Category Archives: Oil

New U.S. energy in 2012 —FERC

What new energy sources are being deployed the fastest in the U.S.? According to FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, it’s not what you may think. The big winners are coal, wind, and solar.

According to the report Office of Energy Projects Energy Infrastructure Update For December 2012, Coal, while accounting for only 17% of new capacity in 2012, unfortunately increased by 133% over new capacity installed in 2011. Natural gas did account for the second most new installed capacity in 2012, 33%, but the amount in megawatts installed actually decreased by 20% from 2011.

The most new capacity installed in 2012? Wind, at 40%, with a 56% increase over new installations in 2011. That’s right, wind beat natural gas 40% to 33% in total new capacity in 2012, and whomped gas in increase in new capacity in 2011, by 56% to -20%.

While solar only accounted for 5.59% of new capacity in 2012, that was an increase of 30% over new capacity in 2011, which is way more than gas and after only coal and wind.

New Generation In-Service (New Build and Expansion)
December 2012 January – December 2012 Cumulative January – December 2011 Cumulative Percent of Total New 2012 Percent Increase 2011- 2012
Primary Fuel Type No. of Units Installed Capacity (MW) No. of Units Installed Capacity (MW) No. of Units Installed Capacity (MW)
Coal 4 1,434 8 4,510 15 1,932 17.1% 133%
Natural Gas 6 2,306 94 8,746 108 11,020 33.1% -20.6%
Nuclear 0 0 1 125 0 0 0.474% -%
Oil 0 0 19 49 66 136 0.186% -64%
Water 2 4 13 99 41 94 0.375% 5.32%
Wind 45 3,095 164 10,689 146 6,844 40.5% 56.2%
Biomass 5 91 100 543 131 446 2.06% 21.7%
Geo- thermal Steam 2 9 13 149 9 56 0.565% 166%
Solar 16 77 240 1,476 354 1,131 5.59% 30.5%
Waste Heat 0 0 1 3 2 136 0.0114% -97.8%
Other 2 0 5 0 11 0 0% -%
Total 82 7,016 658 26,387 883 21,795 100% 21.1%

Source: Data derived from Ventyx Global LLC, Velocity Suite.
Last two columns added by jsq for LAKE www.l-a-k-e.org 24 January 2013.

Biomass unfortunately accounted for Continue reading →

Overwhelming majority of Americans want clean water and renewable energy –poll

A new poll says 94% want new energy balanced with clean air and water, 86% want to shift from coal and nuclear to wind and water power, and 79% are concerned about shale gas fracking affecting water quality.

A few excerpts from the PR Water is High Priority for Bipartisan Majority of Americans, 10 January 2013,

  • 92 percent of Americans think “U.S. energy planning and decision making” should be based on “a comprehensive understanding of what our national water resources are” — a national water roadmap that Congress asked for, but which was never produced. The national water roadmap attracts the support of 92 percent of Republicans, 89 percent of Independents, and 94 percent of Democrats.
  • 86 percent of Americans want leadership on shifting from coal and nuclear energy to wind and solar. Support for this approach exists across party lines, including 72 percent of Republicans, 83 percent of Independents, and 97 percent of Democrats.
  • 86 percent of Americans “support more studies of the health and environmental consequences of the chemicals” used in fracking. Supporters of this approach include 81 percent of Republicans, 84 percent of Independents, and 89 percent of Democrats.
  • Three quarters of Americans have heard of fracking, with 51 percent saying they are very or somewhat familiar with it. 79 percent of Americans are concerned about fracking “as it relates to water quality.”

What is to be done?

Continue reading →

Nukes economically hard to justify —GE CEO Immelt

The CEO of General Electric, the company that designed the reactors at Fukushima and Hatch 1 and 2, said nukes are economically hard to justify. And that was back in July, before the first new nukes permitted in 30 years, at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River, slipped 15 months. What’s winning? Shale gas, temporarily, but that’s just a bump in the road on the way to wind and solar power.

Pilita Clark wrote for Financial Times 30 July 2012, Nuclear ‘hard to justify’, says GE chief,

Nuclear power is so expensive compared with other forms of energy that it has become “really hard” to justify, according to the chief executive of General Electric, one of the world’s largest suppliers of atomic equipment.

“It’s really a gas and wind world today,” said Jeff Immelt, referring to two sources of electricity he said most countries are shifting towards as natural gas becomes “permanently cheap”.

“When I talk to the guys who run the oil companies they say look, they’re finding more gas all the time. It’s just hard to justify nuclear, really hard. Gas is so cheap and at some point, really, economics rule,” Mr Immelt told the Financial Times in an interview in London at the weekend. “So I think some combination of gas, and either wind or solar … that’s where we see most countries around the world going.”

GE CEO Immelt may also want to talk to GE’s own research director Continue reading →

Solar cars and charging stations: who wouldn’t?

Tired of Southern Company CEO Fanning’s maybe “next decade” for solar power? Tired of Georgia Power’s Bowers trying to push solar off for fifty years? Let’s hear from somebody who takes on big tasks and gets them done: Elon Musk, who’s already built a rocket that is resupplying the International Space Station, and who is also building all-electric cars.

