Author: Susan Kraemer

Senator Graham (R-SC) told reporters Saturday that he was outraged at the idea that now immigration reform  might be voted on before the climate and energy bill and is no longer unveiling it Monday as promised.

He has been working for weeks with Senators Kerry (D-NH) and Liebermnan (I-CT) on making the climate and renewable energy bill just fossil-friendly-enough to actually hurdle the unethical 41 vote filibuster of all Democratic majority legislation routinely employed by Republicans since 2006 when they lost the majority in the Senate.

His frustration came because he had also spent weeks working with Democrats to make the immigration measure bipartisan and had not been alerted to the change in plans, moving the immigration vote first.

On Saturday night he said he can not now help unveil the long-awaited climate bill due Monday. But this could put it off till the new congress, when there will be several more Republicans in the Senate, ending the chances for US climate legislation indefinitely. (more…)

It seems like science fiction. It seems impossible that we would destroy our planet and our future, but, we did. We have no idea how bad the effects of our brief exploitation of fossil fuel will be, over the next centuries and millennia.

Since it is going to  be a completely different planet, it needs a new name. The UK Guardian reveals why Bill McKibben suggests we begin to call it “Eaarth”.

“There’s a slightly science fiction look to it; that’s appropriate in the sense it’s a little like a science fiction story: we wake up one day and the planet we have been used to for 10,000 years has 5% more moisture in the atmosphere, the sea is turning more acid. The only trouble is it’s not fiction.”

The 10,000 years helps us understand this. When I was a kid, we worried about the terrible problem of radioactive nuclear waste that would still be here in 10,000 years. Gradually, our perception of time horizons have closed in on us since then. Now we dare only look 50 or 100 years into the future, and no further.

We have stopped talking about 10,000 years ahead. (more…)

Yesterday when Senator John Kerry was begging the polluters who actually run this country not to be mean about the new energy bill he is attempting to thread through the tiny Senate needle of their opposition, he told a very illustrative story about the widening gap between the US and China. On a pre-climate-bill-release We Can Lead phone call, he described being extremely dismayed by a glass of water.

Kerry was on a high speed train in China, and the glass of water on his table was perfectly stable at 300 miles an hour. By contrast, as he pointed out, our piddly little old underfunded Amtrack just veers about on its ancient old tracks, voted in decades before filibusters killed good governance. We are falling behind our main competitor technologically in a kind of massive infrastructure failure.

A poll out today from Ernst & Young’s Global Automotive Center shows why.
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Georgia has about 12 laws on the books to make it difficult for solar power to compete head to head with fossil power. All twelve were lobbied for successfully by Georgia Power, and its parent Southern Company. But the most effective of the twelve anti-competitive laws is the Territorial Electric Service Act which gives the utility a monopoly over “the purchase of energy”.

The cheapest way to get solar is to just purchase the energy. Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) can deliver clean power at a lower cost than utility power.

Under a PPA, you simply buy the electricity from the the solar panels on your roof – just like you now buy the electricity from your utility now.

Shouldn’t any solar business be able to sell you solar power off your roof? In California, and Colorado and many states they can. I am not sure why the Southern Company is not regulated by the FTC. That rule constitutes imposing  an anti-competitive monopoly in forbidding “the purchase of energy” – except from them.
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For somebody old enough to remember PBS before “fair and balanced” news, last night was a shock.

“Energy: the Big Gamble” on PBS Nova contained blatant lies about the pending climate legislation in California. Funding for NOVA is provided by ExxonMobil, Pacific Life, David H. Koch… This is the same Koch family, that makes its billions off oil and gas, that Greenpeace found had spent $25 million from 2005 to 2008 funding  climate denial. This show was designed to scare US voters, and initially, California voters who now face the oil industry’s ballot initiative to put a stop to pending climate legislation, AB32 to move the state to a clean energy economy.

The message of the NOVA piece is that moving to a clean energy economy is just too risky. To drive the message into our subconscious, the show itself is called “Energy: The Big Gamble” and each time the narrator intones on the terrors of climate legislation, dice are shown being rolled (by uncaring hands) to show you just what a risk is being taken with your life. Tremble, Californians!  Some unseen gambler is messing with your livelihood.

Two segments contained particularly self-serving lies for the oil and gas industry now battling the climate legislation in California. In one segment about all the problems they claim will come with clean energy, they actually insinuate that California has blackouts – supposedly because we have too much renewable energy!
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This November, Texas oil companies hope to dupe California voters into repealing their own clean energy bill; AB32. The oil companies’ ballot measure had $966,000 in funding up through the end of March. Now they have doubled that, bringing the total to $1.9 million – supposedly to save California jobs.

Among the most recent additions, one mysterious conservative front group from Missouri – with only $30,000 in funding – somehow mustered $498,000 to save California from itself. But an in-state oil company, LA-based Occidental Petroleum openly added its own $300,000 on Friday.

