Category Archives: environmental blogs

Alternative Forms Of Energy Are Winning – At least it looks like it

Posted on by
Reply

Is this the beginning of a wave whose crest will be high? Or the crest of a wave that is spent? It depends on the impact that events in Japan have. Already Germany has abandoned Nuclear Power and has limits on the carbon products it can produce. If everyone follows suit, the future could be bright.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/business/energy-environment/07electric.html

G.E. Plans to Build Largest Solar Panel Plant in U.S.

By TODD WOODY
Published: April 7, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO — In a move that could shake up the American solar industry, General Electric plans to announce on Thursday that it will build the nation’s largest photovoltaic panel factory, with the goal of becoming a major player in the market.

PrimeStar

Workers were reflected on a panel built by PrimeStar Solar, the Arvada, Colo., manufacturer that was bought by General Electric.

Green

A blog about energy and the environment.

“For the past five years, we’ve been investing extremely heavily in solar,” said Victor Abate, vice president for G.E.’s renewable energy business. “Going to scale is the next move.”

The plant, whose location has not been determined, will employ 400 workers and create 600 related jobs, according to G.E. The factory would annually produce solar panels that would generate 400 megawatts of energy, the company said, and would begin manufacturing thin-film photovoltaic panels made of a material called cadmium telluride in 2013. While less efficient than conventional solar panels, thin-film photovoltaics can be produced at a lower cost and have proven attractive to developers and utilities building large-scale power plants.

G.E. has signed agreements to supply solar panels to generate 100 megawatts of electric power to customers, including a deal for panels generating 60 megawatts with NextEra Energy Resources.

G.E., a manufacturing giant, operates in a range of energy businesses, from nuclear power plants to natural gas turbines. It has been aggressively expanding its energy portfolio, particularly through acquisitions.

Mr. Abate said G.E. had completed its purchase of PrimeStar Solar, the Arvada, Colo., company that made the thin-film photovoltaic panels. G.E. said the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory recently certified that a PrimeStar solar panels manufactured at its factory in Colorado had set a 12.8 percent efficiency record for cadmium telluride technology. Conventional solar panels typically are 16 to 20 percent efficient at converting sunlight into electricity.

“We believe we’ll be a cost leader, a technology leader and we’re excited about our position in a 75-gigawatt solar market over next five years,” said Mr. Abate.

The global conglomerate’s entry into the highly competitive photovoltaic market is likely to prove a significant challenge to First Solar, the thin-film market leader and the dominant manufacturer of cadmium telluride panels.

Also at risk are start-ups like Abound Solar, a Colorado company that in December obtained a $400 million federal loan guarantee to build factories to manufacture cadmium telluride panels.

:}

More tomorrow.

:}

Local Food Lobbying Day – What a lot of work

Posted on by
Reply

Sorry this post is so late but I had to go to lobby today. It was fun. Exciting in some cases and I got to attend a hearing on the Fraking Bill in the Ag Committee. But it makes this post way late. Anyway here was the deal:

http://www.ilstewards.org/blog

Posted 2/11/2011 5:09pm by Lindsay Record.

On April 6th, local foodies, farmers, and citizens from across the state will come together in Springfield to encourage their legislators to support local food and farms. Illinois Stewardship Alliance invites you to join us for our 2nd annual local food and farm lobby day in Springfield on April 6th, from 10a.m. – 3p.m. at the Pasfield House and IL State Capitol Complex in Springfield.

Local Food Awareness Day will consist of a legislative update, orientation, lobbying 101 training, and lunch at the Pasfield House. Following lunch we will descend upon the capitol to educate legislators about the importance of local food systems and advocate for positive policy solutions that promote and support local food systems in Illinois.

Cost: $15 (FREE for members) – includes lobbying training, orientation and lunch at the Pasfield House

*Additionally you may become a member now for $25 (1 year membership) which will allow you to attend lobby day for free.

