Time: 5:30 PM

Where: Birch Room, Wausau City Hall

Next meeting: Monday, June 11, 2012

Agenda 6-11-12

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With sales soaring, Epic invests in solar ‘farm’

By Thomas Content of the Journal Sentinel
June 5, 2011

Verona – By the end of the year, the largest solar project yet built in Wisconsin will take shape in the rolling countryside that Epic Systems calls home. And by the middle of next year, the new solar “farm” will double in size again. Clearly, Epic, a fast-growing provider of sought-after health care software that’s hiring 1,000 people just this year, doesn’t embrace small projects.

It’s more cost-effective to build a big renewable energy project than to come back later and expand it, said Bruce Richards, director of facilities and engineering. And it fits in with a green vision espoused by company founder and chief executive Judith Faulkner. “We were in a meeting, and I was discussing the payback on a particular project, thinking she might have some concerns,” said Bruce Richards, director of facilities and engineering at Epic. “But she didn’t hesitate. She said, ‘But once it’s paid off, the energy is free, right?’”

Epic clearly has the financial wherewithal to undertake a green-energy investment that other firms might seek state dollars to help fund. Officials declined to disclose the cost of the project.

The company is a developer of health care IT software that helps hospitals move toward electronic medical records. Epic sales grew 27% in 2010. Revenue reached $825 million in 2010, compared with $76 million in 2001.

Focused on sustainability

Epic is an economic engine that’s a Wisconsin outlier: A booming business that’s about as far from the state’s manufacturing heritage as you can get. The company is moving to wean itself off fossil fuels in a big way. Already, most buildings on the sprawling campus are heated and cooled with a ground-source heat pump system, which means the campus needs no natural gas for heating and no electricity for cooling in the summer. About 1,300 solar panels were erected in recent months on a latticelike structure above an employee parking lot. Faulkner picked the color of the lattice to match the deep blue light posts that dot downtown Verona, Richards said. The remaining parking spaces are underground, to retain the pastoral feel of the campus. The result, Richards tells a visitor walking between buildings across the complex, “You’re walking on a green roof right now.” Richards says the driver of the green campus and move for energy self-reliance comes from a vision of doing right by the planet. “Sustainability, that’s really what it’s all about,” he said. “We’re looking for 100-year sustainability here. Everything we do in design and put in, that’s what we’re looking to do.” It also is a statement by a firm looking to attract software engineers who could choose to work at places the likes of Google and Yahoo. Studies show employees in that demographic want their company to care about the planet. A company that wants software developers to shun the sunny Silicon Valley climate is offering its own alternative to Google’s solar panel-dominated corporate headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. “It’s really a Verona version of the Googleplex,” said Niels Wolter, a Madison solar power consultant. “Here’s another tech company headed up by engineers who believe in science and think climate change is happening, and they have the profit and the money to cover their campus with solar,” he said. What looks like a construction site on rolling hills won’t turn into another cookie-cutter subdivision with McMansions. Instead, workers are drilling deep underground to place 2,000 geothermal wells. Above ground, concrete foundations have been poured that will be the staging for solar panels that will be mounted 13 feet up. Why so high? To allow the land beneath the panels – and above the geothermal wells – to continue to be farmed, probably alfalfa.

Biggest solar site in state

By next summer, more than 7,500 new panels are expected to generate electricity, 2.2 megawatts, enough to power nearly 300 typical homes. That will be by far the biggest solar electric project in the state, and one of the largest in the upper Midwest. Until now, the largest projects have been Johnson Controls Inc.’s corporate headquarters in Glendale and the Photovoltaic Education Laboratory built last year by Milwaukee Area Technical College north of E. Capitol Drive. Together, they generate less than 1 megawatt. Yet, Epic is growing so fast that even thousands of solar panels won’t meet its total energy demand. The 500-acre site is seeing construction of a massive addition to its learning center, the centerpiece of which is a 10,000-square-foot auditorium to be built by 2013. The existing auditorium, which seats more than 5,000, isn’t big enough to accommodate the annual “users group” meeting that attracts Epic customers from around the country. Epic is eyeing other moves in its bid toward energy self-reliance. Under evaluation, Richards said, is construction of two utility-scale wind turbines that would generate up to 3 megawatts of electricity, as well as a biomass-to-energy project that would convert food waste and landscaping trimmings from the campus into energy. “We’re looking for 100-year sustainability here,” said Richards, who joined Epic after running the engineering department at General Motors Corp.’s Janesville Assembly Plant until the factory closed.

