Author: susan

Another “Solyndra” Project Sacrificed in Republican Attack on FEMA

14 years ago susan 16 Comments

The latest casualty of the Republican-held House, in its witch hunt against renewable energy, is a huge distributed solar project that would have doubled the number of solar rooftop installs in the US, while cutting electricity costs to practically nothing for hard-pressed military families, many of whom return home to lives of long term disability and resulting hardship.

In partnership with military housing developers, SolarCity was to have installed as many as 160,000 solar roofs on military family housing, supplying cheaper and cleaner electricity from their own roofs. Its SolarStrong military program…

“How Obama’s Green Energy Agenda Is Killing Jobs”

14 years ago susan 18 Comments

On September 22, The House Oversight & Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) chaired yet another Republican hearing against the president’s climate change policy in the new GOP-held House. In the hearing, titled “How Obama’s Green Energy Agenda Is Killing Jobs” Issa claimed that President Obama is destroying jobs by conducting a “systematic war” against fossil energy by aggressively pushing clean energy.

To stop climate change, obviously it is necessary to switch to a clean energy economy, and so government policy that aggressively pushes a clean energy economy is the appropriate response.

Obama Issues Veto Threat to Defend Clean Air Act

14 years ago susan 2 Comments

This week a House vote is being taken on another anti-EPA bill. The The Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation (TRAIN) Act, a Republican bill that would create a multi-million dollar multi-agency committee to analyze the economic cost of 10 EPA rules on smog-causing and heat-trapping gases, fine particulates, mercury, ozone, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide will likely pass the Republican-held House.

The bill is redundant. The EPA already quantifies the estimated costs and benefits of its rulings. The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) also normally scores each bill it is asked to, before a vote, also providing estimated costs to industry and benefits to the public. But congressional Republicans have become increasingly unhappy with the results. They believe

New Kind of 40% Efficient Solar Farm Gets $90 Million DOE Loan Guarantee to Cogentrix

14 years ago susan 8 Comments

The largest High Concentration Photovoltaic (HCPV) project in the world is being funded by the DOE with a $90 million loan guarantee for the Cogentrix Alamosa Solar Generating Project. The first 20 years of the electricity it will generate has already been bought under a PPA (power purchase agreement) by the Public Service Company of Colorado. More than 80 percent of its components will be sourced from the United States.

HCPV is new form of utility-scale solar that has barely been developed, but it has great potential because it has almost twice the efficiency of regular solar PV. Cogentrix HCPV is rated at 40% efficient. By comparison, most coal plants are typically rated at 30% efficiency.

The $90 million in funding represents the tail end of almost $40 billion in loan guarantees, loans, or conditional guarantees by the US Department of Energy (DOE) powered by the Obama administration stimulus Recovery Act.

One famously went bad, $0.5 billion to Solyndra. But the more than 40 DOE loan guarantees have

125 Republican Votes Against the Environment: Database Compiled by Waxman’s Staff

14 years ago susan 1 Comment

To hear Republicans tell it, their attacks on the EPA in this congress are in response to what the American People want. Well, just so The American People know what The American People want, here is a searchable online database (thanks to Leslie Kauffman at the New York Times Green blog) that details each of the 125 votes that House Republicans have taken on environmental issues in this congress.

Obama Wins Cap and Trade War to Cut Ozone Pollution

14 years ago susan 11 Comments

Starting in January 2012, the EPA will implement the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) cap and trade program that will put a cap on ground-level ozone (smog) nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide that crosses state lines. The EPA cap and trade program will achieve similar results to the climate bill, making coal less attractive financially than clean energy.

The Obama administration may have lost the battle on cap and trade to cut climate change but it has won the war. Last year, his climate bill

Obama’s EPA Cues $130 Billion Race to Cut Pollution by 2015

14 years ago susan 44 Comments

The EPA will shut down an estimated 20% of the nation’s coal plants through the ground-level ozone rule (the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) ) through cap and trade that is about to be implemented in January 2012. Opponents of the Obama administration’s “over-reaching” EPA say these are costly regulations. Financial analysts estimate that the cost of this rule will be $130 billion by 2015. But if that figure is correct, that’s good news for the US economy.

Because there is another way of looking at that $130 billion “expense”. One industry’s expense is another industry’s sales bonanza. For the coal industry’s balance sheet, it is an expense, but think about who is going to perform this $130 billion cleanup – fairies? Hardly. This is a job for real American industries.

In the most depressed economy since the Great Depression, a slew of US companies will be selling the clean energy solutions (and adding employees to manufacture them) as coal companies must begin a race to have the least polluting coal plants.

Why do they have to race eachother? Simple. Cap and trade is a sort of a plutocrats’ sack race.

Biggest Wind Farm in the US – in Nevada?

14 years ago susan 2 Comments

A gigantic wind farm with the power output of three or four average-sized coal plants has been been proposed by the US wind development subsidiary of the European renewable energy investor Good Energies, in Nevada, according to ReCharge.

The wind farm would be extraordinary, the largest wind farm in the US at a staggering 990 MW. But it would also be Nevada’s first ever wind farm.

Rand Paul Tries to Stop EPA’s Ozone Cap and Trade

14 years ago susan 4 Comments

The Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky introduced S.J. Res 27 on September 8th, a resolution that would force EPA to scrap next January’s EPA implementation of cap and trade under the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) entirely. Then on September 12th, Republican House member Stephen Fincher of Tennessee introduced H.R. 2891 in the House, that would delay implementation by a decade.

Can Republicans prevent the EPA implementation of cap and trade to cut ozone pollution?

Utah Caps Solar Quota at Just 21 Homes Statewide

14 years ago susan 11 Comments

What a difference it makes whether you live in a good clean-energy-policy state or you don’t.

Solar incentives in sunny but 95% coal-powered Utah are so low that the entire state has capped rooftop solar with a quota of no more than 107 KW worth of home solar systems allowed per year. At about 5 KW each (Utah homeowners likely have A/C costs to cover) that amounts to only 21 or so homes!

That is not an incentive. That is a damper on solar development.