The Bailout
Tax Incentives for Renewables Restored in Bailout Bill. By Jim Abrams, AP, October 4, 2008. "Millions of taxpayers, thousands of businesses and groups as diverse as solar power developers and natural disaster victims will see tax relief with the House vote Friday to approve and send to the president a $700 billion financial rescue plan. The tax relief package attached to the rescue bill promotes renewable energy development and extends dozens of tax breaks from the critical research and development tax credit to breaks for such narrowly focused groups as motor sports racetrack owners, film producers and bicycle commuters... The renewable energy incentives include an eight-year extension of investment credits for solar energy, as well as breaks for wind, geothermal and other alternative sources. The solar industry says extension of the credits through 2016 would produce an extra 440,000 jobs and more than $230 billion in investments."
'Dirty Fuels' Profit by Bailout Bill's Tax Breaks for Renewable Energy. By Julie Cart, LATimes, October 4, 2008. "The renewable-energy tax incentives tucked into the financial bailout package passed by the House on Friday include billions of dollars in breaks for old-fashioned fossil-fuel processes such as liquefying coal and squeezing petroleum out of sand and rock... Critics of the measures note that the breaks run counter to the carbon-reduction message Congress intended when it vowed to bankroll clean, renewable technology. And a substantial portion of the tax breaks go to energy companies already flush with record oil profits. 'This is deeply offensive that they would attach this massive lobby goodie bag to a bill,' said Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen, a Washington-based public interest organization. 'This is a gravy train. The American people are suffering here, and oil companies are getting a tax break. Not even clean energy. This is not a way to make laws'... The provisions are found in the complicated tax-extenders legislation tacked on by the Senate after the House rejected the original bailout package. Although House members were adamant that the overall tax provisions remain revenue-neutral, the add-ons will cost taxpayers more than $100 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Managers in the Senate said the energy provisions were needed to make the bailout more palatable to some Western members."
2008 Elections
California's Proposition 7 Prompts a Highly Charged Debate. By Nancy Vogel, LATimes, October 5, 2008. "Proposition 7 on the November ballot aims to hurry the day when more of California's electricity comes from windmills, solar panels and other oil-free sources, requiring the state's utilities to get half their power from renewable energy by 2025. But it would actually hinder renewable electricity production, according to an unusual coalition of opponents that includes environmental groups, solar and wind companies that may appear to stand to profit from the measure, and the state's three biggest private utilities... They say the measure would punish the smallest clean-energy producers because their output would not be counted toward Proposition 7 goals."
Palin Says We Don't Know the Cause of Climate Change; Biden Says Yes We Do: It's Manmade. Vice-presidential debate transcript via CNN, October 2, 2008. Sarah Palin: "I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet"… Joe Biden: "I think it's clearly manmade. And, look, this probably explains the biggest fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden… If you don't understand what the cause is, it's virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is manmade."
Learn Congressional Candidates' Views on Global Warming. Posted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Brendan DeMelle,Huffington Post, October 2, 2008. "The next president will be responsible for shaping our nation's energy policy and response to global warming, a job that the outgoing president left in the hands of the oil and coal industries. But the hard work of converting the next president's policy vision into political reality lies largely in the hands of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 100 members of the U.S. Senate. Previously, it's been difficult for voters to learn where candidates for Congress stand on the most important environmental issues facing our country. So the NRDC Action Fund developed a new website, CandidAnswers.org, designed to let you ask your own candidates to answer a five question survey about their position on global warming emissions, renewable energy, nuclear power, public transportation and fuel efficiency standards."
Canadian Elections: October 14. By Sean McKibbon, CEP News (CA), October 3, 2008. "The Canadian economy dominated the English language federal election debate Thursday night [which took place as the vise-presidential candidates debates in the U.S.] as Prime Minister Stephen Harper defended his party's record from a four-on-one onslaught of criticism from opposition leaders. Harper pledged never to raise taxes, touted his party's previous tax cuts as an effort to shelter the Canadian economy from the gathering storm in the U.S. and argued that only the Conservatives could be trusted not to push the federal budget into deficit... Harper's opponents adopted a strongly interventionist tone, arguing 'laissez faire' economic policies had been disastrous both in Canada and the U.S. and that stronger regulation of financial markets are needed as well as more government involvement in shoring up Canadian industry... Liberal leader Stephane Dion said... his Greenshift plan to cut corporate and personal income taxes and tax pollution would not only address climate change problems but move the economy into the future and create 'green jobs'...Green Party leader Elizabeth May said her party would also impose a tax on carbon emissions, but she promised deeper income tax cuts than the Liberal plan... Unlike the Green and Liberal parties, New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton advocated a cap and trade system for combating air pollution emissions."
