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Energy Tough Love Blog – A weblog from Community Energy Systems

Global Warming Is Speeding Up On Us- Here is part of the problem

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One day I was in Mason City at my parents house, my mom said that “they” are  going to build a wind turbine catercorner from Patty Jackson’s mom’s place. I was really surprised. I said who is “they”. She said I don’t know but they their headquarters are up where the civic center used to be. So I drove out toward rt. 136 but I saw nothing. I got to researching it and here are the two stories I found. Check out the dates.

https://www.pekintimes.com/article/20090415/NEWS/304159939

Mason County plans for wind farms

By Tara Mattimoe

Posted Apr 15, 2009 at 12:01 AM Updated Apr 15, 2009 at 2:22 PM

HAVANA — The Mason County Board took the first step Tuesday toward adopting an ordinance to regulate wind farms in unincorporated Mason County. With several proposed wind farms throughout the county, Mason will soon follow in the footsteps of other central Illinois communities and be host to the wind powered energy sources.

HAVANA — The Mason County Board took the first step Tuesday toward adopting an ordinance to regulate wind farms in unincorporated Mason County. With several proposed wind farms throughout the county, Mason will soon follow in the footsteps of other central Illinois communities and be host to the wind powered energy sources.The board did a first reading of the ordinance Tuesday, said City Clerk Bill Blessman. Adoption of the ordinance will be considered at the county board’s May meeting, he said. The main point in Tuesday’s reading, said Blessman, was to make the proposed ordinance available for public viewing.

The proposed ordinance sets forth various regulations for turbines and wind farms built in Mason County. According to the ordinance, 1,000-foot setbacks are required between towers and any primary structure, and all towers must be placed at least 1.1 times the tower’s height from public roads, transmission lines and communication towers.

https://www.lincolncourier.com/x2011266604/Wind-picks-up-in-Mason-County

Wind picks up in Mason County

By GateHouse News Service

Posted Mar 15, 2011 at 12:01 AM Updated Mar 15, 2011 at 2:11 PM

Two different wind farm corporations have been securing leases in Mason County, according to county officials, who say the tax revenue a wind farm could bring would be welcome.

Two different wind farm corporations have been securing leases in Mason County, according to county officials, who say the tax revenue a wind farm could bring would be welcome.

Mason County Board member James Miller said two wind energy companies have secured leases in Mason County, though the specifics of the companies’ plans are still unclear. The securing of leases is typically the first thing wind companies do before testing and, ultimately, obtaining the permits to erect the turbines. Overall, the process can take a few years.

However, when completed, the wind farms could prove a financial boon for the county which has lost population since the 2000 census — something that affects tax revenue for local governments in the county.

“The county would love to have (the wind farms), and for the school districts this is a big deal,” Miller said. “Some one or two or three of them would benefit.”

Please notice the last article was in 2011. 9 years later it is still “ongoing”/ At this rate they will put up the turbines when the prairie catches on fire.

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Got there and read. More next week.

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Fires IN The Arctic – Need I say more

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Well. I would say, They’re Here! To paraphrase the famous movies.See when I started to talk about green house gases and then global warming a little later it was always in the future tense. Like 2050 or 2040 but the god awful truth is that, the ruinous effects are here. Now. They are escalating.

https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/unprecedented-wildfires-arctic

Unprecedented wildfires in the Arctic

Tags:

Environment
Climate change
Pollution
Public health
12

Published

12 July 2019

Unusually hot and dry conditions in parts of the northern hemisphere have been conducive to fires raging from the Mediterranean to – in particular – the Arctic. Climate change, with rising temperatures and shifts in precipitation patterns, is amplifying the risk of wildfires and prolonging the season.

WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch Programme has released a short animation which highlights the risks and explains how advances in satellite technology make it possible to detect and monitor fire dangers. Improving forecasting systems is important for predictions and warnings around fire danger and related air pollution hazards.

