vote, and would not vote for this glaringly obvious needed change. They are their own lobbyist group. The government check brigade.

[dissent3125]

While our tax system is convoluted and antiquated in several ways, a "Fair or Flat Tax" would be far from fair. This is because a flat tax would eliminate the progressive method that we currently use and create greater disparities in wealth. Also, your suggestion that the fact that government employs vote is a problem is ignorant to say the least. A true green revolution needs as much help as it can get from the government and help in a capitalistic society means balancing the economy so the prices are appropriately represented. Thus, we need more government involvement so that the cost of greenhouse gas emissions is added to cost of production of industries, and then consumers can understand better the true cost of what they have bought. A phobia of big government at this point in history could be catastrophic. We have already witnessed the inabilities of the market to regulate itself completely alone with this past recession, and now must rebalance the role government plays. Your suggestion would lead to rebalancing it in the wrong direction.

Dissent: You are way off base about the role of the government. The recent Wall Street mess was many things and many of them were promoted by government policies...easy home ownership morphed into subprime lending when a 1970's era attempt to stop redlining became a form of extortion against interstate banking, and the under reported role of Fannie and Freddie ever willing to accept all the crap mortgages that the government was pushing. In the end, Fannie and Freddie like Wall Street became to big to fail and even more crap loans were accepted.

Government price fixing or "balancing the economy so the prices are appropriately represented" as you say is to put faith in political pricing that always ends in disaster. Government helping in grants for research is one thing but to rig the market is to pretend that a rigged market is still a market. If any of the green energy alternatives are viaable they have to compete in a real market or doom us all to another colossal failure. BTW, I am invested in green tech so my money is where my mouth is but please, lets keep it real and get Al Gore and the politics out of it.

[SteveChicago]

@dissent3125
A flat "X%" tax is a fair tax. Those who make more will pay more. Why should all the wealthy people in this country pay for all the social programs in this country?

Government Role??? Where was the SEC the last couple years? Or the Fed Reserve or the Treasury? The government should have seen all this coming or noticed the "systemic risk" that they all discovered a year ago. They should have let every Investment Bank fail that would have. Citizens need to realize that the only banking that is secure is FDIC backed accounts. Everything else is a form of risk/gambling.

Government should help fund research, but penalizing one group and subsidizing another is not what capitalism is about. Once renewable becomes strong enough it will take on carbon based energy in real competition and be able to stand on its own, and be stronger for it.

[commenterer]

The best idea Chu has put forward recently bares repeating, White roofs. No matter what R rating of your insulation the heat generated from a black roof will heat up so much it radiates in past your insulation and requires air conditioners to come on in hot climates increasing there use by 15% over a white roofed house. This heat also cooks the roofing material drastically shortening the life of the roof needing to be scrapped and replaced. in the colder climates it doesn't heat up enough in the winter to heat your house but it heats up enough to melt any snow away quicker which disposes of natural" insulation. Scientists estimate that making roofs and pavements white or more light-coloured would counter global warming with "negative radiative forcing" ? reflecting sunlight back into space. They said that retrofitting urban roofs and pavements in tropical and temperate regions with solar-reflective materials would offset about 44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. "Now you smile, but if you look at all the buildings and make all the roofs white, and if you make the pavement a more concrete-type of colour than a black-type of colour, and you do this uniformly... It's the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars in the world by 11 years," Chu said. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/obamas-climate-guru-paint-your-roof-white-1691209.html

[wabcd]

Chu is a bought-and-paid-for-slave of Big Oil after getting a $500 million present from British Petroleum for "biofuel research".

Chu's Solar Energy. Well Germany is World's reigning King of Solar Energy. See what BraveNewClimate.com has on that fiasco:

"....Here?s what Germany?s solar electric output came to in recent years (in gigawatt hours):

2006 = 2,220 GWh; 2007 = 3,500 GWh; 2008 = 4,300 GWh

According to this, the increase in 2009 comes to another 1800 GWh, bringing the 2009 total up to 6,100 GWh. Note the progression hasn?t been steady since 2006, increasing by 1300, then just 800, and now 1800, for a three-year average of 1,300 GWh. I don?t know what the prognosis of the photovoltaic industry organization above projects for increases to 2013, but let?s assume it?s even higher than this year, that it?ll be 2000 GWh more per year. So that?ll give us this probably over-generous estimate:

2009 = 6,100 GWh; 2010 = 8,100 GWh; 2011 = 10,100 GWh; 2012 = 12,100 GWh

So by 2013, Germany will have committed to spending ?77 billion (that?s over $113 billion USD) for solar capacity equivalent to less than 2% of their 2006 electrical demand.

Now let?s look at the cost of nuclear power plants. Setting aside the legalistic and political quagmire that characterizes the nuclear power industry in America, we can look at the cost of the Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs) that were built in Japan in the late 90?s at a cost of about $1.4 billion/GW, and the Chinese? recent estimates for the final cost of their first two AP-1000s ($1.76 billion/GW), and come to the reasonable conclusion that Germany could build Gen III+ reactors for $2 billion/GW, especially modular units in the dozens.

At the moment, Germany?s Gen II nuclear plants have strong capacity factors, including probably the best one in the world with about a 94% CF. So let?s assume that Germany?s brand new Gen III plants could average a 90% CF. For $112 billion, they could build 56GW of new nuclear capacity, for an effective capacity at a 90% CF of about 48GW. Those plants would thus produce about 421,000 GWh annually, which is approximately 68% of Germany?s electrical needs in 2006 (I keep using 2006 figures to be consistent here because that?s the latest IEA data I can find for Germany?s energy stats). Compare that with the <2% expected from solar, and of course unlike solar, nuclear runs 24/7. Now figure in the expected lifespan of the systems: Nuclear: about 60 years. Solar PV: 20-30 years. Being generous and saying 30, that means you?ll get twice as much as the already astounding 34 times the energy that nuclear will produce compared to the same solar investment...."

[mirckeyfi]

A flat "X%" tax is a fair tax. Those who make more will pay more. Why should all the wealthy people in this country pay for all the social programs in this country?

Government Role??? Where was the SEC the last couple years? Or the Fed Reserve or the Treasury? The government should have seen all www.tube34.net this coming or noticed the "systemic risk" that they all discovered a year ago. They should have let every Investment Bank fail that would have. Citizens need to realize that the only banking that is secure is FDIC backed accounts. Everything else is a form of risk/gambling.

Government should help fund research, but penalizing one group and subsidizing another is not what capitalism is about. Once renewable becomes strong enough it will take on carbon based energy in real competition and be able to stand on its own, and be stronger for it.