New report shows that $100 billion investment from federal government could create 2 million clean energy jobs (DOE/EERE News). (Let me see, the Fed just loaned AIG $85 billion, right? This simple little country girl - and taxpayer - is getting a bit confused on the meaning of the term “free market economy.”) Quotable:
A new report from the non-partisan Center for American Progress concludes that a $100 billion federal investment in clean energy technologies over the next 2 years would yield 2 million new U.S. jobs, cutting the unemployment rate by 1.3%, while putting the nation on a path toward a low-carbon economy. The report, prepared by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, proposes $50 billion in tax credits for energy efficiency retrofits and renewable energy systems; $46 billion in direct government spending for public building retrofits, mass transit, freight rail, smart electrical grid systems, and renewable energy systems; and $4 billion for federal loan guarantees to help finance building retrofits and renewable energy projects.
If $100 billion sounds like an unreasonable number, consider the fact that this year’s economic stimulus package amounted to more than $152 billion, of which about $100 billion was provided to taxpayers in the form of rebate checks. The Center for American Progress report concludes that clean energy investments would yield about 300,000 more jobs than if the same funds were distributed among U.S. taxpayers. The clean energy investments would also have the added benefits of lower home energy bills and reduced prices for non-renewable energy sources, thanks to the reduced consumption of those energy sources.
Major investors are pressuring the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to require oil and gas companies to reveal the environmental risks of their supplies (Reuters). A concept also known as “carbon liability.” Quotable: “A group of 19 environmental, investor and non-profit groups want the regulators, under new proposals, to ask that oil and gas companies disclose reported reserves that have higher than average greenhouse gas emissions associated with their extraction, production and combustion.”
Trying to make coal clean (Financial Times). Ie, trying to build coal plants that can remove the carbon dioxide from their emissions. Yes, I’ve seen the pretty commercials, too, but in fact that technology is not yet workable on an applied market scale. Quotable:
Burning coal is the dirtiest, most old-fashioned way to produce electricity in the energy industry today. However, in the coming years many governments and energy companies are hoping to reinvent coal as a cleaner, more modern form of energy in the coming years, as they try to reconcile energy security with the need to halt climate change.
Pickens and water (Ft. Worth Star Telegram). Found this originally on Climateer. Pickens has announced that he is suspending his plans for the water pipeline he had planned to mine the Ogallala (selling the water to Dallas et al). He wants to focus on the wind and transmission plan instead.
If that plan does involve eminent domain, though, it will be interesting to keep an eye on how water rights might be treated under that arrangement.
Recent editorial in USAToday about how scarce water resources of the Great Plains need better protection. Written by a native western Kansan, the child of dryland winter wheat farmers (it sounds like). Quotable:
(Pickens) says little of his intention to market fossil water. That’s what conservationists call finite supplies of water dating to prehistoric times. The Ogallala Aquifer is the largest such supply on our continent. It underlies the Plains all the way from Pickens’ North Texas to South Dakota. Thanks to help he obtained from the Texas Legislature, he has stacked the board of a tiny water district. By the power of eminent domain, also granted him by the Legislature, he can force landowners to sell him rights to a 320-mile strip of land connecting him to Dallas. He will pipe the water down the same corridor he plans to use transmitting his wind power.
Water is life, and the rate we’re squandering it outpaces even our flagrant waste of oil. This is nowhere so true as on the Great Plains, where withdrawals from the Ogallala threaten to close down most irrigation farming before the end of this century.
Found a new blog that I love - Windpower Law. They are from New York but I am sure no open-minded Kansan will hold that against them, right? Correct. Scroll down the right side bar to get some neat links and resources. Great overview of all sorts of wind law, from wind farms to small wind.
And yes, New York does have wind farms. Upstate New York is kind of like - like a giant hand took Kansas, squeezed it up into more bumps and ridges, took away the horizon line, and let lots of trees grow. Lots. Fairly rural place, broken up by a few major population centers. Not even remotely like NYC. Lots of dairy farms. (At least that’s how I remember it from 20 years ago.)
— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org
Leave a Reply