Free Republic

LPEA customers oppose upcharge for visiting homes.. La Plata Electric Association ... A frequent comment was the impression that the switch from analog to Advanced Metering Infrastructure – or so-called smart meters – that started in late 2013 was done without informing customers. Several people said they learned about smart meters from neighbors or only because they were at home when an LPEA technician arrived to switch out the analog meter. The alleged secrecy eroded public trust, they said. About 300 LPEA customers have chosen not to have the latest meter-reading technology installed. A number of speakers cited health problems,...

(CNSNews.com) - The United Mine Workers of America held a rally Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to protest Environmental Protection Agency regulations that they claim would destroy the nation’s coal industry and coal-related jobs while doing nothing to address climate change. On Tuesday, current and retired workers convened at Freedom Plaza, then marched to EPA offices to protest EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan, part of President Obama’s larger climate-change agenda, which aims to cut carbon pollution by imposing state-by-state emissions standards and fines for failure to meet those standards. CNSNews.com asked protesters, “If you could tell President Obama anything about these...

WASHINGTON -- Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said Friday that she believes most states will ultimately comply with her agency's proposed new rules on carbon emissions. The rules, which were released earlier this year and are supposed to be finalized by June 2015, set new limits, specific to each state, on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Each state, however, will need to develop its own plan for meeting those standards. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA can impose its own plans on states that choose not to submit one, and can legally compel states to follow those...

Gina McCarthy insists reducing carbon emissions, fighting climate change boost economyGina McCarthy argued Thursday that her home state of Massachusetts is proof you can cut greenhouse gas emissions while fostering economic prosperity, but the Environmental Protection Agency administrator failed to mention the apparent trade-off for consumers: dramatically higher electricity prices. In a speech promoting President Obama’s climate change agenda, Ms. McCarthy ignored the fact that New England states — which nearly a decade ago formed the nation’s first regional “cap and trade” system — are dealing with electricity rates more than 35 percent higher than the national average. She also...

Green groups are fearful of Republicans winning the Senate majority in November, predicting it could lead to a “whittling away” of environmental regulations at the hands of GOP leaders. While environmental groups are spending millions of dollars trying to save the Senate for Democrats, they acknowledge the possibility that they could be forced to play defense against an all-Republican Congress in 2015. “I think that the wholesale repeal of environmental legislation, repealing [Environmental Protection Agency] greenhouse gas authority, things like that, that’s unlikely to happen,” said Ben Schreiber, director of the climate program at Friends of the Earth. “It is...

Four years ago, Kirk Swallow received state money to set up a compressed natural gas filling facility at the Rifle Shell station he co-owns. The Colorado Energy Office, then under Gov. Bill Ritter and known as the Governor’s Energy Office, gave Swallow’s company a $675,000 grant — money from fines collected from companies that violated state regulations. Swallow said he chipped in about $300,000. But, in June, Swallow had to permanently shut down the CNG pumps at 101 Railroad Ave., in Rifle, Colo. He said he was losing money because of increased competition, excessive electricity fees to run the pumps...

PUEBLO, Colo. - Black Hills executives heard another earful from its customers during a hearing on its proposed rate increase. "I'm mad as hell about these rate increases," said Frank Soudek. "Reasonably priced power. That's what we're asking for," said Lee Gladney. Black Hills wants to increase utility rates by 4 percent starting next year to make up for the construction cost of a wind farm in Huerfano County.

Thousands of birds are flying into a new solar "mega-trap" in the middle of California's Mojave Desert, killing the avian lot at a rate of up to one bird every two minutes, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). The state-of-the-art Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS), which opened in February, is the world's largest solar plant to utilize "power towers," skyscraping structures that receive beams of focused solar rays to generate electricity. At Ivanpah, the sun's ray's are redirected from a sea of more than 300,000 mirrors on the desert surface below to hit water filled boilers...

Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant's concentrated sun rays — "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one "streamer" every two minutes, --SNIP-- The bird kills mark the latest instance in which the quest for clean energy sometimes has inadvertent environmental harm. Solar farms have been criticized for their impacts on desert tortoises, and wind farms have killed...

the insane ways that the VA focused on solar energy and wind towers over vets. Three years before Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki would be forced out of his job because of the veterans who had died under him, he visited the Massachusetts National Cemetery. He wasn’t there to see the men and women who had died because of him. While vets were dying, Obama and Shinseki had turned their attention to something truly important; seeing to it that all the cemeteries where they were being buried had wind or solar power. ... The cemetery turbine had cost $533,000....

