Chicago Plants the World’s Largest Urban Solar Farm
Chicago’s sprawling south side, once thrumming with steel mills and factories, is now covered by large swaths of weedy land strewn with the rubble of faded industries. But last year, a 40-acre patch not far from what was once home to the famous Pullman rail car factory sprouted a crop of 32,000 solar panels. The photovoltaic arrays move automatically to follow the sun, a glistening aberration in an otherwise drab and decrepit landscape. This is the country’s — and perhaps the world’s — largest "urban solar farm," and since December it has been generating up to 10 megawatts of clean electricity to help power a metropolis better known for its archaic dirty coal plants. Industry executives, environmentalists, and city officials — who don’t always find themselves on the same side of an issue — hope it will inspire other solar plants throughout polluted Rust Belt cities. Today Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Exelon CEO John Rowe will lead an official unveiling of the plant. Daley has touted it as part of the city’s plan to take action on climate change and hailed it as a job creator in tough economic times. The Chicago plant hired a handful of permanent employees and about 200 union construction jobs, 44 percent of which were awarded to minorities. Large solar plants of 5 megawatts or more are common in Europe and the southwestern United States but usually aren’t built in highly populated areas. Denis Lenardic, the Slovenia-based editor of widely respected annual reports on the solar industry, said the Chicago project is likely the largest of its kind in the world. Advocates hope the Chicago project shows that solar plants don’t have to be massive and remote — they can be built on abandoned industrial sites or unused land owned by water treatment plants. Putting solar plants close to transmission lines and power users is highly efficient and improves the availability of power for local users in case of downed lines or other problems on the grid. Though not as sunny as the American southwest, the Chicago area’s solar resources are roughly equivalent to or even better than those of Germany and Spain, the world leaders in solar generation. The swiveling panels at the Chicago plant, built by SunPower Corp. and billed as "the most powerful on the planet," generate 30 percent more energy than typical fixed-base panels. The Chicago plant’s maximum capacity of 10 megawatts isn’t much in the larger scheme of things — enough for just 1,500 homes in a city of three million. And during the winter, generation is usually below capacity. But proponents would like to see a host of similar solar farms peppering pockets of empty land in metropolitan areas, providing 5 megawatts here, 10 megawatts there, adding up to a significant energy output. SunPower vice president of public policy Julie Blunden describes them as potential "urban infill." Neighbors of the south side plant say they are thrilled with the investment and symbol of green energy in their back yard. "You hear so much about NIMBYism, here we actually got YIMBYism. We were very welcomed by the community," Blunden said. "We came in and provided clean energy and some jobs, using local labor and local steel." As clean energy has become more desirable and cost-competitive, solar panels have sprouted on the rooftops of houses, government buildings, and big box stores in major cities. This type of solar power is called "distributed generation," with panels providing electricity for a given building or complex and often sending energy back to the grid if the panels generate more than the building uses. Solar plants, by contrast, generate electricity that goes directly to the grid and is sold by a local utility. In northern Illinois, the electricity from Exelon plants is distributed by ComEd. Illinois previously got just 3.3 megawatts of electricity from solar, meaning the Exelon project increased state solar capacity four-fold. Solar generation is driven in part by state renewable energy portfolio standards. Illinois’s standard mandates that 25 percent of the state’s electricity must be generated from renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2025. Six percent of that must come from solar by 2015. That would mean about 750 megawatts of solar power, or more than 70 plants like the south side one in the next five years. The Illinois Power Agency, a government body, is responsible for buying power from different generation companies to make sure that the state complies with the RPS. But larger-scale projects like the one on Chicago’s south side will only become commonplace if they end up being cost-effective, experts say. Exelon was counting on three types of government incentives to make the Chicago solar plant viable. A federal loan guarantee fell through, but company officials say they are still committed to the plant as an experimental "demonstration project." Whether they would build more in the future remains to be seen. "The economics are such that we need the federal incentives," said Exelon senior vice president Tom O‘Neill. "Without these incentives, the cost structure exceeds the revenue." Henry Henderson, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Midwest program, said it’s only logical that the government back clean energy. Coal-fired power plants might seem cheaper, but actually, fossil fuels such as coal come with all kinds of hidden costs in the form of air pollution, human health problems, and global warming, he said. Henderson appreciates the symbolism of cutting- edge energy generation on the city’s now-ragged far south side, which once produced luxury rail cars for the nation. "Pullman was very innovative in its time," he said. "This is a way of doing something innovative now within a place that drove the transformation of our transportation system in the 19th century. How do we take that legacy and turn it into a point of productivity again? It’s recycling at the most important scale."
