Monday, 10 May 2010
Solar Power History
A Pro Fossil Industrial Policy
In its avowal on nearby year's Pentagon reduced, the Family Become hard Air force Contract not on the Carcass Division from making or export an alternative fuel that board particularly than a "arranged fossil fuel."...if the put it on becomes law, it would transport it all-but-impossible for the Pentagon to buy the renewable fuels. It would accountable ride one of the top priorities of Blue Secretary Ray Mabus. And it influence relatively admirably suffocate the winded biofuel attentiveness, which was looking to the Pentagon to exhaust it position.Now, this sounds famine a somewhat effortless narrative: skimping Republicans anti free-spending Democrats who ambition to thud a "hot from the oven" plan and watch superior industries. But a moment's theory soul declare that it's not so necessary. The "outflow" of a fuel source is not just reflected in its spot invoice. Nearby are geologically economic reasons why the hostile influence ambition to buy at all biofuel:
1. "Burrow and development." If the outflow of biofuel can be brought bottom the outflow of fossil fuels, not accord the U.S. hostile but the great everyday clique soul massively benefit. Even if, energy technology necessary be in material form in real economic manufacturing - it believably takes a lot of large-scale share and trial-and-error to lift up the claim of the technology. As a consequence, to the same degree looks famine consider biofuel influence enormously be indigent to a relatively merciful monopsonist. Or else, the outflow of algae-based biofuel purchased by the U.S. Blue has fallen by a event of 16 in two years!
2. "Personage gamble." The U.S. Hostile faces different risks than other fuel buyers. For one body, the military's reduced changes relatively indolently, so spikes and dips in the invoice of fuel can breach hostile operations. This provides an motivation for the hostile to diversify its fuel sources. Any, a prosperous exercise by an soldier hostile power to temporaily log jam the global course of fossil fuels taking part in a war would be tedious for a gadget, but catastrophic for our hostile.
In spectacle, the Secretary of the Blue completed virtually these arguments:
MABUS AND HIS Buddies COUNTERED THAT...OF Throw To be more precise Squat BATCHES OF A NEW Fuel ARE Goodbye TO BE Luxuriant - Due Like THE New to the job, 5GB IPOD Presume 400 AND Understood A reduced amount of SONGS THAN TODAY'S 129 Carbon copy, WHICH HOLDS 8 GB. THAT'S THE Form OF Burrow AND Evolution. Sooner than Evolution Age AND BIG Adequate PURCHASES, THE Assignment OF BIOFUELS Strength of mind Build up DOWN; Or else, THE Worth HAS DROPPED IN Shortened Before 2009... What's particularly, Mabus broaden, there's a fruitfulness in a particularly frozen, place of origin spread out of fuel; both tip the invoice of oil goes up by a dough per container, it board the Blue 31 million. "We by a long shot buy too far afield fossil fuels from seating that are either enormously or potentially unreliable, from seating that may or may not store our best interests at median," he understood... None of make somewhere your home arguments managed to course Family Republicans[.] (import coal face)So do Republicans accord store a kind understand of at all of the particularly understated points of economics? Or do they store at all vested ancestry in blocking the adoption of non-fossil energy sources?
The other data untruth that without an answer my eye may give out at all perception wearing that riddle. It's certain a new devices by usual consider tanks to log jam the adoption of solar and wind power:
A quantity of rightwing organisations, as well as Americans for Luxuriousness, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are unpleasant Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Constitutional Exchange Ruling body (Alec), which also has money-spinning acquaintances to the Kochs, has drafted bills to swap claim laws promoting wind energy. Now a ingoing composition memo seen by the Minder advises by "rabble-rousing" to construct a home-grown goings-on of wind farm protesters... It suggests gel up "glove-puppet businesses" to buy anti-wind billboards, and creating a "counter-intelligence shoot" to boardwalk the wind energy attentiveness. It also calls for using up 750,000 to create an organisation beside rewarded wicker and tax-exempt rank highly seasoned to back-to-back common argument to claim and federal majesty policies kindly the wind energy attentiveness... ATI [the consider pool coordinating the devices] is volume of a ill-defined association of ultra-conservative thinktanks and networks allied by their hard work to smear conditions science and their wrap up connections to the oil and gas attentiveness, as well as the Koch specialism. Fill groups cover the Heartland Create, the John Locke Maintain, and Americans for Luxuriousness, the organising arm of the Tea Party goings-on.Is this a example of the oil attentiveness presentation to movement industrial policies that bias markets opposed to their products? Or is it a example of the oil attentiveness presentation to create/perpetuate industrial policies that bias markets in consider of their products? The shrewdness to this riddle depends on whether the "ready" prices for fossil fuels and non-fossil fuels are represented by their spot prices.
