Hawaii
Energy Policy Forum > 2002
Articles
Interview with Greg Watson
Orion Afield
Summer 2002
AS PROGRAM DIRECTOR of the Massachusetts
Renewable Energy Trust, Greg Watson sits at the helm of a
state agency whose
singular mission is to allocate its $140 million trust
fund to projects in Massachusetts and New England that
support the development of renewable energy technologies.
A
new breed of energy pioneer, Watson is the ideological progeny
of evolutionary mathematician and luminary Buckminster
Fuller. Like an inexhaustible electric current himself, Greg
has followed what he describes as a "positive pull,
or tension" in relationship to his professional life,
making career choices based on his passion for and attraction
to the work at hand. This enthusiasm has led Greg into positions
as the director of New Alchemy Institute, commissioner of
the Massachusetts Department of Food and Agriculture, director
of The Nature Conservancy's Eastern Regional Office, and
director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Just as Buckminster Fuller expounded
a theory of eternal laws in nature which are informed by
an overarching evolutionary
tension, or centripetal force, Greg himself is most excited
by projects that demonstrate how something much greater is
possible when individuals band together in service to a larger
cause. In the case of renewable energy, this translates into
regional microgrids and consumer aggregations (or energy
co-ops), the benefits of which include consumer independence
and clean energy. As readers will find, Watson's enthusiasm
for change is infectious. In fact, one might even say it's "electric."
Orion Afield: When Bush and Cheney talk about energy security,
they mean gas exploration on the Rocky Mountain Front and
drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. What can
we do to promote safer and eco-friendly alternatives?
Greg Watson: In the U.S., we basically have policies and
regulations that benefit the few and the powerful and the
rich, as opposed to asking, what is it that we really need
as a society? We need a diversified and clean energy supply,
a system that acknowledges the real costs -- and I'm not
just talking about subsidies. I'm talking about insurance
and health and pollution, all sorts of things that are consequences
of our energy use.
Folks at the Union of Concerned Scientists
and the Rocky Mountain Institute have realized that you have
to counter
with a viable alternative national energy policy that is
credible and well thought through. To me, optimism is a direct
result of knowing that you've got options, and that you don't
have to accept more of the same. I think a lot of the onus
is going to be shouldered by the states that have deregulated
their electric industries. We've got to get data. We've got
to demonstrate how alternative, decentralized energy systems
work, what it takes to make them work, and where the barriers
are.
In both New York State and the Midwest, farmers are now
able to survive because they can lease a small footprint
of farmland
to wind turbines. They make $5,000 a month in lease fees,
and they are able to farm around the turbines because the
towers have tubular bases. Those are the stories that we
have to get out. There is inspiration in telling those stories.
OA:
What issues stand in the way of the rapid expansion of green
power now that the technology is here?
GW: The larger issue has to
do with really getting people to understand what the options
for green power are. That's
a huge educational process. Energy has been invisible for
most of our lives. You flip the switch and the lights come
on. The bill arrives and you pay it.
Now that people in many
states are being given the opportunity to choose their power
source, one of the things we are hearing
is, "This isn't one of the things that I want to think
about." We are overwhelmed with choices. It's like the
deregulation of the phone company, where you get these schemes
-- ten-ten this, twenty-twenty that. People didn't know whether
they were getting a better deal. To a certain extent, it's
the same story with electricity. It's complicated and confusing.
But
it's not just how we generate the electricity that needs
rethinking, but how we deliver it.
OA: On that note, what
is the difference between the grid and distributed generation?
GW: The grid is the means by which most of us receive our
electricity -- the wires, the poles, and the generating plants,
which are fueled by coal, nuclear, or natural gas. Though
we're hoping, at some point, it could be a wind farm or a
solar farm.
Distributed generation is electricity that is produced on
or near where it is consumed -- from a photovoltaic (PV)
panel or a fuel cell, for example. It might be connected
to the grid, but in some cases it could stand alone. The
idea is that the source of power generated is either on your
roof, in your basement, or maybe part of your community,
as opposed to coming from some central power plant. That
means more control either as an individual or a community
in terms of the power plant itself -- and more efficiency.
