Free Republic

Barack Obama promised today, in Martinsville, VA, to bring "millions" of union jobs through alternative energy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, 1.5 million people in the United States were employed in the petroleum industry...

SOCORRO, New Mexico (STPNS) -- Obama’s latest ad about creating 5 million new jobs really got my attention. Up to this point my opinion was that he really doesn’t say anything meaningful, but 5 million jobs would be a great thing. So I took the bait and went to his site to see if he had something concrete to say for a change (you owe me big time for wading through all his rhetoric). And (drum roll) – nada, zero, zip, bumpkus. He says he will create the jobs, but as far as I can tell, he will do it...

In this year's great energy debate, Democrats describe a future when the U.S. finally embraces the anything-but-carbon avant-garde. It turns out, however, that when wind and solar power do start to come on line, they face a familiar obstacle: environmentalists and many Democrats. To wit, the greens are blocking the very transmission network needed for renewable electricity to move throughout the economy. The best sites for wind and solar energy happen to be in the sticks -- in the desert Southwest where sunlight is most intense for longest, or the plains where the wind blows most often. To exploit this...

What's in store for America when most of its electricity is generated by the sun and wind? Trouble, turmoil and tyranny. With more than 125 wind farms, England is many years ahead of us when it comes to alternative power. But it has just as many NIMBYs per capita as America, and theirs detest wind farms. A 2007 government-commissioned study found upward of three-quarters of people living within 1.2 miles of "condor Cuisanarts" say the loud whooshing sound the blades make is ruining their health and quality of life. But their biggest complaint was about falling property values. More than...

People are mighty miffed at the price of gasoline and my favorite presidential candidate, Sen. Obama, does not seem to be offering much. Yes, he talks about a grand “go to the moon” scheme of “alternative energy” development a la Kennedy and like Mitt Romney. But he’s tied to orthodox Democratic objections to more drilling and to nuclear power, both of which people sense are needed. More important, Obama has not brought his own more progressive thoughts into a clear focus that people can understand as meaningful. It’s not just about “alternative energy”. It’s about how you cut the cost...

They Call the Wind Energy by: Jeff Waldmann, July 29, 2008 The solutions to the energy crisis and relief for unemployment woes can all be found across the pond in Europe, according to a July 22 panel at the Center for American Progress. The panel, including two U.S. experts on both alternative energy and green building and two European officials, discussed energy policy in great detail, and were particularly interested in the application of alternative energy policy in Europe here in the United States. While the event promised to be a discussion of solutions to global warming, and the policies...

America is currently facing energy challenges reminiscent of the 1970s. Unfortunately, rising gas prices have policymakers repeating the mistakes from that decade—mistakes that took a bad situation and made it worse.[1]Then, as now, good energy policy is easy to distinguish from bad energy policy: Good policy leads to more supplies of affordable energy; bad policy leads to less. Chief among the good policies is expansion of domestic oil production, and chief among the bad are windfall profits taxes, price controls, and federal subsidies and mandates for alternative energy sources. These bad ideas were tried before and backfired, and they will...

- Jerry Taylor is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Virtually every claim made by T. Boone Pickens to justify the lavish subsidies he is seeking for his wind energy investments is flat wrong. First, oil imports are not the cause of high gasoline prices. On the contrary, oil imports serve to keep gasoline prices down. After all, we import oil for a reason -- it's cheaper than the domestic alternative. If we were to restrict our energy diet to energy produced in the United States, it would make domestic energy producers (like Mr. Pickens) far richer and energy...

A Baytown businessman could hold the solution to the nation's energy crisis. The joke around the office at Sustainable Power Corp. these days is what Chairman John Rivera likes to call the, "Liars Club." Why? "Anyone you tell about this will call you a liar," he said. In an economy that has been held hostage by oil prices rapidly approaching the stratosphere, this Baytown-based alternate energy company has found a way to make substantial amounts of crude oil from farm waste. Now Rivera must convince potential investors that his trade secret - 21 years and $31 million dollars in the...

