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Gleanings from the web and the world, condensed for convenience, illustrated for enlightenment, arranged for impact...

WALL STREET JOURNAL'S Environmental Capital selected NewEnergyNews as one of the "Blogs We Are Reading" in March, April and May of 2007 and quoted NewEnergyNews on June 5, 2007

MOTHER EARTH NEWS' Energy Matters selected NewEnergyNews for its "What We're Reading" list in September 2008

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Anne B. Butterfield of DAILY CAMERA, a biweekly contributor to NewEnergyNews

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  • The big ka-ching in our health care wallet
  • Anne B. Butterfield
  • June 19, 2009 (NewEnergyNews)

    While Americans wonder with noisy drama what the Obama Administration will do to our current health care system, wouldn’t it be great if we could materially reduce the cost of health care in our country by tackling climate change?

    Virtually all of the power for our transportation and electric utilities comes from petroleum, coal, and natural gas, the combustion of which emits the toxins that are heavily involved in costly degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), to name a few. Rural or urban, we are sitting in a faint bath of toxic chemicals that can exacerbate our symptoms or hasten acute suffering and death, and when that happens it is a big ka-ching in our health care wallet.

    The emissions and other by products of fossil fuel use are so ubiquitous, and often well hidden, that they slip from our awareness. Their presence and health effects have become “just the way life is.” Here are a few of our fossil fuel chemical friends:

    Nitrogen oxides (NOx) are precursors to smog, that brown smear of ozone and particulate matter that collects over cities under high air pressure conditions. Smog alerts are accompanied by higher than average hospital admissions and deaths.

    Particulate matter excerbates asthma, COPD, bronchitis, cardiac events as well as congestive heart failure. When smog mingles with very small particles (known as PM 2.5) the risk of mortality for men over 65 rises to 24 percent above average; for women of this age the death rate is 80 percent above average.

    Three hundred counties in the US are designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as clean air non-attainment areas, being perpetually outside of the recommended air quality standards. Pass the nebulizer!

    Coal fired power plants emit about a third of all human-caused release of mercury, a neurotoxin so widely spread that women and children are advised to limit their eating of fish. In Colorado one-fifth of waterways have mercury-based fishing advisories.

    Another health cost of using coal as heavily as we do is the ash waste. All over our country, ash waste is dumped in unlined pits in or near the water table. A 2007 report of the EPA found that poorly lined waste sites (60 percent of all) pose a cancer risk through ground water that is 900 times what is acceptable.

    Environmental groups have fought for national standards for the handling of coal ash waste, to keep state officials from competing in a “race to the bottom” for corporate clients’ sake. But rather than put coal waste under the EPA’s regulation, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security has just announced that the locations of 44 coal ash dumps cannot be disclosed; their toxicity and precarious engineering make them attractive terrorist targets. Meanwhile two senators are seeking support to make sure that coal ash waste is treated less rigorously than household trash.

    Ontario, Canada released a report finding that each kilowatt hour of coal-fired power creates 12.7 cents of health and environmental effects. The next time you get your electric bill, picture two-thirds of your kilowatt hours each causing 12 cents of medical and other costs. Utilities like to talk about delivering low-cost energy, but that sector’s emissions of known toxins, at 722 million pounds each year, dwarfs all other industrial competitors. A large part of our health care costs belong on our utility bill and other energy related costs.

    California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put it best: “We pay for the fuel we burn but not for the pollution we emit. That pollution causes serious damage to our world, and in the long run, we all pay for it...Imagine if we decided to let everyone dump their garbage on their neighbors' lawns instead of being forced to pay for trash pickup. Sure, it would be cheaper, but it would be disastrous to public health.”

    The climate bill coming through Congress is guaranteed to be inadequate, so our path to the post-fossil fuel era will be long. We should keep up the support for local communities, like Coal River Valley in West Virginia, which is fighting to stop mountain top removal mining, and our own effort in Boulder to rapidly decarbonize our electric supply.