OA: We've read that the efficiency of converting fuel at
the power plant to light in your house is about three percent.
So is the grid conducive to the kind of energy reform that
is needed?
GW: The grid has certainly
reached limits. There is no question that it is inefficient.
But we must be somewhat realistic.
Take agriculture -- could we talk about completely disconnecting
ourselves from the larger food system? Well, maybe not right
away, but we could talk about how to take advantage of opportunities
to eat local food, and sustain local agriculture, and make
folks as dependent on local resources as possible.
You've
probably heard about the study that the CIA did to determine
the average distance that food travels to get from
the farm to the dinner table? They did a similar study to
figure out how far energy travels, because they wanted to
know how vulnerable we would be in the event of an attack
on lines of supply. In both cases it was scary.
But terrorism
aside, there will be breakdowns in the grid system as more
and more people demand more and more electricity.
We have got to figure out how to restructure and become more
local. The grid may have served a useful purpose, but now
we really have to think about distributed generation and
microgrids as viable alternatives. Again, we're not talking
about revolution, we're talking about evolution.
OA: What
is a microgrid?
GW: A microgrid is like the
intermediate step between having your fuel supply -- like
PVs or fuel cells -- in your home
and getting your electricity from some central power station
via the grid. Instead of the national grid, you have a small
grid powered by local sources, like a couple of wind turbines.
So your community or neighborhood or region is powered by
a source that you can see, smell, touch, feel, and have some
control over.
The city of Lowell, Massachusetts, has just
put up a wind turbine to power its street lights. Just one
turbine, but
they are finding that people like it. They like the sense
that even if it's just a small percentage, they have some
control over it.
It's the same old ecological issue -- diversity.
We don't want to become overly dependent upon any single
source. Since
most people are going to get their power from the grid, the
question is, can we diversify that mix and make it increasingly
dependent upon indigenous, renewable, and clean sources of
energy? Then, somewhere down the line, through a combination
of wind turbines and a bank of fuel cells, a community could
say, "We want to localize our grid."
OA: Fuel cells
-- we keep hearing about them. What are they, and is this
source of power available now?
GW: A fuel cell is sort of
like a battery that doesn't use combustion. It uses hydrogen
and oxygen and combines them
to form water and heat, and the byproduct is electric current.
If you use water as the source of hydrogen and oxygen, the
cost comes in separating the hydrogen from the oxygen. But
if you have to use too much electricity to do that, then
you defeat the purpose. There's a small company called Retrochem
that's trying to use PV panels to provide enough current
to separate the hydrogen. When you recombine them, you get
a charge and you get the current and you get heat. It becomes
much more economical if you can take advantage of that waste
heat too.
Today's commercially available fuel cells are large
units, and they are very expensive. But they work well for
operations
that need high reliability, where being cut off from power
could result in loss of life or millions of dollars -- like
hospitals or data centers.
But there are a number of folks,
Plug Power in New York and Novara here in Massachusetts,
that are working on a unit
that would be about the size of a dorm-sized refrigerator.
It would generate about five kilowatts of electricity, which
is basically enough to power most homes. It could be set
up in your basement and would hum like a Maytag refrigerator
for 40,000 hours without you even having to think about it.
But that is still some ways off.
The market that may develop
faster is the automobile. The factors there are the technology,
getting the cost down,
and the infrastructure. You've got to be able to pull up
to a gas station and fuel up. And you've got to be able to
carry that fuel -- you're talking hydrogen and oxygen --
in a way that is safe. So they're not quite here yet, but
we are on that cusp.
OA: It seems that if people get educated,
the shift to more intelligent forms of energy will be a natural
choice.
GW: I think so. But we need
to find ways to avoid people having to pay for it all at
once. So we are asking, could
people tie the cost of PVs or other renewables to the house,
so that it's paid off gradually along with the mortgage?
If I sell, then the person coming in assumes what's left
of the payment. Again, it's about coming up with a way to
buy your energy so that it's sensible, attractive, and affordable.
We
are finding that a big issue with green power is people's
willingness to pay more. Because right now it will cost a
bit more. However, something shifts in people's perspective
if there is a sense of control or even ownership. The town
of Princeton, Massachusetts, didn't want to contribute to
the Seabrook nuclear power plant, and so they built their
own wind farm. The citizens made a conscious decision to
pay more based on the fact that they were generating some
of their own energy and depending less and less on nuclear
and fossil fuels.
