Tag Archives: Climate change

Savannah and Jacksonville most vulnerable to rising sea level

Savannah and Jacksonville are among the east coast cities most vulnerable to rising sea levels due to climate change, a study finds. Savannah, Georgia’s main seaport, with storm surges, hurricanes, and waves on top: what will that look like?

Suzanne Goldenberg wrote for the Guardian today, US coastal cities in danger as sea levels rise faster than expected, study warns: Satellite measurements show flooding from storms like Sandy will put low-lying population centres at risk sooner than projected,

A study published last March by Climate Central found sea-level rise due to global warming had already doubled the risk of extreme flood events — so-called once in a century floods — for dozens of locations up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

It singled out the California cities of Los Angeles and San Diego on the Pacific coast and Jacksonville, Florida, and Savannah, Georgia, on the Atlantic, as the most vulnerable to historic flooding due to sea-level rise.

Sandy, which produced a 9ft storm surge at Battery Park in New York City, produced one example of the dangerous combination of storm surges and rising sea level. In New York, each additional foot of water puts up to 100,000 additional people at risk, according to a map published with the study.

That study projected 6 inches rise at Fort Pulaski by 2030 (minimum 3 inches) and 13 inches by 2050 (maximum 24 inches). But projections have gotten worse since then:

Sea level changes measured and projected The latest research, published on Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters, found global sea-levels rising at a rate of 3.2mm a year, compared to the best estimates by the IPCC of 2mm a year, or 60% faster.

So that would be more like 9 inches by 2030 and 20 inches by 2050.

Add to a higher base sea level bigger storms like Hurricane Sandy, and Savannah and Jacksonville have a problem. Sure, Savannah is Continue reading →

How to stop climate change: divest from fossil fuel companies

In response to a very downbeat diatribe by Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone on the occasion of the U.N.’s Rio+20 conference being some sound and less fury accomplishing not much about stopping climate change, [Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone, 19 July 2012, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math: Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is”] Chloe Maxmin, Divest Harvard Harvard student Chloe Maxmin followed up McKibben’s problem statement with a plan for what to do: divest from fossil fuel companies. [“In Honor of Kalamazoo: An Open Letter to Bill McKibben,” NextGenJournal, 25 July 2012, no longer online, referred to in a post the same day by Chloe Maxmin on First Here, Then Everywhere.] Maxmin didn’t just wish, either, she joined up with McKibben’s 350.org and helped organize Harvard students to do something about it: persuade Harvard to divest its shares of fossil fuel companies. Students at the University of Georgia, or at Valdosta State University, for that matter, could do the same.

Alli Welton wrote for 350.org 18 November 2012, 72% of Harvard Students Vote to Divest from Fossil Fuels,

Last Friday night, the Harvard College Undergraduate Council announced that the student body had voted 72% in favor of Harvard University divesting its $30.7 billion endowment from fossil fuels.

Members of the Harvard chapter of Students for a Just and Stable Future have been campaigning since September to divest Harvard’s endowment from the top 200 publicly-traded fossil fuel corporations that own the majority of the world’s oil, coal, and gas reserves.

Harvard actually already has divested its shares of one fossil fuel company due to public pressure. 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 →

What Georgia Power is afraid of: GaSU and Dr. Smith; and you

So what is Georgia Power afraid of that made their CEO Paul Bowers double down on old-style baseload? Competition, that’s what! What could be more scary in the power-monopoly state of the 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act?

GaSU sun On one side, Georgia Power faces GaSU and its 80 or 90 MW solar plant proposal. Walter C. Jones wrote for OnlineAthens 24 September 2012, Proposed solar company could stir up Georgia’s utility structure,

A proposal from a start-up business promises to lower electricity rates by rebating profits to customers if given a chance to compete as Georgia Power Co.’s “mirror image.”

GaSU fb profile image To proceed with its long-range plan of developing 2 gigawatts of solar power, the start-up, Georgia Solar Utilities Inc., wants to start by building an 80-megawatt “solar farm” near Milledgeville as soon as it gets a green light from the Georgia Public Service Commission. GaSU filed its request last week, and as of Monday, it’s still too fresh for public evaluation.

