Among the four leading candidates is an incumbent who has voted in alignment with environmental groups and a tea-party favorite who blames “environmental extremists” for the crux of the nation’s energy woes.

There’s also a veteran Republican politician who opposes capping and putting a price on greenhouse-gas emissions — a central tenet of President Obama’s energy policy. And a businessman who not only rejects that Earth is inexorably growing warmer but suspects that scientists deliberately cooked the data to push an agenda.

With Congress poised to take a final vote soon on financial regulation, climate and energy legislation remains one of the last major pieces of unfinished business before the November elections.

Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat seeking her fourth term, shares Obama’s belief that Americans burn too much fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. She has sought both to reduce demand through conservation and to increase alternative-energy sources.

Murray has voted to require automakers to significantly boost fuel mileage in passenger cars. She supports giving tax credits to promote clean-energy technologies and personally has sought millions of dollars in earmarks for companies working to develop wind, tidal power and biofuels.

Murray’s track record in recent years has put her in full agreement with positions held by such groups as Environment America and the League of Conservation Voters, according to Project Vote Smart, a nonprofit that analyzes voting records.

The House last year passed the first bill ever to curb heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The measure included a “cap-and-trade” system that would set a limit on overall emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases; polluters seeking to exceed their limit would have to buy emissions credits from companies that have surplus credits to sell.

Rep. Dave Reichert was one of only eight Republicans to vote for the plan, earning the enmity of many conservatives who regard cap and trade as a new tax.

The Senate is at an impasse over the energy bill, in part because most Republicans and some Democrats oppose cap-and-trade.

In an interview, Murray would not say whether she considers a price on carbon emissions an essential tool to combat climate change. She noted she is undecided about increasing the tax on gasoline as a way to help wean Americans off fossil fuels, saying consumers already pay a high price for energy.

“I will consider anything that has the goal of reducing our dependence on oil,” Murray said.

Dino Rossi, a two-time gubernatorial candidate and Murray’s chief Republican challenger, emphatically opposes cap-and-trade as a “job-killing national energy tax.”

Rossi said he’s not necessarily against setting a hard limit on carbon pollution but said the challenge is to do it without imposing additional costs to families.

“We need to strive for clean air and clean water,” Rossi said. “But I can’t say what that (pollution) limit should be.”

Rossi’s campaign said he believes Earth is warming but isn’t sure how much humans are to blame. That’s the same position he took during his 2008 campaign for governor when he said we should reduce carbon emissions rather than debate the cause of climate change. He said then that he favored incentives over government regulations, and he backed expanding highways to ease traffic congestion, which he argued would cut emissions.

In an interview last week, Rossi said all forms of alternative energy, including nuclear power, should be pursued. He also said the solutions to the nation’s energy challenge lie in the marketplace, not with the government.

When gas prices soared during the summer of 2008, Rossi noted, consumers quickly cut back on driving or switched to smaller vehicles.

Republican Clint Didier, a Pasco farmer endorsed by former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, says the solution to our dependence on foreign oil is simple: Drill for it at home.

Didier believes enough oil and gas lie untapped beneath American soil and waters to meet domestic needs, if only environmentalists and regulators didn’t stand in the way.

“We need more drilling, and build more refineries,” Didier said. “We need to be able to use our resources.”

Americans used more than 7 billion barrels of oil in 2008, 60 percent of it imported, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The Interior Department’s best guess is that between 67 billion and 115 billion barrels of recoverable oil is buried within 200 miles of shorelines, with an additional 21 billion barrels beneath federal lands. At that rate, the undiscovered oil could fuel the country for two decades at the most.

Asked if he believed the United States truly could drill its way into energy self-sufficiency, Didier said, “Yes, I do. Yes, I do.”

Didier is skeptical of warnings — including most recently from the National Research Council, the nation’s leading scientific body — that global warming is real and caused mainly by burning fossil fuels. Didier referred to the recent “Climategate” controversy involving allegations that British and American scientists manipulated their research.

Five separate investigations have reaffirmed that the fundamental science behind climate change is sound. Nonetheless, Didier said, “I do not trust the basic data.”

Republican Paul Akers, a Bellingham business owner, goes even further.

Climate researchers “are not scientists. They are people with a political agenda,” Akers said, calling global warming “part of the natural cycle” of Earth heating and cooling.

Akers contends private businesses always will out-innovate bureaucrats. He points to Toyota’s Prius hybrid car as an example of free enterprise solving the energy challenge.

Akers said he believes that technological advances soon will make wind, solar and other forms of green energy a reality — and argues against government involvement, even if only to provide tax incentives.