Folks from some of our energy co-ops are
saying, "Could
we own some assets? Could we own either part of or all of
a wind farm for our members?" So the costs are looked
at very differently when you're invested.
OA: How do energy
co-ops work?
GW: The basic idea behind energy
co-ops, sometimes called aggregations, is to leverage some
advantage in the marketplace.
When you can bring people together as a group to purchase
electricity, they can go to a potential retailer or supplier
and use their collective purchasing power to find the best
price. So the 21 towns that are part of the Cape Light Compact
can negotiate because they're bringing somewhere in the vicinity
of 180,000 ratepayers to the table. They can also make certain
demands -- that a percentage of that electricity be generated
from renewables, for example.
Co-ops can organize in different
ways. The Cape Light Compact is a geographical organization
on Cape Cod and the islands.
But in an aggregation like the Massachusetts Energy Consumers
Alliance, anyone can become a member.
Still, some folks are not going to be content with just buying
energy. They'll want to own assets -- a wind farm or a landfill
gas project, or even a solar farm. The town of Brockton,
Massachusetts, has a proposal to redevelop an old brownfield
site into a solar photovoltaic farm to generate power for
the town.
OA: There's something else very positive shaping
up on the Cape. Could you encapsulate the Cape Wind Project?
GW: In a nutshell, the U.S.
Department of Energy has mapped wind resources across the
country. They classify wind in
certain numbers that have to do with how fast and steady
those winds are, and the area around Cape Cod is one of the
strongest. So one individual basically said, "I'm going
to go out and see where it's possible to site a wind farm." There's
a regulation that says you can't construct any electricity-generating
facility within three miles of the coast. So when they did
overlays and looked at transmission lines, bird paths, ordinances,
and steamship authority paths, they were able to come up
with a site.
But when they went out to survey the site, there
was another boat looking at the same area. It turns out
they were both
out there surveying for a wind farm. They didn't know of
each other, and they had both pinpointed that area, Nantucket
Sound, Horseshoe Shoal. They decided to join forces. So
that's pretty exciting -- just the fact that it happened.
In order
to make this economically viable, they're talking about building
170 wind turbines in a 25-square-mile area,
about four and a half miles off the coast of Hyannis. Now
each of these wind turbines, from the base to the tip of
the blade, is about 426 feet tall. In each, the casing that
houses the gears is about the size of a Greyhound bus. They
will be spaced about a third to a half mile apart, and each
driven 80 feet down. What you would get at the end is 420
megawatts, which is comparable to a small coal-fired plant.
OA:
So what's the holdup?
GW: Well, nature decides where
to site these things. You've got to put them where the wind
resource is steady. And given
current technology, once you get beyond the shoal, the cost
of putting a foundation in deeper waters is prohibitive.
Right now, residents have said, "We are for renewables,
we are for wind, and we're even for offshore wind, but we
think this is the wrong spot." The environmental community
is concerned about the impact on marine and avian populations,
as well as the visual impact.
The Army Corps of Engineers
held two hearings on the proposed wind farm as part of
their NEPA process: one in Boston and
one on the Cape. An article in the Cape Cod Times reported
that, to their surprise, they got something like 600 responses,
and the large majority of them were in favor. Now there
is a very organized and vociferous group that is opposing
the
project. At last count, they had at least two websites
up.
I think you have to acknowledge the visceral and emotional
responses, but you have to weigh them against other things,
including the fact that the Cape probably stands to suffer
most from global warming and sea level rise. There are
a lot of folks in a lot of places looking to see how
we are
going to deal with this. It's a tough one for the environmental
community. People who live in very beautiful spots have
recognized that they're gonna have to make some difficult
choices. OA: Despite these kinds of hurdles, you seem to
have a great deal of optimism...
GW: Peoples' concerns about climate change, about nuclear
waste, about how electricity is generated are presenting
opportunities for new structures and new sources of power.
When we start to show how literally anyone can get involved
-- through organizing and empowering people -- that really
gets my juices flowing.
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