So radical is the proposal that spokespersons for Georgia Power and the Georgia Solar Energy Association said they still were evaluating it and could not comment.

Groups that normally advocate for customers also are staying quiet.

GaSU executives recognize such a big change won’t come easily.

Continue reading →

Southern Company’s three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool

The failed EDF nuke project at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland makes it clearer why Southern Company (SO) was the first company to get a nuclear permit in 30 years: it was the only one big enough and monopolistic enough to pull it off. Even then it’s such a bet-the-farm risk that even “great, big company” SO only dared to deploy its “great big huge scale“ equipment with the regulatory capture triple-whammy of a stealth tax on Georgia Power bills, PSC approval of cost overruns, and an $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee:

  1. a legislated stealth tax in the form of a rate hike on Georgia Power customers for power they won’t get for years if ever. If you’re a Georgia Power customer, look on your bill for Nuclear Construct Cost Recovery Rider. You’ll find it adds about 5% on top of your Current Service Subtotal. Georgia is one of only a handful of states where such a Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) charge is legal thanks to our regulatory-captured legislature. Doubling down on bad energy bets, Southern Company is also trying to use CWIP to build a coal plant in Mississippi.
  2. A captive Public Service Commission that rubber-stamps costs for Plant Vogtle. In case there was any doubt as to the PSC’s role in legitimizing those new nukes, the very next day Fitch reaffirmed Southern Company’s bond ratings.

    Southern Company’s regulated utility subsidiaries derive predictable cash flows from low-risk utility businesses, enjoy relatively favorable regulatory framework in their service territories, and exhibit limited commodity price risks due to the ability to recover fuel and purchased power through separate cost trackers.

    Translation: Georgia Power customers subsidize SO’s bonds and SO shareholders’ stock dividends. The PSC also approved cost overruns being passed on to Georgia Power customers, and those nukes are already over $400 or $900 million, depending on who you ask. What do you expect when 4 out of 5 Public Service Commissioners apparently took 70% of their campaign contributions from utilities they regulate or their employees or their law firms, and the fifth commissioner took about 20% from such sources? Hm, there’s an election going on right now!
  3. An $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee. Even that’s not good enough for SO and Georgia Power: SO is asking for less down payment.

And what if even one of that three-legged regulatory capture stool’s legs went away? Continue reading →

Europe: no shale gas, more renewables

Europe has no shale gas, so, unlike the U.S., natural gas will not be getting in the way of quickly moving to renewable wind and solar energy.

Barbara Lewis and Henning Gloystein wrote for Reuters 23 August 2012, EU Green Energy Drive Says No To Shale Gas, Looks Towards More Renewable Power Sources,

In the medium term, the value of conventional gas is in providing reliable baseload power to supplement unpredictable renewables, which depend on the sun shining or the wind blowing.

Danish state-owned utility DONG Energy, which has relied heavily on coal-fired power generation, sees a combination of gas and renewables as the way to go.

“We see gas-to-power and wind energy as the ideal mix, together comprising clean and stable energy. Wind energy as the clean energy source, and gas-to-power as the balancing power,” Carsten Krogsgaard Thomsen, DONG Energy’s acting CEO, said.

Meanwhile, Windpower Monthly reported 13 August 2012, Dong issues 2012 profit warning,

Continue reading →

Energy experts making excuses for fracking

Numerous eminent current and former regulators, governors, and legislators’ best advice for how to keep fracking from polluting our aquifers and drinking water: “strict regulation”. As Gandhi reputedly said about western civilization: that would be a good idea. But in Georgia and many other places, where the regulatory agency (GA PSC) and the legislature are pretty much captured by the utilities they pretend to regulate, how will we get that “strict regulation”?

This was at a Politico event, sponsored by American Wind Power, called Energy & the Presidency.

Join POLITICO for a lunch conversation with energy experts and policy leaders Energy & the Presidency panel as they discuss current energy legislation, the energy debates facing the nation, policy options and what’s ahead in the year to come. Speakers include: ClearView Energy Partners’ Kevin Book; former Administrator of the EPA and former Director of the White House Office on Climate Change, Carol Browner; Rep. Ed Markey (Mass.); former Gov. Bill Richardson (NM) and former Gov. Bill Ritter (Colo.).