Canada's Green Party is a Prime-Time Draw. By Susan Bouretter, CSMonitor, October 3, 2008. "Elizabeth May... mother, lawyer, environmental activist, and native of Connecticut is the first Green Party member to participate in national televised debates on equal footing with Canada's mainstream party leaders. The debates [were] in French on Wednesday and in English on Thursday night... Despite Green Party success in Europe, Canadians have yet to elect a single Green member to Parliament... Voter concern over high oil prices and climate change have thrust the environment into the center of Canadian politics. But political analysts attribute the party's rise in the polls to Ms. May's scrappy, off-the-cuff campaign style. She has a giftfor rhetorical thunder that seems to resonate with voters... At the heart of the May's Green Party policy platform is a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by taxing polluters while doling out tax breaks to companies and individuals that reduce their carbon output. She campaigned this past week in a cross-Canada tour by train instead of by plane, a lower carbon-footprint form of transportation. She has not driven a car, according to media reports, in 20 years. But May is also keen to stamp out the perception that the Green Party is a left-wing party full of treehuggers. Instead, she emphasizes a platform that is socially progressive with fiscally conservative ideas... In the 2006 Canadian federal election, the Green Party garnered 660,000 votes, or 4.5 percent of those cast. May has her sights set on a much bigger piece of the pie this time around. She said this week that she hopes to win at least 12 seats in the election. Canadians head to the polls October 14."
Capital Ventures
Venture Capitalism to the Rescue. By Jon Gertner, NYTimesMag, October 5, 2008. "In the heart of Silicone Valley, venture capitalists are spending their working hours imagining the future and betting on innovation as green technologies expand into the markets more rapidly than any energy technology has done before."
Google Announces 'Clean Energy 2030' Proposal. Posted by Carlos Rymer, ItsGettingHotInHere, October 2, 2008. "Google has announced its... Clean Energy 2030 proposal. The Internet giant has continued to lead beyond its main business by pledging to make Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal, joining General Electric in figuring out how to get America's national grid to be 'smart,' and even becoming a leader by example with alarge solar power installation at their headquarters. Now, Google has announced a proposal that could wean America off of most fossil fuels by 2030, a plan in line with what T. Boone Pickens has called for with his Pickens Plan and call by Al Gore to make all electricity consumed in America renewable by 2018. Google's proposal calls for a 100% reduction in coal and oil consumption in America by installing 300 GW of onshore wind energy, 80GW of offshore wind energy, 170GW of solar photovoltaic, 80GW of concentrated solar power, 15GW of conventional geothermal, and 65GW of enhanced geothermal. It also calls for an increase in sales ofplug-in and hybrid vehicles to 90% of all sales by 2030 (reaching 42% of the U.S. vehicle fleet in 2030), increasing conventionalvehicle fuel efficiency to 45mgp by 2030, an acceleration of the vehicle fleet turnover from 19 to 13 years (increasing sales by 31%), and building some 32,000 kilometers of new transmission lines."
Record Capital Again Flows to Clean Tech. By Deborah Gage, SFChron, October 1, 2008. "Clean technology startups once again raised a record amount of venture capital in the third quarter, $2.6 billion, with 42 percent of it going to companies in California, according to a new report. More than two-thirds of the funding went to firms in the United States. But problems with the U.S. financial system means the torrid pace can't continue, the report warned, potentially threatening one of the bright spots in Silicon Valley's economy. 'The investors we've talked to are all very worried about credit and the availability of capital,' said Brian Fan, senior director of research at the Cleantech Group in San Francisco, which issued the report. But, he said, if Congress doesn't agree on a bailout plan, 'All bets are off.'"
'Cleantech' Venture Capitalists Drawn to Obama. By Edward Robinson, BloombergNews, September 29, 2008. "Blue-shirted, chino-clad techies aren't famed for agitating at political rallies, let alone sponsoring them. Yet in Obama, West Coast venture capitalists (VCs) have found an ally who's championing 'cleantech,' a buzzword for the new solar, biofuel and other carbon-free energy technologies they're betting on. While Republican Senator John McCain has pledged to fight global warming and enjoys support from such tech titans as former EBay Inc. Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman, it's Obama who's captivated VCs and entrepreneurs. As a candidate who wields a BlackBerry and exploited online social networking to organize supporters and raise cash, Obama, 47, strikes many as a kindred spirit, says Steve Westly, managing partner of the Westly Group, a Menlo Park, California-based VC firm. Obama's embrace of renewable energy has endeared him to an industry that's counting on a green revolution to be the sequel to the 1990s Internet boom."