In addition to the direct threat from burning, wildfires also release harmful pollutants including particulate matter and toxic gases such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and non-methane organic compounds into the atmosphere.

Particles and gases from burning biomass can be carried over long distances, affecting air quality in regions far away.

Heatwaves fuel fires

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Go there and read. More next week – if we are still here.

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Energy Efficiency In The Home – A fan sends me an excellent guide

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I know it has been a while since I have put anything up about Residential Energy  Use, which is where this BLOG started out but we get requests from organizations to get a plug and so here you go.

Tyler <tyler@greenteensclub.org>
To:info@censys.org
Aug 7 at 1:01 PM

Hi there,

My name is Tyler and I’m a member of GreenTeensClub. We’re spreading resources that help make our planet a little healthier, like this home energy efficiency guide: https://www.basementguides.com/basement-and-home-energy/

I think your site is a great place to share this resource: https://censys.org/date/2015/05

The page includes the biggest culprits of energy waste in a home, tips for locating the source of energy-waste issues, and how to lower your bills while reducing your footprint.

Please help us spread awareness of the importance of making homes more energy efficient. Even if we only get a few people to make minor changes, then we’ve made a huge difference.

Thanks!
Tyler

GreenTeensClub

Basement And Home Energy

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Commercial Airplanes Are A Huge Cause Of Global Warming – People say no way

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Her is why I say that Airplanes are the prime culprits of Global Warming. First: They Fly High. While fossil fueled Power Plants and Surface Transport Fleets emit huge green house gases many of them are mitigated before they can have much of a green house effect. But most jets fly right up there. I mean even some prop planes do too.

Second: The Fuel. Especially military flight fuel is bloody near kerosene.

Third: There are so many. It may be a myth but after 911 when so many planes were grounded the tempeture dropped a degree.

So this is kinda cool. Maybe we should call them personal air taxi’s or something. Yes they will be expensive. So what.

https://www.vox.com/2019/5/14/18535971/electric-airplane-aircraft-aviation-clean-energy

Aircraft fuel is notoriously dirty. This airline is betting on clean electricity.

Harbour Air wants to become the world’s first all-electric airline and start flying passengers by 2022.

By Umair Irfan

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that air travel is a massive and growing problem for the global climate.

In the US, transportation is now the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and aircraft account for 12 percent of transportation emissions. US air travel reached a record high last year, pushing up overall emissions even while the power sector saw a decline.

To make matters worse, demand for flights is growing. Emissions from air travel are poised to spike up to sevenfold globally by 2050 if nothing else changes.

That’s why it’s so urgent to decarbonize air travel. Yet the technical challenges are immense. Alternatives like carbon-neutral biofuels remain far too costly. And the stodgy rules in the heavily regulated, risk-averse aviation sector lag far behind advances in electric drivetrains.

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They are currently flying small electric planes on a regional basis.

Go there and see the future. More next week.

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Did The Car Kill Us – Maybe

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There was electricity from coal before there was gasoline driven cars. Still they are a big part of the problem. As other people have pointed out we are literally forced to drive. That is not to overlook the damage that big ocean ships and airplanes. I mean, Coal, Oil, Hot Asphalt and kerosene are the Big Four of Death.

Still it is hard to deny the seduction of the gasoline internal combustion engine. I got my first one when i was 14. It was a 90 cc Honda Motorcycle and it meant freedom to me. I could go from small town to small town in central Illinois. Meet new people, make new friends for a Quarter (.25$) per Gallon of gas. In fact I met my first true love who was riding a dirt bike on a back road blacktop, on the Honda.

How was I to know how dangerous they are, and that does not include the ones killed by operating them.

.https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/was-the-automotive-era-a-terrible-mistake

Dept. of Motor Vehicles

Was the Automotive Era a Terrible Mistake?

For a century, we’ve loved our cars. They haven’t loved us back.