When: Wednesday, September 5, 2012 at 12:00 pm ET

This event was in North Carolina, where the late John Blackburn, Ph.D. already reported two years ago that the whole state could be powered by wind, sun, existing hydro, landfill gas, and less natural gas than is already in use, why do we need fracking at all?

Georgia has similar real renewable energy potential, plus studies by Georgia Tech and Duke indicate that Georgia doesn’t need any additional total electric power anyway, if it gets on with energy efficiency. Add solar and wind instead of natural gas, and we can retire a lot of coal plants. With no need for fracking.

I have an idea: let’s elect Public Service Commissioners and legislators who are not beholden to the utilities they will regulate!

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New NRC head says agency is standing up for public health and safety

Sounds to me like the NRC is not telling its new chief everything. For example, what about Vogtle unit 1 shutting down right after it passed an NRC review? What about cancer in Shell Bluff, Georgia, near the reactors?

Mike M. Ahlers wrote for CNN 14 August 2012, New NRC chair vouches for agency’s independence, states goals

Allison Macfarlane said Tuesday she has confidence in the agency and its independence from the nation’s 104 commercial nuclear power plants.

“I have some strong initial impressions of the agency, and one is that I’ve been very impressed with the staff and their dedication to safety, and their willingness to stand up to industry when they believe a situation is not safe,” Macfarlane said in a wide-ranging discussion with reporters.

“So I’m actually quite assured that the agency is completing its mission of protecting public health and safety,” she said. “They take safety issues very seriously. They take their role as regulators very seriously and the public should be assure that they have the public’s best interests in mind.”

Macfarlane said she hopes to build public confidence in the agency by improving communication, increasing transparency and making NRC documents understandable. “Some of them are rather opaque,” she allowed.

She has said some slightly more impressive things back before she was appointed. Continue reading →

Green from the Grassroots —Elinor Ostrom

On the day she died, Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom published her last article, in Project Syndicate, 12 June 2012, Green from the Grassroots,

This grassroots diversity in “green policymaking” makes economic sense. “Sustainable cities” attract the creative, educated people who want to live in a pollution-free, modern urban environment that suits their lifestyles. This is where future growth lies. Like upgrading a mobile phone, when people see the benefits, they will discard old models in a flash.

Of course, true sustainability goes further than pollution control. City planners must look beyond municipal limits and analyze flows of resources — energy, food, water, and people — into and out of their cities.

Worldwide, we are seeing a heterogeneous collection of cities interacting in a way that could have far-reaching influence on how Earth's entire life-support system evolves. These cities are learning from one another, building on good ideas and jettisoning poorer ones. Los Angeles took decades to implement pollution controls, but other cities, like Beijing, converted rapidly when they saw the benefits. In the coming decades, we may see a global system of interconnected sustainable cities emerging. If successful, everyone will want to join the club.

And counties, and regions, and watersheds, of course. As Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio said, there is a "nexus between sustainability and job creation." We don't have to wait for San Antonio or Los Angeles or Beijing or Atlanta to lead the way: we can get on with it right here where we are.

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Cleaner energy creates jobs in Iowa

In Iowa they didn’t whine about cleaner power regulations like Southern Company did, they went ahead and got on with it without dragging their feet for months or years. Simply complying with the new EPA regulations has created jobs for Iowans.

Matt Kasper wrote for ThinkProgress today, Pollution Control Retrofit Creates 400 Jobs In Iowa: Project Is A ‘Win-Win For Iowa’s Economy And Environment’

Alliant Energy in Iowa is celebrating an emission-reduction technology that will help a power plant meet new standards — creating 400 jobs in the process. One recent study found that “EPA’s two new air quality rules create 1.5 million jobs.”….

The Ottumwa Courier reported:

“The OGS [Ottumwa Generating Station] project is a win-win for Iowa’s economy and environment,” said Pat Kampling, president and CEO of Alliant Energy. “The project at OGS will create approximately 400 good-paying construction jobs for Iowa’s working families and foster future economic growth while making Iowa’s air cleaner.”

Better for public health, better for less climate change, and better the economy: more jobs for Iowans.

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