Hydropower makes splash as W&J energy center resumes series
Courtesy of W&J Center for Energy Policy and Management
The W&J Center for Energy Policy and Management kicked off its 12th academic years with a webinar on hydropower.
Courtesy of W&J Center for Energy Policy and Management
Corey Young, director of W&J’s Center for Energy Policy and Management, oversees CEPM’s 12th Energy Lecture Series.
Courtesy of W&J Center for Energy Policy and Management
W&J’s Center for Energy Policy and Management typically draws crowds for its lecture series, but started the new season with a virtual event on hydropower.
Michael Rooney, a vice president of Florida-based Rye Development, discussed renewable hydropower at W&J’s first Energy Series Lecture for the academic year.
Michael Rooney arose early Wednesday morning energized, prepared to tout a renewable energy source that is somewhat under the radar. He traveled via Zoom, from Seattle to the Washington & Jefferson College campus, to discuss hydropower.
“Only 3% of the 90,000 existing dams in the United States are used to generate hydropower,” he said from three time zones to the west. “Fourteen dams are not producing electricity, and we’re trying to retrofit them to get them active. The United States is moving toward a 100% renewable grid, using carbon-free assets.”
Rooney helped W&J’s Center for Energy Policy and Management kick off its Energy Lecture Series for a 12th academic year. The free event, conducted virtually, was titled “Clean Hydropower from the Three Rivers,” waterways Rooney knows well. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Allegheny College and a master’s at the University of Pittsburgh.
Rooney is vice president of project management for Rye Development, a West Palm Beach, Fla.-based firm that is a leading developer of new low-impact hydropower energy generation and energy storage.
“Low-impact hydropower and hydropower storage provide the only on-demand, 24/7 affordable source of energy,” he said of a source that also qualifies for renewable energy tax credits. “We’re quickly moving away from the electric grid that was being set up 100 years ago.”
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, “hydropower, or hydroelectric power, is one of the oldest and largest sources of renewable energy, which uses the natural flow of moving water to generate electricity. Hydropower currently accounts for 28.7% of total U.S. renewable electricity generation and about 6.2% of total U.S. electricity generation.”
Rye Development, to be sure, has its sights on the waterways of Southwestern Pennsylvania. “There is a series of locks and dams operating in the Pittsburgh area,” Rooney said. “This region has the third-busiest lock-and-dam usage in the United States.”
The company plans to upgrade existing dams on the Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio rivers, which are now used primarily for navigation. Rye, owned by a private equity, wants to add power generation that would provide clean energy for customers in the region, to Pitt and to Iron Mountain, a national data-storage company with which it recently signed a deal.
Rooney said the company has 11 projects on its to-do list for the Mon, Allegheny and Ohio rivers in the Pittsburgh region – an investment of nearly $1 billion.
“Hydropower is federally regulated,” Rooney said. He added that the bipartisan infrastructure bill has provided more than $2 billion to support this source “as a foundation of renewable base-load generation.”
Rooney has an interesting resume, which includes a decade of service in the nonprofit and higher education sectors. He was involved with a range of issues, from international development to environmental education.
More recently, he managed a diverse grant-making portfolio for the Hillman Family Foundations. That endeavor included heading the foundation’s energy and environment grant portfolio.