Registration: To register for the 2011 Local Food Awareness Day @ the Captiol click here. Registration deadline is March 30th.

Payment can be made by sending a check to Illinois Stewrdship Alliance, 401 W. Jackson Parkway, Springfield IL, 62704 (Please make sure you register at the link above before sending a check) or by calling the ISA office at 217-528-1563 (ask for Dee). Or use paypal online by clicking here.

For more information contact ISA’s Policy coordinator, Wes King at wes@ilstewards.org

:}

And

:}

Posted 2/3/2011 6:06pm by Lindsay Record.

Removing Barriers to Local Food Entrepreneurship

We are excited to announce that Senator David Koehler (D-Peoria) is introducing and sponsoring the Illinois Local Food Entrepreneur and Cottage Food Operation Act. The legislation removes prohibitively burdensome barriers to aspiring entrepreneurs producing non-potentially hazardous food and enables preparation in home kitchens for sale at farmers markets for Illinois.  The legislation is in line with at least 17 other states that have similar cottage food laws allowing the production of non-potentially hazardous food items in home kitchens for sale at farmers markets; including most of Illinois fellow Midwestern states.

The cottage food operation bill is one step in an on-going effort to create food rules and regulations that encourage and support local food producers and entrepreneurs by applying scale and risk appropriate regulations. The Illinois Local Food Entrepreneur and Cottage Food Operation Act creates a stepping stone for potential local food entrepreneurs to experiment with recipes and business models by eliminating the costly barrier of constructing or accessing a certified kitchen as the current regulations require.

The proposed legislation will allow entrepreneurs to produce non-potentially hazardous food in their home kitchen to be sold at farmers markets provided certain conditions are met:

  • Products are labeled to include: the name and address of the producer, the common or usual name of the product, the ingredients of the food product, the date the product was processed and the following phrase: “This product is homemade and no subject to state inspection.”
  • Gross receipts from the sale of products does not exceed $25,000 in a calendar year.
  • The name and residence of the person preparing and selling products as a cottage food operation is registered with the Department of Public Health and the Department of Agriculture.
  • The person preparing and selling products as a cottage food operation has an approved Food Service Sanitation Management Certificate.

ISA is a small non-profit so if we are going to make the Illinois Local Food Entrepreneur & Cottage Food Operation Act a reality in Illinois we are going to need your help spreading the word and lobbying your elected officials to support our efforts. Please keep your eyes peeled for more information about this legislation coming soon!

You can access the legislation by clicking here.  View a factsheet about the legislation here. If you are interested in supporting or learning more about the Illinois Local Food Entrepreneur & Cottage Food Operation Act contact ISA’s policy coordinator

:}

More tomorrow.

:}

Either you are furit or agen it but Nuclear Power has a problem

Posted on by
Reply

http://blogs.forbes.com/christopherhelman/2011/03/15/in-panic-germany-to-shut-pre-1980-nukes/

Christopher Helman

In Bizarre Panic, Germany’s Merkel To Shut Pre-1980 Nukes

What a bone-headed move. There’s nothing wrong with the 7 nuclear plants that German Chancellor Angela Merkel decreed would be shut down. Just last fall Germany decided to extend the lives of these plants, which provide roughly 10% of Germany’s electricity. With solar and wind entirely unscalable, how’s Germany going to make up the electric deficit? Either by ramping up the use of fossil-fuel burning plants (and importing more natural gas from Russia) or importing power from its neighbors–like nuke-friendly France.

:}

OR

:}

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/16

Published on Wednesday, March 16, 2011 by Truthdig.com

No Nukes Is Good Nukes

When it comes to the safety of nuclear power plants, I am biased. And I’ll bet that if President Barack Obama had been with me on that trip to Chernobyl 24 years ago he wouldn’t be as sanguine about the future of nuclear power as he was Tuesday in an interview with a Pittsburgh television station: “Obviously, all energy sources have their downside. I mean, we saw that with the Gulf spill last summer.” Futaba Kosei Hospital patients who might have been exposed to radiation are carried on stretchers Sunday morning after being evacuated from the hospital in the town of Futaba near the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. (AP / The Yomiuri Shimbun, Daisuke Tomita)

Sorry, Mr. President, but there is a dimension of fear properly associated with the word nuclear that is not matched by any oil spill.

