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July 18th, 2012 Archives
Conservative Thinkers Entertain Liberal Idea: Carbon Taxes
Ken Silverstein | Jul 17, 2012
Conservative thinkers are playing host to a liberal idea: the enactment of carbon taxes. The issue is making news right before the national elections in the fall, and it could gain increasing momentum.
To read the entire article go to: http://www.energybiz.com/article/12/07/conservative-thinkers-entertain-liberal-idea-carbon-taxes&utm_medium=eNL&utm_campaign=EB_DAILY2&utm_term=Original-Member
Share This PostManipulation of California energy market gives consumers a jolt
By Michael Hiltzik
July 18, 2012
The next time your electricity bill prompts you to curse your local utility, here's another target where you should direct your anger: JPMorgan Chase & Co., which has manipulated the California energy market for its own profit and at a cost to residents and businesses in the state that could be $100 million, $200 million or much more.
That's the accusation leveled by the California Independent System Operator, which has jurisdiction over 80% of the state's electrical transmission. The ISO, a nonprofit corporation controlled by the state government, estimates that JPMorgan may have gamed the state's power market for $57 million in improper payments over six months in 2010 and 2011.
But that could be just the tip of the iceberg: The bank continued its activities past that time frame, according to the ISO. It also says JPMorgan's alleged manipulation could have helped throw the entire energy market out of whack, imposing what could be incalculable costs on ratepayers.
To read the entire article go to: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120718,0,1949782.column?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fbusiness+%28L.A.+Times+-+Business%29
Share This PostScience group grades Sacramento-area utilities on clean energy
mglover@sacbee.com Published Wednesday, Jul. 18, 2012
Sacramento-area utilities drew mixed reviews for their efforts to reach clean energy goals in a report released Tuesday by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The report, "The Clean Energy Race: How Do California's Public Utilities Measure Up?," said Roseville Electric was behind the curve. And while the Sacramento Municipal Utility District received praise, the report also said SMUD needs to raise its game in the future.
The report said California's 10 largest publicly owned utilities increased their renewable energy investments to nearly 19 percent of retail electricity sales in 2010, up from 4 percent in 2003.
California's renewable portfolio standard, RPS for short, requires utilities to generate up to 33 percent of their electricity from clean sources – such as solar and wind – by 2020.
The science group examined how investments made by the utilities met a standard of generating 20 percent of their electricity from clean sources by 2010. The report noted that publicly owned utilities, unlike larger investor-owned utilities, were encouraged – but not required – to meet the 2010 RPS target.
To read the entire article go to: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/07/18/4638074/science-group-grades-sacramento.html
Share This PostPipeline safety records under scrutiny as B.C. set to get more
Kinder Morgan says Trans Mountain project has seen only small leaks in the last decade
By Gordon Hoekstra, Vancouver SunJuly 17, 2012
Kinder Morgan’s 1,150-kilometre Trans Mountain pipeline that transports oil from Alberta to southwestern B.C. has averaged about one leak a year in the past decade, but has not experienced the kind of major spill seen more recently in Alberta and Michigan from other pipelines.
“The pipeline is in many ways in better condition than when it was constructed almost 60 years ago,” said Kinder Morgan vice-president of operations engineering Hugh Harden.
“We have extensive integrity management programs that identify defects from original construction [and] removes them or repairs them. The tools we have today can see much smaller defects than we used to, maybe even 10 years ago,” he said.
The public’s interest in the risk of leaks on oil pipelines has been heightened in British Columbia, with two major projects moving forward in the province.
To read the entire article go to: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/resources/Pipeline+safety+records+under+scrutiny+more/6949239/story.html
Share This PostFeds to conduct joint review of Oregon LNG terminal and Washington pipeline expansion
Published: Tuesday, July 17, 2012, 1:55 PM Updated: Tuesday, July 17, 2012, 4:36 PM
By Ted Sickinger, The Oregonian
The OregonianThe site of a proposed LNG export terminal in Warrenton, across from Astoria.