By

July 22, 2019

The summer I was eighteen, I visited a parking lot forty-five minutes north of town and got behind the wheel for what I hoped would be the first real rite of my adulthood. I was tall, gangly, excitable. Less than a week earlier, following a brief stretch of test-taking at the Department of Motor Vehicles in San Francisco, I had received my learner’s permit. Learning in those days seemed easy. Tests were easy. Doing—when the matter arose at all—was hard. Behind the wheel, I made a show of adjusting the mirrors, as if preparing for a ten-mile journey in reverse. I surveyed the blank pavement ahead of me and slowly slid the gear-shift from park into drive.

Cars had been my first passion. As a two-year-old, I’d learned to recognize the make of vehicles by the logo near the fender or perched on the hood. I grew to understand the people in my life according to their cars; I learned what sort of person I was from my parents’ two old Hondas, one of which, a used beige Accord, I had gone with them to buy. My father’s lingering bachelor vehicle, a rotting yellow Civic, needed to be choked awake on dewy mornings, and I’d performed that job with relish, pulling out the knob beside the steering wheel, waiting a long moment, and pushing it back. This was the late eighties. Gas prices had fallen, and the roads were knotty with cars from across the world. I no longer remember what, as a small child, I envisaged for my future, but I know that it involved moving at speed behind the wheel.

Now, all those years later, the parking lot was virtually empty of cars, and I felt a flush of reassurance. I was learning in my parents’ highly defatigable ride, a minivan with an all-plastic interior and the turning radius of a dump truck. My teacher was my father, a flawless but not wholly valiant driver, who habitually refused to drive on certain bridges in certain directions, for fear of being, as he would put it, “hypnotized” by trusses passing alongside the road. For reasons lost to time, my little sister was on board, too, in the back. I eased my foot onto the gas; the engine revved for a moment, and the van lurched.

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Go there and read and read and read, More next week.

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Two Weeks Ago I Said Trees Would Beat Global Global Warming

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This week’s articles says – Not Likely. I say the trees are a good start. The point is that some people argue for trees or solar panels in the desert for instance. But the desert is an ecosystem that trees or solar panels would disrupt. Deserts are not “throw away” ecosystems. So we can only deploy so much of each. This is why i think geothermal is the ultimate solution.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2019/07/10/reforestation-climate-change-plant-trees/#.XS870XtOnct

planting trees
Planting trees, while beneficial to the planet, is not an easy solution to climate change. (Credit: Janelle Lugge/Shutterstock)

Last week, a new study in the journal Science highlighted the role forests could play in tackling climate change. Researchers estimated that by restoring forests to their maximum potential, we could cut down atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) by 25 percent — a move that would take us back to levels not seen in over a century. Though the study brings hope in the fight against climate change, other experts warn the solution is not that simple.

The study, led by scientists at ETH-Zürich, Switzerland, determined the planet has 0.9 billion hectares of land available to hold more trees — an area the size of the continental U.S. Converting those areas into forests would be a game-changer for climate change, the authors suggested.

“[The study] is probably the best assessment we have to date of how much land could support tree cover on our planet,” says Robin Chazdon, a forest ecologist and professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut not involved in the study, But she is quick to point out that restoring forests is not as simple as it sounds.

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Go there and think. More next week.

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Openly Embracing Climate Change – That is the Bitcoin way

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Now I know. The Tech companies and the Cloud companies are all in on alternative energy sources. For that matter so is Walmart for god’s sake. Nonetheless. Companies using as much energy as a small country? Really? If nothing else it just looks bad.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/4/20682109/bitcoin-energy-consumption-annual-calculation-cambridge-index-cbeci-country-comparison

Bitcoin consumes more energy than Switzerland, according to new estimate

21 comments

Though researchers acknowledge that reliable estimates are ‘rare’

By James Vincent

Bitcoin consumes more energy than the entire nation of Switzerland, according to new estimates published by researchers at the University of Cambridge.

An online tool that launched this week called the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, or CBECI, estimates how much energy is needed to maintain the Bitcoin network in real time, before using this to calculate its annual energy usage.

