updated event information for Take Charge! CEP’s upcoming climate and energy panels
January 18, 2008
Updated event information is now available on CEP’s upcoming Take Charge! community forums in Salina, Overland Park, and Topeka (January 21, 22, and 23 respectively). Click thru to the press release on our home page for times, locations, and pdf fliers listing the names of panel members.
These panels are going to be so darn cool. The participating experts are listed below. CEP couldn’t be more delighted to have these folks participating:
Salina – Kansas Wesleyan University – Monday, January 21, 7-9 p.m.
Jim Ludwig, Westar Energy
Frank Costanza, Tradewind Energy
Carl Huslig, ITC Great Plains
David Schlissel, Synapse Energy
Wes Jackson, The Land Institute
Overland Park, JCCC – Tuesday, January 22, 7-9 p.m.
Bill Riggins, KCPL
Ezra Hausman, Synapse Energy
Mark Lawlor, Horizon
Kimberly Gencur, ITC Great Plains
Topeka, Washburn University – Wednesday, January 23, 7-9 p.m.
Jim Ludwig, Westar Energy
Johannes Feddema, IPCC Researcher
Mark Lawlor, Horizon Energy
Kimberly Gencur, ITC Great Plains
Want to know more about climate and energy in the Midwest? Check out www.climateandenergy.org.
coal special interest dollars (coming soon to a town or TV near you)
January 18, 2008
More on coal from today’s Washington Post - $35 million being spent on PR to build coal plants and fight climate change legislation. (I’ll reprint it in full below, because I have noted that the Post’s links often expire on me.)
Coal Industry Plugs Into the Campaign
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 18, 2008; Page D01
A group backed by the coal industry and its utility allies is waging a $35 million campaign in primary and caucus states to rally public support for coal-fired electricity and to fuel opposition to legislation that Congress is crafting to slow climate change.
The group, called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, has spent $1.3 million on billboard, newspaper, television and radio ads in Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina.
One of its television ads shows a power cord being plugged into a lump of coal, which it calls “an American resource that will help us with vital energy security” and “the fuel that powers our way of life.” The ads note that half of U.S. electricity comes from coal-fired plants.
winding up the week
January 18, 2008
Big story on coal from the LA Times. A selection of quotables:
America’s headlong rush to tap its enormous coal reserves for electricity has slowed abruptly, with more than 50 proposed coal-fired power plants in 20 states canceled or delayed in 2007 because of concerns about climate change, construction costs and transportation problems…
The setbacks have energy regulators jittery about the prospects for meeting America’s ever-increasing hunger for electricity. They say that any delays in building new capacity — coal-fired or otherwise — add pressure to an already strained electricity infrastructure, raising the prospect of shortages or sharply higher prices….
A recent study by the industry-funded Electric Power Research Institute projects that coal power will cost more than nuclear power or natural gas by 2030 if coal’s carbon dioxide problem is solved the way most experts envision. Still unproven, that method involves separating carbon dioxide from the gas stream before it heads out of the stacks, collecting the vapors and then storing them underground. That would also require a new network of pipelines to move carbon dioxide from the power plant to a geologically sound site….
Another industry analysis predicts that wholesale electricity prices will rise 35% to 65% by 2015 if the Warner-Lieberman climate change bill — one of the more conservative plans put forward in the Senate — is enacted…..
A more immediate challenge is transportation, from missing links in the rail routes to silted-up Great Lakes shipping channels, which raise concerns that coal may not be so simple to get at after all. “Can coal deliver?” asked Gary Hunt, president of Global Energy Advisors, a Sacramento-based unit of Global Energy Decisions. “The answer is no,” he said — not without “billions and billions” spent on improvements for mining capacity, railroads and shipping….
Go ahead and read it all, don’t be at the mercy of my editing skills. There’s a lot more to the story that the parts I just clipped out. The overall article is good in that it takes a good overview of the coal power issue, beyond the will-the-plants-get-built-or-not perspective. (I’m as guilty of that limited view as anyone, I know.)
The piece sure could have stood to mention, though, how increasing our energy efficiency can help get some of our demand (our increasing demand, mind you) better under control.
Finally, a short video clip from our friends Down Under – the “black balloons” approach to envisioning how carbon dioxide emissions in our daily lives.
I completely blew out my right arm while playing Wii Tennis the other night. I doubt you’ll hear much more from me today :) typing is hard. everyone have a good weekend.
— Maril Hazlett
Want to know more about climate and energy in the Midwest? Check out www.climateandenergy.org.