More here:
Chicago Plants the World’s Largest Urban Solar Farm
Environmental Groups Join Supreme Court Fight Over Asian Carp
Some of the nation’s largest environmental groups have joined a Supreme Court battle aimed at stopping the destructive Asian carp from infesting the Great Lakes. The Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Alliance for the Great Lakes filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Friday supporting Michigan’s request that the U.S. Supreme Court reopen a nearly century-old case dealing with the diversion of water from Lake Michigan into Chicago-area canals. Those canals are providing an outlet for Asian carp to enter the Great Lakes, potentially devastating the region’s water quality and $7 billion fishing industry. Michigan and the environmental groups argue that the Supreme Court should appoint a "special master" — an expert in water law, shipping, or related fields — to decide whether to temporarily close the locks on Chicago-area canals and create an ecological separation between the Mississippi River and Great Lakes basins (meaning that fish and other marine life couldn’t pass from one to the other). "Having the Supreme Court available as this neutral arbiter of disputes among states would take it out of this world we’re in now where we’re being asked by the state of Illinois and the Army Corps to just trust them," said NRDC staff attorney Thom Cmar. "There are all sorts of reasons why we’re concerned we can’t simply trust them." Disputes Over Economic Impact Illinois and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have balked at the idea of temporarily closing the navigational locks while seeking a longer-term solution. They say they’re worried about the economic impact; the Chicago-area canals are an important shipping corridor for the region. But on Thursday, experts released a study showing that a temporary closure of the locks would have a much smaller economic impact than previously thought — less than $70 million annually, versus the Army Corps’ estimate of $190 million. John Taylor, an associate professor of supply chain management at Wayne State University in Detroit, and James Roach, a consultant formerly with the Michigan Department of Transportation, said lock closure would affect less than 1 percent of Chicago-area freight. They say trains and trucks could take on the cargo that needs to bypass the locks, a change that would only increase truck traffic by 10 percent. They found that waterway traffic has dropped significantly in the Chicago system (as well as nationally) in recent years, and closing the locks and transferring cargo via an expanded intermodal system would actually create more jobs than would be lost. In 2008, the Alliance for the Great Lakes released a study that found significant support among industry groups and other stakeholders for such a move. NRDC’s Cmar said the Army Corps’ $190 million estimate refers to the overall value of shipping on the Illinois River system, including the canals that connect with Lake Michigan. In reality, it is likely the river and canals could still be used for much shipping — including coal delivery to two Chicago power plants — even if locks were closed. At a February 12 public hearing in Chicago, water taxi owners, cruise boat operators, and employees of other waterway-related industries worried that their jobs would be lost if the locks are closed. But experts say closure would not necessarily mean that the waterway would be unusable. Reopening an Old Lawsuit At the Supreme Court, Michigan and its allies are seeking to revive an old lawsuit, first filed in 1929, that challenged Chicago’s right to divert water from the Great Lakes in order to send its sewage to the Mississippi River instead of into Lake Michigan. The justices ruled at the time that Chicago could continue the diversion, but the suit could be reopened if other states could prove that it caused harm. Environmental groups and Michigan officials say ecological harm is now clearly imminent, thanks to the Asian carp. Originally imported to aid aquaculture in the South and accidentally allowed into the Mississippi River, from which they’ve spread continuously upstream, Asian carp are eating machines. Weighing in at up to 100 pounds, they consume up to 40 percent of their body weight daily by filter feeding on algae. Other fish can’t compete with their appetites. Their powerful bodies can also propel the carp high out of the water; they’ve been known to injure boaters with their acrobatics. Cmar argues the invasive species threat can be carefully addressed with a "surgical" approach to "avoid and minimize impacts to commerce and wastewater." He said temporary lock closure and/or ecological separation would not necessarily mean that Chicago would have to send its sewage to the lake, which would require higher treatment standards and greater expense. "To figure it out," he said, "you need a detailed understanding of how goods move through the system and how the system functions to flush Chicago wastewater toward the Mississippi." In the meantime, Cmar said NRDC and the state of Michigan are only asking for an unbiased study on the options — "to find the most effective way to solve the problem that balances all these competing concerns."