Taxing, Trading, Offsetting Carbon
NRDC Weighs Regulation-Based and Price-Based Emission Control Mechanisms. Commentary by James F. Handley, CarbonTaxCenter, October 2, 2008. "For almost four decades, the powerhouse Natural Resources Defense Council has stood as the green movement's stronghold for regulation-based eco-solutions... But not price-based mechanisms like gasoline taxes, congestion tolls and carbon emissions pricing. It was striking, therefore, to read NRDC finance advisor Andy Stevenson come out swinging for carbon emissions pricing. In Why Putting a Price on Carbon is Fast Becoming an Economic Necessity, posted this week on NRDC's Web site [and carried yesterday in EE News], Stevenson warns that tightening credit markets threaten to strangle investment in alternative energy. His solution: 'cap and invest': 'The cap forms a limit on the amount of CO2 that can be emitted in a given year. This declining limit is then broken up into permits… auctioned off to emitting entities, creating a… revenue stream of roughly $150 billion a year over several decades that can be used to help collateralize the loans needed to put America back to work and move us in the right direction... to help finance innovative energy solutions for our economy... Once sufficient capital has been deployed to jump-start emerging energy technologies, this program would then be transformed from a 'cap and invest' program into a 'cap and dividend' program that would rebate energy revenues back to the American people... A dividend or tax shift seem essential to counteract the income impacts of any carbon pricing scheme, whether tax or cap.Without revenue distribution,carbon emissions pricing is a regressive tax... The case against cap-and-invest would be strong even in flush times. Our government is lousy atchoosing technology winners, particularlythis early in the technology race. Remember synfuels? Lieberman-Warner was loaded with subsidies for similar money holes like nukes, ethanol, and 'clean coal'... But cap-and-invest is still a regressive policy that won't do much good up-front.And down the line, as the cap tightens and fossil fuel prices soar, it will become wildly unpopular.Stevenson is right to suggest revenue recycling to offset that pain, but why wait? Why not skip 'cap-and-invest' and go straight for 'tax-and-dividend.' Economists ranging from Ken Green on the right, Bill Nordhaus in the center and Robert Shapiro on the left are all saying 'go for the gold' -- a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Keep climbing, NRDC!"
Impacts of Financial Collapse on Trading and Taxing Carbon. By Curt Barry, Carbon Control News, October 1, 2008, subscription. "A source with the Carbon Tax Center (CTC), which favors the implementation of a sweeping carbon tax to lower GHG emissions rather than a cap-and-trade program, says the unprecedented effects to major financial institutions may cripple the prospects for cap-and-trade legislation in Congress. 'The firms that would be managing and conducting the trading -- some of them have ceased to exist and are having to restructure,' the source says. 'More broadly, there's just obviously a virulent distrust of so-called market measures, or measures that inherently require the creation of new markets that will be managed and manipulated by insiders. So there is just a real hill to climb for cap-and-trade, as an institution, that can win public acceptance and command public trust.' Further, cap-and-trade programs may grow less attractive to federal policymakers as energy prices drop, the CTC source says. While a carbon tax would ensure a certain amount of money is collected by the government from year to year, a cap-and-trade program and its price on a ton of carbon emissions is a constant unknown, and will decrease as energy prices fall, the source says."
Carbon Offsets: The Indispensable Indulgence. By Richard Conniff, Yale Environment 360, September 29, 2008. A guide to offsets. "Despite the potential for abuse, the concept of paying others to compensate for our environmental sins can be a valuable tool in helping reduce carbon emissions. But the world can't simply buy its way out of global warming."
RGGI Declares Initial Carbon Auction a Promising Start. Press Release, RGGI.org, September 29, 2008. "The states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) today announced that the auctioning of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions allowances in North America is off to a strong start. All of the 12,565,387 allowances offered for sale on September 25, 2008 were sold at a clearing price of $3.07 per allowance. RGGI, Inc. reported that 59 participants from the energy, financial and environmental sectors took part in the first-in-the-nation auction, indicating a strong start in the first of many CO2 allowance auctions. The demand for the allowances appeared to have been very strong with a total of quantity of 51,761,000 allowances demanded which was four times available supply for this first auction. The $38,575,783 in proceeds produced from the auction will be distributed to Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont, the six RGGI states that offered allowances for sale during the first auction. The states are investing those funds in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies, and programs to benefit energy consumers. 'The 10 RGGI states have demonstrated great leadership in coming together to offer this first carbon cap-and-trade system, and the smooth completion of the initial auction is proof that the RGGI is leading the nation in the battle against climate change,' said Pete Grannis, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Chair of the Region Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Inc. 'RGGI's example shows that an open and competitive carbon market can be implemented.'"
