Talking Points Memo has more but here are some tidbits on renewable energy, energy independence and sustainability. Yeah!

Clean, Efficient, American Energy: To put people back to work today and reduce our dependence on foreign oil tomorrow, we will increase renewable energy production and renovate public buildings to make them more energy efficient.

Smart Grid/Advanced Battery Technology/Energy Efficiency
Provides a total of $30 billion for such initiatives as a new, smart power grid, advanced battery technology, and energy efficiency measures, which will create nearly 500,000 jobs.
Transforms the nation’s electricity systems through the Smart Grid Investment Program to modernize the electricity grid to make it more efficient and reliable.
Supports U.S. development of advanced vehicle batteries and battery systems through loans and grants so that America can lead the world in transforming the way automobiles are powered.
Helps state and local governments make investments in innovative best practices to achieve greater energy efficiency and reduce energy usage.
Spurs energy efficiency and renewable energy R&D.
Tax Incentives to Spur Energy Savings and Green Jobs
Provides $20 billion in tax incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency over the next 10 years.
Includes a three-year extension of the production tax credit (PTC) for electricity derived from wind (through 2012) and for electricity derived from biomass, geothermal, hydropower, landfill gas, waste-to-energy, and marine facilities (through 2013).
Provides grants of up to 30 percent of the cost of building a new renewable energy facility to address current renewable energy credit market concerns.
Promotes energy-efficient investments in homes by extending and expanding tax credits through 2010 for purchases such as new furnaces, energy-efficient windows and doors, or insulation.
Provides a tax credit for families that purchase plug-in hybrid vehicles of up to $7,500 to spur the next generation of American cars.
Includes clean renewable energy bonds for State and local governments.
Establishes a new manufacturing investment tax credit for investment in advanced energy facilities, such as facilities that manufacture components for the production of renewable energy, advanced battery technology, and other innovative next-generation green technologies. [emphasis mine]

This is encouraging news as we hope to develop manufacturing of renewable energy products, the V-LIM turbine and a capacitive storage system, right here in Coos County.

As a consequence of annoying intermittent electrical blackouts, the City of Stamford, Connecticut has contracted with an energy developer to install a micro-grid at City Hall. The City will sign a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Pareto Energy who will use tax incentives and institutional debt to install a $5.4M fuel cell power generator.
The city would have an option to buy the facility after five years but is effectively taking the money going to Connecticut Power & Light to own their own power generation within 15 years and use the money generated for the city infrastructure.
Last year the City’s Board of Representatives established an Energy Improvement District (EID) after several years of unreliable power that thwarted business development. Major businesses across the country are recognizing the benefits of micro-grids and while Stamford has not opted for a renewable energy system, micro-grids fossil fueled or not, are still more reliable and efficient than centralized power.
Today there are many mature alternatives to the aging electrical grid that the establishment of an EID to allow large power consumers to generate their own power is more and more practical. Small geothermal generators use the temperature difference between ground water and/or the earth and outside ambient air to produce energy.
Raw sewage is converted to methane to produce power and biomass generators convert wood waste and other organic material into power and, of course, there is solar and wind. Stepping away from the centralized power generation model to smaller micro-grids or district energy makes it affordable for communities to enter the electricity business.
The City of Stamford does not expect to pay less for their power by implementing this system but does expect price stability throughout the life of the PPA until the city owns the system outright. CP&L expects an increase in power demand of 100% in Stamford within 5 years. Taking control of their energy allows the City to be independent of the investor owned utility to manage business, industrial and residential growth.

Coos County is not expecting anything along the lines of the anticipated growth in Stamford, CT, in part because we do not have the infrastructure to support it, but micro-grids would keep local dollars from being sent to Pacific Power. Micro-grids eventually pay for themselves and can ultimately fund many public services.
Coos County has the potential to recover from the loss of federal timber subsidies if our leaders will get together and look more at the resources at hand and cast less for a white knight in the form of a big corporation to ride to the rescue. Rural communities can pull out of these hard economic times and become a model of sustainability, but it takes vision and cooperation and determination and leadership.

Just another pretty picture of the V-LIM turbine. The hub is now affixed to the axle and ready to start receiving the blades and rotor.

Rogue River Wind, Ltd will announce the big roll out party for the turbine soon. We will see what a little breeze and some magnets and some copper and a lot of sweat, tears and inspiration can light up.