“We use as much green or recycled materials as we can, Look at the copper roofs on the buildings, that’s really for sustainability. It costs you more up front, but sustainability-wise it’s the right thing to do.” Leftover materials from construction projects are reused in unique forms around the campus. Here, ironworkers shaped the blue metal left over from the solar overhang into animal sculptures. There, a two-story “tree house” made with construction extras boasts a giant conference table and wireless Internet capability, ready for outdoorsy team meetings.

Uncertain times

Epic is embarking on its ambitious green-energy expansion at a time when Wisconsin’s renewable energy sector is facing uncertainty. Policies pushed by the administration of Republican Gov. Scott Walker are shifting away from the previous administration’s push to wean the state from an overreliance on electricity generated by coal, a key contributor of global warming gases. Moves to build more wind farms and generate more power from biomass have been pushed back. The state’s Focus on Energy program is under new management, and the state’s largest utility has scaled back on a renewable energy collaborative. The price of solar power has come down significantly in recent years, even though it still has a ways to go to make it cost-competitive with other forms of power, on a per-unit-of-energy basis. A federal SunShot strategy launched by Energy Secretary Steven Chu seeks to make technology investments to make solar cost-competitive within several years. On a smaller scale, Johnson Controls incorporated a similar geothermal-below-solar system design into its green corporate headquarters in Glendale. That campus became a showcase for some of the company’s energy-efficiency and renewable energy integration technologies. Other examples of major solar investments are found at Orion Energy Systems in Manitowoc, Menomonee Falls-based Kohl’s Corp. sites and GE Healthcare in Waukesha. “It’s cool to see corporate citizens are keeping solar going forward,” Wolter said. “It’s an interesting contrast, as this new administration is so pro-business and they’re cutting all this stuff, yet a lot of the cutting-edge businesses are doing solar.”

The Epic project

When it’s completed, the Epic Systems solar project will consist of nearly 9,000 solar panels, including 1,300 built this year and more than 7,500 more to be built by mid-2012.
In energy terms, Epic will generate a total of 2,560 kilowatts, or 2.5 megawatts.
Here’s how the other largest solar projects in Wisconsin stack up, along with the year they were built:

Milwaukee Area Technical College, Milwaukee, 2010: 540 kilowatts.
Johnson Controls, Glendale, 2008: 385 kilowatts
Orion Energy Systems, Manitowoc, 2010: 341 kilowatts
GE Healthcare Waukesha, 2008: 240 kilowatts

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By Thomas Content of the Journal Sentinel June 6, 2011

The Madison biofuels firm Virent Energy Systems Inc. said Monday it has developed a process to help the bottling industry make plastic bottles without petroleum.

The company said its chemical engineers have been able to produce paraxylene, also known as PX, from 100% renewable plant sugars. When combined with existing technology, this can allow manufacturers to offer 100% natural plant-based plastic bottles and packaging.

In a statement, Lee Edwards, Virent chief executive, said the work represents a “significant achievement for global leaders in consumer products. Our plant-based PX paves the way for 100% sustainable, recyclable products and packaging with complete freedom from crude oil.”

The technology uses a chemical process that converts plant-based sugars into molecules that Virent says are identical to those made from petroleum.

Virent said it’s working with potential partners and customers to explore large-scale commercial options to augment its 10,000-gallon-per-year demonstration plant in Madison.

Last week, the company announced a milestone in the liquid fuels arena — its work in conjunction with the National Advanced Biofuels Consortium to produce biogasoline from feedstocks that come from nonfood crops.

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Adapted from the UWSP Pointer
You might not know it, but many of common, everyday products used by all of us are in some way made with petroleum. Aspirin, bubble gum, dishwashing soap, toothpaste and shaving cream, among scores of other products, all contain petroleum to some extent. With a worldwide energy crisis and the knowledge that petroleum is a finite resource, trying to find alternative materials to produce products such as these is crucial.

This goal is one of many for the Wisconsin Institute for Sustainable Technology (WIST), an institution at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point that seeks to deliver sustainability solutions by combining research, education and laboratory services. At a recent colloquium lecture for Phi Kappa Phi, Paul Fowler, the executive director of WIST, laid out his organization’s plans for helping Wisconsin become a leader in sustainable development. Fowler spoke chiefly of the benefits of the non-traditional uses of Wisconsin’s agricultural and forest products. He especially referred to materials such as whey and methane in the dairy industry, and potato peelings in the potato industry, which are often produced in excess and disposed of, usually at a high cost.