“I think the free market is going to do a fabulous job,” Akers said.

By Kyung M. Song

Seattle Times

Technorati Tags: electricity deregulation

The Obama administration just announced a handout of $2 billion to build solar panels.  The development of this type of energy is politically sexy. Jobs are created to build and maintain the panels, which scream eco-friendly every time they appear on camera.

No one is criticizing the initiative, but it overlooks a power source boasting far greater reliability and intensity than both solar and wind power.  Arguably, it produces NO carbon footprint. You could even say it creates a negative carbon footprint.

The source is recycled energy.  Instead of burning a fuel to create energy, it takes energy that we are otherwise throwing away and converting that into something usable. It captures heat that otherwise disappears into thin air and turns the heat into power.

You see, with the exception of solar panels, all electricity is generated by turning a turbine in a circle.  Windmills and Hydroelectric plants do that with the force of nature.  Coal burning and nuclear power plants do that by boiling water and forcing the steam through the turbine.

At the ArcelorMittal steel plant, in East Chicago, Indiana, a company called Primary Energy mounted giant boilers on top of the big ovens used for the production of steel.  The steam created by those boilers spins the turbine enough to save ArcelorMittal $100 Million per year on its electricity bill.

Thomas Casten, the Chairman of Recycled Energy Development says, “What they’ve done at this plant produces about twice the amount of clean energy as all of the solar collectors in the US since the dawn of the industry.”

Since the power is generated using heat that would be created anyway, you can make the argument for zero carbon footprint.  In fact, since ArcelorMittal uses the power it generates, it borrows less from the grid.  Less coal needs to be burned at the power plant creating an argument for a negative carbon footprint while still voraciously gobbling up megawatts.

No one is against the concept of recycled energy. In fact, using Illinois for an example: the language in the state’s renewable energy portfolio standard seems to prompt it, calling for the exploitation of wind, solar, biodiesel and “other alternative sources of environmentally friendly energy.” But big steel mills with towering smoke stacks don’t say I love nature in a photograph as well as a field of wind turbines.  The politicians and policy makers never jumped on recycled energy.  Mark Pruitt with the Illinois Power Agency says, “There have been a lot of advances in wind and solar. I think the recycled energy approach is something that has been passed over.”

So when you drive past a big steel mill, glass plant or silicon factory, think of how much energy is just being tossed up into the sky.  Across the nation, Casten estimates it at $4-6 hundred billion. “We are the Saudi Arabia of Waste heat.” He says, “You can either use it or lose it.”

Technorati Tags: electricity deregulation, green energy, solar panels

But, a summit at Bismarck State College today is reminding people that our state also has a lot of renewable energy potential.

Speakers at the renewable energy summit say the country needs to invest in all forms of domestic energy, rather than depending on foreign oil.

There`s wind, biodiesel, solar, and of course, our traditional sources like oil and coal. Former NATO supreme allied commander Europe, Gen. Wesley Clark (Ret.), says we need them all here in America instead of shipping $300 billion a year overseas — for the sake of our national security.

“That`s more than the cost of the health bill, more than the cost of the way in Iraq, plus the war in Afghanistan. That`s all the research and development in the United States. That`s your kids` education,” said Clark, Growth Energy co-chairman.

Clark says our nation`s entrepreneurs have the know-how to develop renewable energy that will break the dependence on foreign oil. But, the investment can`t be done unless there`s demand for it, and he says that has to come through policy from the federal government, like tax incentives and mandates.

Clark asked, “Why can`t we have a vision that says, `We`re moving to a new, more sophisticated energy policy that strengthens America`s domestic energy production and reduces what we`re importing from abroad,`?”

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., says Congress is working on a national energy policy that he says needs to focus on getting North Dakota`s energy to the rest of country.

“We already produce far more than we need,” explained Dorgan. “We need the conveyance. We need the pipelines to move product out of here. We`re working on that now and we need a modern transmission system that moves what we can produce here to the parts of the country that need it.”

Dorgan says this kind of policy will allow us to look back and say North Dakota played a major role in advancing the country`s energy industry through both traditional, and renewable sources.

Dorgan says he believes legislation will make it to the Senate floor for debate by the end of the summer.

Technorati Tags: electricity deregulation, green energy, North Dakota, renewable energy

Technorati Tags: Graetzel cells, green energy, photonics, photovoltaic solar plant, solar power

The report, by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC), representing Europe’s main renewable energy companies, is one of the most detailed to work out the nuts and bolts of a near-total shift to green energy such as wind or solar power. Such proposals often stop at wishful thinking.

