President Obama is the country’s biggest champion of the myth of “clean coal”. Carbon capture and storage is not yet operational and it’s unsure if it will ever be. Unfortunately, sinking all this money into CCS to use for coal is a big waste. CCS is not going to solve the problems with coal, such as toxic waste and mercury leaking into our air and water. It’s probably necessary to have carbon capture and sequestration on hand in case climate change enters the runaway phase, but it should not be used on coal plants. Coal plants should be shut down and if CCS is used for anything it should be to remove CO2 from the air in case of an emergency. But the question remains: and put it where?
The problem of where to “sequester” or store carbon emissions is still a huge issue. We cannot put it on the ocean bed or into rock formations unless we know for sure it will stay there, and no one yet knows whether it will. Yet on February 3rd President Obama issued a memorandum declaring our use of coal as necessary, as a job creator and as a cheap form of energy. It’s none of the above. There’s also a catch: as soon as the CCS is implemented, due to its huge cost, the cost of using coal will skyrocket. That makes ‘clean coal’ not only a myth, but a very expensive one and the costs will be passed on to consumers. (Yet Republicans are for this . . . why?)
The use of coal is environmentally devastating. Scientists at the journal Science recently recommended that mountaintop removal to get at coal should stop immediately. And carbon capture and storage won’t stop the pervasive emissions of mercury that get into our land and water, poisoning fish and the people who eat it. CCS would do nothing to prevent acid rain and mercury poisoning of our lakes and streams. From the White House, Feb. 3, 2010:
“SUBJECT: A Comprehensive Federal Strategy on Carbon Capture and Storage
For decades, the coal industry has supported quality high-paying jobs for American workers, and coal has provided an important domestic source of reliable, affordable energy. At the same time, coal-fired power plants are the largest contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and coal accounts for 40 percent of global emissions. Charting a path toward clean coal is essential to achieving my Administration’s goals of providing clean energy, supporting American jobs, and reducing emissions of carbon pollution. Rapid commercial development and deployment of clean coal technologies, particularly carbon capture and storage (CCS), will help position the United States as a leader in the global clean energy race.
This video is short and sweet. Do you want to install solar panels but can’t afford it or wonder who should install it? A solar cooperative might be able to help. And there is probably one in your area. It’s a new project called 1BOG, or One Block Off the Grid. CleanTechnica writes:
There’s never been a better time to go solar, and in a growing number of cities across the US, it’s an economic no-brainer. You can see if solar is right for you by signing up here or on the form to your right. . . . . 1BOG gathers homeowners interested in solar and gets large discounts from top installers.
This sounds like a great idea and a good way to get started with solar. I’m going to check them out personally for what’s available in my area.
You can also check out local hardware stores. I noticed my local super-hardware supplier has a solar panel package on sale this week and it’s really affordable. I wonder, though, what to do with with snow-covered solar panels. . . . Continue Reading → Weekend Videos
A year ago the Obama administration enacted the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Last week, President Obama linked economic recovery to investments in clean energy and green job creation in his State of the Union address. Meanwhile, unemployment is still very high (9.7% last month officially) and 20,000 jobs were also lost last month. Where is the green jobs revolution? We need it now more than ever. The U.S. should be churning out solar panels and creating hundreds of jobs with their installation on American homes and businesses. This is exactly what a few smart Congressmen want.
Congress has waited so long to pass a meaningful climate change and green jobs bill that China is way ahead of the U.S. in building solar panels and wind turbines. The stimulus was never meant to be the only spending on green energy that we did in the near future. It was only the start. This is responsible spending because it will create jobs.
More than $200 billion of the stimulus package was earmarked for projects that would either directly or indirectly create green jobs. (The second reporting by ARRA recipients was made public on recovery.gov last Saturday.)
Last Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a bill aimed at getting 10 million new solar rooftop systems and 200,000 new solar hot water heating systems installed in the U.S. in the next 10 years. This is exactly what the U.S. needs right now! This is from Grist.
Titled the “10 Million Solar Roofs & 10 Million Gallons of Solar Hot Water Act” (PDF), it would provide rebates that cover up to half the cost of new systems, along the lines of incentive programs in California and New Jersey (not coincidentally, Nos. 1 and 2 in installed solar in the U.S.). It also includes measures to insure that those who receive assistance get information on how to make their buildings more energy efficient.
