US Gaining Energy Independence

Posted by Tom Ranken | No Comments | Categories: Complete Digest, Industry News

Source:  Rich Miller, Asjylyn Loder and Jim Polson, Bloomberg News, Seattle Times, February 8, 2012.

NEW YORK — The United States is the closest it has been in almost 20 years to achieving energy self-sufficiency, a goal the nation has been pursuing since the 1973 Arab oil embargo triggered a recession and led to lines at gasoline stations.

Domestic oil output is the highest in eight years. The United States is producing so much natural gas that, where the government warned four years ago of a critical need to boost imports, it now may approve an export terminal. Methanex, the world’s biggest methanol maker, said it will dismantle a factory in Chile and reassemble it in Louisiana to take advantage of low natural-gas prices. And higher mileage standards and federally mandated ethanol use, along with slow economic growth, have curbed demand.

The result: The United States has reversed a two-decade-long decline in energy independence, increasing the proportion of demand met from domestic sources over the past six years to an estimated 81 percent through the first 10 months of 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the Department of Energy. That would be the highest level since 1992.

“For 40 years, only politicians and the occasional author in Popular Mechanics magazine talked about achieving energy independence,” said Adam Sieminski, who has been nominated by President Obama to head the U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Now it doesn’t seem such an outlandish idea.”

The transformation, which could see the country become the world’s top energy producer by 2020, has implications for the economy and national security — boosting household incomes, jobs and government revenue; cutting the trade deficit; enhancing manufacturers’ competitiveness; and allowing greater flexibility in dealing with unrest in the Middle East.

U.S. energy self-sufficiency has been steadily rising since 2005, when it hit a low of 70 percent, the data compiled by Bloomberg show. Domestic crude-oil production rose 3.6 percent last year to an average 5.7 million barrels a day, the highest since 2003, according to the Energy Department. Natural-gas output climbed to 22.4 trillion cubic feet in 2010 from 20.2 trillion in 2007, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission warned of the need for more imports. Prices have fallen more than 80 percent since 2008.

At the same time, the efficiency of the average U.S. passenger vehicle has helped limit demand. It increased to 29.6 miles per gallon in 2011 from 19.9 mpg in 1978, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The last time the United States achieved energy independence was in 1952. While it still imported some petroleum, the country’s exports, including of coal, more than offset its imports.

The expansion in oil and natural-gas production isn’t without a downside. Environmentalists say hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — in which a mixture of water, sand and chemicals is shot underground to blast apart rock and free fossil fuels — is tainting drinking water.

The drop in natural-gas prices is also making the use of alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and nuclear power less attractive, threatening to link the United States’s future even more to hydrocarbons to run the world’s largest economy.

Still, those concerns probably won’t be enough to outweigh the benefits of greater energy independence.

Stepped-up oil output and restrained consumption will lessen demand for imports, cutting the nation’s trade deficit and buttressing the dollar, said Sieminski, who is chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank in Washington.

With the price of a barrel of oil at about $100, a drop of 4 million barrels a day in oil imports — which he said could happen by 2020, if not before — would shave $145 billion off the deficit. Through the first 11 months of last year, the trade gap was $513 billion, according to the Commerce Department. Crude for March delivery settled at $96.91 a barrel yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Read the full article here.

Wind Power in Washington

Posted by Tom Ranken | 1 Comment | Categories: Complete Digest, Industry News

Source: American Wind Energy Association, published August 2011, in Seattle Business Magazine, print edition, February 2012.

• Washington was an early leader in the wind industry and ranks fifth in the nation for installed capacity
• Currently online: 2,357 Megawatts (MW)
• Added in 2011: 151 MW
• Added in 2010: 297 MW
• Under construction: 343 MW
• Wind projects in queue: 5,831 MW
• Percentage of Washington power provided by wind in 2010: 4.6%
• Equivalent number of homes Washington wind farms now power: 625,000
• State wind resource: 18,479 MW at 80 meters hub heights
• According to a resource assessment from the National Renewable Energy Lab, Washington’s wind resource could provide 64 percent of the state’s current electricity needs.

Washington State Ranks 5th for LEED Buildings

Posted by Tom Ranken | No Comments | Categories: Complete Digest, Industry News

The metrics: Our list is based on official U.S. Census data from 2010, and square footage totals were crunched by our LEED Operations team.

Why per capita? Buildings are for people, so by looking at the hard data with the population they serve in mind creates a snapshot of the states that excelertate their portfolio of LEED-certified places to work, play, learn, live, heal, etc. in 2011.

Why did we include 11 entries in the top 10 list? Since D.C. is a federal district and not a state, we wanted to cover all the bases and make sure we included 10 states, but also underscore the District’s leadership in green building.

Why does D.C. eclipse the other states per by such a large margin? A few reasons. Although Washington, D.C. is a very small geographic area compared to U.S. states, the District packs in a substantial amount of green buildings due in part to the tremendous leadership from the government (nearly 30% of all LEED projects are government-owned or occupied LEED buildings, and the federal government alone owns and operates some 500,000 buildings) . On top of that, D.C. has a low residential population in comparison to the number of buildings it contains, on account of its small size and high commuter rate from Virginia and Maryland.

The rankings above reflect many buildings, but some notable, newly certified projects in 2011 include the Treasury Building in Washington, DC which is distinguished as the oldest LEED-certified project in the world; the LEED Platinum Casey Middle School in Boulder, CO; the iconic Wrigley Building in Chicago, IL; Frito-Lay in Lynchburg, VA, which earned LEED Gold for the operations and maintenance of an existing building; the LEED Silver Hard Rock Café in Seattle, WA; Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis, MD; Yawkey Distribution Center of The Greater Boston Food Bank in MA; the LEED Gold Austin Convention Center in TX; SFO’s LEED Gold Terminal 2 in San Francisco, CA; the LEED Platinum Hotel Skylar in Syracuse, NY; and the LEED Platinum Marquette Plaza in Minneapolis, MN.

In terms of totals, there are more than 44,000 commercial projects participating in LEED, comprising more than 8 billion square feet of construction space in all 50 states and 120 countries.