Category Archives: Green Energy

Happy Earth Day to all Communists, Progressives, Eco-Warriors, Leftists and Democrats Everywhere

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“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”

Vladimir Lenin

Vaclav Klaus (one of my all time favorite Presidents) said this not too long ago:

I see the third main threat to individual freedom in environmentalism. To be specific, I do understand the concerns about eventual environmental degradation, but I also see a problem in environmentalism as an ideology.

Environmentalism only pretends to deal with environmental protection. Behind their people- and nature-friendly terminology, the adherents of environmentalism make ambitious attempts to radically reorganize and change the world, human society, our behavior, and our values.

There is no doubt that it is our duty to rationally protect nature for future generations. The followers of the environmentalist ideology, however, keep presenting us with various catastrophic scenarios with the intention of persuading us to implement their ideas. That is not only unfair but also extremely dangerous. Even more dangerous, in my view, is the quasi-scientific guise that their oft-refuted forecasts have taken on.

Since the wheels have fallen off the global warming / climate change hoax, and the environmentalists are not going away, what is the next eco-fad catastrophe that can only be solved by limiting our freedoms and further trashing our economy?

Sustainability.

According to the UN Rio+20 objectives outline, the upcoming conference will be all about wealth transfer… Sorry… Sustainability.

The objective of the Conference is to secure renewed political commitment for sustainable development, assess the progress to date and the remaining gaps in the implementation of the outcomes of the major summits on sustainable development, and address new and emerging challenges
The Conference will focus on two themes: (a) a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication; and (b) the institutional framework for sustainable development.

Rio+20 Issues Briefs

The UNCSD Secretariat together with its partners has prepared a series of Rio+20Issues Briefs. The purpose of the Rio+20 Issues Briefs is to provide a channel for policymakers and other interested stakeholders to discuss and review issues relevant to the objective and themes of the conference, including a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, as well as the institutional framework for sustainable development.

Prepare for an onslaught of stories and propaganda urging you to use less and do less because we all have to worry  ”sustainability.”

“It is true that liberty is precious – so precious that it must be rationed”

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin must be kicking himself (while dodging flaming pitchforks) asking “why didn’t I think of this?”

More Green Energy Corruption: Obama funded company under investigation for insider trading

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Honestly, who is surprised by this?

Via Pat Dollard:

A company awarded $126.2 million in stimulus taxpayer funds from the U. S. Department of Energy is under investigation for insider trading according to a federal subpoena obtained by CBS News.

The company, San Francisco-based Ecotality, makes and installs chargers for electric cars.

The company received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission in October of 2010.

The president of Ecotality North America Don Karner was sent an additional subpoena in December of 2011, which specifically asks for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company for $99.8 million on August 5, 2009.

Unreal.

EU Pushing to raise prices on plastic shopping bags to ‘encourage’ re-use

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Another shining example of the European nanny state running amok:

Fewer Single-Use Bags in the Future?

The idea behind the higher price tag is that manufacturers would be more likely to produce sturdier plastic bags designed for multiple uses, and that consumers would be willing to pay for this privilege. The charge should be increased over time, the study says, so that pricing remains uncomfortable and people do not grow accustomed to low prices. It estimates that all EU citizens would use an average of only 39 bags per year by 2020, an 80 percent decline. It is unclear what the impact of such changes would be on the plastic bag producers and their employees.

Another case of going green without thinking. Via MCT (July 10th, 2010):

Most folks don’t give the hygiene of their reusable bags any thought, but according to a new study from researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University, they should.

The study, “Assessment of the Potential for Cross Contamination of Food Products by Reusable Shopping Bags,” found that nearly all (97%) of shoppers who use reusable bags do not regularly (if ever) clean them. Furthermore, most of us freely mix meats, vegetables, and other foods in the same bag, and don’t think twice about it.

According to the study, “Reusable bags, if not properly washed between uses, create the potential for cross-contamination of foods. This potential exists when raw meat products and foods traditionally eaten uncooked (fruits and vegetables) are carried in the same bags, either together or between uses. This risk can be increased by the growth of bacteria in the bags.”