Sanders currently has nine co-sponsors: Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Arlen Specter (D-Pa.).
Suntech Exec Sees Excess Solar Supply Coming to U.S. – more evidence that other countries are way ahead of the U.S. in developing renewable power. Now we’re going to get their “left-overs”. We should be making these panels in the U.S.
Photo: Sergio Moraes--A Brazilian man is seen during sunset on Arpoador Beach in Rio de Janeiro February 3, 2010.
WASHINGTON Feb. 5 2010 — Planned cuts to Germany’s solar power incentives will probably prompt solar companies to ship excess panels to the United States, pressuring equipment prices here, a top U.S. executive for China’s Suntech Power Holdings said on Thursday.
Germany is the top market for photovoltaic solar systems, with about 50 percent of the global market, but the government there is planning to cut prices paid for solar power from roof-mounted systems by 15 percent from April 1.
“Anything that happens in Germany has a ripple effect,” Roger Efird, Suntech’s managing director for business development in the United States, told the RETECH energy conference.
Solar modules that companies had planned to sell in the German market will probably come to the United States, which could become the biggest solar market by 2013.
Solar companies have struggled in the past year as a glut of supplies pressured module prices by about 40 percent, squeezing profit margins in the nascent industry, and the additional supplies that had been destined for Germany will push U.S. prices even lower.
“I’d say at least another 10 percent drop in pricing, maybe as much as 15 percent,” Efird said.
The turbines were to be fully operational by Nov. 7. To date, the number is zero. One reason offered this week at a North St. Paul City Council meeting: hydraulic fluid and lubricating oil in the turbines’ gear boxes. In cold weather, the fluid turns gel-like and doesn’t flow, said Derick Dahlen, president of Avant Energy, which manages the MMPA. That can be particularly problematic if the turbines are already at a standstill.
To fix the problem, a contractor installed heating elements this week in the turbines. In addition, heat tracing is likely to be added to the hydraulic lines and lubrication oil system.
This is a real problem, because we have a lot of coal burning plants in the north and midwest and they should be replaced by renewable energy as soon as possible. This winter is not unusually cold either. In fact, it’s been warmer than last winter, according to my Xcel Energy power bill. However, Dahlen thinks the problem is not the weather, but the contractor. “I think they should absolutely have known about the cold weather issue, but I think the problems go deeper with that.” He also says that when the weather is warm they don’t run either. What is so difficult about building a wind turbine that works? Can’t the U.S. do anything right when it comes to renewable energy? We need funding for this now, not for more weapons systems and war funding.
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times-- As China takes the lead on wind turbines, above, and solar panels, President Obama is calling for American industry to step up.
China is leading the renewable energy race.China is now far ahead of the United States in wind turbine production. The danger of this is that the United States might go from being dependent on other countries for oil and gas and switch to being dependent on them for solar panels and wind turbines.
China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants. . . . . Multinational corporations are responding to the rapid growth of China’s market by building big, state-of-the-art factories in China. Vestas of Denmark has just erected the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturing complex here in northeastern China, and transferred the technology to build the latest electronic controls and generators.
The U.S. is losing the potential to become a leader in anything, but especially renewable energy technology, because of the inertia of Congress and the ultra-partisanship of our right-wing politicians. It has led to a lack of cooperation on anything, including jobs and renewable energy support, in the U.S. It might be a good time to learn Chinese if you are looking for a job in renewable energy.
The latest EPA headline is distressing to anyone who knows there is no such thing as “clean coal”. Today the news from the EPA declared: “Obama Announces Steps to Boost Biofuels, Clean Coal“.
“President Barack Obama today announced a series of steps his Administration is taking as part of its comprehensive strategy to enhance American energy independence while building a foundation for a new clean energy economy, and its promise of new industries and millions of jobs. At a meeting with a bipartisan group of governors from around the country, the President laid out three measures that will work in concert to boost biofuels production and reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil. “
What Obama doesn’t want to admit is that the danger is not from foreign oil, it’s from carbon emissions, which come more from coal than from anything else. Coal, according to scientist James Hansen, will kill us all if it’s not removed from our energy porfolio. Obama has not gotten the memo on coal.