Federal regulators will conduct a cumulative environmental review, rather than separate reviews, of a proposed liquefied natural gas export terminal in Warrenton, near the mouth of the Columbia River, and a pipeline expansion in Washington designed to serve the terminal.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission sent a letter to Oregon LNG and Williams Northwest Pipeline this week informing them of the decision to evaluate the terminal and pipe expansion as one project.
The companies filed initial applications to get the ball moving at FERC earlier this month. They will file full-blown applications early next year, which the feds now plan to consider together.
Opponents of the LNG terminals, who are regrouping to battle projects that have morphed from import to export proposals, applauded FERC's decision. They say it will preclude the kind of divide-and-conquer strategy that they accuse the backers of the Bradwood Landing LNG terminal and Palomar pipeline of employing to minimize the environmental impact of their
proposals and expedite approvals.
To read the entire article go to: http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2012/07/feds_to_conduct_joint_review_o.html
Share This PostShell’s Arctic Drilling Venture Stumbles Toward Reality
Posted: 07/17/2012 12:45 pm
Royal Dutch Shell, the global energy giant, has already invested more than $4 billion in its Arctic drilling venture, but that was apparently not enough to purchase proper mooring in Alaska's Dutch Harbor and avoid a subsequent public relations mess.
Precisely what happened is still being sorted out. Official accounts had the Noble Discoverer, one of two massive drilling rigs that Shell had parked midway up the Aleutian Island chain, dragging anchor in stiff winds over the weekend before coming to a halt 100 yards offshore.
Locals, including a shutterbug harbor captain, disputed that scenario and lit up Twitter and Facebook with photographs showing the rig all but on the beach.
"There's no question it hit the beach," Kristjan Laxfoss, the harbor captain, told The Associated Press on Sunday. "That ship was not coming any closer. It was on the beach."
To read the entire article go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-zeller-jr/shell-arctic-drilling_b_1679697.html?utm_hp_ref=green
Share This PostIf You Lived Downwind From This Power Plant, Would You Be Concerned?
Posted: 07/17/2012 11:29 am
U.S. Representative from Ohio's 10th District
If an airline pilot failed an annual exam, and the Federal Aviation Administration simply lowered its standards to allow that pilot to continue to fly, would you board the flight? If a surgeon failed a licensing exam, and the medical board simply lowered its standards and allowed the surgeon to continue to practice, would you look for another doctor?
Davis-Besse, a nuclear power plant just 30 miles from downtown Toledo, does not provide the same margin of safety that it did when it was built 34 years ago. Will we allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to simply lower its standards?
A year ago, The Associated Press conducted an in-depth analysis of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's treatment of age-related deterioration at nuclear power plants. The AP concluded that the NRC "work(ed) closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them."
The AP examined "tens of thousands of pages of government and industry studies... along with test results, inspection reports and regulatory policy statements...over four decades." Those records "show a recurring pattern: Reactor parts or systems fall out of compliance with the rules. Studies are conducted by the industry and government, and all agree that existing standards are 'unnecessarily conservative.' Regulations are loosened, and the reactors are back in compliance."
To read the entire article go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-dennis-kucinich/if-you-lived-down-wind-fr_b_1679618.html?utm_hp_ref=green
Share This PostSo, How Hot Was It?
By MATTHEW L. WALD July 17, 2012, 2:34 pm
It was so hot last week, a twin-unit nuclear plant in northeastern Illinois had to get special permission to continue operating after the temperature of the water in its cooling pond rose to 102 degrees.
It was the second such request from the plant, Braidwood, which opened 26 years ago. When it was new, the plant had permission to run as long as the temperature of its cooling water pond, a 2,500-acre lake in a former strip mine, remained below 98 degrees; in 2000 it got permission to raise the limit to 100 degrees.
The problem, said Craig Nesbit, a spokesman for Exelon, which owns the plant, is not only the hot days, but the hot nights. In normal weather, the water in the lake heats up during the day but cools down at night; lately, nighttime temperatures have been in the 90s, so the water does not cool.
