Puerto Rico issues microgrid rules

Puerto Rico issues microgrid rules, gives PREPA 120 days to establish interconnection rules - New Energy Events

Puerto Rico regulators take important steps to lay the groundwork for developing a microgrid industry as they issued final microgrid rules just five months after draft rules were released. The Puerto Rico Energy Commission issued the rules (CEPR-MI-2018-0001), ordering the utility PREPA to establish interconnection rules in 120 days. Until these rules are in place, only off-grid cooperative or personal microgrids are legal.

The new rules establish classes of microgrids, define types of generation they can use, and clarify the role of utilities and municipalities. Jared Leader, SEPA senior associate for utility strategy, issued a brief Friday describing the three classes of microgrids that can be developed under the rules.

Personal microgrids, which will provide power to one or two consumers and can, with PREC permission, provide excess energy and grid services to neighboring customers
Cooperative microgrids, which will serve three or more cooperative members, under two subcategories, small co-op microgrids of less than 250 kW or large co-op microgrids of more than 250 kW. Like personal microgrids, co-op microgrids can sell excess energy and services to others.
Third-party microgrids, which have owners or operators who sell energy services to customers under rates approved by PREC and set on a project-by-project basis. Owners can earn a reasonable rate of return for the first three years of operation.
Humanitarian workers, non-profits and private companies have cited the need for regulatory clarity and planning to build out a robust network of permanent microgrids.

The rules define ‘renewable microgrids’ as those that can generate 75 percent of their energy from renewables — solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower or biomass – and 25 percent from fossil fuels. A combined heat and power (CHP) microgrid must produce at least half of its total energy from the useful thermal energy captured from the plant. A hybrid microgrid may incorporate CHP and renewable systems, but the non-CHP system must generate 75 percent of its energy from renewables. Read More

NCCO announces Youth Video Competition

Belize: The National Climate Change Office (NCCO) invites interested young people (“Entrants”) to tell the country how they are shaping a more sustainable future by entering its second National Climate Change Youth Video Competition.

The National Climate Change Youth Video Competition highlights climate action by youth through videos, giving them a platform to share their successes and inspire other youths and policy-makers. The 2018 competition is stemming from the Global Youth Climate Video Competition which is co-organized by UN Climate Change, GEF-UNDP SGP and Connect4Climate, with support from BNP Paribas Foundation and the constituency of youth non-governmental organizations (YOUNGO).

This video competition offers an opportunity for Entrants to showcase their positive climate actions in order to inspire their community leaders and policy makers in Belize to address Climate Change.

Peruse the following: Entry guidelines, Entry form and the Official Rules for Youth Video Competition

Recycling is suffering from system failure; it's time for a system redesign

We are sacrificing our oceans and filling our landfills in the name of convenience. It's time to pay the bill.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “The U.S. recycling industry is breaking down.” Bob Tita writes:

Prices for scrap paper and plastic have collapsed, leading local officials across the country to charge residents more to collect recyclables and send some to landfills. Used newspapers, cardboard boxes and plastic bottles are piling up at plants that can’t make a profit processing them for export or domestic markets.
It all worked for a while as much of the recycling was shipped to China, where cheap labor made it possible to separate the pizza-covered boxes from the clean cardboard, but the government won’t let them do that anymore. So mixed paper that used to sell for $150 a ton now sells for $5. So instead, much of it is going to landfill.

Stuff is definitely getting thrown away in landfills. Nobody is happy about it,” said Dylan de Thomas, vice president of industry collaboration for the Recycling Partnership in Virginia. “There are very few landfill owners that don’t operate recycling facilities, too. They’d much rather be paid for those materials.”
Essentially, we have a system failure. All of which brings us back to the argument about recycling: who is it for? Who benefits? What do we do now? Read More

1st Ocean Risk Summit

IISD/ENB+ @ 1st Ocean Risk Summit | 9 May 2018 | Southampton, Bermuda

On Wednesday, participants of the Ocean Risk Summit met throughout the day to hear opening remarks, keynote speakers, and presentations on ocean risk, describing and analyzing the changing ocean, and addressing ocean volatility. Two ‘deep-dive’ sessions took place in the afternoon, where panelists addressed in round-table discussions the topics of weather and climate, and health and security.

José María Figueres, Former President of Costa Rica and Founder of Ocean Unite, welcomed the risk management sector to the extended family of ocean partners, explaining that the ocean-related complex threats require a multi-sectoral response.

The Hon. C. Walton Brown, Minister of Home Affairs, Bermuda, welcomed the wide array of stakeholders represented at the Summit, and encouraged participants to commit to creating lasting change.