Carl Hoffman wrote for Smithsonian magazine December 2012, Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride

When he’s not launching rockets, Musk is disrupting the notoriously obdurate automobile industry (see National Treasure, p. 42). While industry giants like Chevrolet and Nissan and Toyota were dithering with electric-gasoline hybrids, this upstart kid said he would design and manufacture an all-electric car that would travel hundreds of miles on a single charge. The Tesla Roadster hit the streets in 2008 with a range of 200 miles, and the far more functional Model S, starting at $57,000, was introduced in June. It’s the world’s first all-electric car that does everything my old gasoline version does, only better. The high-end model travels 300 miles on a single charge, leaps from zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds, slows from 60 to a dead stop in 105 feet, can seat up to five, has room for mulch bags and golf clubs, handles like a race car and its battery comes with an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty. If you charged it via solar panels, it would run off the sun. One hundred a week are being produced in a former Toyota factory in Fremont, California, and nearly 13,000 people have put deposits on them….

And since that story: Continue reading →

Fake fracking reports: professor and institute head quit, other institute disbanded

From Austin to Buffalo, fake science for fracking is increasingly being exposed, Frack U with academic consequences: lead professor resigns, institute head quits, another institute disbanded. The image on the right (Frack U) is not a reputation any university wants to see. At least academia takes conflicts of interest seriously; now if government and the voters would do the same…. Or energy companies. Remember, shale gas (plus nuclear) is what Georgia Power and Southern Company are shifting to from coal, while shading us from the finances that would enable solar power for jobs and energy independence in south Georgia.

Terrence Henry wrote for NPR 6 December 2012, Review of UT Fracking Study Finds Failure to Disclose Conflict of Interest (Updated)

The original report by UT Austin’s Energy Institute, ‘Fact-Based Regulation for Environmental Protection in the Shale Gas Development,’ was released early this year, and claimed that there was no link between fracking and water contamination. But this summer, the Public Accountability Initiative, a watchdog group, reported that the head of the study, UT professor Chip Groat, had been sitting on the board of a drilling company the entire time. His compensation totaled over $1.5 million over the last five years. That prompted the University to announce an independent review of the study a month later, which was released today.

The review finds many problems with the original study, chief among them that Groat did not disclose what it calls a “clear conflict of interest,” which “severely diminished” the study. The study was originally commissioned as a way to correct what it called “controversies” over fracking because of media reports, but ironically ended up as a lightning rod itself for failing to disclose conflicts of interest and for lacking scientific rigor.

Unrepentant as recently as July, Professor Groat resigned in November. Plus this:

Raymond Orbach of UT’s Energy Institute has resigned after the group became engulfed in controversy over a study of fracking.

And elsewhere even more drastic results have ensued:

Continue reading →

Renewables are Winning, Nukes are Dead, and Coal is Crashing

Somebody is willing to read the sunshine writing: Renewables are Winning, Nukes are Dead and Coal is Crashing, as Kathleen Rogers and Danny Kennedy wrote for EcoWatch 14 Dec 2012.

As I wrote back in April when formerly coal-plotting Cobb EMC went solar:

Coal is dead. Nuclear is going down. Solar will eat the lunch of utilities that don’t start generating it.

Can Georgia Power and Southern Company (SO) read that handwriting on the wall? They can’t fight Moore’s Law, which has steadily brought the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy down for thirty years now, and shows no signs of stopping. This is the same Moore’s Law that has put a computer in your pocket more powerful than a computer that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1982 and was used by an entire company. Solar PV costs dropped 50% last year. Already all the new U.S. electric capacity installed this September was solar and wind. As this trend continues, solar will become so much more cost-effective than any fossil or nuclear fuel power that nobody will be able to ignore it.

Rogers and Kennedy explained this phenomenon:

The seismic shift in how we all use cell phones and mobile technology to access the internet almost snuck up on the incumbent technologies and the monopolies that made money selling us landline telephones and a crappy service. Now, we’re all using apps on smartphones all of the time. So too, the shift to a scaled, solar-powered future built around the modular technology at the heart of solar power—the photovoltaic solar cell—will come as a surprise to many. We call it the solar ascent, and it is happening every day in a million ways.

Will SO and Georgia Power continue to prop up that 1973 legal wall that inhibits solar financing in Georgia? Companies and even economic development authorities are starting to find ways around it, and of course there’s Georgia Solar Utilities (GaSU) trying to wedge into the law as a utility. After Hurricane Sandy, rooftop solar for grid outage independence has suddenly hit the big time (Austin Energy caught onto that back in 2003). The U.S. military got solar and renewable energy back in Afghanistan and are now doing it bigtime everywhere.

SO and Georgia Power can try to ignore Continue reading →

Help the military stop climate change through sustainable renewable energy

In memory of Armistice Day, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when World War I ended, let’s help the military get us off of oil and to deal with climate change so fewer people will die in wars.

