Tag Archives: fracking

Why Energy Matters to You —Thomas A. Fanning

Since our coverage of the Southern Company (SO) shareholders meeting in May, SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning has started his own YouTube video series, “Why Energy Matters to You”, in which he tries to head off a real energy policy by advocating SO’s nuclear and coal strategy instead.

SO PR 28 June 2012, Southern Company Chairman Launches CEO Social Media Video Series,

Southern Company SO today unveiled the first in a series of CEO Web videos examining issues critical to the electric utility industry. The video series, “Why Energy Matters to You,” is available on YouTube and features Southern Company Chairman, President and CEO Thomas A. Fanning. Fanning announced the Web series during an appearance at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colo.

Here are his two episodes so far. His theme:

“I believe that every American deserves a supply of clean, safe, reliable, and affordable energy.”

Who could argue with that? It’s just SO’s ideas of how to do it that provoke some argument.

Here’s Part 1 of 2:

Why Energy Matters to You —Thomas A. Fanning Part 1 of 2

His question:

“How can better energy create more economic freedom for the American people?”

His answer is in Part 2 of 2:

Continue reading →

Insurer won’t cover fracking losses

Does your insurance policy explicitly list fracking damages among the things it covers? If not, you’re probably not covered, and especially if your insurer is Nationwide. And if your drinking water catches on fire, that’s probably not even considered damage to your property. Remember, natural gas through fracking (plus nuclear) is what Southern Company and Georgia Power (and therefore all the smaller electric utilities in Georgia) are moving to instead of coal.

The River Reporter reported Wednesday, Nationwide insurance: no fracking way

National Casualty (Insurance) Company, part of the Nationwide group of insurance companies, has announced that hydraulic fracturing operations are prohibited in relation to properties it insures.

The company has determined that the exposures presented by hydraulic fracturing are too great to ignore. Risks involved with hydraulic fracturing are now prohibited for General Liability, Commercial Auto, Motor Truck Cargo, Auto Physical Damage and Public Auto (insurance) coverage. The company said it would not bind risks with this exposure, and any policies currently written with the exposure would be non-renewed (following state requirements).

Among the prohibited risks involved in fracking operations listed by the company are contractors involved in fracking operations, landowners whose land has been leased to lessees with fracking operations, frack sand and frack liquid haulers and site prep (dump trucks, bulldozers) or leasing of tanks.

On Thursday they posted (part of) Nationwide’s response:

Continue reading →

How long until solar beats gas?

We’ve heard even German coal importers say solar beats coal. How long until clean solar beats dirty natural gas fracking?

Southern Company has already cut energy production from coal in half, from 70 or 80% to 35%. Unfortunately, SO did that mostly by shifting to natural gas. Natural gas produced through “a revolution in shale gas”, commonly known as fracking. Do we want to trade dirty water for clean air?

Unlike Johnson & Johnson and Dell (and Coke and Pepsi and Amazon and and more than a dozen more, including even Wal-Mart), the Southern Company has not cut ties with ALEC and its pro-fracking and anti-solar campaign. Why is the Southern Company betting on a dirty horse?

How long until SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning’s “one day” when renewable energy becomes economical? Sooner than his prediction of next decade, as in two years ago solar crossed nuclear, wind is already at parity with nuclear, and even Southern Company realizes coal doesn’t beat anything anymore.

How long before solar beats natural gas, relegating gas to much-reduced use as a backup for sun and wind power, as John Blackburn already projected in March 2010 can happen in North Carolina?

How long will it take for the sun and the wind, with a little water and even less natural gas, to power the world? How long? Not long.

Because the arc of the solar Moore’s Law is long, but it bends down for price per watt, while the price of fracking, no matter the quakes and dirty water for ever, does not.

-jsq

Johnson & Johnson and Dell dump ALEC: where’s Southern Company?

J&J and Dell ditched ALEC, for two dozen bailing out of that ship of dubious lobbying. Where's The Southern Company? Still supporting ALEC's pro-fracking and anti-solar campaign?

A week ago Rebeka Wilce reported for PR Watch that Johnson & Johnson 19th Company, 23rd Private Sector Member, to Cut Ties with ALEC. Today Scott Keyes reported for ThinkProgress that Dell Becomes 21st Company To Drop ALEC. So many companies have ditched the corporate-legislative private-public partnership American Legislative Exchange (ALEC) that it's hard to keep count. Yet we still haven't heard from The Southern Company (SO), even as ALEC continues its drive to dismantle incntives for renewable energy and preserve fracking loopholes, and The Southern Company continues expanding use of natural gas (knowing it comes from fracking) while putting off solar and wind until "one day" some time next decade maybe, and (through its subsidiary Georgia Power) actively opposing fixing Georgia legislative hurdles to renewable energy. All that plus wasting Georgia Power customer cash and taxpayer dollars on useless new nukes at Plant Vogtle.

Come on, Southern Company and CEO Thomas A. Fanning: you can do better than that! Turn to the sun and the wind for clean green jobs for community and profit.