“We’re really looking to explore within WIST the opportunities to say, let’s take some of this waste material which currently is disposed at a cost, it actually costs money to dispose of that material, or, at best, it’s a low-value feed supplement for the agriculture industry, and build some really substantial fuels,” Fowler stated. For example, whey contains a type of alcohol called a polyol that, in combination with other compounds, can produce a bio-derived polyurethane foam that is naturally fire-retardant.

WIST’s future goals for sustainability at UWSP are looking even brighter, as SGA recently decided to allocate to WIST the entirety of its previous funding to Naturewise, a Wisconsin Public Service program. For more information on WIST, go to www.uwsp.edu/WIST. See full article at http://pointeronline.uwsp.edu/news/1011/WIST.html.

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Adapted from the Stevens Point Journal
The completion of the city’s LED streetlight project should give the environment and taxpayers’ wallets a small break. The city began installing the new lights this summer, replacing one-third of the city’s streetlights. The city hopes to replace the remainder of the streetlights within the next three years. The city expects to save $100,000 per year in electricity bills when all the lights are replaced. The energy savings would pay for the bulbs in about eight to nine years.

“This is a tremendous opportunity to save the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Mayor Andrew Halverson said, “and the environmental benefit is tremendous. “The lights also will save about 9,000 to 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year. “Reducing carbon emissions and electricity usage “clearly is what the ‘eco’ in ‘eco-municipality’ is,” Halverson said.

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By Art Oksuita, Director of Operations at Stevens Point Brewery
The Stevens Point Brewery in partnership with Johnson Controls and Wisconsin Public Service Corporation’s Focus on Energy upgraded plant services to reduce our energy requirements. They replaced high wattage lamps in our warehouse, office and retail sales with energy efficient T-8’s. Steam traps were replaced and insulation was upgraded on steam and condensate lines. Motion sensors were installed in our warehouses for lighting and winter/summer controls were installed on exhaust fans to reduce exhausting of heated air in the winter. In addition, the brewery did a compressed air leak audit and made repairs to reduce their cost of compressed air. The brewery had expenditures in excess of $200,000 and received rebates from Focus on Energy of $40,000. The return on investment is expected to be less than two years.

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By Thomas Content of the Journal Sentinel March 11, 2011
Economic forces, such as oil priced above $100 and finite energy resources, will continue to drive the adoption of energy efficiency and non-fossil fuel energy technologies despite a partisan debate that has led to a stalemate in U.S. energy and climate policy, speakers at the eighth annual Green Energy Summit said Thursday.

Three examples from across the state:

• A Madison biofuels company working to develop drop-in ready renewable fuel produced from the sugars extracted from plants.

• A firm in Green Bay converting trash into pellets that can be burned in coal plants.

• Milwaukee’s sewerage district moving to power its treatment plant with renewable energy.

“Five to seven years ago, none of these projects would have existed,” said Art Harrington, an energy lawyer at Godfrey and Kahn. “A lot of this is being driven by the marketplace, with oil at $100 a barrel.”

Virent Energy Systems Inc. has more than 100 employees and is moving with investors such as Cargill, Shell and Honda to make a variety of fuels, including renewable jet fuel, said Aaron Imrie of Virent.

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District has started construction on a pipeline that will send landfill methane to the Jones Island sewage treatment plant, where it will be used to fire turbines that help it make renewable energy on site to power treatment operations. The bottom line will be reduced energy costs for the sewerage district and savings over the long term for district customers, said Kevin Shafer, executive director of MMSD.

Greenwood Fuels in Green Bay is converting labels and other waste products that otherwise are heading to landfills into pellets that can be burned along with coal in power plants, said Ted Hansen, director of operations.

“We call ourselves the nicotine patch for coal,” he said.

Beyond biofuels, the business of solar – which includes new entrant Helios USA, with its highly automated factory in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley – is seeing big investment.

Renewable energy sources have often been thought of as “outliers,” said Larry Kazmerski, head of science and technology partnerships at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.

“Now photovoltaic (solar-electric panels) and so many of these renewables are no longer outliers,” he said. “Solar PV is real, not only in the future, it’s real now. It’s almost a $50 billion a year industry.”

