In NY heeft investering van $1173M besparing van 650MW opgeleverd

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

In NY heeft investering van $1173M een besparing van 650MW electriciteit
opgeleverd (en blijft dit ook in de toekomst doen, dat is de clu!!)
Dat scheelt een hele energiecentrale, voor een éénmalige kostenpost.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/nyregion/29sbc.html

December 29, 2008
Obscure Fee Pays for Efficient-Energy Projects
By KEN BELSON

It is an inscrutable abbreviation often overlooked on electric bills:
SBC/RPS. For the typical New York City apartment dweller, it amounts to
$1.08 a month, barely enough for a cup of coffee.

But the SBC portion, which stands for System Benefits Charge, helped an
entrepreneurial couple in Binghamton revive a foreclosed ice rink, created
a $1 million-a-year cottage industry of energy audits for a midsize
engineering firm near Albany and has provided rebates to at least 19
laundromats that bought energy-efficient air-conditioners and lights.

Introduced in 1998 as a way to reduce the strain on the state’s electric
grid and reduce environmental damage, the fee was nearly doubled in
October, to 0.30 cent per kilowatt-hour from 0.18 cent. Those fractions of
pennies are expected to bring in $350 million this year, up from $178
million each of the last two years and $89 million a year before that.

An analysis of how the money has been used over the past decade shows that
a disproportionate amount goes upstate: Con Edison customers paid half of
the state’s total SBC charges, while 41 percent of the rebates, loans and
other benefits handed out by the New York State Energy Research and
Development Authority went to the areas of New York City and Westchester
County covered by Con Ed. At the same time, customers of National Grid,
the utility that serves northern and western New York State, contributed
about one-quarter of the SBC funds, yet a third of the benefits went to
their area.

And some of the money goes to arm’s-length initiatives that do not
directly reduce energy use. Nearly $20 million has been spent on
advertising campaigns designed to persuade New Yorkers to install compact
fluorescent bulbs and use their air-conditioners sparingly. Another $11.5
million went to feasibility studies for businesses considering new
equipment. Nearly $500,000 was spent on brochures, annual reports and
other printing costs.

More than $100 million, however, has been spent on at least 45 power
systems that recycle the steam produced by natural gas generators, which
have been installed in office towers in Manhattan, including The New York
Times Building, a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant in Queens and Voila Bakeries
in Brooklyn. Some $21 million in low-interest loans went to temples and
churches, health care facilities like the Odd Fellow & Rebekah Rehab
center in Lockport, and an array of businesses, from the Chocolate Gecko
in Albany to a Remington firearms plant in Ilion. And $537,240 helped the
city of Syracuse replace its incandescent traffic lights with LED signals
that save more than four million kilowatt-hours a year.

“The crime is that people don’t know about these programs,” said Rusty
Shriner, who manages the Palisades Ice Rink in West Nyack, which received
$108,584 from the authority in 2004 and 2005.

The rink used the SBC money to buy a new condenser that freezes ice
efficiently; ceiling insulation; a system that recovers heat from the
refrigeration machinery and reuses it to supply hot water; and a system
that automates the electrical machinery, cutting the rink’s electric costs
by about 40 percent. “Ice rinks run on slim margins,” Mr. Shriner said,
“so controlling energy costs is probably the most important thing you can
do.”

Through 2005, $41.4 million in SBC funds was used to reimburse New Yorkers
who installed solar panels and wind turbines; since then, such rebates
have been paid for with money from the other half of the SBC/RPS line
item, the Renewable Portfolio Standard, which is on track to collect $62
million in 2008.

In all, the authority estimates that SBC money has paid for items that
have reduced electricity demand during the past decade by 650 megawatts,
or about what a big power plant can produce. Another 550 megawatts can be
saved by commercial users who have signed up for authority programs
offering reimbursements for turning down lights, air-conditioners and
other electricity hogs. The agency says that these programs have created
4,700 jobs over the past decade and that they helped utility customers
save $570 million in 2007.

The 250-employee agency, with its own inscrutable acronym, Nyserda, is
governed by the Public Service Commission, whose five members are
appointed by the governor. But as its pool of money from utility fees has
deepened, a growing number of state lawmakers have tried to bring it under
their control, arguing that the SBC charges amount to a tax imposed by
unelected officials with little public input.

“It has become larger and far more significant, which is why I thought it
should be on budget,” said Assemblyman Kevin A. Cahill, a Democrat
representing Dutchess and Ulster Counties who is chairman of the energy
committee and said he plans to introduce legislation to that effect next
year. “We’ve reached a point where larger policy considerations should be
considered. It shouldn’t be a mini-pork barrel.”

The pool of energy efficiency funds could grow again next year when the
state carves up the estimated $200 million that power producers are
expected to pay for carbon credits.

Con Edison and city officials have also argued that New Yorkers deserve a
greater slice of the energy efficiency pie. Nyserda, they say, has not
done a good enough job to help New Yorkers get its rebates and loans,
which are disbursed on a first-come-first-served basis; they note that the
agency has 14 people working out of a single office in the city. A
spokesman for Nyserda said that the staff had grown from nine last year
and would be up to 18 next year.

In June, the Public Service Commission also agreed to give the state’s
utility companies, including Con Edison, direct control of about half the
money raised by the increase in SBC fees, with each expected to finance
energy-efficiency projects in their own areas. And Con Ed’s chief
executive was recently appointed to the Nyserda board.

Tom Lynch, a spokesman for the agency, said that where SBC dollars are
spent was less important than the overall effects of increasing energy
efficiency. If businesses in, say, Rochester, save a megawatt of
electricity, then that megawatt is free to be sent to New York City.

“Plus, when you reduce electricity usage through energy efficiency,” he
said, “you take off some of the marginal, dirtier power plants, so you’re
cleaning up the air at the same time.”

Ford Fessenden, Daniel E. Slotnik and Tom Torok contributed reporting

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