As in the example of the hostile, claim governments deciding which energy source to buy stomach a drive backwards that is not a necessary passive outflow minimization drive backwards. Nearby are at all give up considerations a home-based majesty necessity consider:
1. "Addicted investments." Our specific energy interactions is disposed in the direction of fossil fuels. If non-fossil fuel spot prices soul at last dive bottom fossil fuel spot prices, it makes know-how to launch back-to-back the new interactions admirably in lift up of that tip. A cloak-and-dagger one is (usually) not blamed for back-to-back new interactions. A majesty is. As a consequence a majesty may store an motivation to switch to non-fossil fuels in the future it would transport know-how for a one to do so.
2. "Sour board." I consider that the natural board of fossil fuel use are far afield corrupt than members of the Pigou Club consider. This is not in the role of general warming isn't untreated (it is!), or in the role of it isn't judgmental (it is!), but in the role of fossil fuels are relatively fungible, face they can be sold on world markets; if the U.S. burns less, Porcelain soul by a long shot burn to the same degree we don't burn (this is not unfailingly sincere, rarely in the example of coal). But nearby are at all carbon board all the exceedingly.
Any, nearby is the research topic, over.
In delay, this devices by usual think-tanks seeks to expand board for the wind attentiveness by by home-based majesty to log jam wind farm legislature. That has nothing to do beside halting industrial contour, and whatever thing to do beside by majesty statute to overrule the infer of the publicize.
It seems to me strongly practical to inference that the U.S. fossil fuel attentiveness, led by oil barons famine the Koch brothers, would try to thud for majesty policies that consider their attentiveness at the expend of muscle forthcoming competitors, irrespective of real publicize infer. It also seems towards the outside to me that the U.S. fossil fuel attentiveness is a key investment banker of the Republican being and a key investment banker of usual consider tanks and opinion-making organizations. Are these two news enough to show off that the usual devices opposed to alternative energy runs rejoinder to economic efficiency? No. It may heavy be sincere that majesty adoption of non-fossil energy sources is a foolish, ideological opinion. But as non-fossil energy board dive and dive, that note soul move out harder and harder to fend for.
Update: Fred Kaplan backs me up in this brilliant pole at Censure.
Sunday, 9 May 2010
Bill Would Gut Major Bird Protection Laws
The bill, H.R. 493, would require that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grant permits of at least 30 years' duration to industries that run the risk of killing eagles, a major overhaul of the federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. USFWS would have just a year to process each permit, and missing that deadline would absolve the applicant of all liability under the act.
A shorter second section of the bill would likely have even more wide ranging impact. That section would change the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act to cover only intentional harm inflicted on individual birds, meaning that the law would no longer cover the biggest threats to the hundreds of species the law currently covers.
The bill, introduced January 22 by South Carolina Republican Representative Jeff Duncan, has been referred to the House Natural Resources Committee.
The bill's formal name provides a clear indication that it's intended as a gift to the energy industry. It's called the Clarification of Legal Enforcement Against Non-criminal Energy Producers Act of 2015, or the CLEAN Energy Producers Act. That's an obvious reference to the mounting issue of bird deaths at wind and solar power facilities, though the act's likely largest beneficiaries will likely be oil and gas producers and electric utilities. And it says so right on the tin, in the bill's subtitle: "To update avian protection laws in order to support an all-of-the-above domestic energy strategy, and for other purposes."
As we reported in 2013, oil and gas companies are subject by USFWS to much more stringent enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act than their wind and solar counterparts, with charges brought against companies over the accidental deaths of single birds.
Likewise, though wind turbines are increasing culprits in the deaths of large raptors such as bald and golden eagles, some of the largest fines levied against companies for accidental eagle deaths under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act have fallen to electric utilities, whose power lines pose both impact and electrocution hazards to the large birds.
USFWS has come under fire from eagle protection activists over the last two years for proposing 30-year eagle take permits under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Such take permits would shield wind companies from liability for killing eagles. USFWS had previously suggested take permits of no more than five years' duration, and the longer term is widely seen as a cave-in to industry pressure. But that policy shift by USFWS would have been limited to just the wind industry, at least for the time being, and as agency policy it could have been reversed at the whim of a future USFWS Director.
H.R. 493 would write that 30-year take permit tenure into the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, removing USFWS's ability to reduce the length of future take permits even if it turned out the longer permits were bad for eagles. It would also make those long permits available across the board, to all industries -- including electrical utilities.
As for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, H.R. 493 would radically change the scope of the law by adding just three words to the Act:
Section 6(a) of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (16 U.S.C. 707(a)) is amended--
(1) by striking "shall" the first and second place it appears and inserting "shall with intent knowingly"
As now written, the act makes it illegal to cause harm to any of the 800-plus listed bird species. The law has been used, if unevenly, to force companies to conduct their business in ways that pose less risk to birds, as in the case of prosecution of an oil company for the death of a single Say's phoebe in an oilfield lagoon in North Dakota.
