What pollutes almost as much as one and a half coal plants per permanent job? The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. Does that sound like a good deal to you?
Talia Buford and Darren Goode wrote for Politico 1 March 2013, State Dept. Keystone report plays down climate fears, Continue reading
Underground may be out of sight, but it just keeps seeping farther,
getting into more wells, poisoning more wetlands, and getting into the air,
causing cancer and other diseases.
Katie Leslie and Shannon McCaffrey wrote for the AJC 13 April 2013, 20 years later, Fort Gillem contamination still spreading,
In the early 1990s the U.S. Army discovered hazardous chemicals dumped at Fort Gillem seeping into residential wells in neighboring Forest Park. The finding prompted the military to pass out bottled water and convert many residents to a county water system from their private wells.
But two decades and a base closure later, state officials say the Army still hasn’t done enough to clean up known and suspected carcinogens that are migrating from groundwater into surface water and, potentially, into the air residents breathe.
We might want to think about that before importing coal ash; oh, wait, we already did! Maybe at least we should not import any more of it. We already have cancer-causing arsenic in some of our wells; we don’t need more. And what about that Continue reading
Spring means soon time for the Southern Company Stockholder meeting!
See what one of the biggest electric utilities in the world is up to,
and maybe make a few suggestions.
Here are videos of what you missed last year, and here is the official SO notice for this year (I got a link to it because I’m a shareholder): Notice of Annual Meeting of Stockholders of The Southern Company
DATE: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 TIME: 10:00 a.m., ET PLACE: The Lodge Conference Center at Callaway Gardens
Highway 18
Pine Mountain, Georgia 3182
It includes a list of Items of Business, which doesn’t mention that
stockholders are usually allowed to ask questions.
Those questions are usually answered by Thomas A. fanning,
Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer,
who included a letter (text below) in which he recites
his usual list of energy sources, in his usual order: Continue reading
Uranium has been found in well water near Juliette, Georgia, but tests by several different groups of researchers differ on whether it might be related to nearby coal ash from Plant Scherer. The same coal ash ponds near which some people are getting cancer from uranium in their well water. Coal ash like we have in Veolia landfill in Lowndes County.
S. Heather Duncan wrote for Macon.com yesterday, New water test results shed light on Juliette contamination,
Continue readingMany Juliette residents have expressed concern that a coal ash pond
at Plant Scherer, one of the largest coal-fired power plants in the country, might be causing the problem. Georgia Power is majority owner and operator of the plant and its 750-acre, unlined pond filled with coal ash slurry, which can contain heavy metals such as uranium….
Since then, water samples tested by the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as a smaller group of samples tested by a group of University of Georgia graduate students, showed no pattern of contamination that could be clearly linked to groundwater flow from the coal ash pond. The samples were taken last year, but in some cases it took months for the samples to be analyzed….
On the other hand,
And they know compound annual growth, even at a low 22% rate, is going to cause them a heap of trouble.
More from the
Edison Electric Institute January 2013 report,
Disruptive Challenges: Financial Implications and Strategic Responses to a Changing Retail Electric Business (rehosted on the LAKE web server, since it disappered from the EEI server),
The decline in the price of PV panels from $3.80/watt in 2008 to $0.86/watt in mid-20121. While some will question the sustainability of cost-curve trends experienced, it is expected that PV panel costs will not increase (or not increase meaningfully) even as the current supply glut is resolved. As a result, the all-in cost of PV solar installation approximates $5/watt, with expectations of the cost declining further as scale is realized;
Sure, costs won’t continue to drop forever, but Continue reading
Fossil fuels get more than $70 billion dollars a year in
U.S. government subsidies (tax breaks and direct spending),
while solar and wind get only about $12 billion,
so fossil fuels got more than five times as much,
while
nuclear got ten times as much (especially
in Georgia).
Even corn ethanol, that sounded-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time
boondoggle, gets more subsidies than solar and wind put together.
That’s without even going into the externalities such as healthcare costs due to polution, environmental destruction through mountaintop removal for coal, tar sands oil drilling, and fracking for natural gas, and wars for oil and uranium.
Continue reading
Risks at
Southern Company’s Kemper Coal plant in Mississippi?
Push those costs onto the public, of course!
Southern Company and its subsidiary Mississippi Power
got the MS Public Service Commissioners to approve super-CWIP
(Construction Work in Progress)
for Kemper Coal: automatic rate increases for MS Power customers for years.
Just like Southern Company and its biggest subsidiary Georgia Power
got the Georgia legislature to approve Super-CWIP for the new nukes
at Plant Vogtle back in 2009.
And both CWIP projects are already over budget.
How about we cancel those boondoggles and build solar and wind instead?
AP reported 13 December 2012, After spending $1.88 billion, Southern Co. still faces risks on plant in Kemper County,
Continue readingLTE in the VDT today. I’ve added a few links. -jsq
Continue reading
Fox News recently claimed that “solar won’t work in America because it’s not as sunny as Germany”. Such statements are common for a network that has long lost its credibility. Unfortunately too many take such gibberish at face value. Thus columns like “environmentalism or obstructionism?” are not surprising, but in the end it’s the facts that matter:
- Global warming is real. For years we have been experiencing record heat waves, droughts, wild fires, etc., and while seawater levels are rising, storms like hurricane Sandy become major threats to low lying areas along coast lines.
- The main culprit for global warming are greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil.
- While China overall emits more than we do, the US leads in per capita emissions. The average US citizen produces three times more carbon dioxide than the average Chinese citizen.
Finally!
The reactor
only 160 miles from here
that
nobody wanted to pay to fix
is closing for good: Duke is closing Crystal River.
After Kewaunee and Crystal River closing, which one is next?
San Onofre?
The never-opened Vogtle 3 and 4?
Ivan Penn wrote for Tampa Bay Times today, Duke Energy announces closing of Crystal River nuclear power plant,
Duke Energy announced early Tuesday it will permanently close the Crystal River nuclear plant that has been shut down since late 2009.
The company said it is reviewing alternatives, including building a new natural gas plant, to replace the power produced by the nuclear facility.
Duke's four coal-fired plants will remain in service at the same Citrus County complex where the nuclear plant, known as CR3, is located.
How about they build
offshore wind farms
and solar farms
instead, like
TEPCO is doing near Fukushima?
Those can be built on time and on budget, use no fuel, and cause no pollution.
And how about
rooftop solar for jobs and energy independence?
There's more in the article, including this:
Continue reading
As
anticipated,
Georgia Power released
that
20-year energy plan Thursday,
because they have file one every three years with the PSC.
It includes far less solar power than tiny little far-north-of-here
Denmark is busily deploying.
The good news:
Georgia Power is closing a bunch of coal plants.
And this plan makes a nod towards
"demand response programs, energy efficiency programs, pricing
tariffs and other activities".
The bad news: they're replacing those coal plants with natural gas, and of course "two new state-of-the-art nuclear facilities at Plant Vogtle"; you know, the two Georgia Power has been charging customers for since 2009 while they deliver no electricity. Georgia Power can't even seem to deliver the reactor containment vessels.
But what about renewable energy? Continue reading