Tag Archives: Valdosta

Fourth extension on Vogtle nuclear loan guarantee deadline

Southern Company doesn’t want to pay $17 to $52 million to get an $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee. That’s 0.2% to 0.62%. Why should we guarantee SO’s bad bet for pennies down? Let’s just call it off!

Ray Henry wrote for AP yesterday, Talks continue over Ga. nuclear plant loans,

Three years after the U.S. government promised $8.3 billion in lending for a nuclear plant in Georgia, Southern Co. and its partners have not sealed a deal.

President Barack Obama’s administration recently agreed to a fourth extension of the deadline for finalizing lending agreements between Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power and the other owners of the nuclear plant now under construction. Congress authorized the funding in 2005 to revive a nuclear industry that at the time expected growth.

Few utilities secured even a preliminary agreement, mostly because power companies dropped plans to build nuclear plants. The Great Recession trimmed the demand for energy, and plummeting natural gas prices made it cheaper to build gas-fired plants. The slumping economy also pushed interest rates to historic lows, reducing borrowing costs and undercutting the need for subsidized lending.

All that and ten nukes have been closed or cancelled in the past year. Even France’s EDF has exited nukes in the U.S. and has already built more U.S. solar and wind power than SO’s new Plant Vogtle nukes would produce.

Southern Company now claims this federal loan guarantee isn’t necessary: Continue reading →

France unfracked

No fracking France, affirms France’s highest court. No, silly utilities, fracking is not like geothermal power. Yes, utilities, you’ll have to write off a lot of fossils in the ground. But there’s far more money to be made in clean energy, so get on with it!

Mat McDermott wrote for Motherboard yesterday, You Can’t Frack France

After a constitutional court review, France's ban on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and oil has become "absolute," in the words of Environment Minister Phillipe Martin. In its decision, the court found Continue reading →

Fossil Free Valdosta

Fossil Free Valdosta, a facebook page just launched by members of S.A.V.E. (Students Against Violating the Environment), under VSU’s new solar canopy:

A student campaign calling on Valdosta State University to freeze any new investments in the fossil fuel industry immediately and divest within the next five years.

You can help divestment by signing their petition. That will help VSU stop wasting investments on fossil fuels while solar stocks skyrocket. And that will help undermine the political power of the fossil fuel industry. After all, all our investments are political, and there’s nothing neutral about investing in climate wreckage.

-jsq

European utilities scared of renewable energy

Another reason Southern Company needs to get on with a smart grid, using its biggest private R&D outfit in the U.S. Now that solar has reached grid parity with everything including natural gas (and years since it passed nuclear), if the utilities don’t get out in front, they’re going to be left behind.

Derek Mead wrote for Motherboard yesterday, European Utilities Say They Can’t Make Money Because There’s Too Much Renewable Energy,

Renewable energy has been on a tear the past few years, with growth in many countries spurred by subsidies for wind and solar power. Now the heads of 10 European utility companies say EU subsidies should end, because they've got more renewable energy than they know what to do with.

The 10 CEOs in question, who refer to themselves as the Magritte group because they first met in an art gallery, represent companies that control about half the power capacity of Europe. The group gave a press conference today— Reuters says that 10 such executives giving a joint public statement is “unprecedented”—to hammer home a message they’ve been trumpeting ahead of an EU energy summit in 2014: There’s too much energy capacity, which has driven prices down so far that they can’t make any money.

As long as there are nukes or coal plants, there’s too much capacity. European utilities need to get on with things like Continue reading →

Solar vs. fossil fuel stocks

Should Harvard President Drew Faust worry that “Significantly constraining investment options risks significantly constraining investment returns”? Actually, if Harvard has been wasting investments in oil and gas for the past year, its endowment has lost a bundle. Ditto VSU.

Let’s compare stock performance of Guggenheim Solar ETF (NYSE:TAN) which invests in solar stocks with the PowerShares DB Energy Fund (NYSEARCA:DBE), which invests in oil and natural gas companies. Yep, that’s 120% for TAN and 0% for DBE:

TAN solar v DBE oil and gas 1 year

Sure, if you go back farther, solar stocks continued to drop after 2009 until this year: Continue reading →

AAUW Candidates’ Forum 15 October 2013

This one will include questions from the audience (here are videos of last year’s AAUW forum.) This announcement received yesterday. -jsq

The American Association for University Women is hosting a Candidates’ Forum on Oct. 15 (please see the announcement below), and we are hoping to let everyone in the area know about it. I am contacting various media in the hope that a public service announcement can be made. I would much appreciate your help!