Good thing, most EU countries have socialized medicine to combat the spike in food poisoning this rule would create.

Three W. Virginia coal plants closing due to high cost of MATS and other environmental rules

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Expect more of this in the very near future:

The three plants produce 660 megawatts and about 3-percent of FirstEnergy’s total generation. In recent years, the plants served as “peaking facilities” and generated power during times of peak demand for power.

The plants operated under subsidiary Monongahela Power. Mon Power recently finished a study of unscrubbed coal fired plants in the system to determine the potential impact of the most recent environmental regulations from EPA. Company officials determined the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) made it unfeasible to retrofit or continue operating the three plants.

“The high cost to implement MATS and other environmental rules is the reason these Mon Power plants are being retired,” said James R. Haney, regional president of Mon Power and president of West Virginia Operations for FirstEnergy.

Remember what candidate Obama said in 2008…

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And, in Michigan, Electricity prices have been on a steady upward trend since 2006.

I wonder how steep this curve will climb as power companies in Michigan determine it is too expensive to retrofit existing coal power plants as required by the new onerous EPA regs.

I’m sure the Germans really love buying electricity from France.

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Solar power is not cutting it in Germany because the 1.1 million solar systems in Germany have generated almost no electricity for weeks. Via Der Spiegel:

The only thing that’s missing at the moment is sunshine. For weeks now, the 1.1 million solar power systems in Germany have generated almost no electricity. The days are short, the weather is bad and the sky is overcast.
As is so often the case in winter, all solar panels more or less stopped generating electricity at the same time. To avert power shortages, Germany currently has to import large amounts of electricity generated at nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic. To offset the temporary loss of solar power, grid operator Tennet resorted to an emergency backup plan, powering up an old oil-fired plant in the Austrian city of Graz.

I’m sure the German public loves the idea of purchasing power from the Czech Republic.

And France. I’m sure the Germans really love buying electricity from France.

The Spiegel story continues.

Solar energy has gone from being the great white hope, to an impediment, to a reliable energy supply. Solar farm operators and homeowners with solar panels on their roofs collected more than €8 billion ($10.2 billion) in subsidies in 2011, but the electricity they generated made up only about 3 percent of the total power supply, and that at unpredictable times.

The distribution networks are not designed to allow tens of thousands of solar panel owners to switch at will between drawing electricity from the grid and feeding power into it. Because there are almost no storage options, the excess energy has to be destroyed at substantial cost. German consumers already complain about having to pay the second-highest electricity prices in Europe.

Makes sense doesn’t it? Sink $10.2 billion of tax payer money into a green energy scheme that drives up costs and makes you more depended on foreign sources of energy?

Sounds familiar. 

Much like Frederic Bastiat’s classic “broken window” economic model

Our Government Penalizing Oil Companies for Not Using a Biofuel That Doesn’t Exist

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This is absurd:

When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.

“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.

As pointed out previously here at MCT bio-fuels, much like the green energy movement in total, makes little economic or logical sense.

SolarReserve: Another Obama Backed Green Energy Boondoggle

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What will a $747 million tax payer backed loan guarantee buy these days? How about 2.5 square miles worth of mirrors. That, and a puny amount of electrical generation capacity:

SolarReserve of Santa Monica, Calif., can store heat from the sun in the form of molten salt. A field of mirrors that are aimed by a computer reflect the sun’s light on a black box on top of a central tower. In the box is the molten salt, which the sun heats to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The salt can be run through a heat exchanger to make steam to power a conventional turbine and generator.

The advantage is that extra salt can be stored for a rainy day or plain old nighttime so that the plant can continue to make electricity at any hour. That ability is increasingly important as more and more conventional solar farms are set up; ordinary solar cells produce electricity only while the sun is shining, and a system that relies heavily on an intermittent source of power needs storage.

In May, the Energy Department gave the company a promise of a $747 million loan guaranteee for a 110-megawatt plant using that technology in Tonopah, Nev.