Currently, the CBECI says the global Bitcoin network is consuming more than seven gigwatts of electricity. Over the course of a year that’s equal to around 64 TWh or terawatt hours of energy consumption. That’s more than the country of Switzerland uses over the same time period (58 TWh per year), but less than Colombia (68 TWh per year).

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Go there and read. More next week.

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If We Plant Trees We Can Beat Climate Change – This is Bob Croteau’s solution

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What they don’t tell you that you would have to plant enough trees to cover North America TWICE. That is a trillion trees. Now we could do that. The cool thing is that saplings soak up huge amounts of Carbon so we might get a decade of Global Cooling which we could use. But we would need a second solution for Ocean Acidification. I am sure we could do the acid thing eventually. Still, getting a trillion trees? Well we shall see.

https://www.dw.com/en/planting-1-trillion-trees-could-stop-climate-change-argues-study/a-49478494

News

Planting 1 trillion trees could stop climate change, argues study

Planting a massive number of trees is the most effective way to combat global warming, scientists have said. Reforesting an area the size of the United States could capture two-thirds of manmade carbon emissions.

Trees in a park

A report from Swiss scientists published on Thursday said an effective way to stem the catastrophic consequences of climate change would be to plant about 1 trillion trees. This would take up an area roughly the size of the United States, but there is more than enough room, according to the study published in the journal Science.

“Every other climate change solution requires that we all change our behavior, or we need some top-down decision from a politician who may or may not believe in climate change, or it’s a scientific discovery we don’t yet have,” researcher Tom Crowther told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “This one is not only our most powerful solution — it’s one that every single one of us can get involved with.”

Over decades, the growing trees could suck up nearly 830 billion tons (750 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to the study. That’s about as much carbon pollution as humans have spewed in the past 25 years.

Crowther added, however, that while this was a cheap solution, it would not work without emissions cuts. Researchers emphasized that there are also behavioral changes that would work faster, such as cutting animal products out of one’s diet.

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Go there and read. Hope it happens in my life time. More next week.

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Democrats Want Climate Debate – Is it to late

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I do not believe this article needs much comment. The Polluters may have WON. But in winning for profits have they lost for humanity, I guess I am just a little bummed today. This article was published on my birthday last year.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07617-1

NEWS

Greenland is losing ice at fastest rate in 350 years

Vast ice sheet’s dramatic transformation revealed by ice cores, satellite data and climate models.

Ice melt across Greenland is accelerating, and the volume of meltwater running into the ocean has reached levels that are probably unprecedented in seven or eight millennia. The findings, drawn from ice cores stretching back almost 350 years, show a sharp spike in melting over the past two decades.

Previous studies have shown record melting on parts of Greenland’s ice, but the latest analysis includes the first estimate of historical runoff across the entire ice sheet. The results, published on 5 December in Nature1, show that the runoff rate over the past two decades was 33% higher than the twentieth-century average, and 50% higher than in the pre-industrial era.

“The melting is not just increasing — it’s accelerating,” says lead author Luke Trusel, a glaciologist at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. “And that’s a key concern for the future.”

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Go there and cry. Imean, go there and read. More next week.

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CWLP Is Doomed – Coal will strangle it to death

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A “multi-post” that I rarely ever do any more. But this issue is important so first my recommendations, first published on Facebook, and then the facts on the ground.

CWLP IS Doomed

If the members of the City Council of Springfield had any sense at all (and guts/leadership) they would:

1/ Tell IBEW 193 to retrain the workers at Dallman 1 2 and 3 in Solar and Wind
2/ They would close Dallman 1 2 and 3
3/ They would put out a notice for proposals to gasify Dallman
4/ They would take the savings and invest it in renewables
5/ They would ask the County to drop their ridiculous zoning rules for wind farms so we could have a wind farm in Sangamon county

But instead they will live in the 1900s and like Trump demand coal for a fuel source no matter what.