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    Anne's previous NewEnergyNews columns:

  • The big ka-ching in our health care wallet (June 19, 2009)
  • It takes a Governor (May 24, 2009)
  • Want a job? Think Wind. (May 10, 2009)
  • Just Say No to Xcess Energy (April 28, 2009)
  • NREL’s history of fickle funding (April 12, 2009)
  • Wagons firmly circled: Governance at REA’s and Tri-State (March 26, 2009)
  • A new migratory pattern: Colorado youth go to Washington (March 12, 2009)
  • Even coal is in for a revolution (February 22, 2009)
  • High Flyers and the Commons (February 11, 2009)
  • Come on Baby, Sit by Me (January 25, 2009)
  • A return on investment (January 3, 2009)
  • Mr. Secretary, we're watching you (December 28, 2008)
  • Canary in the Coal Mine (December 13, 2008)
  • Crash test dummies (November 16, 2008)
  • Needless markup (November 2, 2008)
  • The flap about 58 (October 19, 2008)
  • Hip towns and a clever measure (October 7, 2008)
  • Are we afraid of change? Still? (September 21, 2008)
  • Cheney in a chignon (September 7, 2008)
  • Don't tick off the blonde (August 10, 2008)
  • Buying us time on global warming (July 27, 2008)
  • Hint from Heloise - It's the pH, Stupid! (July 13, 2008)
  • Nukes: the position ridiculous and the expense damnable (June 29, 2008)

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    NOTEWORTHY IN THE MEDIA:

  • Young, Green Entrepreneurs Flock to Carbon Market, from NPR's Morning Edition: "...climate change and a billion-dollar carbon market that trades in carbon credits — as if they were pork bellies — have created a new career niche."

  • Ethical Markets TV: A remarkable TV series showcasing people who “…illustrate the triple bottom line, respecting people and the environment while earning a profit…” Part of Ethical Markets: “Your gateway to cleaner, greener 21st century economies.”

  • Energy Security and Global Warming, from Warren Olney's TO THE POINT at KCRW in Santa Monica: "US energy demands are rising as the price of oil goes through the roof...Canadian tar sands and domestic coal would provide energy security, but at the risk of increased global warming. Can renewables be developed in time?"

  • Designer Biofuels, from KQED Radio in San Francisco: "...making a gasoline alternative to run our cars has great promise but there are huge problems...The next answer [may come]...from a UC Berkeley lab, a Silicon Valley start up or...the jungles of Costa Rica."

  • HELEN’S WAR: Portrait of a Dissident, showing periodically on the Sundance Channel (click title for listings), profiles the medical doctor turned anti-nuclear activist as she continues her nearly 4-decade-old campaign to educate the public on the serious drawbacks to the development of nuclear energy.

  • A CRUDE AWAKENING: The Oil Crash, showing periodically on the Sundance Channel (click title for listings), studies the implications of world dependence on oil and declining availability of it.

  • Lee Iococa predicts the Plug-In Hybrid will be the next big thing in cars NPR’s Morning Edition: Thursday, April 26, 2007.

  • Robert Redford Presents "the GREEN": A weekly block of New Energy and Environmentally-Friendly programming. Check local listings.

  • John Rabe's OFFRAMP, Saturdays at noon (and podcasts) via NPR-affiliate KPCC-FM. A radio magazine show about Los Angeles, sometimes covering energy issues but frequently featuring John telling anybody he can about his vegetable oil-burning, converted Mercedes.

  • NOW: PBS's David Brancaccio talks with Laurie David, a producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and a major environmental activist.
    • Stream it at your convenience here.