A financial bubble. I will use the familiar term “bubble” as a shorthand, but note that it confuses cause with effect. A better, if ungainly, descriptor would be “asset-price hyperinflation”—the huge spike in asset prices that results from a perverse self-reinforcing belief system, a fog that clouds the judgment of all but the most aware participants in the market. Asset hyperinflation starts at a certain stage of market development under just the right conditions. The bubble is the result of that financial madness, seen only when the fog rolls away. is a market aberration manufactured by government, finance, and industry,...

Finding direction in wind. T. BOONE PICKENS KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT THE ENERGY business, and right now he's really, really into wind. His private firm, Mesa Power, is buying leases in the American heartland for a massive wind-power project whose first phase includes about 700 windmills on 400,000 acres near Pampa, Tex. By its completion in 2014, Pampa should be the world's largest wind farm, generating enough electricity to light 1.3 million homes. The legendary Texas oil man isn't alone. Some $9 billion of new wind projects boosted U.S. wind-power-generation capacity 46% last year. That, says a U.S. Department of Energy...

SCOTTSDALE, AZ--(MARKET WIRE)--Jun 25, 2008 -- PetroSun, Inc. (Other OTC:PSUD.PK - News) announced today that the company has advanced as a team member to the award consideration phase for the development of jet fuel derived from algae. We anticipate the final award negotiation process to commence after June 30, 2008. "Our shareholders should be aware of the important role PetroSun has ascended to within the algae based sustainable fuels industry," stated Gordon LeBlanc, Jr., CEO of PetroSun. "It is frustrating that we are restricted to this generic release of information today based solely on the current status of the alternative...

The Italian government said Thursday it would begin building nuclear power stations, reversing a 20-year ban in an initiative likely to spark strong resistance and take a long time to come to fruition. "During the term of this parliament, we will lay the first stone for the construction in our country of a group of new-generation nuclear power stations," Economic Development Minister Claudio Scajola told the Italian employers' federation Confindustria. "We can no longer avoid an action plan for a return to nuclear power," he said, recalling a campaign pledge by Italy's newly named right-wing prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to...

Fads come fast and furious in our viral age, and the reactions to them can be equally ferocious. That’s what we’re seeing right now with biofuels, which everyone loved until everyone decided they were the worst thing since the Black Death. Where fuel distilled from plant matter was once hailed as an answer to everything from global warming to the geo-strategic power shift favoring repressive one-pipeline oil states, its now a “scam” and “part of the problem,” according to Time magazine. Ethanol has turned awful. The supposed crimes of biofuels are manifold. They’re behind soaring global commodity prices, the destruction...

Who knew a “free� source of energy could be so expensive? The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) recently estimated that billions of dollars in investment will be needed to transmit wind-generated electricity from the areas of Texas most suitable for wind generation — West Texas and the Panhandle — to the areas of the state that need energy the most — the I-35 corridor and the upper Gulf Coast. These costs will be borne by Texas ratepayers. How did this happen? Subsidies, incentives, and renewable energy mandates have paved the way for Texas’ wind-energy boom. Today, Texas leads the...

Gas, oil futures hit new records on report of lower supplies By JOHN WILEN – 54 minutes ago NEW YORK (AP) — Gasoline and oil futures prices rocketed to new records Wednesday, propelled by concerns about how much gas will be available during the peak summer months. Crude futures approached $115 for the first time. Gas futures prices set records after the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration reported that supplies of the fuel fell by 5.5 million barrels last week, much more than analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected. The report raised concerns that there won't be enough...

Researchers have made a breakthrough in the development of "green gasoline," a liquid identical to standard gasoline yet created from sustainable biomass sources like switchgrass and poplar trees. Reporting in the April 7, 2008 issue of Chemistry & Sustainability, Energy & Materials (ChemSusChem), chemical engineer and National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER awardee George Huber of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass) and his graduate students Torren Carlson and Tushar Vispute announced the first direct conversion of plant cellulose into gasoline components. In the same issue, James Dumesic and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison announce an integrated process for creating chemical...

