Category Archives: Wind

Suniva went to Solar Valley, Michigan, which has a plan

Suniva’s second solar PV manufacturing plant that Georgia couldn’t keep went to Saginaw, Michigan, where the editorial board of The Saginaw News lists it as just one bullet item:
• Georgia-based solar panel maker Suniva is well along in its federal loan guarantee application so it can build a plant in Saginaw County.
So what is the big news that they’re editorializing about?
The Solar Valley is starting to snowball.

Amid the campaigning and squabbling on the Friday before last week’s statewide election were two electric announcements promising a big buzz for our region’s future.

Continue reading →

Wind + Google = Atlantic Wind Connection

Susan Kraemer writes in Clean Technica about Google Builds First US Off-Shore Superhighway for Clean Energy:
Some very exciting news for US clean energy today. Google announced on their blog last night that they will invest in building 350 miles of transmission off the Atlantic coast from New Jersey to Virginia to tap into a gigantic off-shore wind potential that has only just been opened up this year with the first-ever US approval of an off-shore wind farm, by the Obama administration.

The new transmission cables, a superhighway for clean energy, will enable the connection of up to 6,000 MW of offshore wind turbines. That’s equivalent to 60% of the wind energy that was installed in the entire country last year and enough to serve approximately 1.9 million households.

Putting this system in place removes the major barrier: the lack of infrastructure, and should – with a friendly administration, jump-start off-shore wind in this country.

Doesn’t the Georgia Bight (coast of Florida, Georgia, SC, and NC, aka the South Atlantic Bight) have similar wind potential? Maybe somebody should start building a wind farm off of Savannah and invite google to fund transmission lines from there, too.

-jsq

Houston’s Renewable Energy

For those people around Lowndes County who are living in the past and still say solar doesn’t work, Jonathan Hiskes interviews the former mayor of Houston, Bill White, in Grist, 24 Sep 2010, and asks about solar energy and efficiency:
During White’s time as mayor of Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city, he ran a highly successful home-weatherization program and engineered a major purchase of 50 megawatts of clean energy, giving momentum to the state’s booming wind industry.
Hm, so VSU, for example, could buy wind energy from windmills off the Georgia Coast…

Read on about solar. Continue reading →

Ontario shutting down all coal plants by 2014

According to the province of Ontario:
Ontario families will breathe cleaner air after four additional dirty coal-fired units were permanently shut down, reducing smog-producing coal generating capacity by 40 per cent since 2003.

Today’s closing of two of eight units at Nanticoke and two of four units at the Lambton plant are part of Ontario’s plan to phase out dirty coal-fired generation by 2014 and replace it with wind, solar and other cleaner energy sources.

Hm, isn’t Ontario mostly north of Buffalo, where solar companies are booming and U. Buffalo is building a solar array at its entrance? And isn’t Toronto north of Buffalo, well more than a thousand miles north of here? Tell me again why south Georgia can’t do solar? The solar panels on my workshop say we can.

-jsq

Joy Towles Ezell: Florida Sierra Club biomass policy

A Sierra Club reply to Brad Lofton, copied to the Valdosta Board of Education and others.

-jsq

From: Joy Towles Ezell
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:27:54 -0700 (PDT)

As the former Conservation Chair and the former Energy Chair of the Florida Chapter of the Sierra Club, and as the former Energy Chair of the Big Bend Group of the Florida Chapter, I must “set the record straight”. Today’s National Sierra Club policy is not as strong as the Florida Chapter’s policy was against burning biomass. I can speak only to Florida’s SC policy, so I submit to you the policies of the Florida Chapter and the Big Bend Group concerning the burning of biomass during my tenure, with our press release concerning the now defeated biomass plant in Tallahassee:

The Florida Chapter Policies were also published, in part, in The Pelican, Spring 2004, the official Florida Chapter newsletter.

Here is the Chapter policy on ‘biomass.’

Florida Chapter Sierra Club policy opposes biomass production:

“We continue to oppose the development of biomass production as an
alternative to solar and wind power. Biomass production depletes the
environment by decreasing topsoil, using more water, fertilizer and
diesel fuel than it is worth and creates more pollution.”
Page 8. http://florida.sierraclub.org/Pelican/spring04.pdf


Continue reading →

How about some real clean energy jobs, and a renewable energy strategy for Georgia?

This is a response from me to Brad Lofton’s letter of 22 September 2010. I also refer to Leigh Touchton’s response of the same date.
From: “John S. Quarterman”
To: blofton@industrialauthority.com, Leigh Touchton
Cc: [VDT, elected officials, and other people]
Subject: Re: Brad Lofton, Executive Director Industrial Authority
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 11:23:39 -0400

Brad,

I also appreciate you taking the time to meet with people, but I am disappointed in the information provided by VLCIA.