Even 11 months after what has become known simply as “Chernobyl” I sensed a terror of the darkest unknown as I donned the requisite protective gear and checked Geiger counter readings before entering the surviving turbine room adjoining plant No. 4, where the explosion had occurred.

It was a terror reinforced by the uncertainty of the scientists who accompanied me as to the ultimate consequences for the health of the region’s population, even after 135,000 people had been evacuated. As I wrote at the time, “particularly disturbing was the sight of a collective farm complete with all the requirements of living: white farm houses with blue trim, tractors and other farm implements, clothing hanging on a line and some children’s playthings. All the requirements except people.”

:}

You decide. More next week.

:}

True High Speed Rail – Could make the trip from Chicago to St. Louis in 2 hours

Posted on by
Reply

OK, so we spent the last 30 posts showing what the rightwing and the leftwing talking heads have been talking about. Now onto real news. This was forwarded to me by Andy Martin of Phat Andy’s Barbecue fame. Thanks for that man.

http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/amtraks-high-speed-rail-vision-for-2040-new-york-to-washington-in-96-minutes/11144/

Amtrak’s high-speed rail vision for 2040: New York to Washington in 96 minutes

By Andrew Nusca | Sep 30, 2010 | 37 Comments

Amtrak on Tuesday unveiled its vision for high-speed rail in the Northeast Corridor by 2040, and it’s a doozy.

According to the train operator’s “A Vision for High-Speed Rail in the Northeast Corridor” report (.pdf), progress in the next 30 years could bring trips from New York City to Washington, D.C. in 96 minutes and trips from Boston to New York in just 84 minutes.

Amtrak is thinking “world class” rail, and the plan involves speeds of up to 220 miles per hour (about 354 kilometers per hour) that, all said and done, would slash existing commute times between the aforementioned cities in half.

But no plan is without a price tag, and Amtrak hangs that vision on a peg of $117.5 billion.

Here’s a statistical rundown of how that adds up on the ground:

  • Deadline: 2040.
  • Ridership by 2040: 18 million.
  • Capacity to expand beyond that: up to 80 million annually.
  • Frequency: one to four trains per hour in each direction, with additional trains for peak demand. Today: 42 per day. Tomorrow: 148.
  • Plan would generate an annual operating surplus (yes, you read that correctly) of about $900 million.
  • More than 40,000 full-time construction jobs each year for 25 years’ worth of building track, tunnels, bridges and stations.
  • More than 120,000 permanent jobs benefit from “improved economic productivity” along the corridor
  • $4.7 billion investment each year over 25 years, or $117.5 billion in total.

:}

Next up, cheaper more efficient solar pane. More tomorrow.

:}

Global Climate Change Isn’t Happening – And if it is it not humans fault

Posted on by
1

I can’t take it anymore AND I am about to lose my mind. For the past 2 weeks with only one break I have put the thoughts about energy policy by the top 15 conservative pundits according to the Right Wing web site. These guys wouldn’t know energy policy if it tapped them on the shoulder and said,  “Hi, My name is Energy Policy, what is yours”? So today I put up some intriguing  research that if true explains a lot of human history in the 1300s and 1400s especially in Europe.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/was-genghis-khan-historys-greenest-conqueror

Was Genghis Khan history’s greenest conqueror?