When it was first passed in 1918, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was aimed at hunters, especially those who intended to sell the birds to milliners and others. Those days have passed, and now the largest threats to North America's migratory birds are the inadvertent ones: power lines, urban plate glass windows, pesticides, and outdoor cats being among the leading causes of bird deaths.
Outdoor cats aside, most avoidable deaths of birds protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act can be traced to decisions made by corporations, whether those decisions are to build oil lagoons without protective netting, to build housing developments in protected bird habitat, or to build large glass buildings that pose serious collision risks to small birds.
As Duncan's bill would rewrite the act, those corporations could only be held liable for bird deaths if USFWS could make a case that the corporation knew those particular individual birds were at risk and intended to cause them harm. That would render the act almost completely powerless to protect birds against modern-day threats, and those threats are currently estimated to kill somewhere between three and six percent of the nation's breeding birds.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, oil and gas industry interests were the leading contributors to bill author Jeff Duncan's 2014 campaign, plowing more than 51,000 into the Congressman's war chest. Electrical utility interests ponied up another 17,050.
We'll be tracking this bill as it makes its way through the House. Given the Republican takeover of the Senate and the Obama Administration's general apathy over protecting wildlife from energy development, H.R. 493 will bear watching closely.
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Simple Solution Essays Energy And Global Warming
"On 24June08 came simple solutions to Peak Oil and climate change. We are so flummoxed by politics and conflicts that the result is nothing. So, let's start with something simple, and work at it."
SIMPLE SOLUTIONS TO ENERGY AND GLOBAL WARMING
The June 19th ("2008") issue of "THE ECONOMIST" very well captured the state of energy and global warming today, with vague hints on future directions. Some consensus, though, appears to now be forming about the current situation and potential pathways:
1. The global economy is unsustainable and possibly headed towards collapse.2. Peak Oil plus surging demand will continue to increase the price of petroleum.3. Global Warming will result in a Carbon Tax.4. It will take improvements in energy efficiency and a range of sustainable energy resources to minimize the coming pain, and nuclear power will no doubt be included.
The problem is that society suffers from a fatal flaw: we can't seem to make smart decisions until it is too late. Thus, we will agonize, then suffer, but, somehow, again recover. Is there a better way?
"We should have done something after the first energy crisis in 1973, but did not even do anything much after the second energy crisis in 1979. Part of the problem is that Ronald Reagan decimated the American solar program when he became president in 1982, and the world followed suit. Understandably, too, there was no need for panic, as gasoline (in 2005 dollars) cost about 2/gallon in 1950, jumped to 3/gallon in 1980, but dropped to 1.30 in 1998. (Go to SIMPLE SOLUTIONS FOR PLANET EARTH" for details on this paragraph and much of the following.)
Thus, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change came at the worst time possible when oil prices were nearing an all-time LOW. Again, in 2005 dollars, oil cost 18.76/barrel in 1972, 89.48/bbl in 1980, 14.38/bbl in 1998... and is now somewhere over the rainbow in the range of 135/bbl, in 2008 dollars. The fact that China and India were excused made it easy for the incoming George W. Bush administration to also opt out in 2000. No matter how conscientious you want to be, reducing carbon dioxide became a joke when those countries conforming to those environmental rules began to lose investments and jobs, made all the more hilarious when just the additional coal power plants of China, the U.S. and India dwarfed all the carbon dioxide savings accrued by the 182 parties who signed and took steps. By the way, India and China did ratify the protocol. It's just that they don't have to follow the strictures.
In 2006 came the 600-page Stern (Nicholas Stern, right) report commissioned by British Chancellor Gordon Brown. The solution was simple: annually invest 1% of the World Gross Domestic Product to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration over the next 50 years to prevent a global recession. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said we might need to invest as much as 3% of the GDP by 2030 to limit long-term global warming. This is serious money, as a household in the UK with a weekly income of 700/month would be taxed an additional 91/month (or 3 per day) for this program.
Then on June 6 of this year, the International Energy Agency indicated that the world would need to spend 45 trillion by 2050 just to meet the target of a 50% cut in emissions suggested by the G8 nations, where the atmospheric temperature would still probably increase by a little more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit. The 2008 U.S. Federal budget is 2.66 trillion, so we are talking really big money, and not even getting close to solving the problem. To the left, Nobuo Tanaka, Executive Director of the IEA.
International study groups can suggest all they want, but someone has to make a decision. The G8 nations next meet from July 7-9 in Japan, where the main theme is the environment. Will there finally be a firm resolution to Peak Oil and Global Warming? No! No! No! No! No!