Developing new technology is often like working your way through a minefield, belly down, creeping inch-by-inch, poking tentatively at every possible dent or protuberance and hoping you aren’t blown up in the process. Each forward inch extracts pints of sweat yet when you raise your head to get your bearings you find there is still a long way to go and multiple paths to choose from.
Even now, as the V-LIM turbine has solved one problem after another, where to get 8 conductor slip rings, NASA grade bearings, 50 amp 4 contact rectifiers, 45 mega Gauss magnets, what insulator to use, how to minimize cogging and resistance, the biggest hurdle lies ahead. Breaking through traditional mindsets and established paradigms that trap our society within a centralized power model is not going to be easy.
Language in the Draft EIS report prepared for FERC regarding the proposed LNG terminal illustrates the ‘stuck in the box’ thinking that has helped lead America into its current energy crisis. The report, ironically, cites all the inherent problems of centralized power production, be it renewable or LNG, namely transmission congestion as a barrier to renewable energy.
The report further cites, correctly I might add, that tying intermittent energy sources into the grid at the higher voltage transmission line levels is highly problematic. Load matching and maintaining a consistent 60 Hz output is a costly and time consuming job, the failure of which can cause massive blackouts like the one in the Northeast in 2003.
The Draft EIS report concludes that lack of transmission capacity and difficulties in load matching at the transmission level negates renewable energy as a viable alternative to LNG in meeting projected loads in the years to come. Not once does the report discuss the merits of de-centralized power production.
Widely and successfully practiced in Europe, the concept of producing power at the point of consumption instead of in remote rural outlands is hardly untried technology. The failure of the report to acknowledge advances in small wind technology, solar and geothermal power production, micro-grids and combined heat and power, not seeing the forest for the trees, puts millions of acres of private property at risk of seizure by eminent domain.
Imagine how frustrating it is for my small venture to know that I may close deals with European contacts before I finalize domestic projects, simply because the foreign mindset is open to decentralized alternatives. America must think out of the box if small business has any chance of providing long term, living, family wage jobs in Coos County.
Please allow me to take this opportunity to introduce and thank those people who participated, at my request, in the duel with Amanda Davidson. I want to especially thank my good friend, Ed Pool, who is a little under the weather right now and wrote in support of ending combat operations in Afghanistan. Ed served in the United States Navy as a radar technician and patrolled the Saigon River in 1965 and 1966. He then went on to spend 35 years with the Federal Aviation Administration. Please join me in wishing Ed a speedy recovery.
Dr Robert Fischer handled the oil-drilling topic. Bob is a Marine Corp veteran and went on to earn his PHD from Michigan State University. He taught at California State University, Fresno in the Social Sciences department for 30 years.
Pat Reid took on the ethanol topic. Pat earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in Applied Physics from Pacific Lutheran University where he also played all four years for the university’s baseball team. He served 8.5 years in the US Army with 7 of those years as a helicopter pilot including 2.5 as an instructor pilot. Pat made a direct transfer to the USCG 3.5 years ago and is currently flying as an aircraft commander out of North Bend.
Pat lives right here in Coquille with his “beautiful wife” of nearly 11 years and two children, ages seven and three.
Thank you all so much for contributing to the community.

Nuclear power is gaining a lot of hype lately as an answer to US energy needs. Proponents of nuclear power are extolling the ability of nuclear generators to produce terawatts of power without carbon emissions and that this will reduce our dependence on foreign resources and thereby improve national security.
As energy demands increase around the globe more and more nations are looking to nuclear power as an answer. After a decades old ban, nuclear supplier countries are reaching an accord with India opening the atomic reactor market worth tens of billions of dollars to companies like France’s state-controlled Areva, Westinghouse and General Electric of the U.S. to Russia’s Rosatom.
Electricity production produces approximately 40% of the world’s carbon emissions the other 60% coming from other sources. Converting all fossil fuel powered plants to nuclear energy would require an increase from 443 operating plants to 4,316 nuclear power plants by 2050 at a cost of $14.4 trillion. Here is the real kicker, according to “Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy Review”, a draft report prepared for the Australia government, using only 1,587 nuclear reactor generators would use all known uranium deposits in less than 40 years. Nuclear is not a renewable energy.
Nor would investing in nuclear power by any means reduce US dependence upon foreign resources. The US, the largest power consumer in the world using half again as much power as China, has a third the uranium reserves of Canada and one seventh those of Australia. Even a nuclear powered US would be heavily dependent upon foreign resources.
There is also the matter of carbon neutrality and nuclear power and the mining of uranium, just like coal, produces carbon emissions. During the lifetime of a nuclear power plant, roughly 40 years, the disposal of radioactive waste, decommissioning, and other continued maintenance adds both carbon emissions and cost.
The numbers quoted in the draft report above are based upon current energy demands. However, investor owned utilities and power generators do not operate on zero growth, quite the contrary they required sustained annual growth of 2, 3 or 5% to justify placing capital into an industry. Using the ‘Rule of 72’ the exponential growth to maintain a 5% annual increase means that power consumption must double every fourteen years.
Doubling means just that, instead of 4,316 nuclear power plants by 2050, the world would require twice as many plants every fourteen years! In other words, uranium supplies would be depleted even sooner and the infrastructure wasted.
There is no substitute for conservation and there is no time left to waste to convert to and improve upon existing renewable sources. Carbon emitted today will last 100 years and only then dissipate to about 37% of its original concentration. Planting trees can help but even a total cessation of carbon pollution would not clear the planet of what has already been produced.
The sun produces, each day, enough energy to run our planet through both solar and wind technologies. It just makes sense to invest our time, energy and resources into sustainable and renewable resources. The last thing we want is to fight wars over uranium.