The price of a stabilized green power grid is very steep, one could say it is like a “hockey stick”Story submitted by Eric Worrall  (h/t John Droz)Coal and gas electricity companies are being paid up to 400x times the wholesale price of power, in return for helping to stabilize the German electricity grid.According to Bloomberg, “Germany’s push toward renewable energy is causing so many drops and surges from wind and solar power that the government is paying more utilities than ever to help stabilize the country’s electricity grid.” “At the beginning, this market counted for only a small portion of...

I don’t think Gina McCarthy had thought this through. McCarthy to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: “And the great thing about this proposal is it really is an investment opportunity. This is not about pollution control. It’s about increased efficiency at our plants…It’s about investments in renewables and clean energy. It’s about investments in people’s ability to lower their electricity bills by getting good, clean, efficient appliances, homes, rental units,” “This is an investment strategy that will really not just reduce carbon pollution but will position the United States to continue to grow economically in every state, based...

Renewable energy, particularly wind and solar, continues to set records for electicity generation and installed capacity in many parts of the world, and as shown in Figure 1 wind and solar growth in recent years has indeed been quite spectacular:~~snip~~If decarbonization is to be achieved by expanding renewables the expansion will have to come in wind, solar and biomass. So let’s take hydro out and see how far growth in wind, solar and biomass has carried us along the decarbonization path so far:Clearly they still have a long way to go.

Sarah Palin is right. Obama losing Lois Lerner’s emails is worse than Nixon erasing 19 minutes of tape. Two years of emails is much more significant than 19 minutes of conversation. But then Obama’s just being Obama. If the IRS would only turn over the hard drive of Lois Lerner, I would happily be able to restore those lost two years of data. Do you know how hard it is to permanently delete data off of a hard drive? Very hard… you’d have to deliberately do it. It would be kind of like spending $1 trillion on shovel ready...

The VA Scandal began at the Phoenix VA Health Care System where administrators earned promotions and bonuses by shunting patients who needed treatment into fake waiting lists. As many as 40 veterans had died while waiting for care and 1,715 veterans in the Phoenix VA Health Care System had waited more than 90 days for an appointment. A retired Navy serviceman died of bladder cancer after being put on a 7-month waiting list after blood was found in his urine. He finally received an appointment a week after his death.

It’s bad enough that American taxpayers have been repeatedly fleeced by President Obama’s many failed “green” projects, now the commander-in-chief is dedicating an extra $2 billion—on top of $2 billion already dispersed in 2011—to make federal buildings in the United States energy efficient. It’s a necessary expense to protect the planet, according to the global warming movement spearheaded—and largely funded—by the U.S. government and much of the international community. This particular investment will cut carbon pollution by more than 380 million metric tons, according to a White House announcement. That’s equivalent to removing 80 million cars from roads for a...

The Department of Defense (DOD) paid $150 per gallon for alternative jet fuel made from algae, more than 64 times the current market price for standard carbon-based fuels, according to a report released on Wednesday. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted in its report that a Pentagon official reported paying “about $150 per gallon for 1,500 gallons of alternative jet fuel derived from algal oil.” GAO’s report examined the financial challenges facing increased purchases and use of alternative jet fuels by federal agencies. “Currently, the price for alternative jet fuels exceeds that of conventional jet fuel,” the report noted. The...

An adorable baby bald eagle whose parents were executed by solar panels. (AP) The Obama administration has opened up a new front in its war on America’s eagles. For years, the president has relied on wind turbines to orchestrate his eco-genocide. Biologists estimate that wind farms kill as many as 328,000 birds each year by chopping them out of the sky. The administration’s successful weaponization of solar farms will only accelerate the death rate. Studies indicate that the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California has proved to be an especially efficient apparatus for eagle extermination. The facility, which...

Smith Electric was the future of the UK. Then it was the future of America. Now maybe it can be the future of Zimbabwe or Syria. Or some other sucker country.The Obama economy would look a lot like the Soviet economy if instead of building non-working third rate versions of Western technologies, the USSR had spent all its time trying to make a car that runs on dreams and pixie dust.Say what you will about the Lada, but at least they managed to make more than 500 of them.Smith had a long strange and troubled history and essentially we...

Only a few weeks after President Obama's controversial decision to delay the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, the Obama administration is expected in the next several weeks to approve a 500-mile green energy transmission line project running through Arizona and New Mexico that his own Defense Department says may pose "an unacceptable risk to national security." The multibillion-dollar electric power line project, financed by a group called SunZia, would connect wind power facilities in eastern New Mexico to the electric grid and supply power to Arizona and California. About 45 miles of the transmission lines would be located in...