The report said that global investments in energy would need to total $18 trillion by 2030 — almost five times the entire U.S. federal budget for next year — to set the world on a path to generating about 95 percent of electricity from non-polluting renewables by mid-century.

However, the International Energy Agency has estimated that investments of $11.3 trillion will be needed anyway by 2030, in all forms of energy, to cover the world’s growing needs. The IEA’s central scenario assumes fossil fuels will remain dominant.

Renewables now make up about 18 percent of electricity generation and governments want to raise the share.

This is partly to combat global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, and partly to diversify and guarantee energy supplies as fossil resources decline, and to combat other forms of pollution.

Sven Teske, lead author of the 260-page report at Greenpeace, said there would be long-term economic benefits from a phase-out of subsidies for fossil fuels and from the fact that inputs to renewable electricity — such as wind or geothermal energy — are free. The plan would also phase out nuclear power.

“The costs at the beginning are because renewables are more labor-intensive,” he said.

To pay the bill, the report suggests looking at historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions and at ability to pay. That meant the United States would pay 36.3 percent of the annual bill in 2010, falling to 28.9 percent in 2030.

China, which recently overtook the United States as top greenhouse gas emitter, would pay only 4.3 percent of the bill in 2010, rising to 13.6 percent by 2030, since it is poorer and has a shorter history of industrialization.

The report said the shift would mean there were about 12 million jobs, including 8.5 million in the renewables sector, by 2030.

“Under business as usual, global renewable power jobs would be only 2.4 million of the global power sector’s 8.7 million jobs,” it said.

Negotiators from about 185 nations are meeting in Bonn from May 31 to June 11 to discuss a new U.N. climate deal after a summit in Copenhagen in December fell short of agreeing a binding treaty on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

by Kevin Liffey – Reuters

Technorati Tags: electricity deregulation, European Renewable Energy Council (EREC), geothermal energy, Greenpeace, International energy agency, renewable electricity, wind energy

The state already has more solar energy per capita than any other, but with its small population that hasn’t meant much to solar developers and manufacturers.

Enter the state Office of Energy.

It announced this evening plans to contract with solar photovoltaic installers and developers in the state to build solar installations — including panel-covered parking shades — at several state buildings across Nevada.

The office is preparing a request for proposals that should be ready for developers and installers by the end of the month.

It is seeking proposals for projects at 15 specific sites, including nine in Clark County, as well as proposals for Department of Corrections sites.

Among the proposed projects are solar panel-covered parking shades at the Grant Sawyer building in Las Vegas, the Henderson, Flamingo Road and Decatur Boulevard Department of Motor Vehicle buildings, and shaded parking structures and removable solar installations on vacant land between Charleston and Oakey boulevards.

“We will lead by example and make use of clean solar power for state buildings,” Gov. Jim Gibbons said in a statement. “We will save taxpayers millions of dollars in utility costs.”

The new solar installations are to be paid for out of money set aside to pay electricity bills on state buildings.

The state is expecting the proposals to include contract details by which the state will pay the installer back the costs of components and installation through a set per kilowatt hour fee. With the cost of solar panels dropping over the past few years, the state expects the fee proposed by the installers to be less than the cost of buying electricity during the day from NV Energy.

The endeavor is inspired by a recently completed project at the state National Guard facility, which was overseen by state Energy Director Jim Groth.

By Stephanie Tavares

Las Vegas Sun

Technorati Tags: green energy, Las Vegas, photovoltaic solar plant, solar power

Ohio House and Senate agree on new tax policy for power projects.

COLUMBUS — Negotiators for the Ohio House and Senate on Thursday, June 3, appeared to reach agreement on tax breaks aimed at bringing “green energy” projects to Ohio as the legislature worked to finish up and recess for the summer.

Also, the House approved a bill to overhaul how telephone companies are regulated and the Senate was expected to concur with the House version.

The Ohio Telecommunications Association and Communications Workers of America supported the bill but consumer groups said it would wipe out consumer protections and bring higher monthly bills.

Landline customers with bundled services will no longer have protections, such as an automatic month of credit if their phone is out for more than 72 hours or the guarantee that their service will be reconnected within 24 hours of paying a bill, said Marty Berkowitz, spokesman for the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel.

The bill also allows phone companies to hike basic service fees by up to $15 a year, he said.

Behind the scenes, Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, worked to find votes for a constitutional amendment to replace Ohio’s system for drawing new state legislative districts with a plan geared to creating fairer and more politically competitive districts.

