NewEnergyNews: QUICK NEWS, January 11: CHINA – EU AIRLINES EMISSIONS WAR; BUFFETT BUYS MORE WIND; LA RENEWS ROOFTOP SUN PUSH

NewEnergyNews

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

Every day is Earth Day.

YESTERDAY

  • Holiday Weekend Reading: NEW ENERGY IN CHINA

    • -------------------

    GET THE DAILY HEADLINES EMAIL: CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS OR SEND YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS TO: herman@NewEnergyNews.net

    -------------------

    THE DAY BEFORE

  • TODAY’S STUDY: INTEGRATING NEW ENERGY
  • QUICK NEWS, May 24: SO AFRICA TO BUILD A GIGAWATT OF WIND; LUCKY CORRIDOR FOR NEW MEXICO NEW ENERGY; MEGAWATT TEST OF CIGS THIN FILM

    • THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE

  • TODAY’S STUDY: THE BENEFITS OF WIND AND SOLAR TOGETHER
  • QUICK NEWS, May 23: AN ‘UNPRECEDENTED’ MOVE TO NEW ENERGY; BRAINTRUST GOES AFTER SOLAR PRICE; INTERIOR APPROVES WIND ON INDIAN LAND

    • THE DAY BEFORE THAT

  • TODAY’S STUDY: EUROPE’S PV TO 2016
  • QUICK NEWS, May 22: APPLE TURNS TO SUN; EU WIND CAN LEAD ECONOMIC RECOVERY; CHINA’S NEW GRID MAY ONLY MEET OLD NEEDS

    • AND THE DAY BEFORE THAT

  • TODAY’S STUDY: BANKS ON COAL
  • QUICK NEWS, May 21: A FIGHT FOR SUN IN TEXAS; NRG LAYOFFS HERALD FADING PTC HOPES; WHAT WORRIES GRID OPERATORS MOST

    • THE LAST DAY UP HERE

  • SUNDAY WORLD HEADLINE- CHINA STARTS WORLD’S BIGGEST TRANSMISSION
  • SUNDAY WORLD HEADLINE- SOLAR’S IMPACT ON GERMAN OCEAN WIND
  • SUNDAY WORLD HEADLINE- INDIA WIND GETS A GOLDMAN SACHS BILLION
  • SUNDAY WORLD HEADLINE- HOW KOREA IS LIKE DENMARK

    • --------------------------

    --------------------------

    Anne B. Butterfield of Daily Camera and Huffington Post, is a biweekly contributor to NewEnergyNews

  • Colorado's Elegant Solution to Fracking (April 23, 2012)
  • Anne Butterfield (Huffington Post via New EnergyNews)

    Eventually those local moratoriums against fracking will expire in Boulder, Longmont and Erie. And residents will worry anew about toxic fracking operations inching up on schools and neighborhoods in pursuit of a product that goes "poof" the instant it's used. Nice value ~ not.

    And it's timely that the University of Colorado at Denver School of Public Health just announced a study which finds that air pollution within a half mile of frack-ops have toxic emissions five times over federal safety standards, causing elevated life time cancer risks and respiratory and neurological effects for nearby residents. Rep. Diana DeGette is now urging the Environmental Protection Agency to consider Colorado's study as they finalize air standards for fracking.

    It has also just come out that fracking is inching up on agriculture to compete for Colorado's water. Taking only .08 of a percent per year, it's a smidge for sure, but that water gets so polluted it must be disposed in a way that removes it from the hydrologic cycle. And that's not pretty when we're looking down the craw of a new drought kicked off with an historic climate change induced heat wave plus a horrifying wildfire this season.

    Permanently voiding precious Colorado water out of the hydrologic cycle feels even worse in view the fact such water can be lost for naught when the depletion rate on fracking wells is 63-85 percent in the first year, according to Dave Hughes of the Geological Survey of Canada. This can mean fruitless water waste when drilling down the slippery slope of diminishing marginal returns.

    But Colorado will need all the more gas, as the Clean Air Clean Jobs Act requires Xcel Eenrgy in Colorado to soon retire 900 megawatts of coal burning capacity. The act also requires that the natural gas used for recouping that coal-fired capacity comes from in state (see page 18 here). That puts upward pressure on fracking all over the state. This means more tangles between fracking and populated areas, and more permanent loss of precious Colorado water. It seems like Colorado may have backed itself into a box canyon, where residents are cornered with fracking risks to land, air, water and health.

    But there's an elegant pathway to reducing Colorado's need for natural gas -- by using the sun in a familiar technology that is at least two times more efficient than solar photovoltaics. It's good old fashioned solar thermal - those rooftop panels that heat water.