Oil
U.S.: Great Place for the Oil Business. By Stephen Leahy, IPS, September 30, 2008. "Why do U.S. oil companies -- some of the most profitable corporations on the planet -- receive 20 to 40 billion dollars a year in subsidies from the U.S. government? And, in a time of skyrocketing oil prices and profits, why did the George W. Bush administration in 2005 authorize an additional 32.9 billion dollars in new subsidies over a five-year period? 'Those are very good questions,' said Doug Koplow of EarthTrack Inc., an independent energy information research organization in Boston, Massachusetts... Koplow's 2007 report to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developmentputs the annual U.S. subsidy at an average of 39 billion dollars a year, when the costs of guarding oil lanes in the Persian/Arab Gulf, and the Alaska Pipeline are included. This does not include any costs from the Iraq war. Official U.S. government statistics from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) offer a different picture, stating that the oil and gas industry only received 2.15 billion dollars in 2007. 'The EIA has a very narrow definition of what constitutes a subsidy,' said Koplow."
Oil Shale: Viable Domestic Energy, or Dirty Fuel? By Jad Mouawad, NYTimes, September 30, 2008. "After months of bitter wrangling, a quarter-century ban on offshore drilling along most of the nation's coastline expired at midnight Tuesday tonight. But amid the rancor surrounding that fight, punctuated by cries of 'Drill, baby, drill' at the Republican convention, Congress is also allowed a moratorium freezing the development of oil shale to expire... In theory, the end to the oil shale ban, which has been in effect for two years, could open two million acres for development across Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. As with offshore production, it will be up to the next administration to set the parameters on whether to expand domestic production. Backers of the program, including Senator Bob Bennett, Republican of Utah, have argued that developing these resources would help bring oil and gasoline prices down. There is potentially plenty of oil trapped in these sedimentary rocks -- though how much, no one quite knows for sure. Some estimates put the figure at 500 billion barrels, twice the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. 'What are you afraid of?' Senator Bennett said in The Salt Lake Tribune last week. 'You're afraid it might work. And it's very clear, given the price of $4 a gallon gas, that people want to find out.' but for its many critics, oil shale is a particularly nasty way of dealing with the energy crisis. To get hydrocarbons out of the shale, the sedimentary rocks must be heated to temperatures of 900 degrees by injecting steam. The process, which melts the oil and allows for its collection, uses vast amounts of energy and water. Critics also say shale production would emit four times more global warming pollution than producing conventional gasoline, and point to the environmental damage caused in Canada by producing oil from tar sands."
Oil Sands Responsible for Almost Half of Canada's Increase in Greenhouse Gases. By George Tombs, CSMonitor, September 30, 2008. "The relentless search for oil has led explorers to the boreal forest [above the Athabasca oil sands] of northeastern Alberta, among the jack pines and black spruce trees an hour's drive from the boom town of Fort McMurray... [which is] is experiencing a gold rush, even if the gold is black. The two-lane highway into town is often jammed with full-size pickup trucks and prefabricated process plants on wide-load trailers. Life in town is a frenzy of skyrocketing house prices, inadequate municipal infrastructure, mountains of freshly earned cash with little for workers to spend it on, and a huge transient population, much of it in temporary work camps. There's a severe shortage of skilled labor. Mine workers are being recruited from as far away as South Africa and Venezuela. But the biggest concern is the environmental footprint being created by oil-sands development. Extracting Athabasca's oil is costly not only in terms of infrastructure, but also in water, energy used to produce steam, and the enormous amount of greenhouse gas that results. Some question whether the scale of new projects is wise. At today's prices, tens of trillions of dollars' worth of oil are at stake. The oil sands exist in two formations: Surface deposits account for 20 percent of total recoverable reserves. The rest are at various depths underground... The ferocious rate of government approval of new projects is upsetting some Canadian politicians as well as environmental groups from the World Wildlife Fund to the Sierra Club... Who can say no to this much oil?' asks Simon Dyer, oil sands program director at the Pembina Institute, a Calgary-based sustainable-energy advocacy group... 'We have hopelessly weak greenhouse-gas [GHG] targets in Canada,' adds Mr. Dyer. 'If you look at Canada's total projected increase of GHG from 2003 to 2010, 41 to 47 percent of Canada's increase can be attributed to the oil sands. They are the one single issue dragging us away from reducing GHG emissions.'"
Big Oil Funded Research in Palin's Campaign Against Protection for Polar Bear. By Ed Pilkington, London Guardian, October 1, 2008. "Gov. Sarah Palin and her officials in the Alaskan state government drew on the work of at least six scientists known to be sceptical about the dangers and causes of global warming, to back efforts to stop polar bears being protected as an endangered species, the Guardian can disclose. Some of the scientists were funded by the oil industry. In official submissions to the US government's consultation on the status of the polar bear, Palin and her team referred to at least six scientists who have questioned either the existence of warming as a largely man-made phenomenon or its severity. One paper was partly funded by the US oil company ExxonMobil. The paper, entitled Polar Bears of Western Hudson Bay and Climate Change [PDF, 22 pp], has been criticised for relying on old research and ignoring evidence that Arctic sea-ice is melting at a quickening pace. Walt Meier, a world authority on sea ice, based at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, said: 'The paper doesn't measure up scientifically.' One co-author of the paper, Willie Soon, completed the study with funding from ExxonMobil -- which has oil operations in Alaska's North Slope -- as well as from the American Petroleum Institute. Soon was a former senior scientist with the George C Marshall Institute, which acts as an incubator for climate-change scepticism. The institute has received $715,000 in funding from ExxonMobil since 1998."
