Category Archives: international energy groups

Environmental News Network – Just one article out of hundreds

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This site is a little busy as they used to say, but it is really informative.

http://www.enn.com/climate/article/45052

From: Editor, Science Daily
Published October 5, 2012 01:11 PM

Non-Native Plants Show a Greater Response Than Native Wildflowers to Climate Change

Warming temperatures in Ohio are a key driver behind changes in the state’s landscape, and non-native plant species appear to be responding more strongly than native wildflowers to the changing climate, new research suggests.

his adaptive nature demonstrated by introduced species could serve them well as the climate continues to warm. At the same time, the non-natives’ potential ability to become even more invasive could threaten the survival of native species already under pressure from land-use changes, researchers say.

The research combines analyses of temperature change and blooming patterns of 141 species of Ohio wildflowers since 1895. Overall, the average temperature increased 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) in Ohio between 1895 and 2009. And 66 wildflower species — or 46 percent of the 141 studied — flowered earlier than usual in response to that warming.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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The Drought And Ethanol – While the EPA has some control, not as much as some think

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The real problems with all the “stop turning corn into liquid fuel” noise in the press is that the EPA only has the authority to wave some of it. The rest of the authority belongs to the Clean Air Act and in this respect ethanol is one of the best oxygenators for the fuel which cuts smog and ozone. Added to that ethanol is a cheaper oxygenator by about a buck a gallon so I doubt seriously if the gasoline refiners will give it up. Bottom line is it is a great way to pander to growers and livestock people who have been abandoned by the House of Representatives who could not get a Farm Bill passed. But is not going to free up a lot of corn and even then it will be expensive.

http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Oil/6585987

Texas governor asks US waive ethanol mandate on drought impact

Washington (Platts)–24Aug2012/136 pm EDT/1736 GMT

Texas Governor Rick Perry on Friday asked the US Environmental Protection Agency to waive its ethanol mandate as a severe drought shrivels this fall’s expected corn harvest.

His petition marked the fifth state to formally ask EPA to alter the Renewable Fuel Standard’s requirement for blending corn-based ethanol into gasoline supplies for 2012 and 2013.

It comes four years after EPA rejected a similar request by Perry. He said the ramifications of this year’s drought could be worse than the conditions he cited in the 2008 petition.

“The forecasts are dire, as crop yield and overall productions are projected to be lower than anticipated,” Perry said in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, adding that ethanol production and the corn market have changed considerably since 2008.

“Requirements for ethanol derived from corn starch have increased more than 60%; meanwhile, domestic corn production in 2012 will be less than in 2008, perhaps substantially so,” he added. “In the past two years, more corn has been devoted to ethanol production than used for feed grain.”

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Solar And Coal – You would not think they go together

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I say this is a stretch. It is just the coal companies to throw a little sop to what “green” means. You judge for yourself.

http://www.earthtechling.com/2010/07/hybrid-solar-coal-plant-being-tested-in-colorado/

Hybrid Solar Coal Plant Being Tested In Colorado

by

As much as we all want coal as an energy source to go away completely, we also know it will take the government and private sector sometime (too long in our opinion) to fully move to clean energy sources. In the meanwhile, methods need to be developed which can minimize the impact of fossil fuel usage on the environment. One such pilot project is going on near Grand Junction, Colorado, at Xcel Energy’s Cameo Generating Station using a unique solar-coal hybrid design.

Xcel Energy said it has connected a parabolic-trough solar technology system developed by Abengoa Solar to its coal power plant. This system concentrates solar energy to provide heat for producing supplemental steam for electric power production, which Xcel Energy feels will help lower the usage of coal as an energy source at this facility while also testing the commercial viability of concentrating solar power thermal integration and lowering carbon dioxide emissions.

This project is believed to be the world’s first known demonstration of the hybrid solar-coal approach using the parabolic-trough solar approach. It is part of a larger program by Xcel Energy to test promising new technologies with potential to lower greenhouse gas emissions and result in other environmental improvements. The company said this program allows it the opportunity to test these technologies and evaluate their cost, reliability and environmental performance at a demonstration scale before determining whether they should be deployed more widely

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Go there and judge for yourself. More next week.