As of the end of March, 89% of the funding has come from the oil industry, with nearly three quarters of that just from Texas oil companies. The petition gathering is being handled through The Tea Party, another (perhaps unwitting) front group for the fossil energy industry, as a subsidiary of Freedomworks, the Dick Army (mostly energy) lobbying group.

It is sure to increase voter turnout this November.

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Now even 3M is getting into the solar biz. The huge Minnesota company is famous for the Post-It Note and other mainstays of Western civilization, but now their excellent materials scientists have been put to work creating a reflective foil that can be used to make the  (already rather cheap) mirrors in solar thermal trough technology – even cheaper, through mass production.

They are not the first midwestern US giant of industry to enter this field. Alcoa also has a way to make the mirrors in solar thermal trough technology cheaper,  through the use of aluminum for the mirror.

3M’s solution is to make a sticky-backed polymer sheath that protects a micro-layer of highly reflective copper and silver. Their new film would reflect more light than traditional mirrors, increasing power output in a given area.
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Two vulcanologists published a paper in 2008 suggesting that as climate change continues, the next decades could see more volcanic activity in regions such as Iceland that are now under ice.

Climate change could spark off more volcanic eruptions in the now frozen volcanic rim regions, Alaska, Patagonia and Antarctica and Iceland says Dr Carolina Pagli,  at Leeds University; one of the authors of the research. As ice melts above volcanic rocks they are able to expand to turn into magma more readily as pressure from above is reduced.

Global warming melts ice and this can influence magmatic systems, says Dr Freysteinn Sigmundsson, the paper’s other author, at the Nordic Volcanological Centre at the University of Iceland.  “Our work suggests that eventually there will be either somewhat larger eruptions or more frequent eruptions in Iceland in coming decades.” (more…)

Like the rest of Europe, the UK has a Kyoto-level ambitious renewable energy plan to reduce its CO2 emissions 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. As part of achieving this, the island nation plans to build an astonishing 32 Gigawatts of off-shore wind by 2020, enough to supply a quarter of its electricity.

However, a “lack of investment in the vessels used to build offshore wind farms could hinder Britain’s ambitions to shift to renewable energy”, E.ON UKs Robin Rigg told Reuters. He is the head of one of the leading companies in the consortium of companies meeting the UK’s 32 Gigawatt target.

It will take an armada of vessels to get the huge parts of modern turbines out into the North Sea to deploy them in off-shore wind farms. In today’s world, the supply chain is lacking. There are not enough ships that can carry turbines, and building these ships will take a huge investment. (more…)

Could a solar-powered dirigible be the cargo ship of our peak-oil, carbon-constrained future? If the inventor of the patent pending  High Speed Solar Airship is correct, the future of long haul cargo combines solar powered transmission married to centuries-old dirigible technology.

Like the old blimp, a gas envelope lifts the airship from sea level to its cruising altitude. Unlike the old blimp, this new solar blimp would cruise at a much higher altitude: at 30,000 feet.

The HSSA would be powered by 24,000 square feet of thin-film  solar cells in an integrated application on top of the balloon – for 62.7 KW of rated power. However,  that rating would be if it was on earth.

Because of the altitude, there would also be a 30% efficiency boost of the solar power once aloft, just from the freezing cold at that altitude. In addition, because the height is well above cloud levels; sunlight is unobstructed. This would provide sun for well over the maximum earthbound solar access of up to 8 hours a day.

Thinner air at that height also means faster speeds.The 320 foot long airship could reach daytime speeds of 182 MPH utilizing a 96 MPH average Jet Stream wind speed, and even continue flying at night with a speed of 165 MPH, carrying 60 tons of cargo, and 2 million cubic feet of helium.
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Placing a strong cap on greenhouse gas emissions in the US alone would cost Iran $1.8 trillion worth of oil revenues over the next forty years. Every day from now till 2050 – Iran would lose another $100 million.

Using an MIT analysis of the effects of a carbon cap that reduces global warming pollution; WonkRoom has estimated that Iran stands the most to lose from climate and energy legislation pending in the US Senate.

Oil production is worth $120 billion a year to Iran. It holds the world’s second largest oil and gas reserves after Saudi Arabia.

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Freshman Democratic Senators Mark Begich (D-AK) and Jean Shaheen (D-NH) have been joined by Republican Senators Mike Crapo(D-ID) and Lisa Murkowski (D-K) in announcing breakthrough bipartisan support for a little-utilized form of renewable energy, with major implications for greenhouse gas reductions in the US in the American Renewable Biomass Heating Act.

Their legislation would expand the use of waste biomass in high-efficiency heating systems in commercial and industrial buildings, Brighter Energy reports, by expansion of 30% tax credits to exceed the $1,500 limit, and to extend past the current expiration date of 2013.

Previously both Republicans had joined the now routine minority filibuster to prevent  extending expiring renewable energy tax credits, not once but twice, both voted no on ensuring that when fuel is defined as renewable that it not hurt the environment, and both filibustered against tax credits for renewable biomass, in particular.