and other places.

New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed putting windmills on city bridges and rooftops as part of an ambitious push for renewable energy.

Bloomberg outlined his plan Tuesday night at a Las Vegas conference on alternative energy.

You can read his speech here or watch it here

Recognizing the importance of addressing the climate change crisis and reducing dependence upon foreign oil and gas, the US Department of Energy (USDOE) has launched an aggressive program aiming to meet 20% of America’s energy needs via wind by 2030. In conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the USDOE produced a study assessing the economic and environmental costs and benefits of achieving this goal.
The study can be read in its entirety at 20percentwind.org and concludes more than 500,000 jobs would be supported with an increase of 100,000 jobs in supporting industries and 200,000 more jobs through economic expansion at the local level. Other economic gains are expected annual property tax increases of $1.5B by 2030 and electric price stability.
Deploying wind energy and displacing fossil fuel powered plants will result in 825 million metric tons less carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2030. Power generation presently accounts for 40% of CO2 emissions in the US. Wind energy, unlike fossil fuel or nuclear generated power does not require water so water consumption will drop also.
The study focuses entirely on centralized wind energy or large wind farms despite growing and successful implementation of distributed renewable energy systems in Europe. Nevertheless, the study reveals that successful deployment of an additional 304GW of wind power to meet the 20% goal is dependent upon massive investment in the transmission grid infrastructure. Consequently, 19,000 miles of new 765-kilovolt (kV) transmission lines, for an estimated price tag of US $60 billion are being proposed to Congress by high powered energy players like T Boone Pickens.
Other challenges to the centralized model include the need to develop larger electric load balancing areas, in tandem with better regional planning to implement generation diversity. According to the study, the US must increase annual wind power installation by 16GW by 2018, within ten years. Obtaining permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and other affected agencies in order to build out the transmission infrastructure to support this growth can take up to ten years. This is one reason the European Distributed Energy Partnership (EUDEEP) formed to implement wide scale distributed energy production to avoid many of these barriers and costs.
Significantly, the study acknowledges that a “business-as-usual” approach will not meet these goals. A major national commitment to clean energy, CO2 reductions and independence from foreign resources is required at a grass roots level. From a grass roots level it will also be possible to demonstrate that wide scale distributed energy systems can work in the US not just Europe and elsewhere. Happily, there are several people working on making the South Coast of Oregon a model of energy independence that the rest of the nation can build upon.
Please permit me a little divergence from topic here but I hope that in the inevitable debates to ensue during an election year we can focus on issues and not stoop to exposing verbal gaffes and sartorial faux pas. If you want to criticize Obama, criticize him, a constitutional lawyer, for eviscerating the 4th Amendment with his recent vote on the FISA bill. Or criticize him for his hawkish view on Iran or his votes for emergency defense spending more than five years after the ‘emergency’, not because he said fifty seven states instead of fifty on the campaign trail.
Criticize McCain for not defending the 4th Amendment and not voting on the FISA bill, for voting against an increase in GI benefits and for voting to continuing emergency defense spending five years after the ‘emergency’. Don’t criticize him because he thinks Iraq and Pakistan share a common border, (a really wide border called Iran). The future of this country is worthy of better debate and time is too short to waste on anything less than serious issues.