Mona El-Fiqi stands in line Bread queues have become a common scene The government has started applying new measures to regulate the sale of subsidised bread, including raising flour quotas in high population governorates, separating the processes of bread production and distribution, and enforcing strict penalties on the sale of subsidised flour on the black market. But bread queues continue to grow longer and people still cannot readily find this staple food. For many years, different types of bread at various prices have been available on the market. One could buy a loaf of subsidised baladi (traditional) bread at PT5,...

Every week brings new claims that clean, free, inexhaustible renewable energy will soon replace the “dirty” fuels that sustain our economy today. A healthy dose of reality is needed. Over half of our electricity comes from coal. Gas and nuclear generate 36% of our electricity. Barely 1% comes from wind and solar. Coal-generated power typically costs less per kilowatt hour than alternatives – leaving families with more money for food, housing, transportation and healthcare. By 2020, the United States will need 100,000 megawatts of new electricity, say EIA, industry and utility company analysts. Unreliable wind power simply cannot meet these...

So, with gasolene prices bobbing up and down. And the economy also bobbing! When and what will it take to get rel action n Aternative energy?Nikola tesla(1856-1943) had the answer more then a 100 years ago!That of broadcasting wirelessly eletric power! He even set up a braodcasting tower for this at Wardecylle,Long Island(Now Shoreham, L.I.) But when he mentioned FREE ELECTRIOC POWER to hs financial backer the great Robber Baron J.P. Morga. Whos meatered eletric power intreste would have been ruined. The money was removed and Tesla went into a life long debt!To honor Dr. Tesla in 2005 and 2006...

Hybrid electric vehicles not as green as they are paintedHybrid electric vehicles that run on both conventional gasoline and stored electricity can be no more than a stop gap until more sustainable technology is developed, according to researchers in France. Writing in the Inderscience publication International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management, they suggest that the adoption of HEVs might even slow development of more sustainable fuel-cell powered electric vehicles. Jean-Jacques Chanaron Research Director within the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Chief Scientific Advisor at the Grenoble School of Management and Julius Teske at Grenoble, question strongly...

MOJAVE - The wind farms that dot the hillsides west of Mojave are about to expand, with Thursday's announced start of an 8,000-acre project to provide power to the city of Los Angeles. When completed next year, the Pine Tree Wind Project will be the largest city-owned wind farm in the country, expected to provide enough energy to power 56,000 homes. "Today Los Angeles not only turns a new page in its energy history, we write an entirely new book for a livable, breathable L.A.," said Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa. Villaraigosa joined city and Department of Water and Power officials...

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez says he wants to send oil to $200 a barrel. Robert Zubrin has a plan to stop him. In his just released book, Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil, Zubrin, an American aerospace engineer known previously primarily for his inventive approach to Mars exploration, lays out the strategy. To say the book is remarkable, would be a severe understatement. Combining soaring idealism, incisive thinking, and a viscous [sic -- a funny inadvertent pun] go-for-throat killer instinct in a single package, Energy Victory is the first book I have ever read that...

The New Dawn of Solar Imagine a solar panel without the panel. Just a coating, thin as a layer of paint, that takes light and converts it to electricity. From there, you can picture roof shingles with solar cells built inside and window coatings that seem to suck power from the air. Consider solar-powered buildings stretching not just across sunny Southern California, but through China and India and Kenya as well, because even in those countries, going solar will be cheaper than burning coal. That’s the promise of thin-film solar cells: solar power that’s ubiquitous because it’s cheap. The basic...

Wind energy carries the promise of tapping into a free, seemingly endless supply of energy. But those thinking to capture the breeze in their backyard with a personal windmill might be surprised how much the wind actually costs. "Small wind doesn't make economic sense," says Paul Gipe, who has written several books and commentaries on wind energy. The only people who should consider small wind systems (less than 100 kilowatts) are those who have to because they aren't connected to the power company, Gipe said. These "off-grid" consumers made up 90 percent of small wind turbine sales last year in...