The Mongol invasion scrubbed nearly 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, according to surprising new research

Bryan NelsonMon, Jan 24 2011 at 6:44 AM EST 181 Comments

Genghis Khan GENGHIS GREEN: The founder of history’s largest contiguous empire cooled the planet while taking a body count. (Photo: Wiki Commons/public domain)
Genghis Khan’s Mongol invasion in the 13th and 14th centuries was so vast that it may have been the first instance in history of a single culture causing man-made climate change, according to new research out of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, reports Mongabay.com.
(WorldShares lets you earn donations for your favorite nonprofit. Earn up to 20 points now.
Learn More )

Unlike modern day climate change, however, the Mongol invasion cooled the planet, effectively scrubbing around 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere.

So how did Genghis Khan, one of history’s cruelest conquerors, earn such a glowing environmental report card? The reality may be a bit difficult for today’s environmentalists to stomach, but Khan did it the same way he built his empire — with a high body count.
Over the course of the century and a half run of the Mongol Empire, about 22 percent of the world’s total land area had been conquered and an estimated 40 million people were slaughtered by the horse-driven, bow-wielding hordes. Depopulation over such a large swathe of land meant that countless numbers of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests.

:}

Back to the towheads. More tomorrow.

:}

10 Ways Humans Helped The Planet – Well, at least were nicer to it

Posted on by
Reply

This is tough to put up on the website primarily because I have never conquered Adobe Flash. But since their post is actually a summary of 10 of their articles from the last year I will put up the sitation  (yes I spelled it that way on purpose), the head line and a copy of part of their third story. The slideshow is pretty cool however so check all of the pictures out.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/earth-environment-green-2010-101228.html

How Humans Helped the Earth in 2010: Slide Show

:}

Here are parts of the third article. Complete with the photo I pray.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/wind-farms-float-away-from-nimbyism.html

Wind Farms Float Away from NIMBYism

Analysis by Zahra Hirji
Thu Jul 1, 2010 09:09 AM ET
WindFloatSeascape

One of the biggest complaints of offshore wind farms is the eye-sore factor. Apparently residents would prefer a giant coal-fired power plant polluting the planet from far away to a clean source of energy they actually have to look at. This is the essence of the NIMBY (“Not In My Back Yard”) whine.

But NIMBYist whinging is shrill, and for the residents of Nantucket Sound, powerful. Their opposition to the construction of an offshore fleet of wind turbines, part of the Cape Wind project, was enough to delay the project for years.

Enter the Windfloat.

Windfloat is an ocean-based floating wind turbine designed by the California company Marine Innovation & Technology. The turbine sits atop a 3-legged floating foundation that is based on the designs of offshore gas and oil platforms.

Due to the bulky structure of current coastal wind turbines, the structures are anchored in the seabed – limiting their positioning to shallow water depths ranging between 98 to 164 feet.

This new design, however, proves that a turbine’s size and weight need not be compromised for distance from shore. Researchers suspect that the Windfloat foundation can support a 5 megawatt turbine with a height of around 230 feet.

:}

More tomorrow.

:}

Energy Year In Review – Here they come

Posted on by
Reply

This one is a pretty good for being sort of an over view.

http://www.good.is/post/year-in-review-2010-the-year-in-clean-energy/

  • December 22, 2010 • 8:00 am PST

Year in Review 2010: The Year in Clean Energy

It was a record year for solar power, and the electric car began its comeback but, thanks to our increasingly desperate need for fossil fuels, 2010 also saw the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. We’re getting closer to workable clean energy, but will we get there quickly enough? And can we do it without Congress’s help?

With the economy hemorrhaging jobs, President Obama kicked off 2010 with the January announcement of $2.3 billion dollars in tax credits for companies building clean energy technology—everything ranging from turbine blades to batteries to solar panels.

It’s not all just solar panels. Off the coast of Reedsport, Oregon, a New Jersey-based company called Ocean Power Technologies began building a wave-power farm, using giant plungers that rise and fall with the waves. It isn’t operational yet, but the plan is for 10 of these generators to collectively power about 400 homes.

:}

For the reast of it please see the blog post itself. More tomorrow.