  • Living with Ed, an HGTV tons-of-fun reality/comedy show about the trials, tribulations, hilarity and rewards in the marriage of environmentalist Ed Begley, Jr., and his appearance-oriented actress-wife Rachelle Carson. Click here for listings

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  • My Novels: OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades & OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction
  • Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades by Mark S. Friedman
  • OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades, the second volume of Herman K. Trabish’s retelling of oil’s history in fiction, picks up where the first book in the series, OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction, left off. The new book is an engrossing, informative and entertaining tale of the Roaring 20s, World War II and the Cold War. You don’t have to know anything about the first historical fiction’s adventures set between the Civil War, when oil became a major commodity, and World War I, when it became a vital commodity, to enjoy this new chronicle of the U.S. emergence as a world superpower and a world oil power.
  • As the new book opens, Lefash, a minor character in the first book, witnesses the role Big Oil played in designing the post-Great War world at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Unjustly implicated in a murder perpetrated by Big Oil agents, LeFash takes the name Livingstone and flees to the U.S. to clear himself. Livingstone’s quest leads him through Babe Ruth’s New York City and Al Capone’s Chicago into oil boom Oklahoma. Stymied by oil and circumstance, Livingstone marries, has a son and eventually, surprisingly, resolves his grievances with the murderer and with oil.
  • In the new novel’s second episode the oil-and-auto-industry dynasty from the first book re-emerges in the charismatic person of Victoria Wade Bridger, “the woman everybody loved.” Victoria meets Saudi dynasty founder Ibn Saud, spies for the State Department in the Vichy embassy in Washington, D.C., and – for profound and moving personal reasons – accepts a mission into the heart of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Underlying all Victoria’s travels is the struggle between the allies and axis for control of the crucial oil resources that drove World War II.
  • As the Cold War begins, the novel’s third episode recounts the historic 1951 moment when Britain’s MI-6 handed off its operations in Iran to the CIA, marking the end to Britain’s dark manipulations and the beginning of the same work by the CIA. But in Trabish’s telling, the covert overthrow of Mossadeq in favor of the ill-fated Shah becomes a compelling romance and a melodramatic homage to the iconic “Casablanca” of Bogart and Bergman.
  • Monty Livingstone, veteran of an oil field youth, European WWII combat and a star-crossed post-war Berlin affair with a Russian female soldier, comes to 1951 Iran working for a U.S. oil company. He re-encounters his lost Russian love, now a Soviet agent helping prop up Mossadeq and extend Mother Russia’s Iranian oil ambitions. The reunited lovers are caught in a web of political, religious and Cold War forces until oil and power merge to restore the Shah to his future fate. The romance ends satisfyingly, America and the Soviet Union are the only forces left on the world stage and ambiguity is resolved with the answer so many of Trabish’s characters ultimately turn to: Oil.
  • Commenting on a recent National Petroleum Council report calling for government subsidies of the fossil fuels industries, a distinguished scholar said, “It appears that the whole report buys these dubious arguments that the consumer of energy is somehow stupid about energy…” Trabish’s great and important accomplishment is that you cannot read his emotionally engaging and informative tall tales and remain that stupid energy consumer. With our world rushing headlong toward Peak Oil and epic climate change, the OIL IN THEIR BLOOD series is a timely service as well as a consummate literary performance.
  • Oil history journal articles by Dr. Trabish: Oil Stories and Histories
  • Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction by Mark S. Friedman
  • "...ours is a culture of energy illiterates." (Paul Roberts, THE END OF OIL)
  • OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, a superb new historical fiction by Herman K. Trabish, addresses our energy illiteracy by putting the development of our addiction into a story about real people, giving readers a chance to think about how our addiction happened. Trabish's style is fine, straightforward storytelling and he tells his stories through his characters.
  • The book is the answer an oil family's matriarch gives to an interviewer who asks her to pass judgment on the industry. Like history itself, it is easier to tell stories about the oil industry than to judge it. She and Trabish let readers come to their own conclusions.
  • She begins by telling the story of her parents in post-Civil War western Pennsylvania, when oil became big business. This part of the story is like a John Ford western and its characters are classic American melodramatic heroes, heroines and villains.
  • In Part II, the matriarch tells the tragic story of the second generation and reveals how she came to be part of the tales. We see oil become an international commodity, traded on Wall Street and sought from London to Baku to Mesopotamia to Borneo. A baseball subplot compares the growth of the oil business to the growth of baseball, a fascinating reflection of our current president's personal career.
  • There is an unforgettable image near the center of the story: International oil entrepreneurs talk on a Baku street. This is Trabish at his best, portraying good men doing bad and bad men doing good, all laying plans for wealth and power in the muddy, oily alley of a tiny ancient town in the middle of everywhere. Because Part I was about triumphant American heroes, the tragedy here is entirely unexpected, despite Trabish's repeated allusions to other stories (Casey At The Bat, Hamlet) that do not end well.
  • In the final section, World War I looms. Baseball takes a back seat to early auto racing and oil-fueled modernity explodes. Love struggles with lust. A cavalry troop collides with an army truck. Here, Trabish has more than tragedy in mind. His lonely, confused young protagonist moves through the horrible destruction of the Romanian oilfields only to suffer worse and worse horrors, until--unexpectedly--he finds something, something a reviewer cannot reveal. Finally, the question of oil must be settled, so the oil industry comes back into the story in a way that is beyond good and bad, beyond melodrama and tragedy.
  • Along the way, Trabish gives readers a greater awareness of oil and how we became addicted to it. Awareness, Paul Roberts said in THE END OF OIL, "...may be the first tentative step toward building a more sustainable energy economy. Or it may simply mean that when our energy system does begin to fail, and we begin to lose everything that energy once supplied, we won't be so surprised."
  • Oil history journal articles by Dr. Trabish: Oil Stories and Histories