For example, you say:

You are absolutely correct in stating that we provided you peer reviewed scientific literature proving that biomass plants are indeed carbon neutral
Excuse me? What journal accepts a stack of powerpoint slides for peer review?

Maybe you mean it’s based on some journal article. Citation, please: journal, date, and page.

The only thing I can find in it that was peer-reviewed was a quote from an IPCC 2007 report, which asks for “a sustainable forest management strategy”. That’s what we don’t have; that stack of slides certainly isn’t it.

You mention:

Continue reading →

Dr. William Sammons on Biomass Sustainability and Economics

Here’s an interesting video interview with Dr. William Sammons, the doctor who spoke in Traverse City just before that biomass plant was nixed.
Is it more important to reach the target … or to say we have new information and we need to revise the targets and what qualifies?
He’s talking about potential billions of dollars of health costs from particulates, about “waste” wood (what they say they will burn) vs. whole trees (what they end up burning), and most importantly about sustainability.

Biomass plants don’t have to report their CO2 emissions, so if all the proposed biomass plants get built we’re talking about as much as 800 million tons of CO2 from biomass plants by 2020, 12 to 14% of total CO2 emissions for the U.S. (not just power emissions: total national emissions). Trees don’t grow fast enough to suck all that back out of the air in ten years. Continue reading →

Proposed Solar Plants

OK, let’s look at “solar” in the online interactive map from Joel Achenbach’s story about The 21st Century Grid in the July 2010 National Geographic. It’s easy to count the proposed solar power plants in Georgia: zero. Yet there’s one in Virginia, one in Maryland, and at least three in Florida, adding to the currently largest solar plant in the country near De Soto, Florida. The map legend repeats the GEFA canard that
The Southwest is a solar-power hotbed. To supplement fossil fuel plants, long-distance transmission lines stretch from the Mojave Destert, which has plenty of sun.
Yes, that’s true, but what about this. At least three solar plants are proposed around San Antonio and Austin, which are not in the area of the southwest the map blurb is referring to. In fact, the largest solar plant in the country is proposed for Austin. Austin is one degree of latitude south of Valdosta, and has been leading the country in solar deployment for many years now. Texas in general almost doubled renewable energy generation between 2004 and 2006 while Georgia did nothing. Texas hasn’t stopped. When will Georgia start?

The Austin solar solution doesn’t require massive new power lines, either. It’s mostly been accomplished with solar panels on houses and business roofs; panels that wouldn’t show up on National Geographic’s map because they’re small and distributed. Which is the point: they generate power where it’s needed, and at peak times when it’s needed, namely when it’s hot and sunny out and air conditioners are running on max. There’s no reason Georgia can’t do the same.

I would continue this series by showing wind generation proposed for Georgia, but there isn’t any of that, either. There could be, off the coast.

Which makes more sense: polluting our air with more coal and biomass plants, or getting a move on with solar and wind?

-jsq

Georgia Power Away from Coal?

Walter Jones writes about how Georgia Power aims to rely less on coal:
For years, solar and wind were described as unsuited for the South’s weather conditions and geography, although Georgia Power is now taking another look at them in this year’s version of it’s integrated-resource plan, a document it updates every three years.
I suppose late is better than never. However, Georgia Power is turning more to nuclear and natural gas.

But why is it turning away from coal at all?

Stricter environmental regulations are also changing the economics of coal. Even without a “carbon tax” or “cap and trade” passing in Congress, the federal government is stepping up its existing authority over power plants. And an ongoing court case related to a proposed power plant owned by an independent company, Longleaf, could open the door in Georgia to regulation of carbon dioxide emissions. Any combination of those factors could lead regulators to force Georgia Power to shut down more of its older coal plants.

“The financial outlook for coal is grim,” Thompson said.

People are finally wising up that coal is bad for us, and the company sees that affecting its bottom line.

-jsq

Center of Innovation – Energy

Where’s Waldo? And where’s the state renewable energy strategy for Georgia, or for the southeast, or for just south Georgia? Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) Project Manager Allan Ricketts found another candidate.
“Forests Dominate Georgia’s Land Use”
That’s the title of slide 10 of 21 in Center of Innovation – Energy (CIE) by Jill Stuckey, Director. Actually, massively pesticided planted pines dominate south Georgia’s land use; not the same as actual forests with species diversity and diverse ages of trees. The same CIE slide equates
Georgia Forestry = Biomass Energy
That is what the state government seems to want it to be.

Back on slide 9, solar is defined as a southwestern regional energy source; nevermind that the solar map on that page shows Georgia with the same insolation as most of Texas (more on that later). And wind is defined as a central U.S. regional strength, nevermind that even Georgia Power has started exploring the possibility of wind off the Georgia coast.

I get it that Georgia has trees and forestry is a big industry in Georgia. I’m a tree farmer myself. I’d love to be convinced that biomass from trees is one good way to go. But at what costs? And compared to what? Continue reading →