Fifty years ago in his native Bolivia, Francisco Pacheco became interested in electrical phenomena and especially in primary batteries. While in his early twenties he had heard a story about a Bolivian priest who had invented a battery that would give 3 volts instead of the normal 1.5 volts. The battery was called the Pila Bolivia but when Francisco tried to track it down and the priest, he was told that the priest had gone to Germany and neither he nor the battery was ever heard from again. In the mountains of Bolivia, there are many minerals (tin, titanium, etc)...

RICHMOND, Va. - State Sen. Frank Wagner is staying warm at his temporary address, even in below-freezing weather and without a traditional power supply or fireplace. The Virginia Beach Republican, a proponent of alternative energy sources, is living for a week outside the Science Museum of Virginia in a solar-powered house designed and built by Virginia Tech students. He moved in Wednesday. Using a remote control and a computer, Wagner is testing whether the award-winning home can generate enough electricity from the sun to run everyday home appliances — and still have enough left over to send to Richmond's power...

ArvinMeritor and Wal-Mart Transportation announced an agreement Jan. 10 to jointly develop a dual-mode, diesel-electric drivetrain for a Class 8 tractor. The vehicle, which the companies believe to be the first dual-mode diesel-electric tractor prototype in development in North America, will be based on an International Class 8 ProStar tractor and powered by an engine developed by Cummins. "We've been working on development of hybrid drivetrains for some time," said Carsten J. Reinhardt, president of ArvinMeritor's Commercial Vehicle Systems, based in Troy, Mich. "This Class 8 project is a major step in our continuing work in alternative drivetrain development --...

French firm Areva - the largest maker of nuclear reactors - has tabled a $1bn (£506m; 772m euro) bid for leading clean energy firm Repower of Germany. Areva said it would pay 105 euros a share for the wind turbine firm, a move that would allow it to tap into the growing wind energy sector. Climate change has fuelled a greater commercial interest in clean energy, as firms try to reduce carbon emissions. News of the offer pushed Repower shares up by 23.5% to 110.23 euros. The 105 euros a share offer represents a 17% premium on the firm's closing...

Several Southern California cities have abandoned plans to renew long-term contracts for coal-fired electricity, gambling on the availability of adequate alternative energy from cleaner sources. Local officials told Utah-based Intermountain Power Agency on Monday they wouldn't be renewing their contracts for cheap, coal-fired power, which expire in 2027, and would instead be looking for available alternatives, from wind farms to desert solar power. "It's a huge change," said Mayor Todd Campbell of Burbank, which is one of the cities that decided to not renew its contract. The others are Pasadena, Glendale, Riverside and Anaheim. They join the Los Angeles Department...

TOKYO, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (7011.T: Quote, NEWS, Research) said on Monday it plans to launch a small nuclear reactor in the United States after 2011, aiming to take advantage of a resurgence in the U.S. nuclear power market. Mitsubishi Heavy, Japan's biggest heavy machinery maker, said the 1,200-megawatt reactor will be based on the company's advanced pressurised water reactor (APWR) for the domestic market and modified to meet safety standards set by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). In July, Mitsubishi Heavy, which lost out to Toshiba Corp. (6502.T: Quote, NEWS, Research) in a race...

The Air Force is scheduled Tuesday to test a new jet fuel made from coal instead of oil. A B-52 bomber at Edwards Air Force Base in California is expected to take off with two of its eight jet engines burning a 50-50 blend of synthetic and oil-based fuel. Research on the fuel project has been conducted at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. The goal is to develop, test and pave the way to commercialize the fuel. The research is focused on the Fischer-Tropsch process for producing synthetic kerosene from coal. The military wants a fuel that works with...

WASHINGTON -- Along with automakers, the Bush administration wants to end debate over whether ethanol made from corn yields more energy than does the fuel used to produce it. The Energy Department's verdict: It does. A new department brochure says that 740,000 British thermal units of fossil energy are consumed to make and deliver ethanol that contains 1 million Btu of energy. The latest version of the brochure, issued last month, is part of a broad department defense of ethanol. . . . Critic unbowed "Every argument they make is bogus," says Tad Patzek, one of the leading critics of...