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Refineries Shut Down All Over The Country – Is this a coincidence

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Come on. 4 refineries in a 4 state region are effected at the same times by “disasters” that would be easy to contrive. In 2 of the biggest markets in the country, the Great Lakes Region and California. Can that be an accident? Looks highly suspicious to me. One thing is for sure everybody is loving those rising gas prices besides the drivers and President Obama. Maybe that is what they are after, defeating Barack Obama and electing one of their own, Mittens Romney.

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/fire-is-latest-pollution-1494592.html

Fire is latest pollution problem at Chevron plant

National / World News 12:06 p.m. Thursday, August 9, 2012

By JASON DEAREN

The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — A massive Chevron oil refinery fire that sent hundreds of people rushing to hospitals and is pushing West Coast gas prices higher was just the latest pollution incident at the facility that records show has increasingly violated air quality rules over the past five years.

The refinery is one of three such facilities near San Francisco that rank among the state’s top 10 emitters of toxic chemicals, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory.

Chevron’s Richmond refinery — the scene of Monday’s fire that shrouded the area in black smoke — has been cited by San Francisco Bay area regulators for violating air regulations 93 times in the past five years.

The number has increased from 15 violations in 2007 to 23 in both 2010 and 2011. The refinery is also the state’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, according to state regulators.

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Go there and read. State Fair starts today so I may be gone  for a couple of days. More tomorrow.

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Solar Power In New Mexico – What better of a place to set up shop

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Yes I know about the fire at the Chevron Plant in the Bay area and what that adds to the idea that the oil and gas industry is purposely taking gasoline processing capacity offline as demand for gasoline falls to keep prices high. But solar is so much more peaceful and zen like.

This type of progress is just stunning. We are on the way to becoming a renewable country. Now if the rest of the world will follow suit.

http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S2296947.shtml

New Mexico’s largest solar plant opens in Carlsbad

Posted at: 09/22/2011 6:10 PM | Updated at: 09/22/2011 6:16 PM
By: Joe Bartels, KOB Eyewitness News 4

Carlsbad officials unveiled the largest solar power project in New Mexico on Thursday.

Three of the five solar power plants in Southeast New Mexico went online, feeding enough electricity over the next 20 years to power almost 200,000 homes.

Eddy and Lea counties added the additional energy source to their already impressive portfolio.

“We have, of course, nuclear, we have bio fuels being produced down here, a vibrant oil and gas industry that’s doing fantastic and now we have solar,” said John Waters of Eddy County Economic Development.

The 100 acres of photovoltaic panels will track the sun’s movement in the sky for the next 20 to 30 years.

It’s all part of a plan to create clean, renewable energy and jobs.

“What we have is a facility that employed people for a significant amount of time, and will continue to do so over the next 20 to 30 years,” said Robert Reichenberger, Sun Edison spokesperson. “These panels and this facility are expected to last that long so we will continue to need people on the jobsite to monitor the project.”

Out of the three power plants online, two of them are in Jal and one is in Carlsbad.

The two offline – in Eunice and Monument – are expected to be generating power by the end of 2011.

“It shows we’re ahead of the rest of the state in this type of energy production and we like to think of ourselves in Southeastern New Mexico, particularly Eddy County as being a major contributor to the energy industries across the country,” said Waters.

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Go there and watch the video. More tomorrow.

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Over 900 Million People Without Power – 3 times the number of people in the US

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I think somewhere the God’s are laughing at me. Really, I keep trying to post stories about large solar facilites and the news gets in the road. I mean this is actually a huge story. I can not remember a time that this many people who had electricity lost it.

http://www.startribune.com/business/164247506.html?refer=y

Power grids across northern and eastern India fail in massive, cascading blackout

Article by: RAVI NESSMAN , Associated Press

NEW DELHI – India’s energy crisis cascaded over half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving more than 600 million people without government-supplied electricity in one of the world’s biggest-ever blackouts.