:}

It’s The Holidays – So let’s use energy efficient decorations

Posted on by
Reply

http://www.thegreenparent.com/2007/12/14/green-your-christmas-with-low-energy-holiday-lights/

Green Your Christmas with Low-Energy Holiday Lights

Whether you like lights that are white or multi-colored, make them green with LED lights that use 90% less energy and last much longer than traditional bulbs. LEDs don’t heat up like standard bulbs…so they stay cooler, are safer for kids, and pose less risk of fires. And if one bulb does break or burn out, the rest of the lights in the strand will keep glowing.

If you can’t find LED Christmas lights at your local store, check out Holiday LEDs or Forever Brights from Christmas Treasures to light up your holidays while going easy on the planet. To get even more green from your outdoor Christmas lights, try Solar Illuminations for solar-powered Christmas LEDs.

Photo credit: Graham Soult

:}

More tomorrow

:}

This Is Probably A Huge Exaggeration – But

Posted on by
Reply

But sometimes the Peak Oil people get all wound up and I want to put their stuff up in a timely fashion. So without further adieu (god I have always wanted to say that ) here it is:

http://phoenixrisingfromthegulf.wordpress.com/

The Gulf of Mexico is Dying

A Special Report on the BP Gulf Oil Spill

It is with deep regret that we publish this report.  We do not take this responsibility lightly, as the consequences of the following observations are of such great import and have such far-reaching ramifications for the entire planet.  Truly, the fate of the oceans of the world hangs in the balance, as does the future of humankind.

The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) does not exist in isolation and is, in fact, connected to the Seven Seas.  Hence, we publish these findings in order that the world community will come together to further contemplate this dire and demanding predicament.  We also do so with the hope that an appropriate global response will be formulated, and acted upon, for the sake of future generations.  It is the most basic responsibility for every civilization to leave their world in a better condition than that which they inherited from their forbears.

After conducting the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference for over seven months, we can now disseminate the following information with the authority and confidence of those who have thoroughly investigated a crime scene.  There are many research articles, investigative reports and penetrating exposes archived at the following website.  Particularly those posted from August through November provide a unique body of evidence, many with compelling photo-documentaries, which portray the true state of affairs at the Macondo Prospect in the GOM.

:}

dot dot dot as they say
:}

As the diagrams clearly indicate, the geology around the well bore has been blown.  This occurred because of drilling contiguous to a salt dome(1), as well as because of the gas explosions which did much damage to the integrity of the well casing, cementing, well bore, well head, and foundation around the well head.  Eighty-seven straight days of gushing hydrocarbon effluent under great pressure only served to further undermine the entire well system.  Finally, when it was capped, putting the system back under pressure forced the upsurging hydrocarbons to find weaknesses throughout the greater system, which revealed all sorts of compromised, fractured and unsettled geology through which the hydrocarbons could travel all the way to the seafloor and into the GOM.

:}

This is a really long post and a really long blog space so I can not really do it justice. Please go there and read it all. Is it truth. I don’t know but there is a lot of destruction in the Gulf with or with out some kind of continuing seepage. More tomorrow.

:}

If You Live Anywhere Near Baton Rouge Please Attend LEAN’s Fundraiser

Posted on by
Reply

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Louisiana-Environmental-Action-Network/103828312998455

LEAN Fais Do Do 2010

Come celebrate the holidays and this past year at a LEAN house party!

Join your friends and family at the LEAN office for LEAN Fais Do Do 2010. Let’s say a goodbye to 2010 with conversation and cheer.

Food, Fun, Drink and Cheer.
Perhaps even a few reindeer games!

When: Saturday December 4th 2010

Time: 3:00pm – until

Where: The Lean Office


162 Croydon Ave, Baton Rouge, LA 70806 (map)

We will have food and a keg of beer. Please bring any other food or beverages that you like or would like to share. If you are musically inclined please feel free to bring your instrument.
Come on over and pass a good time!

:}

More next week.

:}