    • About Me

    Name: Herman K. Trabish
    Location: La Crescenta, CA

    *Doctor with my hands *Author of the "OIL IN THEIR BLOOD" series with my head *Student of New Energy with my heart

    View my complete profile

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    CONTACT: herman@newenergynews.net

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      A tip of the NewEnergyNews cap to Phillip Garcia for crucial assistance in the design implementation of this site. Thanks, Phillip.

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    Pay a visit to the HARRY BOYKOFF page at Basketball Reference, sponsored by NewEnergyNews and Oil In Their Blood.

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    • Wednesday, July 02, 2008

    HUGE SOCAL SOLAR POWER PLANT NEEDS TRANSMISSION

    NewEnergyNews has already covered the Stirling Energy/San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) solar power plant development. (See STIRLING ENERGY: CONCENTRATING SOLAR) SDG&E, as part of its California Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) obligation to obtain 20% of its power from New Energy sources, has a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Stirling Energy for 900-megawatts of solar energy-generated electricity.

    The PPA provides the financial foundation for Stirling Energy to proceed with the project. The Bureau of Land Management’s moratorium on new solar power plant applications does not apply to this long-planned installation. An     EIS report has been drafted. Only one piece of the puzzle is still missing: Transmission.

    In another example of the very interesting conundrum in which local environmental harm finds itself pitted against global environmental harm, SDG&E wants to build the Sunrise Powerlink, 150 miles of new transmission, to bring the Stirling Energy project’s electricity to San Diego and local environmental groups oppose both. Sunrise Powerlink would cross the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, a region treasured (for good reason) by environmentalists. Also, the Stirling Energy technology is unproven on a large scale and opponents fear its ultimate cost will be far greater than is presently estimated, putting upward pressure on utility bills.

    In order to push the project forward, Stirling may proceed with the installation in 2 phases, the 1st of which would not require the new high-voltage transmission. By the time Stirling and SDG&E are ready to take on Phase 2 and Sunrise Powerlink, the technology will be proven, costs will be clearer and global climate change may make environmentalists more willing to talk about new transmission.

    An interesting footnote to the story: California is one of only two southwestern states whose RES does not have a solar “carve out” (a requirement that a certain percent of the overall New Energy requirement be from solar energy). Yet California is busy developing solar because its rich solar assets and its governor’s aggressive support make that New Energy source an economic option.

    The implication: As technological breakthroughs and well-designed federal and local incentives bring solar energy production costs down, more and more states will turn to it. Though wind energy has beaten solar energy to marketplace price parity, solar is such a logical choice in so many circumstances there is absolutely no reason the two most abundant renewable energy sources cannot and will not eventually co-exist in an emissions-free 21st century New Energy infrastructure. (No reason except, of course, the resistance of dirty and dangerous energy source owners.)

