Climate and energy

Production Tax Credit – foiled again! The Congress is experiencing a one hundred car pile-up over energy issues. Kind of like the pile-up that the KS legislature had over coal this past session, but with even MORE people watching.

Thus yet again the Production Tax Credit (PTC) hit a wall (Reuters). If you check the roll call vote, Senators Roberts and Brownback voted against it in a procedural motion.

As someone asked me this morning – “Didn’t they get the memo…? Wind and solar are GOOD for Kansas.”

I said that sending memos beyond my power, but I could indeed urge Kansas citizens to communicate their views (whatever they are) urgently and passionately to their elected representatives. Feel free to locate them through www.congress.org.

(Will the PTC come up for a vote again? We’ll see. Word is, probably.)

Energy costs on Kansas farms rising – even before 2008 fuel price spikes. (Cattlenetwork.com) Quotable:

For non-irrigated crop farms in the Kansas Farm Management Association, last year´s average energy-related costs per acre were 37 percent higher than their previous five-year (2002-06) average. In contrast, total crop production costs for 2007 were 29 percent higher, according to Michael Langemeier, agricultural economist with Kansas State University Research and Extension.

“To keep this in perspective, though, you´ve got to remember that in addition to price changes, technology and crop mix can impact per- acre energy costs,” Langemeier said. “Adopting no-till or reduced tillage systems, for example, is a change in technology. Adoption of those systems has increased in recent years. And, as a result, this on-going change in tillage systems actually dampened the impact that 2007´s energy price hikes had on energy-related cropping costs.”

The percentage rise in fertilizer costs was even higher than the one for energy, he said. In part, that´s because a large part of fertilizer´s entire 2002-07 cost increase occurred just last year.

“Compared to the per-acre average for non-irrigated crop farms from

2002 through 2006, last year´s fertilizer costs were 60 percent higher,” Langemeier said.

Kansas Rural Center has new wind power webpage! Check it out – wind for schools, wind forums, sample siting guidelines, leasing info, etc.

Ganked from Climateer, I think. Another billionaire – Philip Anschutz – getting involved with transmission lines (Denver Post). As someone who spent the better part of six years buried in the basement bookshelves of Anschutz Science Library at KU, that snippet interested me.

T. Boone Pickens also visited the Wichita Eagle news and editorial staff yesterday – for their coverage, click here. As far as the final attendance for Pickens’ Topeka appearance yesterday, I have seen anywhere between 750-1000. Favorite headline, from the TCJournal: “Pickens shoots the breeze…”

Could the Kansas speed limit go to 65 mph? (LJWorld) That will come up for discussion at the next Kansas Energy Council meeting on August 13 in Topeka.

— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org