To read the entire article go to: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/so-how-hot-was-it/?ref=energy-environment
Share This PostBefore Anyone Complained About the Air-Conditioning, an Idea
By JAMES BARRON July 16, 2012, 6:23 pm
July 17, 1902: It was another scorcher in New York. The week before, seven deaths tied to the heat had been reported. The city's public baths were jammed with people desperately trying to cool down. The newspapers, following President Theodore Roosevelt's vacation on Long Island, said he had been out horseback riding when a thunderstorm rolled in. It was so hot, he did not mind getting soaked.
What the newspapers did not report was that something had happened involving the second floor of a Brooklyn printing plant - something that changed everything.
What happened was air-conditioning. Sort of. July 17 was the date on the blueprints for newfangled equipment to temper the air.
A junior engineer from a furnace company figured out a solution so simple that it had eluded everyone from Leonardo da Vinci to the naval engineers ordered to cool the White House when President James A. Garfield was dying: controlling humidity. "If you could keep humidity at a balanced rate," said Marsha E. Ackermann, the author of "Cool Comfort: America's Romance With Air-Conditioning" (Smithsonian Books, 2002), "it would not seem so sweltering and things would not be dripping all over."
To read the entire article go to: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/before-anyone-complained-about-the-air-conditioning-an-idea/
Share This PostSo, How Hot Was It?
By MATTHEW L. WALD July 17, 2012, 2:34 pm
It was so hot last week, a twin-unit nuclear plant in northeastern Illinois had to get special permission to continue operating after the temperature of the water in its cooling pond rose to 102 degrees.
It was the second such request from the plant, Braidwood, which opened 26 years ago. When it was new, the plant had permission to run as long as the temperature of its cooling water pond, a 2,500-acre lake in a former strip mine, remained below 98 degrees; in 2000 it got permission to raise the limit to 100 degrees.
The problem, said Craig Nesbit, a spokesman for Exelon, which owns the plant, is not only the hot days, but the hot nights. In normal weather, the water in the lake heats up during the day but cools down at night; lately, nighttime temperatures have been in the 90s, so the water does not cool.
Asked whether he viewed Braidwood’s difficulties as a byproduct of global warming, Mr. Nesbit said: “I’m not a climatologist. But clearly the calculations when the plant was first operated in 1986 are not what is sufficient today, not all the time.”
To read the entire article go to: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/so-how-hot-was-it
Share This PostLose the Crust, Inherit the Wind
By LESLIE MACMILLAN July 18, 2012, 7:40 am
As the West struggles with wildfires this summer, hot, dry weather is also contributing to massive dust storms in Arizona. Known as "haboobs," the storms are characterized by strong winds and a wall of dust that can be thousands of feet high, grounding planes, blowing away barns and knocking out power to major cities like Phoenix.
Dust storms are nothing new to Arizona: each year, an average of five people die in dust storms between May and September, when such a storm can blot out the sun and create a hazard on highways. To raise awareness of the risks of driving during dust storms, Arizona's Transportation Department recently invited residents to write haiku on the dangers via Twitter and Facebook.
While state agencies grapple with the public safety problem, scientists are studying the root causes of dust storms. Just as poor farming practices, including plowing up the prairie to plant crops, created Dust Bowl conditions in the 1930s in the driest regions of the Great Plains, the erosion of Arizona's "desert crust" is contributing to dust storms today. The trick is getting people to care about a terrain that some people think of as barren or lifeless, and perhaps not as worthy of preserving as, say, a rainforest.
To read the entire article go to: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/lose-the-crust-inherit-the-wind/?ref=energy-environment
Share This PostSmart Grid Funding Woes: Glendale Struggles, Boulder/Xcel Spar
Hopefully, other smart grid projects aren’t having these kinds of problems.
Jeff St. John: July 16, 2012
Just because you’ve won a multi-million-dollar federal smart grid stimulus grant doesn’t mean you might not run out of money later.
Two years after becoming the first recipient of a Department of Energy smart grid stimulus program grant ($20 million in this case), Southern California municipal utility Glendale Water and Power is facing a $9.5 million cutback that’s forcing it to ask for rate increases and offer $60 million in bonds to keep its smart grid plans on track.
