AJC on the
EPA hearings this week:
they didn’t print my proposed second step for natural gas,
but they did quote Sierra Club on efficiency.
Kristina Torres wrote for the AJC today, EPA brings ‘clean power’ plan to Atlanta. Will it hurt Georgia? Continue reading
High noon rally Tuesday and 9AM to 8PM hearings Monday and Tuesday 29-30 July 2014
at the
Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center, Main Tower Bridge Conference Area, Conference Room B, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta, GA.
Plus you can comment online, maybe about
mercury from coal Plant Scherer
in the Alapaha River and how shifting to “natural” gas just promotes
more fracked methane pipelines like that
Sabal Trail boondoggle.
EPA could take a second step on methane, and we can get on with
faster, cheaper, cleaner, and far more environmentally beneficial
solar power in the sunny southeast.
For details see the
Sierra Club
or
WWALS
or
SpectraBusters postings.
-jsq
Some like pithy posts, and others like long historical
summaries: see
the Solar Hot Topic for the latter.
I’ve just added links about solar parking lots, Oakland, CA, Dublin, GA and Lowndes High Schools, and super-lobbying group ALEC’s efforts in every state
legislature to oppose solar power.
Solar will win, simply because it’s already cheaper than anything else and the prices keep going down. The fossil industry will delay as long as possible to suck up more profit, but even Wall Street has turned against fossilized utilities that aren’t doing renewables yet. We the people will win. We just need to stop the fossil junkies from doing more damage before they lose. The sun is already rising.
-jsq
PolitiFact Rhode Island
examined 6 July 2014
a claim by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of 27 May 2014
and found that:
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said that solar industry jobs have now outpaced coal-mining jobs.
The most recent data from three objective sources support his claim.
Continue reading
Solar Roadways has raised $1,884,633 in six weeks from Earth Day to now
on a goal of $1,000,000 in indiegogo
(which was already
a record for most contributors with 36,000 people at $1.5 million).
Yes, to all those who have asked me, I think it could work.
Add solar roadways to rooftop solar and solar farms and wind,
and
the EPA’s new CO2 rule (which doesn’t even do much about coal for years
and does nothing about about “natural” gas)
will seem like a quaint baby step in a few years after this happens: Continue reading
The same Energy Policy Act of 2005 that
subsidized dirty oil and fracked methane including LNG exports
also funded
that oxymoron “clean” coal such as Southern Company’s Plant Ratcliffe
in Mississippi,
ethanol production lining the pockets of Monsanto, and
the $8.3 billion loan guarantee
to Georgia Power for the new nukes at Plant Vogtle.
2005 was a very long time ago in solar PV years:
prices are halved, and installed solar power production is up more
than ten times and growing exponentially like compound interest.
We need to stop throwing money at dirty, water-sucking,
centralized baseload 20th century non-solutions and get on with
clean 21st century distributed solar and wind power
for jobs, for energy independence, and for clean air and water,
not to mention less climate change.
-jsq
Solar car charging station at the
Southern Company Stockholder Meeting:
that’s new.
Other solar changes were detectable, if you knew what to look for,
and with hints from
SO CEO Tom Fanning and
new R&D VP Larry Monroe
here are some, while we’re waiting on SO for video and transcript.
Two demonstration solar charging cars were on the lawn outside the breakfast tent: Continue reading
If you owned Southern Company stock on 31 March 2014 (I did), you should have gotten a letter to Stockholders from SO CEO Tom Fanning:
You are invited to attend the 2014 Annual Meeting of Stockholders at 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, May 28, 2014, at The Lodge Conference Center at Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, Georgia.
Tom Fanning is a most congenial host, always ready with an answer to any question, as you can see in these videos from the Continue reading
All thermal power generation requires water for cooling, with nukes so vulnerable no private insurer will cover them anyway and failing frequently in recent heat waves. “Natural” gas is no better than coal or oil for water use; maybe worse because all those pipelines vulnerable to backhoes or corrosion or attack. Even hydro is vulnerable to lack of rainfall. Carbon sequestration doesn’t get good marks, while conservation and efficiency get rave reviews from a study of insurance perspectives on power generation. What’s the one power source this article about insurance risks does not say is fragile in the face of climate change? Hint: look up.
Limiting Liability in the Greenhouse: Insurance Risk-Management Strategies in the Context of Global Climate Change, by Christina Ross, Evan Mills, and Sean B. Hecht, Stanford Environmental Law Journal and the Stanford Journal of International Law, Symposium: on Climate Change Risk, Vol. 26A/43A:251, 2007.
Supply-side energy choices that may be made to reduce the carbon-intensity of energy services have their own distinctive liability characteristics. For example, switching to lower-carbon electricity generation technology based on thermal power plant technology (e.g., by substituting natural gas for coal) results in systems that are still heavily dependent on water resources for cooling. The Electric Power Research Institute has documented considerable risks to traditionally cooled power generation systems as a result of climate change-induced droughts.242 Similarly, “zero-emissions” hydroelectric generating systems are also sensitive to rainfall patterns.
242 Denis Albrecht, Electric Power Research Institute, Presentation: Climate Impact on Water Availability for Electricity Generation (April 11, 2006) (presentation slides associated with the Electric Power Research Institute).
Centralization considered harmful
Continue reading
Have you heard there’s a U.N. agency going around getting local governments to sign “Agenda 21” into ordinances that will take away your private property through eminent domain? If not, you’ve avoided the propaganda put out by fossil fuel companies to subvert sustainability. If you have, here’s why it’s bunk.
There is an organization that promotes measures for sustainability to local governments. Sustainability as in arranging for local resources to be available for us and our children and grandchildren. Clean air, clean water, forests, education, and private property rights including not letting developers or big corporations damage your private property. Are you against any of those things?
An organization promoting sustainability with local governments is called
ICLEI–Local Governments for Sustainability.
ICLEI says it is:
the leading global network devoted to local governments engaged in sustainability, climate protection, and clean energy initiatives. The organization was formerly known as the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives.
ICLEI has heard about the conspiracy theories and has written up a rebuttal. Continue reading