The video question came from a young woman who asked why he’s focusing on nuclear power and coal when more good safe jobs, in her opinion, would come from renewable energy. (Coal is the real culprit, not nuclear, which is carbon emissions free). Obama’s answer was probably political reality, but it wasn’t climate change reality. He responded:
“With respect to clean coal technology, it is not possible at this point to completely eliminate coal from the menu of our energy options. And if we are ever going to deal with climate change in a serious way, where we know China and India are going to be greatly reliant on coal, we’ve got to start developing clean coal technologies that can sequester the harmful emissions, because otherwise — countries like China and India are not going to stop using coal — we’ll still have those same problems but we won’t have the technology to make sure that it doesn’t harm the environment over the long term.
The cooling towers of Three Mile Island's Unit 1 Nuclear Power Plant pour steam into the sky in Middletown, Pa., March 17, 2009.
Obama’s Nuclear Loan Guarantee Plan Draws Opposition. USA Today, February 1, 2010. “A campaign is already underway to oppose the tripling of loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants, included in President Obama’s 2011 budget (and Energy Fact Sheet) unveiled on Monday. A bevy of environmental, taxpayer and scientific groups . . . . are criticizing Obama’s proposal to increase loan guarantees for new nuclear plants from $18.5 billion to $54.5 billion. The guarantees could bolster GOP support for his bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which passed the House of Representatives but is pending in the Senate. In a letter to Obama, four groups – the National Taxpayers Union, Taxpayers for Common Sense, the George Marshall Institute and the Non-Proliferation Education Center — oppose an expansion of loan guarantees for new nuclear plants. . . “
Instead of focusing on opposing nuclear plants, these groups should brainstorm ways to shut down all U.S. coal plants, which kill more people and harm the environment more than any nuclear plants in the U.S. ever have. The French have an excellent record of safety, so the U.S. could too, if it put more money and effort into it. A disturbing story about tritium leaks from CBS news came out yesterday, and these problems have to be addressed as soon as possible. Radioactive tritium, a carcinogen, now taints at least 27 of the nation’s 104 nuclear reactors
But new nuclear designs and replaced parts in old plants will help solve this problem, if they can be funded and built very soon. The “pebble bed” design, the 4th generation nuclear plant designs offer a lot of promise for safety and keeps the radioactive material in the reactor vessel. Nuclear energy is nearly CO2-free and has an obvious place in our energy future. I wish “environmentalists” who are worried about climate change (as I am) would understand that conservation is not adequate to solve our massive emissions problems quickly enough.
Photo: Marko Djurica --The sun sets over Kabul January 31, 2010.
Iceland Tops Environment List. U.S., China, and India Lag Far Behind
According to a new report and world-wide ranking of 163 nations based on environmental public health and the vitality of their ecosystems, Iceland, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Sweden, and Norway are in the top five, with the U.S. trailing in 61st place and China and India ranking 121st and 123rd respectively. The Environmental Performance Index, compiled by researchers at Yale and Columbia universities, ranks countries based on 10 main categories such as environmental health, air quality, water management, biodiversity and habitat, forestry, and climate change.
During his Q&A with Republicans last Friday, President Obama said:
“. . . . we have to plan for the future. And the future is that clean energy — cleaner forms of energy are going to be increasingly important, because even if folks are still skeptical in some cases about climate change in our politics and in Congress, the world is not skeptical about it. If we’re going to be after some of these big markets, they’re going to be looking to see, is the United States the one that’s developing clean coal technology? Is the United States developing our natural gas resources in the most effective way? Is the United States the one that is going to lead in electric cars? Because if we’re not leading, those other countries are going to be leading.
So what I want to do is work with West Virginia to figure out how we can seize that future. [changing coal instead of getting rid of it] But to do that, that means there’s going to have to be some transition.. . . “
That was an excellent point: even if there are climate change skeptics in the U.S. who don’t want to act until they are “sure” about climate change, the rest of the world is already sure and acting on it. That means the U.S. is falling behind. Other countries are getting to work on green energy and green jobs and cutting emissions now, and if we don’t join in we are going to be left in the dust and lose that business in the new greener technology. It’s already happening. If we don’t start catching up to other countries in new tech and cutting emissions now we’ll be even farther down the list next year.