In other action, the Democratic-controlled House approved legislation aimed at highlighting the wealth of GOP gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, legislation that is expected to die in the GOP-controlled Senate.

The “green energy” tax breaks represented a rare bipartisan cooperation as partisan bickering heated up with the approach of the November elections.

Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland was poised to sign the legislation, said Amanda Wurst, Strickland’s spokeswoman.

The House Ways and Means Committee voted 12-5 on a modified version of Senate Bill 232, sponsored by Sen. Chris Widener, R-Springfield, and already approved by the Senate. The House and Senate were expected to approve the new bill later Thursday.

Widener said it could create up to 1,000 jobs.

One proposed wind farm is in Champaign County.

Under the legislation, projects that qualify would pay annual fees based on how much energy they generate instead of property taxes, both real and tangible.

Revenue from the taxes goes to school districts and local governments and a coalition representing these groups objected to the bill.

A statement from the coalition, which includes the Ohio School Boards Association and the Ohio Township Association, said it “falls woefully short in replacing losses in local tax revenues for schools and local governments.”

Widener has said the new system is necessary for Ohio to catch up with other states in attracting renewable energy projects that generate electricity from sources such as wind and solar power.

Ohio’s current effective tax rate is up to eight times higher than neighboring states, the Ohio Wind Energy Association has said. Also, the legislation will help the state comply with the energy bill passed in 2008 that requires 12.5 percent of Ohio’s electric energy to be generated by renewable sources 2025, Widener has said.

County approval would be required for companies to receive the tax breaks and counties could increase the per megawatt fee to $9,000. Otherwise, the top fee would be $8,000, depending on the project.

By William Hershey and Laura A. Bischoff

Dayton Daily News

Technorati Tags: geothermal, green energy, Ohio Wind Energy Association, photovoltaic, solar energy, wind energy

Technorati Tags: Clean Energy Fund, Connecticut Energy and Technology Authority, Connecticut Fund for the Environment, Department of Public Utility Control, Environment Connecticut, green energy, photovoltaic solar plant, solar power

Construction is ongoing at the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Indiantown recently. 

INDIANTOWN — Florida Power & Light Co.’s newest solar-energy plant will have enough mirrors to cover 80 football fields. But those mirrors will focus sunlight onto surfaces that add up to slightly less than the area of a single football field.

That concentration of solar power will generate temperatures of more than 700 degrees — hot enough to make electricity for 11,000 homes.

The Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center here will rank as the world’s second-largest solar plant when it begins pumping out as many as 75 megawatts of electricity late this year. It will also be the only system of its kind in the world.

Conventional wisdom holds that solar plants using mirrors — which generate heat that produces steam that, in turn, spins an electrical generator — aren’t worth the effort in Florida because of the regularity of afternoon rain clouds much of the year. So far, all of the solar plants built in the state convert sunlight directly into electricity using photovoltaic panels, which produce a charge, if only a reduced one, even on cloudy days,

But FPL is building its “thermal” solar plant on a campus near Lake Okeechobee that already has 13 generators fueled by oil and natural gas. Steam from the solar plant will be combined with steam produced with the heat exhaust from four natural-gas plants to spin an existing generator — an approach not taken before. FPL thinks that makes thermal more feasible, because the utility won’t have to spend millions of dollars building a generator for the solar plant.

The project costs about $420 million, which will add about 16 cents a month to the average FPL residential customer’s bill.

FPL also owns the world’s biggest solar plant, a thermal unit in California’s Mojave Desert that is four times the size of the Martin County project. The Florida plant is based largely on the technology of the 30-year-old Mojave system, though it has been given far stronger pylons, frames and mirrors to withstand hurricane winds of up to 130 mph.

John Gnecco, FPL project development director, said dropping one of the California plant’s glass mirrors could lead to much bad luck, because it would shatter. But the Martin County solar mirrors, though also made of glass, bounce unscathed when they hit the ground.

To demonstrate, Gnecco laid one of the curved mirrors on a gravel parking lot recently and jumped on it repeatedly, causing it to flex trampoline-like. The special mirrors were made in Spain, one of the few countries where FPL could find a suitable manufacturer with kilns large enough to temper the 56-by-67-inch pieces of glass.

The thermal unit’s mirrors are also highly reflective — much more than a typical bathroom mirror — and there are a lot of them: more than 190,000.

Workers are installing the mirrors in aluminum frames to create long, linear dishes. The more than 6,800 frames each contain 28 mirrors and will be arranged in parallel rows that are linked together for a total length of about 50 miles.