As he sold investors on an improbable plan for turning Inland Empire cow manure into electricity, W. Patrick Moriarty had an answer for everything. With a folksy delivery, the Orange County businessman promised cutting-edge technology, a respected engineering firm and tax-exempt financing to extract methane gas from mountains of manure and use it to generate enough power to light a small city. "He told me categorically that we would get our money back with interest and that the project was good as gold," said Shmuel Erde, a Beverly Hills lender. What Moriarty and his business partner, Wayne Stephens, didn't tell...

As U.S. demand for energy continues to grow, a top American nuclear official says the United States is seriously considering stepping up its reliance on nuclear power. As Nuclear power already accounts for 20 percent of the U.S. electricity supply. The last nuclear plant to open in the United States was 10 years ago. The new chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Dale Klein, indicated that since U.S. demand for electricity remains strong, nuclear power generation is once again a serious option. "But one of the reasons in the United States that we're looking at building new nuclear plants is...

A news release from the Texas General Land Office Jerry Patterson, Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, staked a claim for the future of wind power today, announcing a Texas bid for the proposed U.S. Department of Energy large-scale wind turbine research and development facility. “The race for wind energy is like a modern day space race,” Patterson said. “In Texas, our program is go for launch. Were charging ahead to bring a large-scale turbine testing facility to the Texas coast.” Texas has brought together a coalition of its best academic minds, industry leaders and public servants to focus...

SACRAMENTO - A hotly contested bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California would spur a wave of new clean-energy technology, prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr predicted Wednesday. Entrepreneurs ``are going to go out and compete and innovate to bring enormous solutions to the market'' if the bill passes, Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, said at a news conference at the Capitol. He was joined by Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, and executives from several alternative-energy companies. Assembly Bill 32, sponsored by Núñez and Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, D-Woodland Hills, would mandate cuts in...

Alternative Energy Sources. Nothing gets my spidey-news-senses tingling like that phrase. Heh™. Want to stop enabling ME terrorists? Then find a way to quit feeding the Oil-Ticks who bleed the wealth of the Western world, and then use the proceeds to fund terrorism.

Peter Wagner, a general partner at venture firm Accel, predicts there will be nuclear powered cars on the streets of San Francisco in a decade. You've just got to think of it more as indirect nuclear power. Cars won't have reactors, he explained during a panel discussion at the Venture Capital Investing Conference taking place in San Francisco. Instead, nuclear power will become a more acceptable form of energy to the American public as gas prices continue to climb and global warming worsens. Nuclear power will provide electricity to the grid, and individuals will charge electric cars by plugging them...

"America has no shortage of oil... Washington, DC has a shortage of the political will required to let American workers go get it." -- Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) With oil prices reaching record levels, the left is up to its old tricks, blaming the President and calling for lots of expensive big government “solutions”. As part of this push, they argue that we're running out of oil. But clearly, this argument is not new -- and it's dead wrong. In 1874, Pennsylvania's state geologist fretted that America had only a four-year supply of oil left. He was wrong. In 1914,...

MONTICELLO - Standing on a hill not far from his farmhouse, John Caveny looks down at the grass growing around his feet and says he's looking at the future of Illinois agriculture. "The purpose of this farm is to turn grass into cash," he says. Caveny stands in a plot of miscanthus, a perennial grass that by summer's end will grow about 12 feet tall and has the potential to become not only a cash crop for farmers, but also a source of electrical power and motor fuel. As the nation's No. 2 corn ethanol producer and leading consumer of...

A Canadian company has developed a new, more efficient process to make the alternative fuel ethanol from farm waste. With today's high oil prices, experts hope the new technology could reduce demand on fossil fuels and increase energy security. "In the past, ethanol fuel use has been limited, because the cost of production was too high," said Jim Easterly, a Washington, D.C.-based bioenergy consultant. "Ethanol produced from corn kernels and wheat grain has historically been more expensive than gasoline produced from oil." Producing corn-based ethanol, for example, uses energy from oil and electricity for everything from growing the corn to...