A bill now in Congress would help protect poor people by making oil, gas, and mining companies open their books–but industry lobbyists are fighting it. Poor communities have a right to follow the money–and to call for a fair share for schools, health care, and jobs.
This is a short video from Oxfam about economic justice for people who are not profiting adequately from the sales of their natural resources that we in the U.S. (almost) take for granted. There are a lot of people whose natural resources are being taken and sold, without their consultation, and they are not getting fair payment for them. They don’t even know where the money is going. Corporate energy profits are gouging average consumers and most people don’t know how that gallon of gas gets to their local gas station. This video, “Follow the money,” is good at pointing this out, but it also implies that gasoline has such a high price because of all the profiteers and middle men along the way to the pump. It’s not just that; it’s also about supply and demand. Oil is finite and some day it will run out. As things run out, they become a lot more expensive, and there will be a rush to profit even more from the remaining oil.
For those who continue to think natural gas is a clean energy alternative, read this story from ProPublica. Natural gas is a fossil fuel being touted as part of our “green energy future”, along with biofuels; a nonsensical claim considering that it emits CO2 when burned. In addition to emitting greenhouse gases when it burns, it must be extracted from the ground by various methods, all of which use toxic chemicals, energy and water. Natural gas doesn’t just flow harmlessly out of a tap you can turn on and off. If people knew more about the toxicity of its extraction process and all the spills that occur, I wonder if they would be so ready to embrace something that is so damaging to the environment. For more information, read about gas drilling’s serious environmental threat here.
(Jan. 27 2010) — As more gas wells are drilled in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, more cases of toxic spills are being reported. Earlier this month, Pennsylvania’s environmental officials fined Pennsylvania-based Atlas Resources after a series of violations at 13 wells, including spills of fracturing fluids and other contaminants onto the ground around the sites. And just last week the agency fined M.R. Dirt, a company that removes waste from drilling sites, $6,000 for spilling more than seven tons of drilling dirt along a public road.
The reports come on the heels of a string of other incidents that have killed fish in one of the state’s most prized recreational lakes and released toxic chemicals into the environment.
The Atlas spills are significant because they are among the latest and because they happened repeatedly during the routine transfer of fluids. Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection fined [1] Atlas Resources $85,000 for the offenses, which took place between May and December of 2009. Many of the spills were discovered by DEP inspectors.
The following letter and statement were sent on January 28, from Climate Action Network Canada, to Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Dear Mr. de Boer,
On behalf of the people of Canada, we are making a “Peoples Submission” to the Copenhagen Accord. We realize it is exceptional for you to receive a national submission through a nongovernmental organization. However, the present circumstance in Canada is exceptional. The views and aspiration of the majority of Canadians are not reflected in the views and actions of the present government.
The Canadian people have been very clear in their continuing support for the Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We also support Canada adopting science based emission targets and contributing our fair share to a mitigation and adaptation fund.
We want the international community to know Canadians will one day live up to our obligations.
Please accept this “Peoples Submission” as an indication of the real values and views of Canadians.
Sincerely,
Graham Saul
Executive Director
Climate Action Network / Réseau action climat Canada
January 29, 2010–Anthropogenic warming has thrown what was once a stable climate into disarray, and may be leading as much to ruinous droughts as to record-breaking freezes.
Climate change is an issue of literal and figurative polar extremes. As the planet inexorably warms, deniers mix in assertions of global cooling with their usual Al Gore insults and political assaults. . . No wonder, then, that people around the globe are dizzy with confusion. Careening between these extremes, they are easily manipulated by seeming opposites, environmental, political and otherwise. All of this, in the end, is complicated by the lack of consensus from gun-shy scientists, who are lately more busy fending off (or feeding off of, depending on the scientist) ludicrous sideshows like Climategate than they are confidently extrapolating the destabilizing scenarios to come, a move that might give all their number-crunching some real-world meaning.
The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies released the results of a new national survey on public responses to climate change. This report finds that public concern about global warming has dropped sharply since the fall of 2008.
Barack Obama will propose a tripling of government funding for new nuclear reactors to more than $54bn. Barack Obama used his presidential authority to help advance his climate change agenda today, announcing that the US federal government and agencies would cut their giant carbon footprints by 28% by 2020.
The announcement was [shown] by administration officials as evidence of Obama’s commitment to his climate and energy agenda, which has run into opposition in Congress and from coal, oil and manufacturing groups.