Of course, nowhere does the three NYT articles cheer-leading the project discuss, you know, the sheer size of the project discussed. However, if you click over to the project web site they give us the projected size of this project.

Quick Facts:

Location:
 Northwest of Tonopah, NV
Technology:
 Concentrating Solar Thermal with Storage
Size:
 110 MW
Water Use:
 less than 600 Acre-feet/year
Site:
 ~1,600 Acres, BLM-managed land
Transmission:
 9.5 miles
Fuel:
 Sunlight

In case you were wondering, 1,600 acres is 2.5 SQUARE MILES.

The green zealots are willing to cover 2.5 square miles of land to generate a paltry (and more than likely overstated) 110MW of electricity.

To put this in perspective the Zeeland ‘Peaker’ power station covers 30 acres of land (including the parking lot) and generates 930MW of power using natural gas.

November 6, 2012 can’t get here fast enough.

To replace coal in 2020 Britain would burn 60m tons of wood (biomass) 5X the timber they could produce

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Radical environmentalists are still spinning their wheels trying to solve global warming (a problem that is nonexistent) with so-called solutions that produce less power and destroy the environment in the process.  Ironic, since they are environmentalists and their goal is to protect the environment.

All the bad green ideas begin in Europe and work their here and the next push (after solar and wind power) to come from Europe is Biomass.

Via the ASI blog:

It is really quite marvellous how all of these various things we’re supposed to be doing to save the planet are exactly the things we used to do which damaged the planet so badly. As Matt Ridley points out when talking about what we’re supposed to do to keep warm when we can’t burn coal or oil:

To replace coal, the government projects that by 2020 Britain will be generating electricity from burning up to 60m tonnes of biomass, mainly wood, about five times the timber harvest that Britain could conceivably produce.

Now “five times the harvest we could possibly produce” means that we would be over using that resouce. Denuding these islands of trees in fact. Which is what we actually did do all those centuries ago and what impelled us to go and conquer a quarter of the world in order to gain resources (no, really, we did things like go to war against Denmark so that we could have access to the Baltic timber to replace what we’d burnt) and also to start digging up coal in the first place.

Because there was no wood left, see?

Boneheads.

Obama Regime: Hey, you can save money on energy while we make it more expensive

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While driving around town today,  I caught a radio spot from our government extolling the virtues (and monetary savings) from using less energy. The spot was much like the following ‘helpful’ ad from the US Department of Energy:

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The first two thoughts that came to mind listening to this nonsense was:

1. Stop wasting money producing and broadcasting these stupid ads. This will be an immediate savings for tax payers.

2. “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”

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While our government nannies are trying to coerce us into saving energy, the Obama regime is doing everything in its power to block development of real energy resources in favor of his green energy scheme.

Oh, and if you think all this capping of ‘green house’ gasses and green energy is needed to save the ENTIRE planet from global warming, think again. Even hard core global warming fanatics are having to admit the so-called problem is not really as severe as first predicted.

Lead author Andreas Schmittner from Oregon State University, US, explained that by looking at surface temperatures during the most recent ice age – 21,000 years ago – when humans were having no impact on global temperatures, he, and his colleagues show that this period was not as cold as previous estimates suggest.

“This implies that the effect of CO2 on climate is less than previously thought,” he explained.

By incorporating this newly discovered “climate insensitivity” into their models, the international team was able to reduce uncertainty in its future climate projections.

The new models predict that given a doubling in CO2 levels from pre-industrial levels, the Earth’s surface temperatures will rise by 1.7C to 2.6C (3.1F to 4.7F).

That is a much tighter range than the one produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2007 report, which suggested a rise of between 2.0C to 4.5C

Of course, this still doesn’t explain why surface temperatures in my back yard have been slowly declining since the late 1930′s:

How can the mean temperature in my back yard drop at a rate of 0.0018 deg / year over the last 70+ years when the ENTIRE Planet is supposedly suffering from a catastrophic warming trend?