H. E. Peter Thomson, UN Special Envoy for the Ocean, emphasized that the ocean is the source of life on the planet, elaborating on its decline by the accumulating effects of a wide range of human impacts.
Mike McGavick, CEO, XL Group, stressed that “the risks are moving ashore with ferocity,” estimating that US$320 billion were lost last year due to natural disasters, and urging action to reverse ocean degradation.
Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan underscored the need to “reverse the damage we have inflicted on the vital oceanic system,” stressing that the next decade will be crucial for securing a sustainable future.
Read More

Credit Rating Agency Issues Warning On Climate Change To Cities

One of the largest credit rating agencies in the country is warning U.S. cities and states to prepare for the effects of climate change or risk being downgraded.

In a new report, Moody's Investor Services Inc. explains how it assesses the credit risks to a city or state that's being impacted by climate change — whether that impact be a short-term "climate shock" like a wildfire, hurricane or drought, or a longer-term "incremental climate trend" like rising sea levels or increased temperatures.

Also taken into consideration: "[communities] preparedness for such shocks and their activities in respect of adapting to climate trends," the report says.

"If you have a place that simply throws up its hands in the face of changes to climate trends, then we have to sort of evaluate it on an ongoing basis to see how that abdication of response actually translates to changes in its credit profile," says Michael Wertz, a Moody's vice president.

(https://www.npr.org/2017/12/01/567843604/credit-rating-agency-issues-warning-on-climate-change-to-cities?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social

When will the world’s polluters start paying for the mess they made?

The climate wars have begun and we call to you from its front line. Climate change is not a concept or a future risk, it is our reality.

A few months ago, Hurricane Maria caused economic losses and damages of 226% of Dominica’s GDP. Only two years before, Tropical storm Erika cost Dominica 90% of GDP, and Tropical Cyclone Pam battered Vanuatu, costing 64% of Vanuatu’s GDP. Last year Bangladesh suffered the worst flooding in a century covering one third of the country and affecting 11 million people, and in 2007 and 2009 Tropical Cyclones Sidr and Aila devastated Bangladesh. High coastal tides have reached deep inland in the Seychelles, threatening its economic livelihood.

Warmer seas have made tropical storms and coastal flooding more destructive than before, and that is before we consider the human costs of lost lives, homes, roofs, jobs and livelihoods. The trauma of monumental disasters cost lives long after the disaster passes.

We choose to be captains of our fate. We are endeavouring to waterproof our livelihoods and societies. But to do so will cost more than 100% of our GDP. We cannot do so overnight and yet each day takes us closer to the next hurricane, cyclone or monsoon. Climate change is relentless for us.

It is not only unjust that we should pay the costs of loss and damage from a climate change we did not cause, this very iniquity is a force behind climate change. As long as those who profit from the production of greenhouse gases are not those who suffer its most extreme consequences, climate change will accelerate. Soon the whole world will be affected, but soon it will be too late. Read More

Get the science right

The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest | The New Yorker

In 2005, however, at a conference in Hokudan, a Japanese geologist named Yasutaka Ikeda had argued that the nation should expect a magnitude 9.0 in the near future—with catastrophic consequences, because Japan’s famous earthquake-and-tsunami preparedness, including the height of its sea walls, was based on incorrect science. The presentation was met with polite applause and thereafter largely ignored. Now, Goldfinger realized as the shaking hit the four-minute mark, the planet was proving the Japanese Cassandra right.

The next full-margin rupture of the Cascadia subduction zone will spell the worst natural disaster in the history of the continent.

For a moment, that was pretty cool: a real-time revolution in earthquake science. Almost immediately, though, it became extremely uncool, because Goldfinger and every other seismologist standing outside in Kashiwa knew what was coming. One of them pulled out a cell phone and started streaming videos from the Japanese broadcasting station NHK, shot by helicopters that had flown out to sea soon after the shaking started. Thirty minutes after Goldfinger first stepped outside, he watched the tsunami roll in, in real time, on a two-inch screen.

In the end, the magnitude-9.0 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed more than eighteen thousand people, devastated northeast Japan, triggered the meltdown at the Fukushima power plant, and cost an estimated two hundred and twenty billion dollars. The shaking earlier in the week turned out to be the foreshocks of the largest earthquake in the nation’s recorded history. But for Chris Goldfinger, a paleoseismologist at Oregon State University and one of the world’s leading experts on a little-known fault line, the main quake was itself a kind of foreshock: a preview of another earthquake still to come. Read More