Hundreds of students and business representatives at the second day of the summit, which continues Friday at the Frontier Airlines Center, heard a call to action in favor of an energy transition from Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and author of books including “The End of Nature.”

Last year was the warmest year on record, he said, “and that heat was really remarkable: Nineteen nations set new all-time temperature records,” with Pakistan hitting 129 degrees for the first time.

A changing climate already can be seen, such as a drought in Russia that led the third-largest producer of wheat to stop exporting the grain, contributing to higher food prices.

Warming ocean temperatures can lead to more intense storms, such as those experienced last year in Pakistan, when monsoons and flooding left 4 million people homeless, McKibben said.

McKibben’s 350.org campaign is encouraging policy-makers to take steps to reduce the carbon concentration in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million – a level called for by climate scientists to avoid the most egregious effects of a warming planet.

Carbon emissions linked to fossil fuels that already have been burned to produce energy are projected to lead to warming temperatures and further climate change impacts, McKibben said.

“The point is, this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened and we are in the middle of it,” he said. “And at the moment, we’re not doing very much about it.”

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A Unique Laboratory

Beyond building new homes for residents who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina, Make It Right is a unique laboratory for testing and implementing new construction techniques, technologies and materials that will make green, storm resistant homes affordable and broadly available to working families in communities across America.

The Greenest Homes in America

Two years ago, the Make It Right site was totally devastated, scattered with remnants of peoples’ home, rows of concrete foundations and porch steps leading to nowhere. The only people living on the site were a few pioneering families in FEMA trailers. Today, the U.S. Green Building Council says Make It Right is building the largest, greenest neighborhood of single family homes in America. We have earned their highest distinction for energy efficiency and sustainability, LEED Platinum, by integrating and aggregating a variety of cutting edge construction materials and techniques.

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by Brian Merchant, Brooklyn, New York
on 02.16.11
It’s well-known that the coal-fired power plants that provide the US with 50% of its electricity also inflict significant damage on the environment and citizens’ health. Coal plants spew particulate emissions that cause asthma and other respiratory woes — and they’re responsible for tens of thousands of deaths every year. And then there’s the environmental damage inflicted during the process of extracting, transporting, and processing the stuff. And then, there’s coal’s contribution to climate change. All told, it costs the nation up to $500 billion a year. That’s the finding of a new Harvard study that, for the first time, examines the true cost of coal throughout its entire life cycle …

Clearly, the fact that coal contributes more global warming pollution than any other source in the nation is far from its only problem. But vested industry interests and its political allies have long claimed that coal is the cheapest energy source around — and if you look only at commodity prices on market exchanges, indeed, coal (sometimes) looks pretty cheap. Yet we know that’s only a small fraction of the true cost of coal.

Harvard professor Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment, has just released a paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences entitled “Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal.” Epstein symbolically announced the release of the study today aboard the Greenpeace ship the Arctic Sunrise, which is in the midst of its Coal Free Future Tour. I was on board as well to report on the event.

The study is the first to look at the major costs of coal from extraction to combustion. It finds that coal costs $74 billion a year in public health burdens in Appalachian communities alone. Those costs come from increased health care costs, deaths and injuries that result from mining and transporting coal, and the emissions generated during the coal’s combustion.

The emissions of pollutants elsewhere were deemed to cost up to $187.5 billion a year, again due to the health costs of cancer, lung disease, and respiratory sickness. Mercury impacts account for another $29.3 billion. Epstein and his team also looked at the cost of coal’s spectacular carbon emissions, in the form of various climate impacts, and the way it’s already effecting land use, energy consumption, and food prices across the nation. These costs are estimated at a conservative $205 billion.

Meanwhile, the costs of the spillage of toxic waste and its cleanup, the impact of coal on crops, property values, and tourism account for billions more — up to $18 billion a year. Add it all up, and you find that coal costs the nation up to half a trillion dollars a year.

“And this is an underestimate,” Epstein said.

In the conclusion of his speech, Epstein suggested some solutions. “What can we do? We need to phase out coal rapidly. We need to move rapidly with healthy solutions.” Which means, he says, smart growth in cities, more green buildings, clean energy, rooftop gardens, public transport, and communities connected with light rail. “It means more jobs, cleaner air, and healthier cities,” Epstein said.

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