View original here:
Environmental Groups Join Supreme Court Fight Over Asian Carp
Great Lakes’ Asian Carp Crisis Deepens
Concerns about Asian carp invading the Great Lakes have already prompted states to sue each other before the U.S. Supreme Court and led to plans for a White House summit. But those worries were ratcheted up even higher this month with the discovery of Asian carp DNA in Lake Michigan’s Calumet Harbor. The environmental DNA (known as eDNA — more on that later) had already been found in multiple spots between Lake Michigan and the electric barrier in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal designed to block the voracious invaders and keep them from ravaging the Great Lakes’ ecosystem. With the latest discovery, environmental groups have renewed their calls to sever (ecologically speaking) the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River watershed. The two systems were linked by canal more than a century ago so that Chicago could dump its sewage, diluted with Lake Michigan water, into the Mississippi River and keep the Great Lakes clean. The most effective ecological separation, at least in the short term, would involve temporarily closing the locks between the canals and Lake Michigan and erecting barriers in other waterways without locks in order to impede the carp’s progress. In December, Michigan filed a lawsuit backed by other states demanding emergency closure of the locks until a permanent means of ecological separation can be found. Officials fear for water quality and the $7 billion Great Lakes fishing industry if the invaders reach Lake Michigan. Asian carp have damaged every U.S. waterway they’ve entered, outcompeting native species as they voraciously vacuum up plankton, and injuring boaters with their propensity for powerful leaps out of the water. But on January 19, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Michigan’s request for immediate action without explanation, leading two lawmakers from the state, Republican Congressman David Camp and Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow, to introduce the CARP ACT, which stands for Close All Routes and Prevent Asian Carp Today. It seeks the emergency closure of the locks and additional underwater barriers. The Supreme Court could still act on a broader aspect of Michigan’s request, which demands an end to the so-called "Chicago diversion" of Lake Michigan water. That suit was filed by Great Lakes states in 1922. In its decision at the time to leave the waterway intact, the Supreme Court left open the possibility that it could change its mind if the diversion were shown to cause harm. Michigan resuscitated the suit in December, in the face of strong opposition from the state of Illinois and industry groups that claim closing the canal would hamper shipping and flood control. Skeptics question whether the DNA that’s raising alarm bells could have been transported past the barrier on boats or barges or through Chicago’s sewer system. The Army Corps of Engineers has noted that no actual Asian carp have been found past the electric barrier. But scientists with the Nature Conservancy and University of Notre Dame, who developed the eDNA test, say the discovery of DNA in multiple tests means that Asian carp have indeed breached the barrier. Fish slough off DNA in scales, feces, urine, and mucus. Since last summer, scientists have taken hundreds of 2-liter water samples from the canals, rivers, and harbors connected to Lake Michigan. They can amplify bits of DNA taken from the biological material in the water samples and compare them with Asian carp DNA. David Lodge, the director of Notre Dame’s Center for Aquatic Conservation, says scienctists don’t know how long the DNA stays in water, and the tests can’t tell them how many fish might be in a particular lake or river. "It’s a pretty blunt instrument at the moment," Lodge says. "All it tells us is there were fish here." In the case of the Great Lakes, even that small indication is enough to make officials sweat. The Asian carp crisis has now made it all the way to the Oval Office (which is currently occupied by a Chicagoan, after all). President Obama’s top environmental advisor recently proposed an "Asian carp" summit with Great Lakes governors in early February, and state attorneys general are demanding invitations. The White House has called Asian carp a serious threat — but so far has supported Illinois in the dispute. Closing all of the Chicago-area locks would entail cooperation from the federal Army Corps of Engineers, as well as state and municipal governments. NRDC Midwest program director Henry Henderson said policymakers should take this opportunity to re-engineer an outdated shipping system that is economically inefficient and environmentally dangerous. NRDC recommends replacing the canals with a new intermodal facility that would transfer cargo from barges and ships to trucks, trains and other barges. "Looking at Asian carp as the problem instead of the alarm bell unnecessarily truncates the solution," Henderson said. "It’s not like two species of Asian carp are the problem — this 19th century canal system has been revealed to be unambiguously a highway for invasive species."
Continue here:
Great Lakes’ Asian Carp Crisis Deepens