Each frame also holds a tube a few feet in front of the mirrors. The tube contains a synthetic, oil-like fluid that costs $15 a gallon and is designed for heating to 740 degrees. The hot fluid flows through a separate component that acts something like a boiler to create steam.

The tubes are made of stainless steel and painted black but encased in the airless vacuum of a glass tube. Birds can land on the glass tubing and not be roasted, Gnecco said.

Nearly 150 miles of pipe and related plumbing, some as much as 30 inches in diameter, will hold 1.2 million gallons of the synthetic fluid.

The relatively costly project is likely to fuel the debate among state lawmakers about the risks and rewards of government incentives and mandates for solar-power development. FPL and other power companies — including Central Florida’s two other major utilities, Progress Energy and Orlando Utilities Commission — have been experimenting with solar in response to growing government concern about climate change triggered, in part, by relatively cheap power plants that burn coal and natural gas.

One thing utility engineers hope to solve once the Martin County plant is operating is the problem posed by partly cloudy days, when some of the plant’s mirrors will be reflecting full sunlight but others will be shaded. Plant engineers don’t want alternating pulses of cooler and hotter steam arriving at an electrical generator that runs most efficiently, and with the least wear and tear, when operating conditions are kept constant.

But they’ll have plenty of time to figure that out: Gnecco said the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center is likely to be operating for the next 50 years.

Kevin Spear can be reached at kspear@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5062.

Technorati Tags: Florida Power & Light, green energy, photovoltaic solar plant, solar power, thermal mirrors, thermal solar plant

Photovoltaic solar panels, solar thermal panels and solar shingles stole the show in displays all across the Green Festival. The human rights organization Global Exchange and Green America, a national environmental group respectively, jointly sponsored the show. .

But how does sustainable energy really work for a home, how much does it cost and is it really practical for middle class Americans? I went in search of all these answers right in my own backyard – at Navy Pier.

Before even attending the event I learned that I could ride my bike to it and be admitted free. I pedaled my retro 3-speed bicycle down the Lake Shore Drive Trail and watched hundreds of people sun bathing on the beach, enjoying the beautiful weather. It dawned on me that I was headed indoors to learn about all of the energy available outdoors.

How much will it cost?

A typical photovoltaic home solar power system runs about $30,000 to install said Matt Lacognata, an employee at Earth, Wind and Solar Energy, LLC. in Chicago

Lacognata was very quick to point out that the federal government gives a 30 percent tax credit and the state of Illinois also has a 30 percent tax rebate, when funds are available So that $30,000 bill could plummet to approximately $12,000 according to Lacognata.

This type of array “will decrease your energy bill by about 25 percent for the next 50 to 60 years,” said Joe Gordon, a renewable energy specialist for Solar Service, Inc., in Niles. 

Doesn’t sound too bad right? Well it actually gets better.

What happens to excess power that is generated?

“The (electric) meter spins backwards when you generate excess power,” said George Raman, a project manager at Good Electric, Inc., in Chicago. He said he is being trained to install both commercial and residential photovoltaic solar systems.

At the end of each year, utility companies pay homeowners who send excess electricity back into the power grid.

How long do solar panels or wind turbines last?

Depending on the brand and type of photovoltaic panel, the life span is anywhere between 30 to 60 years. “We really think this is a lifetime product,” said Joe Gordon.

Wind turbines, mostly made of aluminum, will last between 20 and 30 years according to Lacognata.

Although the costly bill comes up front, these systems easily pay for themselves in roughly a decade. The remaining electricity generated during the life of the system is all money that’s saved on utility bills.

What’s the maintenance for the system?

Photovoltaic solar panels are virtually maintenance free, said Raman. An occasional hosing off of panels if they get dusty or dirty is all that’s required. 

“They are covered with tempered glass, which is stronger than the windshield of a car, hail bounces off of them,” said Gordon.

Even if panels get covered with snow in the winter, the slope of the panels allows for the snow to slide off on its own once the sun comes out.  

The practicality and benefits of green energy are growing in popularity as technologies improve and costs decline. “The technology for wind and solar and all green energy gets better and better everyday and every year,” said James Faber, the editorial and production director of Mindful Metropolis, a Chicago-based independent monthly magazine.

The Green Festival is just one way for companies and organizations to show off their new technology and inform Chicagoans about the impact of sustainable energy.

“There are a lot of different ways that you can adapt green energy technology nowadays that just weren’t practical years ago,” said Faber. “We are definitely moving in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go.”

by Brad Thompson

Technorati Tags: environment, green america, green energy, green festival, Photovoltaic solar panels, photovoltaic solar plant, solar power, solar shingles, solar thermal panels