The shortfall is the difference between the $10 million the utility expected to spend on smart grid this fiscal year, and the $450,000 approved for it by the Glendale city council, according to local news reports. The situation is already having a negative effect on the utility’s finances -- Fitch Ratings downgraded some of the utility’s water revenue bonds on Friday, saying that water utility was borrowing from the electric utility to pay for capital improvements.
To cover the shortfall, the utility announced this month that it’s seeking a whopping 14.7-percent electricity rate increase over four years, starting at 3 percent next year, a move that has angered city residents and brought smart meter opponents out in force. It’s also planning to issue about $60 million in bonds.
To read the entire article go to: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/who-pays-for-the-smart-grid-glendale-struggles-boulder-xcel-spar/
Share This PostCommercial Solar’s Risk Targeted by Insurers’ Partnership
Assurant and GCube know risk—and they are betting on distributed solar generation.
Herman K. Trabish: July 13, 2012
Because solar is a still maturing industry, one of the big fears its financial backers have is that the panels on which their investment depends will not perform according to manufacturer claims.
Solar can point to few large-scale installations that have performed to warranty provisions over the promised 25-year warranty period.
Assurant, Inc. (NYSE: AIZ), a powerhouse in the insurance space for 120 years, and GCube Insurance Services, Inc., a three-decade veteran of the renewables space, have partnered to provide a new insurance product for commercial-scale solar projects between 100 kilowatts and three megawatts that addresses investors’ concerns.
“In addition to the standard property and liability insurance,” explained Assurant Operations and Industry Relations VP David A. Schroeder, “we also have a warranty component at a project-specific level. That is what is unique about our offering.”
Assurant had $8 billion in revenues in 2011, but, more importantly, $1.7 billion of that was in warranties.
To read the entire article go to: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/commercial-solars-risk-targeted-by-insurers-partnership/
Share This PostA PACE Rebirth? Sacramento and Ygrene Try to Unlock Green Homes
Can a new approach to PACE home solar/efficiency finance overcome big regulatory roadblocks? Sacramento and Ygrene are trying it out.
Jeff St. John: July 16, 2012
Property assessed clean energy, or PACE, financing -- paying for home solar installations, energy efficiency retrofits and other green improvements through property taxes -- was all the rage a few years ago.
Then, in 2010, Fannie May, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency decided that PACE payback obligations were problematic when combined with residential mortgages, putting the whole idea into legal limbo, and the industry into a stall. Programs in 23 states were canceled or cut short.
Since then, we’ve seen multiple approaches emerge to unlocking the legal snarl that’s preventing PACE from moving forward, whether via court challenge, or by delivering the same financial benefits of PACE via different structures, like utility bills.
Now, California’s state capital, Sacramento, is about to get the ball rolling on a new version of PACE financing that could unlock the residential market. Last month, it announced its Clean Energy Sacramento program was expanding PACE to both commercial and residential construction, with a goal of driving $100 million in investment in rooftop solar, efficiency upgrades and other green projects.
To read the entire article go to: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/a-pace-rebirth-sacramento-and-ygrene-try-to-unlock-green-homes/
Share This PostSolar Trade War and the Law of Unintended Consequences
Crushing small American companies with SolarWorld-inspired solar tariffs
Eric Wesoff: July 16, 2012
Last week, Shyam Mehta of GTM Research wrote a (great) article on the struggles of a tiny American solar device manufacturer caught in the crosshairs of the SolarWorld-led tariffs on Chinese solar panels.
The firm, left unnamed to protect its privacy, produces solar chargers for consumer devices such as mobile phones and iPads. One item on the firm's bill of materials, a strip of 18-percent-efficient photovoltaic material, was sourced from a China-based supplier. Long story short, the company now faces retroactive duties of $7,500 on $3,000 worth of product, as well as an enormous challenge in locating an alternative supplier.
Since the imposition of the "critical circumstance" tariff, production at the small American company has come to a standstill and employees are being sent home. This outcome -- at an American company, no less -- can't have been the intention of the claimant.
To read the entire article go to: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solar-trade-war-and-the-law-of-unintended-consequences/
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