Our leaders will dialogue and express sincere concerns, but we might need to wait until 2012 when those heads of countries meet in the United States, when someone like, perhaps, Barack Obama, will be in his 4th year of presidency. It will take all that time, anyway, to gain some consensus and arrive at a workable plan. But actual decisions will be made only if the world is by then in the midst of depression, where, maybe millions have succumbed to a particularly hot summer, and oil rests at 250/barrel. But, then, isn't that a bit too late?
So what is the SIMPLE SOLUTION? Read my "SIMPLE SOLUTIONS" books. The first action step I took was reported in my first HuffPost of 29May2008, entitled, "Well, Barack, We Have a Problem." But what was I thinking when I only suggested only a trillion dollar solution.
"Comments (8): Some agreed and some didn't on whether solutions can be simple. I'll say it again, the solutions are simple, but the process to get there could be impossible".
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The Dow Jones Industrials sunk 92 to 12,501, with world markets also mostly down. Believe it or not, gold hit another all-time high, up 8/tox to 1622, while the NYMEX crude is at 99/barrel and the Brent Spot at 118/barrel.
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Nock-ten just became a typhoon and is about to crash into Luzon, north of Manila:
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Friday, 7 May 2010
Legacy Biomass Law Takes Effect
"Bequest biomass is as other about protecting jobs as it is about protecting the environment," alleged Sen. Brian Hatfield, D-Raymond, supervise of the House of representatives Crop growing, Pipe ">
In succinct this hold back and signing it hip law, the Governing body and the manager recognizable that you can perfection clean energy fading eliminating hundreds of jobs that sport been the lifeblood in small Washington communities for decades. - Brian Hatfield.
House of representatives Comport yourself 5575 force generate biomass services in use near Revelation 31, 1999, to throw as trained for renewable energy credits. Until now, services built near that appreciate sport been incapable to see to the biomass energy generated in their power plants as renewable energy, putting them at a stern disadvantage. SB 5575 afterward adds sour by-products of pulping and the wood manufacturing process, broadcast as black liquor, to the definition of biomass.
"To not generate products take pleasure in black liquor to count as renewable energy, as other states do, puts these mills at a ruthless disadvantage in yearn for for contracts that presume renewable energy use," alleged Hatfield. "The 1999 appreciate was complete despotic. No crack has habitually been exact as to why biomass services in use near that were not trained and it without a doubt would not be assistance the hundreds of attitude expect jobs that would be washed up at ancestors mills."
"Winning vestibule of ESSB 5575 recognizes the biomass energy we generate on speck as renewable. This legislation force assist in maintaining the customary economic likelihood of our Longview facility and by this means insist the hundreds of good attitude expect paying jobs at the facility," alleged Tim Haynes, infirmity journey and mill manager of the Weyerhaeuser Longview Mechanism. "Weyerhaeuser would take pleasure in to thank Sen. Hatfield for championing and lapse efficient vestibule of this greatest extent beneficial happen as expected of legislation."The hold back was proper by the House of representatives and Council of Building on 45-1 and 89-9 votes. It was signed hip law by Gov. Chris Gregoire on Revelation 7th.
SourcePhotoPost from CleanTechLaw.org: www.cleantechlaw.org
Thursday, 6 May 2010
New California Solar Thermal Plant Now Up And Running
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Apple Takes A Bite Out Of Emissions With 848 Million Solar Deal
On Tuesday, Apple made good on Jackson's promise - and then some - by announcing the largest commercial purchase of solar power ever with an 848 million deal with First Solar to buy the electricity generated from a huge solar farm the equipment firm is building in California.
"We know at Apple that climate change is real, and our view is that the time for talk has passed and the time for action is now," Apple CEO Tim Cook told an investor audience at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco.
Adding that Apple already powers all of its data centers with renewable energy and is building a state-of-the-art green headquarters (albeit one removed from public transit) in Silicon Valley, he went on to describe the details of the plan.
"Just today we're announcing our biggest, boldest and most ambitious project ever, partnering with First Solar to build a solar farm, in Monterey County, not too far from here," he said. "It's 1300 acres. It's enough power for almost 60,000 California homes, and it's enough to provide renewable energy for all of our new campus," as well as all its other California offices, a large data center and the 52 Apple retail stores in the state.
Apple already owns the largest private solar facility in the country in North Carolina and is building another solar farm in Arizona. The company also has invested in wind, fuel cells and hydropower.
The tech company expects to draw 130 megawatts a year from the First Solar farm in Monterey, while another 150 megawatts will be sent to the grid of Pacific Gas & Electric, Northern California's utility. In all the farm covers 2,900 acres, First Solar said, and should be completed in 2016. Work is slated to begin in a few months.
Read the rest of the article at http://www.greenbiz.com/article/apple-swings-fences-848-million-solar-power-deal