Energy Options
We Don't Need Nuclear Power. By Arjun Makhijani, Nature Reports, October 2, 2008. "The notion that nuclear power is necessary to address climate change does not reflect a close examination of the realities of the marketplace or rapid new developments in solar energy, wind energy and energy storage technologies. Indeed, current cost trends indicate that new nuclear power plants are likely to be economically obsolete even before the first new ones come online in the United States. Relying mainly on large power plants in a centralized grid today is the electrical equivalent of depending on punch cards and mainframe computers -- clunky, costly, risky, inefficient and unnecessary. The age of laptops and the Internet offers the opportunity of solving the climate crisis by moving to a world of smart, secure, distributed, efficient and fully renewable grids. For the sake of environmental health, global security and the economy, we should seize the moment and get it done."
Filipinos Set an Example for Utilizing Geothermal Power. By Blaine Harden, WashPost, October 4, 2008. "Geothermal power... accounts for about 28 percent of the electricity generated in the Philippines. With 90 million people, about 40 percent of whom live on less than $2 a day, this country has become the world's largest consumer of electricity from geothermal sources. Billions of dollars have been saved here because of reduced need for imported oil and coal... In installed geothermal power capacity, the country ranks No. 2 in the world, narrowly trailing the United States, which has far more geothermal potential, far more engineering talent and far greater demand for clean sustainable power. But unlike in the Philippines, government policy in the United States has been inconsistent. In 2006, the Bush administration cut most geothermal spending -- federal programs that received as much as $100 million a year in the 1980s shrank to $5 million. Research projects were dismantled. Scientists in the field had to find other jobs."
Scotland to Build World's First Tidal Farms.By Jenny Haworth, Edinburgh Scotsman, September 29, 2008. "Scotland has taken a major step towards leading the way in marine renewable energy with the announcement that the world's first tidal farms could be built within three years. Two tidal projects, each with up to 20 turbines, could be installed on the seabed in the Pentland Firth and the Sound of Islay. A third is planned off the North Antrim coast in Northern Ireland. The aim is that all the underwater turbines would be constructed in Scotland, kick-starting the renewables industry in this country. ScottishPower Renewables will apply for planning permission for the three tidal projects next summer. If permission is granted, they would be the first commercial underwater tidal turbine farms built anywhere in the world. The structures stand 30 metres tall and can work as deep as 100 metres. The 20-metre blades would turn at least 10 metres below the surface to avoid shipping, developers said, and the zones would be off-limits to trawlers for safety reasons."
Wind
Study Reveals Huge Potential for Great Lakes Wind Power. AP, October 2, 2008. "Michigan could produce more than 10 times the amount of current peak electricity if nearly 100,000 offshore wind turbines operated along the Great Lakes, according to a new report[PDF, 20 pp], [which states that] offshore winds could produce 320,000 megawatts of energy... Power from the turbines would be 80 times more than the projected output of the world's largest wind farm planned in Texas by billionaire T. Boone Pickens... 'This result has the potential to elevate Michigan's wind energy profile nationally and internationally because the resource available is significant,' said Soji Adelaja, a study author and the director of the Michigan State University Land Policy Institute. Michigan has jurisdiction over 40 percent of the lakes' surface, in addition to controlling much of the bottom where the turbines would be built."
New Jersey Grants Rights to Build a Wind Farm About 20 Miles Offshore. By Ken Belson, NYTimes, October 3, 2008. "Regulators in New Jersey awarded the rights on Friday for construction of a $1 billion offshore wind farm in the southern part of the state to Garden State Offshore Energy. The rights, which include access to as much as $19 million in state grants, is part of New Jersey's Energy Master Plan, which calls for 20 percent of the state's energy to come from renewable sources by 2020. The decision comes on the heels of decisions by Delawareand Rhode Islandto allow the installation of offshore wind farms. Garden State Offshore Energy is a joint venture that includes PSEG Renewable Generation, a subsidiary of PSEG Global, which is a sister company of the state's largest utility, Public Service Electric and Gas Company... The proposal by Garden State Offshore Energy includes the installation of 96 turbines to produce as much as 346 megawatts of electricity, enough to power tens of thousands of houses, starting in 2013. The turbines would be arranged in a rectangle about a half-mile long by one-third of a mile wide and would be placed 16 to 20 miles off the coast of New Jersey's Atlantic and Ocean Counties, much farther out and in much deeper water than other proposed wind farms. Deepwater Wind, which will work with P.S.E.G. to build the wind farm, said it could affordably build turbines in 100 feet of water with the same technology used to build oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and other places. Because the wind blows more reliably during the day farther offshore, the company expects to be able to more readily tap into the higher prices available on the power market at peak times. And by putting the turbines so far out, the company hopes to blunt opposition from environmentalists and residents who say that turbines diminish ocean views and damage wildlife."