If you're a Georgia Power customer and you'd like to help persuade SO, you can pay your Plant Vogtle Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) charge in a separate check and write on it what you'd like instead. Even if you're not, it's election season, and every member of the Georgia legislature is running: you can contact your candidate and find out what they're willing to do to get us solar and wind for energy independence, jobs, community, and profit.

-jsq

SO CEO Fanning: Policy, jobs, and the economy plus fracking

You may have wondered, how was Southern Company (SO) CEO Thomas A. Fanning so ready and able to respond at length to any question at the SO shareholder meeting? Because he’s a class A CEO who does his homework, such as this white paper he wrote dated September 2011: American Energy Policy, Jobs and the Economy, in which he explains what he meant by “the revolution we have seen in the shale gas industry”.

So, natural gas is important, but it’s not a panacea. Here’s why.

First, the reason prices have dropped so far is because of a new technology called fracking, which releases natural gas from so-called tight rock formations, such as shale gas. Fracking is the injection of chemicals underground, which have the effect of fracturing the rock deposits, thereby releasing the natural gas. There are environmental concerns around the chemicals associated with the fracking process. Those concerns have to be resolved.

Those concerns range from polluted groundwater to earthquakes. It’s great that SO is turning away from coal. I don’t think it’s so great to trade dirty air from coal for dirty water and earthquakes from fracking.

Secondly, many of these shale gas deposits are in places where there is no sufficient pipeline infrastructure necessary to move the gas to the places it’s needed to generate the electricity. Pipelines will have to be built. It will take time. We need to resolve that issue, too.

Meanwhile, rooftop solar Continue reading →

ALEC loses 8 more, including Wal-Mart

Even Wal-Mart ditches ALEC! What about the Southern Company?

ALEC Exposed is keeping a list of Corporations Which Have Cut Ties to ALEC, and since the ten we last counted, eight more have jumped the sinking lobbying ship: Blue Cross Blue Shield, YUM! Brands, Procter & Gamble, Kaplan, Scantron, Amazon, Medtronic, and Wal-Mart. That’s right, even Wal-Mart. Jason Easley wrote for Politicus USA yesterday, Wal-Mart Dumps ALEC and Outs Them as Un-American,

In a statement, Wal-Mart representative Maggie Sans wrote, “Previously, we expressed our concerns about ALEC’s decision to weigh in on issues that stray from its core mission ‘to advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets…We feel that the divide between these activities and our purpose as a business has become too wide. To that end, we are suspending our membership in ALEC.”

Wal-Mart claimed that ALEC was no longer as interested in Jeffersonian free market principles as they were other partisan political issues. Two of those unnamed political issues are most certainly voter ID and stand your ground laws.

When even Wal-Mart complains that ALEC isn’t “free market” enough, Wal-Mart, which Continue reading →

ALEC, bills to ditch renewable energy, and the Southern Company

Got caught promoting laws that encourage people to kill people? Double down on laws to kill people through pollution! That’s what ALEC is doing. And look who’s apparently a member of ALEC: the Southern Company, parent of Georgia Power, and proprieter of several of the largest and dirtiest coal plants in the country.

Brian Merchant wrote for Treehugger Tuesday, Two ALEC Campaigns Exposed: One Kills Renewables, One Boosts Fracking,

After major corporations like Pepsi, Kraft, Proctor & Gamble, and Coke all ditched the rightwing group, ALEC announced that it would Plant Scherer abandon its drive to enact gun and voter ID laws. The group’s decision came after a couple high profile campaigns were launched decrying ALEC’s involvement in passing the ‘stand your ground’ laws.

But the group is actually stepping up its efforts in other arenas, as I noted last week. And two new reports, one from ProPublica, the other from DeSmogBlog, outline its new aims: dismantle legislation that incentivizes renewable energy generation, and preserve loopholes that allow natural gas companies to keep the chemical cocktails in their fracking fluids secret from the public.

This is the same ALEC that promotes laws like Georgia’s HB 87 that lock up more people to benefit private prison companies like CCA, which wanted to build a private prison on Lowndes County, Georgia. Traficking in human beings is not too sordid for ALEC, so poisoning people through polution doesn’t seem surprising.

Hm, let’s look at the corporate membership of ALEC, as collected by Sourcewatch’s ALEC Exposed. Why there’s The Southern Company, parent of Georgia Power! I’m frankly a little surprised Continue reading →

Solar is coming —Michael Noll

Received yesterday on Solar tipping point within a few years. -jsq
In line with comments made by Steven Chu:

Solar cheaper than fossil fuels in a decade, says Steven Chu, by Christopher Mims, 3 November 2011.

Solar power will be cheaper than fossil fuels at some point between the end of this decade and 2026*, said U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu

as well as a recent Op-Ed piece by Paul Krugman:

Here Comes Solar by Paul Krugman, 6 November 2011.

…progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.

This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues — and if anything it seems to be accelerating — we’re just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.

And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it’s likely that we would already have passed that tipping point.

-Michael Noll

I added the blockquotes and the Moore’s Law link. Seems to me physicist Sec. Chu must be looking only at the sticker price, while economist Krugman is also looking at other costs and at externalities not currently included in the sticker price, yet still costing us in other ways. Add in the costs of wars for oil and I wonder how long ago solar already became cheaper than oil….

-jsq