CleanTechnica

The U.S position on Climate Change is overshadowing all other discussions in the lead up to Copenhagen, even at a conference I recently attended in Melbourne Australia - the 5th Australia-New Zealand Climate Change & Business Conference, August 24-26th. The Australian position requires global consensus for a greenhouse gas emissions target by 25% with a successful Post 2012 Agreement in place, but only 5% if that is not concluded. It all depends on what the U.S does in Copenhagen according to their minister Penny Wong.

The European Union is the only group that will continue with strong commitments independent of the U.S position with a 20% reduction of greenhouse gases on 1990 levels by 2020 and 30% if a global agreement is concluded.

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Which state makes 15 percent of its electricity entirely from wind power?

Iowa. In 2006, according to the Iowa Utilities Board, wind power provided 5 percent of the state’s electricity. Now, just three years later,  Iowa produces between 15 and 17 percent of its own electricity from wind power.

MidAmerican Energy, Iowa’s biggest utility, pays farmers $3,500 a year (plus 2% increase annually) to rent locations for 102 wind turbines. To scout the best locations, they paid $5 an acre to survey likely farmland, and will pay $10 an acre per year to keep those options open for future additional wind turbines.

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Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is proposing a bill that would lend $30 billion dollars to American small and medium sized manufacturing companies who specialize in clean technology.  The bill would make American manufacturers a player in the clean technology market which faces stiff overseas competition.  It is estimated that 70% of the components for clean technology (much of which was invented in America) are made abroad.  So far, 150 businesses have come out and endorsed the Senator’s legislation.

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Four British newspapers are quoting a self-published author who claims supposed wind turbine health problems in a piece that could be pretty much summed up as:

Wind Turbines Give You Spots!

The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and The Belfast Telegraph are printing the same piece (unverified by any third parties) by a New York pediatrician who has set herself up as an “expert” on wind with her own vanity press. Nina Pierpont thinks “Wind Turbine Syndrome” can cause abnormal heart beats, sleep disturbance, headaches, tinnitus, nausea, visual blurring, panic attacks migraines, sleep deprivation, and general irritability.

And it is fine that a pediatrician, like anyone else, has an opinion, but that doesn’t make this science. Pierpont is claiming that her book is peer-reviewed (by other pediatricians, I assume?) which is not true. Other pediatricians (who are doctors for children) have not “peer-reviewed” her work.

More relevantly; acousticians (who actually do study the aural efffects of things like wind turbines) have not “peer-reviewed” her work.

How could they? Can a mathematician or a weatherman “peer” review a climate scientist’s work? Of course not. They are not peers. Same thing with acousticians versus childrens doctors.

A “peer”, by definition, works in the same field of study.
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The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported good news for renewable energy enthusiasts this week. Energy from renewable resources has increased significantly over the last year. It is now higher than energy produced from nuclear power.
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Texas start-up Baryonyx awarded two offshore wind energy leases

Which state’s waters will be the home of the United States’ first offshore wind farm? Will it be Massachusetts, where an eight-year battle for a wind farm near Cape Cod seems like it may never end? How about a little further south, in Rhode Island or New Jersey? Will it be Delaware, where Bluewater Wind hopes to develop a project that would provide almost 1/3 of the energy needed by Delmarva Power? What about other Mid-Atlantic states like North Carolina or Virginia, where the Department of Interior says sites with easily-developed shallow water wind resources dot the coastline?

Well, if you answered none of the above, you may be on to something.

Texas General Land Office last week awarded leases to Baryonyx, authorizing the company to develop wind farms on three sites, two of which are offshore, with a total potential capacity of 3,000 megawatts. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve seen the headlines:

Cows Operate Power Company as Side Business
Onion Farmer takes $2.5 Million to Bank For Electricity Production
More Carbon Sequestration Needed: Farmers Paid to Not Plant

Every day there’s more news of the alternative energy that farms can make. From cow poop. From crop residues. From onion skins. From chicken feathers. From wind royalties. From solar power.

But you read cleantechnica.

Of course farmers will benefit from the climate bill. HR2434 is designed to make it cheaper to switch to low carbon energy than to keep using fossil fuels that destroy our future.

Farmers; however, are stuck with Fox News and Rush and the Heritage Foundation and CATO. They are told

Your energy cost will soar under socialist Al Gore climate bill!

So they worry. What Fox News and Rush won’t let them know is that…
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It looks as if Geothermal power could be the genie let out of the bottle to provide us with almost staggering amounts of electricity at just 0.04 cents per kwh.

Geothermal could be cheaper than fossil fuels, according to a study just published at NYU Stern. Yet, strangely, geothermal received the fewest Federal DOE dollars invested in R&D over the last 8 years.

Hm. I wonder why that was?

The first study to compare efficiency improvement of various renewable energy alternatives in response to government funding found  that geothermal has yielded the highest returns per R&D dollars invested by the Department of Energy.

NYU Stern Professor Melissa Schilling; an expert in strategic management and technology and innovation management found that of all renewable energy technologies the performance of geothermal improves the most per dollar of R&D invested. Wind power was the next, and solar power received the most Federal R&D funding.

But they have all lagged fossil fuel funding. The United States still invests more government dollars yearly on R&D for fossil fuel technologies than for all of the renewable energies combined. By contrast, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom spend more R&D on renewable energies than fossil fuel technologies, the study found.

Despite getting the most funding in the US, fossil fuel technologies are no longer improving efficiency much or at all.

Below the fold: one geothermal breakthrough birthed by $1 Million in US DOE R&D funding:

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Arizona wants to be the “solar-energy hub of the world,” Kristin Mays, chair of the Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities in the state, said at the Intersolar North America conference in San Francisco this week.

The state last week enacted a law that offers new incentives, including a tax credit of up to 10 percent, for solar companies that set up shop there.

At the Intersolar North America conference in San Francisco this week, some state rivalry became apparent as Arizona leaders argued the state’s advantages compared to California. “We know the Mojave desert’s off limits. Well, the desert in Arizona is open for business,” said Barry Broome, CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, to laughter from the audience.

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In one of the strangest alliances in military history, the U.S. Army at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio has joined with the golden-cheeked warbler to fight urban sprawl near the Camp Bullis Military Training Reservation.  Camp Bullis is a training ground for U.S. Army, Air Force, and Marines combat troops, and for medical units.  The 27,994-acre reservation includes 6,500 acres of prime habitat for the golden-cheeked warbler, which is on the endangered species list in Texas and the U.S.

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