Wind Power is Blowing Toward New York. Newsday, September 28, 2008. "The winds of change may be returning to New York's energy landscape. There were three signs this month that things are starting to blow in the right direction for clean and renewable energy. The optimism began with the announcement last week that the Long Island Power Authority [LIPA] and Consolidated Edison have started a joint study for an offshore wind project in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of the Rockaways. This follows a Public Service Commission ruling allowing a major Spanish firm to invest in wind plants upstate. That electricity, however, is a long way from Long Island, and that's why the appointment of Richard Kessel [former chairman of LIPA and a longtime advocate of wind power] as head of the New York Power Authority has local [Long Island] significance. Kessel's priority in his new job is building a major north-south transmission line to move cheap, alternative energy, including hydropower from Canada, from upstate to downstate. Kessel's appointment comes as a new political consensus in favor of wind power is emerging. Gov. David Paterson has eagerly endorsed it, as has Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who wants to seed the ocean waters around the city with turbines."
Queen Elizabeth Buys World's Biggest Wind Turbine. Daily Mail (UK), September 29, 2008. "The Queen's estate has purchased the world's biggest wind turbine in a bid to tackle climate change. The 100-metre high turbine will supply 7.5 megawatts of power to the national grid when it is installed off the North East coast of England. It is hoped the Queen's involvement will speed up the development of specialist deep water turbines and encourage energy firms to invest in renewable energy. The Crown Estate, which manages the Queen's assets on behalf of the nation, purchased the Clipper Windpower MBE turbine prototype, codenamed Project Britannia. It is currently under construction at Clipper's Centre of Excellence for Offshore Wind in Blyth, Northumberland... Rob Hastings, Director of the Marine Estates at The Crown Estate... said 'We believe that our support for the Britannia project will drive forward the development of turbine technology designed for the challenges of the offshore environment. This is an important step in the future of offshore wind and a great opportunity to help establish a new industrial base of activity to advance the UK's leadership in renewable energy.'"
Solar
PV and Thermal: A New Combined Cycle. By Matthew L. Wald, NYTimes, September 30, 2008. "One of the limitations of solar photovoltaic systems is that, at the current state of the technology, no more than a quarter of the energy from the sun is converted to electric current. Most of the rest of the energy is lost as waste heat. But Vinod Khosla, the founder of Sun Microsystems and now a technology entrepreneur and alternative-energy venture capitalist, says he's found a solution that doubles or even triples the energy yield -- a gargantuan leap in a field where engineers exult over the most incremental gains. Mr. Khosla is funding a company called PVT Solar, of Berkeley, Calif., where engineers two years ago began trying to harness that wasted heat. In a sense, it was already being collected, either in the solar modules themselves, or underneath. (Solar arrays are often installed at an angle, to face the sun, thus creating a wedge-shaped space below for heat to collect.) PVT's founders decided the heat could be harnessed and pumped into the home for climate control, water heating and other uses. It is a sort of combined cycle for solar -- a marriage of solar photovoltaic technology and solar thermal systems, which gather the sun's energy in the form of heat."
Solar-Powered Cars Start Race Around South Africa. By Laura Grant, Independent, September 29, 2008. "Six solar-powered cars set off from Pretoria on Sunday on an epic, two-week race around South Africa. The cars, which were all designed and built by teams in the race, range from what looks like a modified golf cart to something that wouldn't look out of place in an episode of Star Trek. But they are all feats of engineering. The idea behind the race is to show people what fun science and engineering is, says Winstone Jordaan of the Advanced Energy Foundation, the Pretoria non-profit organization [sponsoring] the race."
Autos
Indian Protesters Stop Major Auto Plant in West Bengal. By Emily Wax, WashPost, October 4, 2008. "After months of violent demonstrations, Tata Motors, the Indian manufacturer of the world's cheapest car, will abandon its $350 million factory in West Bengal state. The problem: protests by farmers who lost land in a deal that had been seen as a symbol of India's transition from agriculture to manufacturing and technology... Tata Motors has already been offered two other sites in neighboring states. The Nano, which is known in India as 'the people's car'... was to roll out this month with a sticker price of $2,500. As other Indian cities have boomed, Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, has remained in a bygone era. The area has sentimental ties to India's former Soviet ally."