    Colorado could amend the CACJA to promote solar thermal as a jobs intensive domestic energy supply that works with natural gas to heat homes, buildings, water and industrial processes. This could free drilling companies to sell excess Colorado gas out of state for much higher prices (see page 8 here), possibly gaining crucial industry support for this intrusion of renewables into their market. Higher profitability, less contentious drilling and more renewable energy jobs is the hope.

    In all of North American, Colorado is "ground zero" for the best conditions for producing huge benefits from solar thermal. It's the sunshine, cold ground water, high heating loads, renewables-savvy population and existing industry that can, if the state takes on robust targets, lead the nation in an industry that swaps jobs and skills in place of burning money. And burning money is what we do when we burn costly fuels that go poof the instant they're used.

    A robust Colorado plan for solar thermal could put the clean air and clean jobs back into the so-called, gas-friendly Clean Air Clean Jobs Act.

    And in case anyone has forgotten ~ there are huge economic risks with shale gas, a.k.a. the fracking boom, as the resource is almost certainly not as profitable, resourceful or as clean as hyped by industry. On deeper review, it's promising to be an economic bubble.

    Fracking is supposedly going to make our nation 100 years of cheap gas, as, amnesiac members of Congress and the President are wont to say. But various geological experts such as the Potential Gas Committe have poured cold water all over that flaming hype, detailing how the supply could be as little as 21 or even 11 years. And Arthur Berman, a widely regarded petro-geologist has commented that the industry reminds him of the sub prime mortgage mess and wrote, "U.S. shale plays share many characteristics with the gold rushes.... Both phenomena result from extreme promotion. Anyone can join. Every participant believes that they will get rich. Great amounts of capital are destroyed as entrants try to get a position. The bonanza is exhausted sooner than most expected and few profit in the end."

    So if you are one of the thousands of Coloradans who are waking up to the nightmare of fracking in your community - go online and read the Colorado Solar Thermal Roadmap. Then find every political leader you can to talk about it. Colorado would be wise to use its natural solar resources to hedge against an over-reliance on gas, one that shall expand as the CACJA requires. And coal with its rising prices is on the wane nationwide as well, which means the demand for gas will be a pressure cooker loaded with risk for our energy security, economy, and environment.

    Author's note: Want to support my work? Please "fan" me at Huffpost Denver, here (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anne-butterfield). Thanks.

    -------------------

    Anne's previous NewEnergyNews columns:

  • Colorado's Elegant Solution to Fracking (April 23, 2012)
  • Shale Gas: From Geologic Bubble to Economic Bubble (March 15, 2012)
  • Taken for granted no more (February 5, 2012)
  • The Republican clown car circus (January 6, 2012)
  • Twenty-Somethings of Colorado With Skin in the Game (November 22, 2011)
  • Occupy, Xcel, and the Mother of All Cliffs (October 31, 2011)
  • Boulder Can Own Its Power With Distributed Generation (June 7, 2011)
  • The Plunging Cost of Renewables and Boulder's Energy Future (April 19, 2011)
  • Paddling Down the River Denial (January 12, 2011)
  • The Fox (News) That Jumped the Shark (December 16, 2010)
  • Click here for an archive of Butterfield columns

    -------------------

    Some details about NewEnergyNews and the man behind the curtain: Herman K. Trabish, Agua Dulce, CA., Doctor with my hands, Writer with my head, Student of New Energy and Human Experience with my heart

    email: herman@NewEnergyNews.net

    -------------------

    Your intrepid reporter

    -------------------

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

    -------------------

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

  • ---------------

    • Wednesday, January 11, 2012

    QUICK NEWS, January 11: CHINA – EU AIRLINES EMISSIONS WAR; BUFFETT BUYS MORE WIND; LA RENEWS ROOFTOP SUN PUSH

    CHINA – EU AIRLINES EMISSIONS WAR
    China airlines won't pay EU carbon tax
    Alison Leung and Harry Suhartono (w/Narayanan Somasundaram, Edmund Klamann, Matt Driskill and Ian Geoghegan), January 6, 2012 (Reuters)

    "China's airlines will refuse to pay any charges under the European Union's new carbon trading scheme, while other Asia Pacific carriers, already battling a weak travel market, are likely to pass on the extra cost to passengers…The EU's Emissions Trading Scheme ETS.L was launched in 2005 as one of the major pillars of the bloc's efforts to combat climate change. From January 1, all airlines using EU airports are included in the cap-and-trade scheme."