See for example this thread first. It strikes me somehow as quite odd To oppose wind farms off of Cape Cod. Just for Teddy's sake. Let's build them, and take the wind out of his sails, by God!

Hydrino Theory, Which Overturns Quantum Theory, Is In Turn Overturned By Doofusino Theory by Scott Aaronson On December 28, 1999, The Village Voice, long respected for its hard-hitting journalism and unimpeachable scientific integrity, ran a cover article entitled "QUANTUM LEAP" by Erik Baard. The article relates the epochal breakthroughs of Dr. Randell Mills of Princeton, NJ, a "Harvard-trained medical doctor who ... says he's found the Holy Grail of physics: a unified theory of everything." The article continues: Mills says that with this new understanding he's produced clean and limitless energy and an entirely new class of materials and plasma...

CARTHAGE, Mo. (AP) - An experimental plant that turns turkey byproducts into fuel oil can resume normal operations for 15 days to test whether new equipment solves a problem with bad smells that prompted the state to shut it down in December. If no odor problems resurface, the test run from Tuesday through March 21 could be the last step on the way to resuming full operations at the plant, the Department of Natural Resources said Tuesday.... Appel said the plant's technology for converting animal byproducts into fuel oil was a key to reducing dependence on foreign energy sources that...

Alternative energy researchers are hoping that California voters get a chance to act on their rage against oil companies at the ballot box in November--and alternative energy companies are pointing to the initiative as the boost needed to get the industry off the ground. However, critics of a new initiative effort say the main beneficiaries would be the venture capitalists behind the campaign. The group Californians for Clean Alternative Energy is gathering signatures to place an initiative on the November ballot that would impose a tax on oil production in California. The Clean Alternative Energy Act would place a tax...

It is the regular beeping that grates. But if it stops, prepare to be scared. The signal audible every second in every corridor of the high-level toxic nuclear waste plant on Britain's sprawling Sellafield site is a sign all the alarms are working. If it stops, or changes tone, something has gone very wrong. "The people who work here every day tell me they get used to it. But it tends to get on the nerves of everyone who visits the plant," Sellafield information officer Ben Chilton told Reuters on a tour of the site 480 km (300 miles) northwest...

Self-proclaimed alternative energy proponent Sen. Ted Kennedy has strongly opposed an environmentally friendly "wind farm” off the coast of Massachusetts – and now it appears Kennedy will have his way. A proposal before Congress would limit the construction of wind turbines and most likely doom plans for the Cape Wind Project, the nation’s first offshore wind farm. [Editor’s Note: Read the book that first exposed Sen. Kennedy’s hypocrisy -- Go Here Now.] "This is a dire moment for us,” declared Mark Rodgers, a Cape Wind Associates spokesman, who said the proposal "would be totally fatal” for the project. The Cape...

Green Car Journal: Ethanol Fuel Growing in Importance SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 01/31/2006 -- According to the editors of the Green Car Journal, ethanol motor fuel is picking up momentum and could be on its way to becoming a truly successful fuel alternative for millions of vehicles that otherwise run on gasoline. That's saying a lot considering the challenges that have always faced alternative fuels, including higher cost than gasoline, uncertain supplies, few fueling stations, and limited numbers of vehicles able to run on fuels other than those derived from petroleum. "What's changed is the auto...

CHEYENNE, WYOMING, USA -- Terra Moya Aqua Inc. (TMA) is ready to go into production of a new vertical-axis wind turbine design that resolves some of the shortcomings that have plagued the traditional propeller design. While many of the new design features are superior to the familiar propeller, Ron Taylor, who is the inventor of the new vertical design, as well as founder, Chief Operations Officer, and chairman of the board for Terra Moya Aqua Inc., is modest in his approach. He does not see his vertical turbine supplanting the existing propeller infrastructure, but rather views it as supplementing the...