U.S. Auto Sales Below 1 Million for First Time in 15 Years. By Tom Krisher and Bree Fowler, AP, October 2, 2008. "U.S. auto sales dropped below 1 million last month for the first time in more than 15 years as some consumers struggled to get financing and others were frightened away from showrooms by bank failures and turmoil on Wall Street. Americans bought 964,873 vehicles in September, the lowest sales figure since February 1993... Sales fell 27 percent compared with September 2007, with every major brand but General Motors Corp. reporting drops of at least 24 percent... Even Toyota Motor Corp., whose fuel-efficient offerings led to strong sales earlier this year, saw a decline of 32 percent, with the top Japanese automaker blaming the drop on the overall economic conditions."
China Keeps Car Rules Imposed for Olympics. By Maureen Fan, WashPost, October 2, 2008. "The government began taking 30 percent of its cars in the capital off the roads Wednesday in an attempt to make permanent some of the traffic restrictions imposed during the Olympic Games, officials and media reports said. Beginning Oct. 11, Chinese motorists will also stop driving one workday a week, based on the final number on their license plates. The new rules should take 800,000 vehicles off the roads each day, according to reports quoting Wang Zhaorong of Beijing's Municipal Traffic Committee. There are 3.5 million cars in Beijing, and more than 1,000 vehicles are added each day, according to government statistics." Beijing Police Turn Back to Bicycles. China Daily, October 2, 2008. "About one third of the police in Beijing started to patrol on 1,600 bicycles or electric bicycles this October, returning to the tradition in the 1990s." Beijing to Remove 300,000 Heavily Polluting Vehicles in One Year.China Daily, October 2, 2008.
U.S. Driving Continued to Drops This Summer. By John Crowly, Reuters, September 30, 2008. "Motorists on US roads drove less for the ninth month in a row in July, when gas prices peaked at more than $4 per gallon, according to new government figures."
Automaker Bailout Slid By Unheralded. Posted by Jesslyn Taylor, TaylorPaper.com, September 30, 2008. "Only in the shadow of a proposed $700 billion Wall Street intervention could a $25 billion bailout of the auto industry be considered a minor news event and excite little comment. The bailout of the automakers occurred last week. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler say they need help in transitioning from big cars and SUVs to fuel-efficient vehicles. The $25 billion is just half of what the Big Three were requesting. But it still dwarfs the $1.5 billion bailout of Chrysler in 1980. And there are far fewer strings attached than in 1980...There are striking similarities between the automaker bailout and the Wall Street measure; both are a response to bad business practices. In Detroit's case, the auto industry failed to react quickly to increased consumer demand for smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. Now they say they need help responding."
Students and Artists
British Artists and Scientist Set Sail for Greenland to Record and Publicize Dramatic Global Warming. By Victoria Watts, Building Design (UK), September 29, 2008. "An eclectic bunch of artists and scientists [have set sail for] Disko Bay on the west coast of Greenland... to inspire those on board to create artworks that raise awareness of climate change. The group will pass Jakobshavn glacier, one of Greenland's largest, which is losing 20 million tons of ice every day... The expedition, which can be followed [here] , returns to the UK on October 5, 2008."
New Jersey High School Students Distribute Free CFLs to Elderly and Needy. By Sharon Adarlo, Newark Star-Ledger, October 1, 2008. "In an effort to do his own part in helping the environment, Matthew Erickson, along with several friends, is giving away 60,000 compact fluorescent bulbs to senior citizens and needy families, as well as educating people about their energy-saving benefits." They were inspired by An Inconvenient Truth, and founded HelpLightNJ.
Wildlife
The Long March of the Penguins. By Claire Soares, London Independent, October 5, 2008. "Exhausted birds are washing up on Brazil's tropical beaches, thrown off course by changing currents."
Noisier Oceans, an Increasing Problem for Marine Animals. By Richard A. Lovett, National Geographic, October 4, 2008. "As the world's oceans become more acidic, the underwater sounds that whales and other marine mammals depend on for survival may turn into a confusing racket, a new study says. That's because the ocean's ability to conduct sound is expected to increase dramatically due to global warming. The shift could make it easier for rare whales to find each other and reproduce, researchers say. More likely, though, the effect would be comparable to a person in a crowded place straining to talk over all the chatter. 'What that means is that the background level of noise in the ocean -- say wave noise or ship noise -- will increase,' said study co-author Peter Brewer, a geochemist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. John Hocevar, oceans campaign director for Greenpeace USA, agreed. 'This is a real disaster for marine life,. he said... Ocean acidity... is projected to increase by .3 pH points between now and 2050. That may not seem like much, but the change will spur a 70 percent increase in the distance sound will travel."