    [Cai Haibo, deputy secretary-general, China Air Transport Association CATA.L:] "China will not cooperate with the European Union on the ETS, so Chinese airlines will not impose surcharges on customers relating to the emissions tax…"

    From a University of Minnesota/Duluth greenhouse gas inventory (click to enlarge)

    "CATA represents the country's four major airlines: flag-carrier Air China Ltd (0753.HK) (601111.SS), China Southern Airlines (600029.SS) (1055.HK), China Eastern Airlines (600115.SS) (0670.HK) and Hainan Airlines (600221.SS)…Chinese airlines would consider taking legal action against the EU over the move to charge for carbon emissions on flights to and from Europe…[and will] take their time on this, mindful that U.S. airlines recently lost a legal challenge against the ETS, and given that collection of the tax from airlines will not be until March 2013…

    "CATA estimates the scheme will cost Chinese airlines 800 million yuan in the first year and more than triple that by 2020…Germany's Lufthansa (LHAG.DE), the world's second-largest long-haul carrier after Dubai's Emirates, warned passengers…to brace for higher ticket prices…The EU says its ETS, which already applies to other industries, is the fairest way to cope with aviation's contribution to global warming…[T}he International Air Transport Association (IATA), has said the ETS would cost airlines 900 million euros in 2012 and the industry will not generally be able to pass this on to consumers because the market is too weak…The IATA forecast a 49 percent fall in 2012 industry-wide profit to $3.5 billion…"


    BUFFETT BUYS MORE WIND
    Buffett's MidAmerican Utility Buys Three Iowa Wind Energy Projects. MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. acquired three wind farm projects in Iowa that will have a combined wind power capacity of 404.8 megawatts at completion and 176 wind turbines.
    January 9, 2012 (Regulacion Eolica con Vehiculos Electricos)

    "MidAmerican Energy…[will] develop new wind farm projects in Iowa. As part of its latest wind energy plans, the company has also entered into agreements to acquire three wind power projects in Iowa that will have a combined capacity of 404.8MW with 176 wind turbines…

    "Des Moines-based MidAmerican Energy is announcing it will build three new wind farm plants in five Iowa counties. Ann Thelen, spokeswoman for MidAmerican, says the moves will enhance the company’s wind energy portfolio, adding more than 400 megawatts of wind power…[Through] an agreement with Clipper Windpower…[MidAmerican will] acquire about 200 megawatts of wind farm projects in Audubon and Guthrie counties and also a 101.2 megawatt wind farm in Adair County…"

    The nation's 7th best wind resource (click to enlarge)

    "Another agreement is with RPM Access for a 103 megawatt wind farm in Marshall and Tama counties. Combined, 176 new wind turbines will reach into the sky with the wind farm projects. There will also be expansion at the existing Rolling Hills wind farm, which covers parts of Adair, Adams and Cass counties.

    "…[When the wind farm projects are complete, approximately 29% of [MidAmerican’s] total generation capacity will be powered by wind energy…{MidAmerian has] invested approximately four-billion dollars in the state of Iowa for our wind power generation…[It] will again be working with Seimens Energy to manufacture the wind turbines at its [Iowa] facility in Fort Madison…"


    LA RENEWS ROOFTOP SUN PUSH
    New proposal seeks to encourage solar panels on LA rooftops, parking lots
    Molly Peterson, January 9, 2012 (KPCC/NPR)

    "Ambitious goals Los Angeles city officials have set for solar energy remain out of reach. Changes in leadership at the L.A. Department of Water and Power have slowed renewable energy policies. So has the domestic economy. Now the DWP is floating a new proposal designed to encourage solar farms on large rooftops and parking lots…Germany started its own program to encourage solar farms on large buildings 21 years ago; in English, the German policy of buying power from large rooftops translates as ‘feed-in tariff’… California law now requires that utilities do something like that…

    "DWP plans to buy solar energy generated on big buildings under long-term fixed-rate contracts. These projects would be at least five times bigger than most residential solar systems, and they’re different from home systems, where the electric meter spins forward and back…[F]eed-in tariff contracts offer more predictability as DWP tallies its energy resources. Local businesses recognize the value too…"

    click to enlarge

    "…[M]illions of dollars in tax revenue could juice L.A.'s coffers if large local solar projects take off…[but] this kind of system creates a new market for power. That’s tricky…

    "…How much to pay for solar energy is only one the matter DWP’s cautious about…It’ll take different engineering to deliver electricity in the other direction on transmission lines…A study…found that a full 600 megawatt feed-in tariff program would create up to 18,000 jobs…"

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:55 AM

    0 Comments:

    Post a Comment

    << Home