Hundreds of trains stalled across the country and traffic lights went out, causing widespread traffic jams in New Delhi. Electric crematoria stopped operating, some with bodies half burnt, power officials said.

The massive failure — a day after a similar, but smaller power failure — has raised serious concerns about India’s outdated infrastructure and the government’s inability to meet its huge appetite for energy as the country aspires to become a regional economic superpower.

Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde blamed the new collapse on states taking more than their allotted share of electricity.

“Everyone overdraws from the grid. Just this morning I held a meeting with power officials from the states and I gave directions that states that overdraw should be punished. We have given instructions that their power supply could be cut,” he told reporters.

The new power failure affected people across more than a dozen states — more than the entire population of the European Union. The blackout was unusual in its reach, although its impact was softened by Indians’ familiarity with frequent blackouts and the widespread of backup generators for major businesses.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Koch Brothers Mouthpiece Changes His Tune – So Global Warming is actually real

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That is the bitch about science. Over time it is always right. The Catholic Church was very slow to get this. RJ Reynolds eventually got it but it cost it billions. All of the asbestos people eventually got it too. But the Koch Brothers were just gona prove them wrong. I do not know whether it is endemic  to capitalism but this “prove them wrong” phase is what the space exploration crowd is experiencing right now. Call it the Buck Rogers phenomena but private companies will fail to develop space much like Climate Change needed to stop 30 years ago.  30 years from now the space people are going to be wondering what happened to their dreams…if any of us are still left alive.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/29/koch-funded-climate-scientist-i-was-wrong-humans-are-to-blame/

Koch-funded climate scientist: I was wrong, humans are to blame

By Jonathan Terbush
Sunday, July 29, 2012 14:16 EDT

The founder and director of a climate change study project funded heavily by the Koch brothers, who last year reversed course and said he believed global warming was real, has gone one step further, writing in a weekend op-ed in the New York Times that he is now convinced the phenomenon is caused by humans.

In a piece titled, “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” Richard A. Muller, a University of California, Berkley physicist who founded the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature study (BEST) wrote that his, “total turnaround, in such a short time,” was driven by a new report from the group that concluded for the first time that global warming is a man-made problem. That revelation brings Muller essentially full circle from his stance a few years ago, when he criticized other global warming studies as flawed and questioned whether the Earth was even warming abnormally, dangerously fast at all.

“Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted,” Muller wrote. “I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes.”

The BEST study, he wrote, found that the Earth had warmed by about two and a half degrees over the past 250 years, with the bulk of that spike occurring in the past 50 years. Moreover, he found that, “essentially all of this increase” was likely due to greenhouse gas emissions, a point climate change believers have accepted as fact for years.

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Go there and crow. More tomorrow.

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Oil Stocks By Mike Nadel – Good advice from a good guy

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I do not normally boost someone else’s net contributions just because I think the author is cool. Had he not written about oil stocks I probably wouldn’t either, but it is the summer. Because I was getting alittle burnt out on all the serious blogging I have done for 5 years, I gave myself permission to post whatever I wanted too and boringly I have stuck to energy conservation, the residential market and all things environmental. So today is a really “what the hell” kinda day. Enjoy.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/708101-time-to-slide-into-oil-stocks

Time To Slide Into Oil Stocks

??By Mike Nadel

The last time I filled my car’s tank, I paid less than $3 a gallon. As my wife will attest, I was more than a little giddy. “Two-ninety-seven!?!? You gotta be kidding me!!! This is incredible!!!” Hey, we all have to find life’s little thrills wherever we can, right?

The price of crude oil, the source of gasoline, is determined by numerous factors: supply and demand, the Middle East unrest, natural and unnatural disasters, Wall Street speculators, economies in the U.S., Europe and emerging markets, etc.

Crude oil reached $110 per barrel on February 24 and was still over $100 per barrel two months later. It has been on a fairly steady decline since, hitting $80 per barrel on June 22 – its lowest level in two years – before rebounding into the mid-80s. So what’s next?