First the SJ-R

https://www.sj-r.com/news/20190507/report-recommends-cwlp-retire-its-three-oldest-power-units-move-away-from-coal

Report recommends CWLP retire its three oldest power units, move away from coal

In a much-anticipated report, an energy consulting firm is recommending that City Water, Light and Power retire three of its four coal-fired power generators “as soon as feasible” while offering the utility a roadmap to a less coal-dependent future.

The Energy Authority (TEA), which was retained by the city last year to map out a plan for the utility’s power generation for the next 20 years, released the 84-page “integrated resource plan” on Monday and gave a presentation to members of the Springfield City Council.

The firm recommended that CWLP retire Dallman units 1, 2 and 3 by as early as 2020 after finding that “no scenario economically retained these units.”

The results are not much of a surprise given the age of the units and the current state of the energy market, which has been upended by the rise of natural gas and the increasing affordability of renewable energy. For coal-dependent utilities like CWLP, it has not been easy to keep up.

“One of the things that we’ve been saying for quite some time is that coal-fired units basically can’t compete very well in the market, they’re not competitive in the current market,” said CWLP chief utility engineer Doug Brown. “So this report basically confirms all of that.”

Then the Illinois Times.

https://illinoistimes.com/article-21209-consultant-retire-three-of-cwlp%E2%80%99s-coal-fired-plants.html

Thursday, May 9, 2019 12:05 am

Consultant: Retire three of CWLP’s coal-fired plants

By Karen Ackerman Witter

How can Springfield’s City Water, Light and Power (CWLP) best provide electrical power to meet the community’s future energy needs? Retiring Dallman Units 1, 2 and 3 coal-fired plants, increasing the use of renewable energy and expanding energy efficiency are some of the recommendations included in a recently released report.

Last year the city hired The Energy Authority (TEA) to develop an Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). Kevin Glake from TEA presented the results of the comprehensive study to the city council on May 6 at a meeting of the Public Utilities Committee. Anyone who uses electricity generated by CWLP or cares about the future of the city’s public utility should be interested in this plan.

Public comments are being accepted now through June 3, and a public open house is scheduled for 5-7 p.m. May 20 at the Lincoln Public Library. More information and the complete plan are available online at https://cwlp.com/IRP.aspx. Comments can be emailed to IRP@cwlp.com or mailed to CWLP General Office, ATTN: CWLP IRP, 800 E. Monroe St., Springfield, 62701.

https://illinoistimes.com/article-21312-letting-go.html

Thursday, June 13, 2019 12:19 am

Letting go

Springfield ponders cutting back on coal

By Bruce Rushton

t’s not a welcome message in council chambers.

“They came back with exactly what everyone on the city council knows,” Ward 1 Ald. Chuck Redpath declared at a May 28 committee-of-the-whole meeting, joining colleagues in criticizing the report issued by The Energy Authority. “The point is, we can’t just…go down without a fight. We’re talking about getting rid of two, maybe three, of our plants, and it’s going to be detrimental to our ratepayers. It’s going to be detrimental because, eventually, you are going to have to go out on the net, and buy off the net – the grid – and then we’re going to be subjected to whatever prices we get stuck with if we’re down to one plant. We’ve got to start thinking outside the box and find a better way.”

And so Redpath and other aldermen cling to coal, even as they talk about new courses. Those opposed to coal have a simple response to complaints about a report that contains no surprises.

“They’re not learning anything new because nothing has changed in six years in terms of the economics of those old units,” says Andy Knott, senior campaign representative for the Sierra Club. “They don’t want to look at the facts and the reality and make the best decisions for the ratepayers.”

“They’re too old”

“Integrated resource plan,” a tag invented in the 1980s, is the official title of the study that’s drawing ire from aldermen. The planning process is supposed to help utilities figure out long-term economics. Thirty-three states, but not Illinois, require utilities to prepare IRPs that are subject to review by state regulators.

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Go there and read sadly/ More next week…

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