Sun Day Analysis: Renewables Account for 11% of US Energy Production

More than 60% of Washington state electrical production is hydropower. Washington's RPS does not identify in-stream hydropower as renewable. Local politicians are arguing that the state already meets the standard defined under I-937 and no more money should be spent on other renewables. This local claim of ownership of a national resource is typical of water-energy issues. The water in the Columbia River does have renewable energy content, if it flows through a turbine at a dam. Water which is diverted around the turbines for fish passage, lock operation, flood control, loses some or all of that potential energy. Water removed from the river for irrigation or municipal uses, loses all of its renewable energy value and requires large additional energy inputs to pump to the fields and cities.
Water and energy are inextricably linked in every practical energy production technology, either in operation or manufacturing. Hydropower is the obvious nexus of the discussion of renewable energy. While both renewable and clean, hydropower is not sustainable over centuries.. Hoover Dam operations and Lake Mead water levels tell the story quite well.

Some this renewable energy is already being delivered to California and the southwest via the underutilized HVDC transmission system across Oregon. Should legally mandated river operations be changed and should more cheap hydroelectricity be sold to western states to meet their RPS requirments? It depends on who you ask, but Washington and Oregon farmers generally say NO! with prejudice.

The US continues to allow utility monopolies to add mainly only windpower, which conveniently for them is too unreliable to replace their need for coal and nuclear plants. From 1994 to 2008, windpower grew about 750%; compared to about 20% for solar and practically nothing for hydropower, biomass and geothermal – even though these three were the largest renewable energies before 1994 and also the lowest-cost and most reliable base-load alternatives. Now this article says for the first four months of 2009, the nation continued to add mainly only windpower. Hydropower did increase some, but I suspect the utility monopolies did most of the building and continued to block independent hydropower production. Thus, I believe we can conclude that the corrupt US continues to allow utility monopolies to block independent hydropower, biomass and geothermal production, so they can soon return to building coal and nuclear plants.

The RPS's(renewable portfolio standards) that Or and Wa have are designed to encourage renewable generation when utilities biuld new generation. The exclusion of existing large hydro from qualifying as part of the "standard" is only because if it was included, each of the PNW's utilities, which currently have large portions of their generation portfolio's made up of Hydro, some having 60%,some having 80%, some having 90%, some are 100%, would have created a major imbalance in the utilities future renewable needs at the get go. Excluding it makes everyone start at the same starting line. No one ever suggested Hydro wasn't renewable. It just doesn't qualify for the new generation standard.

Dennis and Don,
good points made, I was not keyed into these facts.

I had read that Hydro did not count because of the large energy used to build the cement or earth dams and biomass area lost because of the land use and thus forest-crop area lost and thus C02.
I was suspect of this because of the long life of the dams and that H20 also has biomass i.e, algae etc.
Are their any facts/numbers/studies to quantify this.
Should Hydro get some fraction assigned to its energy output? For example .681? That would take into account the average biomass lost, overall or for a region? Any boater-fisherman would tell you the area is not lost.
A positive or negative C02 removal index should be developed for all types of energy. Negative for Co2 creators, Positive for renewables, removal index to keep good associated with renewables and negative for fuel based. Per M-Watt, M-watt-hour, or dimensionless. For instance biomass generated biofuels would still be a negative number but would be much smaller fraction compared to oil or coal based energy production. Coal based energy production but with algae Sequestering C02 flue gas scrubing wouls show as a fraction compared to plain old coal.
All types could be sorted into a list for easy understanding of all people. From academicians to the common man could all easily understand, even politicians (sorry could not resist).
Food and fuel farming could be rated as well ( C02 removal +,-/ energy use or just raw, both) based on the type of energy input, food-fuel output type, if charcoal production and tilling back into the soil was used for instance we could rate all these inputs outputs and their relative C02 index's compounded we could a C02 food and fuel index that could be sorted and used for trading credits. consumers could buy food and fuel, making informed decisions quickly if these indexes were placed on labels on packaging and at the pump, on the utility bill, congress persons voting record...

This C02 index would allow subsistence farmers to help save the planet from the coming destruction by giving them a financial incentive to produce charcoal and till back into the land. As they cannot afford to be forward thinking when all resources are used just for survival.
By getting Carbon offset credits that can be monetized into local currencies most all peoples around the world would immediately start to do this. after one or two seasons their land output would increase giving positive feedback to their income and their realization to their new found empowerment of positive change for the planet via carbon sequestration.

This also applies to small and large farming operations to!

Consumers would have a powerful and positive force by buying energy, fuels, and foods that have the highest positive C02 reduction index )or the lowest negative one). people would passably more for a higert index value for the same quality product (or a lower price for a more negative one ).

Everyone would have a positive force at their disposal if these types of gauges were available that met the two second rule.

Dennis,
If we build large flues that circumvent the dams and add stream based energy harvesters into them we could recover a large fraction of the lost potential energy of the diverted water around dams and save the fish populations as well.
If large enough they could be used while sediment is removed from dams that erode their value over time. This could be a way to add back the natural sediment into rivers that are part of the natural process and life of the ecosystems of rivers.
It could be managed in a holistic way that both producted energy and sustained-improves the life-ecosystems of our rivers.