Ecological Impact from Ike Significant and Could Be Long-Lasting. By Matthew Tresaugue, HoustonChron, October 1, 2008. "Thousands of migrating warblers pass through the Bolivar Peninsula about this time every year, making one last stop for food and water before their 600-mile flight over the Gulf of Mexico. But the warblers and other migratory birds might not be able to find refuge for a while on the remote and particularly vulnerable place. Hurricane Ike stripped the birds' favorite mulberry trees, leaving little fuel for their long journey ahead -- one of the sobering consequences of the storm. Even without a major oil spill, Ike caused widespread environmental damage to Southeast Texas, ripping through the region's barrier islands, washing debris into Galveston Bay and the Gulf, and imperiling animals, fish and plants by pouring excessive amounts of saltwater into marshes. 'The extent of the damage won't be known for a while,' said Larry McKinney, executive director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. 'But it's possible that we've had 20 to 30 years of damage at once.'" After Hurricane Ike, Birds are Absent from Texas Peninsula.By Michael Graczyk, AP, October 5, 2008."One of North America's renowned bird migration and bird-watching areas is strangely silent. Blame Hurricane Ike."
Experts Warn 1/3 of All Species Could be Extinct by End of Century. By Brian Skolloff, AP, October 2, 2008. "Climate change threatens to kill off up to a third of the planet's species by the end of the century if urgent action isn't taken to restore fragile ecosystems, protect endangered animals and manage growth, scientists warned Wednesday as a wildlife summit opened... The three-day summit, sponsored by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, assembled several world-renowned climate change researchers with dozens of wildlife experts to trade ideas on how to save species on a warming planet."
Smart Growth
Schwarzenegger Signs Anti-Sprawl Greenhouse Gas Bill. Steve Lawrende, AP, September 30, 2008. "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation Tuesday that attempts to ease greenhouse gas emissions by giving priority to transportation projects that limit commutes and curb urban sprawl. Supporters said the legislation is needed to help implement a 2006 law that requires California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The bill requires the state Air Resources Board to set regional targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks and directs regional planning agencies to develop land-use strategies to meet those targets. Cities and counties will not have to implement those plans, but they could lose transportation funding if they don't... The bill also includes an additional incentive for cities and counties to comply. It relaxes environmental reviews for housing projects that comply with the so-called sustainable communities strategies that will be developed by regional planners."
Report to Mayors Says 4.2 Million New 'Green' Jobs Possible from Renewable Energy, Efficiency.By H. Josef Hebert, AP, October 2, 2008. "A major shift to renewable energy and efficiency is expected to produce 4.2 million new environmentally friendly 'green' jobs over the next three decades, according to a study commissioned by the nation's mayors. The study to be released Thursday by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, says that about 750,000 people work today in what can be considered green jobs from scientists and engineers researching alternative fuels to makers of wind turbines and more energy-efficient products. But that's less than one half of 1 percent of total employment. By 2038, another 4.2 million green jobs are expected to be added, accounting for 10 percent of new job growth over the next 30 years, according to the report by Global Insight, Inc. 'It could be the fastest growing segment of the United States economy over the next several decades and dramatically increase its share of total employment,' said the report."
Food
Meat Production is a Growing Concern. By Matthew Warren, The Australian, October 2, 2008."There are two population booms on earth: people and animals to feed them. The human population is approaching seven billion and is expected to reach nine billion by 2050. In the parallel universe of farms and feedlots, there are more than 30 billion animals bred to help feed them...The World Bank classified about 5 per cent of the world's population as making up the global middle class in 1960. Today it is more than 8 per cent, or 600 million, and predicted to double again by 2030....In 2002 per capita consumption of meat in the richest countries averaged 94kg a year. In the poorest countries it was 9kg. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999-2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes. But meat production is resource intensive and ruminant livestock such as sheep and cattle generate substantial amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas... The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that about 18 per cent of global greenhouse emissions come from livestock production. That's more than all the cars, trucks and planes in the world."
Newman's Own Organics: A Trendsetter. By Kim Stevenson, NYTimes, September 30, 2008. "It took a detailed marketing plan and a Thanksgiving dinner that Nell Newman secretly made with organic ingredients to convince her skeptical father that the venture was worth it. Now, 15 years later, the company's line has grown to more than 150 products, and Newman's Own Organicsis the third most recognizable organic brand in the country, according to the Hartman Group, a market research firm. When the company started, major food producers were reluctant to develop organic versions of products for fear consumers might question their traditional offerings, said Peter Meehan, a family friend who started the organic company along with Ms. Newman. 'Because he was willing to do it, he helped allay the fears that corporate America had about coming out with both organic and conventional items,' he said. The company's need for organic ingredients, especially in the early days, meant survival for small producers and helped strengthen markets for commodities like organic chocolate and sugar."
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