The AAUW (American Association of University Women) will sponsor a Candidates’ Forum on Tuesday, Oct. 15th, at 7 p.m. in the VSU Continuing Education Building Auditorium, located at 903 N Patterson St. Candidates for the upcoming Municipal Elections will give brief presentations and the audience will be invited to ask moderated questions. For further information, contact Dr. Diane Holliman (229-560-8645) and visit the AAUW website at http://valdosta-ga.aauw.net.

Thank you so much.

Dr. Patricia Marks
Professor Emerita, Dept. of English
Valdosta State University
******
AAUW Corresponding Secretary

Corrupt cocaine cops in Florida

This could never happen in Georgia, right? Right?

Matt Gutman, Erin Brady, Seni Tienabeso and Candace Smith wrote for abc News 9 October 2013, How Undercover Cops in a Florida City Make Millions Selling Cocaine,

Police in a Southern Florida community outside of Fort Lauderdale have been using a controversial tactic to conduct cocaine sting operations and have been raking in millions of dollars in the process.

For years, the Sunrise, Fla., police have been conducting what are called “reverse stings.” Undercover police detectives play the role of cocaine dealers and try to lure in potential buyers who drive or fly in from all over the country with wads of cash. If the stings are successful, informants can receive large payouts and police can seize cash, cars and other non-monetary assets. The busts have Continue reading →

County lost LOST; now has 120 days to negotiate with cities

So all our tax money the county spent on the alleged county attorney arguing before the state Supreme Court was wasted. The remaining law seems to say by 120 days from Monday the cities and the county need to come to an agreement.

Kay Harris wrote for the VDT yesterday, Lowndes LOST in limbo: Supreme Court tosses key amendment,

In a ruling issued Monday, Oct. 7, the Supreme Court of Georgia declared a 2010 amendment to the Local Option Sales Tax Act unconstitutional, reasoning that the amendment would delegate a legislative function of allocating tax proceeds to the judicial branch of government, a violation of the Separation of Powers clause of the Georgia Constitution.

For Lowndes County, the ruling effectively renders the lawsuit moot that was filed by the five cities against the county in September 2012.

The Supreme Court’s ruling came in the case of Turner County vs. the City of Ashburn over a dispute in splitting the proceeds from the one cent sales tax, the same issue in the Lowndes lawsuit. By declaring the portion unconstitutional that would allow a judge to decide how to allocate the tax dollars between the entities, the issue is now in limbo for several counties in Georgia.

You may recall that former Chairman Ashley Paulk wasn’t interested in discussing proposals from the cities, and said from before the LOST negotiations began that he expected it to go to arbitration.

This was the same Chairman Ashley Paulk who put SPLOST VII on the ballot a year early and lost it. I wonder how much input County Manager Joe Pritchard had into these two losing decisions?

At least SPLOST VI hasn’t expired yet and there’s time for the voters to go again on SPLOST VII in November.

What happens now with LOST? Continue reading →

Our investments are political –Divest Harvard to Drew Faust

Divest Harvard summed it up:

Our investments ARE political.

And that’s just as true at VSU.

Not even Tim DeChristopher put it more pithily than that. Samantha Caravello wrote in the Harvard Law Record 7 October 2013, Pres. Faust, There’s Nothing Neutral About Investing in Climate Wreckage, noting that Pres. Faust’s excuses were actually in response to “an invitation from undergraduates to participate in an open forum on divesting Harvard’s $32 billion endowment from the top 200 fossil fuel companies.”

President Faust warned against using the endowment in ways that would position the university as a political actor, claiming Continue reading →

U.S. adults fail math, reading, and problem-solving

Then adults fail to provide sufficient education for U.S. children to succeed in an educated world. But we can change that. Korea and Finland did, and we can, too.

Kimberly Hefling wrote for AP Tuesday, American adults score poorly on global test,

U.S. In math, reading and problem-solving using technology—all skills considered critical for global competitiveness and economic strength—American adults scored below the international average on a global test, according to results released Tuesday.

Adults in Japan, Canada, Australia, Finland and multiple other countries scored significantly higher than the United States in all three areas on the test. Beyond basic reading and math, respondents were tested on activities such as calculating mileage reimbursement due to a salesman, sorting email and comparing food expiration dates on grocery store tags.

Too bad they didn’t test picking political candidates to elect. Apparently at least a minority of U.S. adults failed that, too. I would quote from the actual test, but this is what we find at ncs.ed.gov today: Continue reading →