    Unlike most sundrenched southwestern states, CA doesn't have a solar carve-out in its RES. Yet it is building solar energy. It is important to notice why. (click to enlarge)

    Massive solar plan is linked to SDG&E; Proposed plant would power 500,000 homes in San Diego
    Bruce V. Bigelow, July 1, 2008 (San Diego Union-Tribune)

    WHO
    San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E); Stirling Energy Systems (Bruce Osborn, COO & Bob Liden, VP); California Energy Commission (CEC)

    WHAT
    Stirling Energy filed a 2,600 page document with the CEC providing futher details of SES Two, its 1st 300-megawatt installation of SunCatchers for SDG&E.

    click to enlarge

    WHEN
    - The California RES requires state utilities to obtain 20% of their power from New Energy sources by 2010.
    - 2005: SDG&E signed a PPA with Stirling Energy covering 900 megawatts of solar energy-generated electricity.
    - If allowed to proceed, Stirling expects to begin construction in 2009 and finish before the end of 2010, allowing the installation to provide 40% of the SDG&E’s CA RES requirement.
    - Stirling has subjected its SunCatcher dishes to rigorous testing at Sandia National Laboratory for almost 2 decades.

    WHERE
    - Stirling Energy Systems is based in Phoenix, AZ. Their 1st installation for SDG&E is planned for the Southern California desert region on 6,500 acres of mostly federal land between Interstate 8 and state Route 80 about 10 miles west of El Centro.
    - Sunrise Powerlink would run from California’s Imperial Valley to the City of San Diego.

    WHY
    - The Stirling Energy/SDG&E 750-megawatt installation will have 30,000 SunCatcher solar mirror dishes, each 38 feet tall and 40 feet across.
    - This would be the first large-scale installation of the Stirling Energy technology.
    - Phase 1 would place 12,000 SunCatchers on 2,600 acres and generate 300 megawatts (peak).
    - Phase 2 will have 18,000 SunCatchers, generate 450 megawatts (peak) and require the Sunrise Powerlink.
    - Stirling estimates the cost of Phase 1 at $400 million while opponents claim it will cost $1.8 billion. The dispute results from the fact that prototype SunCatchers cost $250,000 to build but the company expects costs to dramatically drop with economies of scale.
    The cost of the Sunrise Powerlink is estimated at $1.5 billion.
    - When agreement is reached on Phase 2, a 3rd installation of 150 megawatts will require a 3rd Imperial Valley site.

    A Stirling SunCatcher. (click to enlarge)

    QUOTES
    - Bruce Osborn, COO, Stirling Energy: “We can deliver the first phase to San Diego on existing power lines, but new transmission infrastructure is critical to achieving full realization of the Solar Two facility…”
    - David Hogan, Center for Biological Diversity: “Even if the Stirling solar project is viable, which we dispute, it doesn't appear necessary to build the Sunrise Powerlink to bring energy from the Stirling facility to San Diego…”
    - Jennifer Briscoe, spokeswoman, SDG&E: “[Stirling is ] meeting their milestones on schedule, and even ahead of schedule…They are bringing us one step closer to a cleaner and greener San Diego.”
    - Bob Liden, VP, Stirling Energy: “We have geared up to be able to deploy roughly a thousand units a month, which would enable us to complete the first phase [by the end of 2010.]”

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 6:30 AM

    1 Comments:

    At 4:32 PM, Blogger kwark said...

    ". . . new transmission infrastructure is critical to achieving full realization of the Solar Two facility. . ."

    I've yet to be convinced that site selection for solar power plants such as this one is anything but a grab for the cheapest land with suitably high isolation rates. For reasons I've yet to discern, evaluation of delivery or maintenance efficiency is simply not mentioned and everyone focuses on the silly dichotomy of good energy vs the "other" environmentalists.

    Also, new infrastructure probably is necessary BUT what is definitely NOT necessary are NEW transmission corridors - It's perfectly feasible to build new infrastructure in existing pipeline, transmission line, or highway corridors - corridors that already criss-cross the desert. Just because it's more profitable for these companies to blaze a new corridor doesn't mean it's the wise thing to do.

     

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