I certainly am no oil-price-trend expert… and even if I were, I wouldn’t listen to myself. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that alleged experts were predicting $5 gas by Memorial Day and maybe even $6 by the Fourth of July? Still, when it comes to forecasting oil prices, “Up” usually is a reasonable guess – especially after it has been down.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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XL Pipeline Will Not Help The US – And when a 16 yr. old girl points it out

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They TRASH her. I posted this mainly because her points are valid. But read the comments. These are seriously brutal comments, by trolls, aimed at a 16 year old girl. This is what the energy business has sunk too.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/06/keystone_xl_pipeline_wont_bene.html

Keystone XL pipeline won’t benefit American families or the environment

Published: Sunday, June 17, 2012, 5:00 AM     Updated: Sunday, June 17, 2012, 12:35 PM

By Emilie Winn

As a 16-year-old high school student, I am deeply concerned about the long-term effects of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline on my and subsequent generations. This pipeline would transport tar sands 2,000 miles from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Producing synthetic oil from tar sands generates around three times the amount of greenhouse gases as regular oil production. TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline proposal, was ordered by the government to dig up 10 sections of the Keystone I pipeline after testing showed that the steel used was possibly defective. The company plans to use steel from the same manufacturer for the Keystone XL pipeline. In addition, the Keystone I pipeline has seen 12 spills in a single year. The idea of this level of error at a much higher magnitude is horrifying.

One of the most cogent claims made about the proposed pipeline was the number of jobs it would create, which many supporters estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. Yet data from the U. S. State Department and TransCanada itself has shown the project would provide up to 6,500 jobs during production and leave only hundreds of permanent jobs. The effect Keystone XL would have on unemployed Americans has been largely fictionalized. For the Keystone I pipeline in South Dakota, a shockingly low 11 percent of construction jobs were taken by South Dakotans. The majority of jobs that such projects create are taken by immigrants willing to do menial labor for low pay. And the vast majority of jobs are temporary.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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This Piece Just Blew Me Away – Small unit nuclear power is just so wrong on so many levels

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This is the Republican Corporate dreamland. Proclaiming that you are the energy source of  the future doesn’t make it so. But mix in a fair number of under educated farm people who will believe anything and Westinghouse who has everything to gain and you have a Missouri wet dream. Unfortunately this is just that, only it is a bad dream. I mean really, if we make it small and spread it around it will work better? Get out.

http://www.moenergyfuture.org/blog/breaking-news-exciting-investment-opportunity-for-missouri-announced-today/

Breaking news: Exciting investment opportunity for Missouri announced today

Posted on April 19, 2012

On Thursday, April 19, Missouri’s energy future took a giant leap forward as investor-owned, cooperative and municipal utilities announced that they are partnering with Westinghouse Electric Company to apply to the Department of Energy’s Small Modular Reactors (SMR) investment fund for up to $452 million. The funding will support engineering, design certification and licensing for SMRs in Missouri.

This historic partnership could make Missouri a world leader in the energy sector economy.  Gov. Jay Nixon, Sen. Mike Kehoe, Rep. Jeanie Riddle, Chairman Pollock and the overwhelming majority of members of the General Assembly who support nuclear power and helped make this amazing opportunity a reality, should be applauded for their hard work and commitment to Missouri’s energy and economic future.

Over the last four years, MBEF’s supporters across the state educated the public to show that cleaner, alternative energy sources like nuclear are a path forward for Missouri. Today, we are another step closer to creating jobs, boosting our economy and securing our energy future.

This announcement could make Missouri home to an SMR component manufacturing center, engineering and design center, and training facility for engineers—establishing Missouri as a world leader and exporter in energy technology and manufacturing.  In addition to the construction of new SMRs, thousands of Missourians will be put to work because of this project.

An economic impact study about the SMR project is in process and will be made available later this spring.

For more information about SMRs, please visit the below websites.

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Go there and laugh. More tomorrow.

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