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Farming in many regions of the US is likely to be among the worst casualties of climate change over the next decades. So it is an obvious, ethical, sensible and responsible move that John Deere supports climate and energy legislation to reduce our use of climate-changing fossil fuels, by funding renewable alternatives through fees on polluters.

Predictably, however, Deere is being targeted by attack ads by Freedomworks that will be shown on CNN, Fox News, Headline News and the History Channel.

The lobbying group FreedomWorks is the group that created the Tea Party movement. Based in Washington, DC, it is run by Dick Armey, a former House Republican Majority Leader who is now a fossil industry lobbyist.

Their next target is climate legislation that threatens the fossil industry with caps on pollution. This has put John Deere squarely in their sites.
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Republicans in the armed forces are coming back with much greener views on energy than the Senators that represent the Red States they come from, or the media that serves Republicans. A VoteVets poll of returning Afghanistan and Iraq veterans, comprising mostly Republicans – only 20% were Democrats – mostly from the Red States in the South showed a strikingly stark chasm opening between vets and their Senators.

Asked “Do you favor or oppose a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill that invests in clean, renewable energy sources in America and limits carbon pollution in the atmosphere?”

73% of vets voted “Aye”.

But since at least 1993, Senate Republicans have consistently voted and filibustered against all attempts at passing comprehensive clean  energy and climate legislation that limits carbon pollution in the atmosphere.
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Half of getting solar to crank out some juice for your home is just getting it up on your roof; which is a construction job for a contractor.

Which to choose, and why? A great place to start is the Bay Area’s own Calfinder, that refers contractors nationwide for solar photovoltaic or solar hot water system installations.

Started by serial entrepreneur Jason Polka who began and grew Varsity Painting into a multi-multi million dollar business and then decided to go into specializing in the first Green painting business in the Bay Area with Moondance Painting. As with the first two businesses, Calfinder began as one of those businesses that grows out of the discovery of a need.

The solar part of the referral site has really taken off, as one of the first sites to focus on solar referrals nationwide. SolarCalfinder has now linked over 10k homeowners with solar installers to get local crews installing solar panels on their houses.
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And why not. The North African desert kingdom gets over 3,000 yearly hours of solid reliable sun power – every year.

Morocco will invest $9 billion upfront to build 2 Gigawatts of solar power, distributed between 5 solar power plants, by 2020.

The 2 GW (2,000 Megawatts) is enough to supply 40% of the nation’s electricity to 32 million souls, who apparently have fairly modest energy needs.

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Colorado’ s largest utility, Xcel Energy is shutting down 900 MW of coal plants and replacing them with natural gas power plants. This move by just one utility will reduce the entire Colorado coal power fleet by a staggering 30%. What prompted this rather dazzling move?

The Colorado Clean Air – Clean Jobs Act just passed. Badda bing.

All new (or re-powered) electric power plants may not emit more than 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour, effectively ruling out coal burning (without CCS).

All utilities in the state must find a way to achieve the goal. They can replace or re-power coal plants with natural gas or add energy efficiency measures such as combined heat & power, or they can switch to renewable energy sources.
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In the last two years, with the 20% by 2010 Renewable Energy Standard deadline looming, California utilities had to look well outside the California border to buy some last minute wind power.

Over 11 GW of California projects are still stalemated by bureaucracy. So all three major utilities added last minute wind power from Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and even as far North as Washington. (more…)

While much of the EnergyStar® program is sound, and has led to real quantifiable energy savings over time, over the last four years,  alarm bells have been sounding on the increasingly lax certification process. Just how lax?

A gasoline-powered alarm clock the size of a microwave was one of the more ridiculous items able to get an automated label in a year-long undercover sting operation by the General Accounting Office.

Alarms had been sounding for the last 4 years, leading up to a year long investigation that uncovered the flawed certification process.  So this month, the EPA and the DOE announced that it will begin a long overdue overhaul of certification processes to get the EnergyStar® program back on track.

For the first time, all products seeking the EnergyStar® label will be tested in approved labs and require manufacturers to participate in an ongoing verification testing program to will ensure continued compliance.
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People in California’s hinterlands pay a very high price for electricity. They use three times more power than the average; trying to stay cool, and  they now pay more than four times the base rate for it. They think that’s not fair, and PG&E agrees with them. PG&E is applying for a rate change to reduce the top tier rate, and spread the cost of that higher energy use amongst the rest of their ratepayers.

But it’s no secret in solar circles that one reason for the boom in California solar has been those high rates paid by the most profligate energy consumers in the state. A “front-of-the-bay” Bay Area counterpart who (by not needing air conditioning or a swimming pool) pays about $100 for an average of just 550 kilowatt hours a month.

But someone with a swimming pool and air conditioning, in back of the Berkeley Hills, in the stifling cities of Concord, Walnut Creek, Pleasanton and Livermore – that see summer temperatures routinely over 95 degrees Fahrenheit – can easily spend up to $400 a month for 1,500 kilowatt hours a month of electricity.
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