President Obama’s first state of the union speech took place last night. Applicable portions dealing with climate change and energy are in the transcript clip below. It was very interesting that when Obama was talking briefly about climate change and said something like, “…overwhelming evidence …” the Republicans booed and made other negative noises. Global warming has now become a full-blown partisan political issue in the U.S., and the Republican party are the official deniers. In addition, Obama is missing the opportunity of a lifetime to give us serious climate change legislation, and he’s blowing it by going down the middle of the road, trying to please everyone. This year could be the end of any meaningful climate change legislation, until the point where it’s obvious and too late. (We now enter a political election cycle.) We don’t know when it will be too late to stop climate change, but I bet Bill Gates is hoping it will be soon so his geoengineering investments pay off.
“But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. (Applause.) It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. (Applause.) It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. (Applause.) And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America. (Applause.)
I am grateful to the House for passing such a bill last year. (Applause.) And this year I’m eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate. (Applause.)
I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy. I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But here’s the thing — even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future -– because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.”
Look into the future — it’s a very sparse and dirty place. It might also be very dark. The few remaining humans will all live at the tops of major mountains, trying to grow things in the rock. Some made it to the Arctic, but it’s hard to live in such extreme latitudes where the sun doesn’t even shine for months out of the year. The remaining humans can’t figure out exactly what happened. So many animals and plants have gone extinct, there is little to eat and no medicine, no electricity and no power. There has been a great culling of humans and animals on planet Earth and along with them went the ability to communicate over distances. There are no governments, and no countries remain. Borders are meaningless. After the final resource wars, countries descended into chaos and humans scattered over the horizon . . . .
This is our potential future unless we get a handle on global warming very soon. That’s not likely without strong national leadership. So, I’m hoping that President Obama will talk about climate change and new energy and green jobs in tonight’s State of the Union speech. We had such high hopes that he would act decisively on global warming, and it’s been a year already!
Alternative energy like wind and solar are making big development strides, but are not being implemented fast enough. The U.S. needs a huge infusion of stimulus money and work into building new transmission lines. The news on wind overall is good though:
Issuing its end-of-year report, the American Wind Energy Association said the industry installed nearly 10,000 megawatts of new capacity during the year, growing at an annual rate of 39%. The U.S. now has a total of 35,000 megawatts of wind energy installed, enough to light and power 9.7 million homes and the equivalent of removing 62 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year and taking 10.5 million cars off the road.
Though the industry avoided a predicted 50% decline in domestic wind turbine manufacturing because of the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus and the Obama administration’s commitment to clean energy job creation, AWEA CEO Denise Bode said a stronger federal policy on renewable energy is needed to keep manufacturing robust.
Every time there is a great idea concerning biofuels it eventually turns out to be less than advertised. I thought algae would be something that could pan out as a brilliant form of fuel for the future. It would be easy to grow and would not compete with food for land. At present, though, it creates more net CO2 than expected. The CO2 production would not be a one-off, it would be something that would be repeated as more fuel is made, over and over again. Last week, the government doled out more than $80 million in stimulus money for biofuels research, much of which will be focused on algae research. From GreenInc. and e360:
Chris Richards for The New York Times: The need to feed nutrients directly to the water could be a limiting factor in the utility of algae as a biofuel, a new study suggests.
Growing algae for biofuels is an energy-intensive process that can generate more greenhouse gases than the process sequesters, according to a new study. Examining the life cycle of algal biofuels, researchers from the University of Virginia found that the process emits high levels of greenhouse gases because algal production requires using large amounts of fertilizer. Those fertilizers often come from petroleum-based sources, and fertilizers also emit nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, according to the study.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, said that while biofuel production from crops such as corn, canola, and switchgrass can result in a net carbon dioxide uptake, that is not yet the case with algal biofuels. The paper said that one promising way to overcome the environmental impact of using fertilizers to grow algal biofuels is to produce them with effluent from sewage treatment plants. Proponents of algal biofuels also said it is too early to make firm conclusions about the environmental impact of the technology because it is still in its infancy.
This is disappointing! The paper suggests that one way to reduce the environmental impact of algae is to draw city wastewater into algae plantations, as a source of nitrogen and phosphorus.
Recent Comments