John M. Broder wrote for NYTimes 9 November 2012, Climate Change Report Outlines Perils for U.S. Military,

Climate change is accelerating, and it will place unparalleled strains on American military and intelligence agencies in coming years by causing ever more disruptive events around the globe, the nation’s top scientific research group said in a report issued Friday.

The group, the National Research Council, says in a study commissioned by the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies that clusters of apparently unrelated events exacerbated by a warming climate will create more frequent but unpredictable crises in water supplies, food markets, energy supply chains and public health systems.

Hurricane Sandy provided a foretaste of what can be expected more often in the near future, the report’s lead author, John D. Steinbruner, said in an interview.

“This is the sort of thing we were talking about,” said Mr. Steinbruner, a longtime authority on national security. “You can debate the specific contribution of global warming to that storm. But we’re saying climate extremes are going to be more frequent, and this was an example of what they could mean. We’re also saying it could get a whole lot worse than that.”

…

Climate-driven crises could lead to internal instability or international conflict and might force the United States to provide humanitarian assistance or, in some cases, military force to protect vital energy, economic or other interests, the study said.

This is in addition to the even more obvious connection between war and U.S. dependence on foreign oil which the veterans in Operation Free want to fix by helping us shift to clean renewable energy.

“In Iraq… the lines would stretch up to ten miles long under the hot sun, under constant risk of attack by extremists. I realized then just how vulnerable it makes any country to be dependent on oil, especially the United States, which uses nearly a quarter of the world’s supply.”

We also heard last year from Col. Dan Nolan (U.S. Army ret.) that the Marines in Afghanistan realized Continue reading →

Bill Moyers on ALEC

Bill Moyers takes on ALEC.

Posted yesterday On Bill Moyers’ website, ‘United States of ALEC’ Video Previews

This week, Moyers & Company (check local listings) presents “United States of ALEC,” a report on the most influential corporate-funded political force most of America has never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.

He said more on Huffington Post Wednesday,

Continue reading →

Who will let the sun shine on Georgia?

Someone asked who to vote for who will represent the people more than the electric utilities, on Elect Georgia legislators and Public Service Commissioners who will let the sun shine on Georgia! OK, here’s my opinion.

Sec. State provides you with a sample ballot.

For PSC, vote for somebody who isn’t an incumbent (the incumbents are marked on the ballot). The election today is a primary, so you need to select a Democratic ballot (Steve Oppenheimer District 3 is not an incumbent) or a Republican ballot (Pam Davidson District 5 and Matt Reid District 3 are not incumbents).

For the legislature, here is a list of who voted for the nuke stealth tax as a charge on Georgia Power bills for electricity nobody will get for years if ever. On your ballot, see if somebody else is running against them. Around here, somebody is: Bikram Mohanty for State Senate District 8, Teresa Lawrence for State House District 174, and JC Cunningham for State House District 175, all Democrats, since the incumbents switched parties after being elected last time.

So, if you want solar and wind energy for jobs, energy independence, and profit in the state of Georgia, instead of Georgia Power’s bet-the-farm nuclear risk at Plant Vogtle and Southern Company’s natural gas fracking, that’s who I would vote for.

If, like me, you didn’t already vote early, today is the final day to vote in this primary, and you and I’ll be going down to the precinct polling place to cast a ballot. Today’s the day!

-jsq

Elect Georgia legislators and Public Service Commissioners who will let the sun shine on Georgia!

Solar PV prices have dropped so much they’re competitive with coal, natural gas, and nuclear. The only thing that stops Georgia from leading the country and the world in solar energy is our legislature and Public Service Commission kow-towing to the electric companies instead of serving the public. How about we elect Georgia legislators and PSC members who will change that?

How about if we elect legislators who will stop approving nuclear boondoggles for Southern Company through a stealth tax on Georgia Power customers? How about we elect Georgia Public Service Commissioners who will stop giving Georgia Power a guaranteed profit through charging cost overruns (already $400 million) for the Plant Vogtle boondoggle to Georgia Power customers?

How about instead we fully fund the existing 35% state tax rebate for renewable energy? Last year Georgia legislators did double the money in that fund, but it’s still only $5 million a year and the funding for 2012 has already been used up. $5 million a year for power after it’s installed, while Georgia Power and Southern Company have already run $400 million over budget on nuclear energy that nobody will see for years, if ever! We need Georgia legislators who understand that Moore’s Law for solar means fast growth; growth in jobs, energy independence, and profit for Georgians.

To bring Georgia to the lead in renewable energy in this country and the world, all we really need to do is to pass something like SB 401 to modify that arrogant dinosaur of a 1973 Georgia Territoriality Electric Service Act that prevents you from getting financing to install solar generation and selling it through the grid at a profit, with the electric utility taking a cut and bragging rights.

It is time to let the south Georgia sun break through the clouds of power utility disinformation and regulatory capture. It is time for us to elect Georgia legislators and Georgia Public Service Commissioners who will let the sun shine on us in Georgia!

-jsq