Free Republic

During the Clean Energy Investment Summit hosted by the White House on June 16, the administration announced a series of initiatives that will include “more than $4 billion in private sector commitments and executive actions to scale up investment in clean energy innovation.” A statement posted by the White House press secretary’s office noted that Vice President Joe Biden would “deliver remarks highlighting more than $4 billion of independent commitments by major foundations, institutional investors, and other long-term investors to fund climate change solutions,” but also stated that the White House “is announcing a series of executive actions that will...

Finland's government wants the country to turn away from fossil fuels and look towards horse manure to heat its homes instead, it's reported. The new coalition's manifesto sets out plans for the large-scale use of horse dung as a renewable source of energy, the national broadcaster Yle reports. One energy company is already trying out a biofuel made by mixing horse manure with a wood-based litter, which is then burned to create power. The Fortum group says the annual waste created by three horses would be enough to heat a family home for a year. And with about 77,000 horses...

The federal government spent more than $4.28 billion in stimulus money on green upgrades to public buildings — but today, it has no idea if those huge expenditures actually made the facilities any more energy efficient. “I don’t have the data to say that,” says Nick Goco, the General Services Administration’s deputy assistant inspector general for real-property audit. “To date, the system being used to evaluate the Recovery Act projects has not been fully populated with the data needed to evaluate the project. . . . We don’t know,” he says. The GSA Office of Inspector General examined 45 full...

On May 7, Tom Friedman published an op-ed in the New York Times filled with praise for Germany’s green-power program. “What the Germans have done in converting almost 30 percent of their electric grid to solar and wind energy from near zero in about 15 years has been a great contribution to the stability of our planet and its climate,” gushed Friedman. “ . . . This is a world-saving achievement.” Friedman is not alone in his admiration for the German energy program. President Obama has hailed it too, saying that the world should “look to Berlin” as the model...

President Barack Obama said at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Portland, Ore., yesterday that he is “not a scientist,” but that: “I can understand science.” Obama made the remark as he talked about his agenda for fighting global warming. “That’s why we’re taking actions through the EPA to make sure that we cut carbon pollution that’s produced from power plants,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.” …

Garfield County officials said Monday the Bureau of Land Management is considering even-stricter measures to protect greater sage-grouse than previously contemplated, rather than listening to concerns the county and others have raised. As a cooperating agency, the county got an advance look Friday at the revised proposal the agency is now considering. “It is very dramatic in terms of the changes (from a draft BLM proposal) that are being proposed,” Fred Jarman, the county’s community development director, told county commissioners Monday. Jarman and Garfield Commissioner Tom Jankovsky said the proposed measures are the result of directives coming from Washington, D.C....

There’s lots of red ink on green energy projects receiving government loan guarantees.  The Government Accountability Office has a new estimate of the cost of loans and loan guarantees issued by the federal government under a 2005 law, and it adds up to $.2 billion. Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times reports: “As of November 2014, DOE estimates the credit subsidy cost of the loans and loan guarantees in its portfolio — that is, the total expected net cost over the life of the loans — to be $2.21 billion, including $807 million for loans that have defaulted,” the...

We must journey back to March, 1987, and the United Nations document entitled Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, to discover what is probably the only universally agreed upon—if nebulous and contradictory—definition of “sustainable development,” the precursor of “sustainability,” viz. Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of...

Syracuse University alumni are new additions to the lengthening list of persons who can stop contributing to their alma maters. The university has succumbed — after, one suspects, not much agonizing — to the temptation to indulge in progressive gestures. It will divest all fossil-fuel stocks from its endowment. It thereby trumps Stanford, whose halfhearted exercise in right-mindedness has been to divest only coal stocks. Evidently carbon from coal is more morally disquieting than carbon from petroleum. The effect of these decisions on consumption of fossil fuels will be nil; the effect on the growth of institutions’ endowments will be...

General Motors will stop making the Chevrolet Volt for four weeks in June and July due to slow sales and to deal with the change to an all-new version of the gas-electric hybrid car. The company says the Detroit-Hamtramck plant that makes the Volt and four other cars will probably stay open through the summer despite plans for the Volt. The factory also is undergoing construction so it can build a new full-size Cadillac CT6 and the 2016 Volt starting late in the summer. Sales of electric and hybrid cars have slowed this year, largely due to low gasoline prices....

In 2014, American households saw the largest electricity price increases in 6 years, according to government data, as utilities are forced to use more green energy and invest in energy efficiency and grid improvements. Energy Information Administration data shows that U.S. residential electricity prices “experienced large increases in retail electricity prices during 2014, with the average U.S. residential price increasing 3.1% over the previous year.” Last year’s price increase was the highest of any year since 2008 when prices rose 5.7 percent. “Residential electricity rate increases during 2014 ranged from 1.3% in the Pacific Coast states to 9.9% in New...

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid helped steer billions of federal tax dollars to companies supporting a green energy group run by two of his former staff members and a current campaign operative.The Nevada Democrat pushed for millions of dollars in grants and billions more in federal loan guarantees for corporations that donated to the Clean Energy Project, a nonprofit founded by a pair of former staffers with close ties to both Reid and to a major Democratic PAC associated with the senator, Lachlan Markay of the Washington Free Beacon reported.One such company, California-based Fulcrum Bioenergy, received a hefty federal grant...

A former top White House official and the head of President Barack Obama’s personal advocacy group is joining the board of a green energy company backed by a major Democratic donor that recently received millions in federal contracts. LanzaTech announced Wednesday that Jim Messina, Obama’s former deputy chief of staff, reelection campaign manager, and the head of his retooled campaign apparatus Organizing for Action was appointed to the company’s board of directors. “Jim’s proven ability to merge technology, messaging, and communications in support of ideas that transcend ‘business as usual’ will help us continue our mission of reshaping how our...

A solar-power project set to open next month in Nevada has fried 130 birds during tests and will soon join another solar farm in California in avian incineration. If as many birds being burned by solar power farms built in the U.S. were to wash up on our beaches soaked in crude oil from a leaking offshore well, the outrage would be deafening. But as with the wind turbines that now cover acre upon acre of former "pristine" countryside, what amount to avian Cuisinarts slicing and dicing everything that flies, including endangered species, only the crickets are chirping. House Minority...

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Just hours after Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announced his decision to resign, a subpoena arrived in a state office building confirming that federal agents are looking into the influence-peddling scandal that led to the abrupt end of a four-decade political career. The Democratic governor gave in to mounting pressure Friday, abandoning his office amid suspicions that his live-in fiancée used her relationship with him to land contracts for her green-energy consulting business. His resignation, which takes effect Wednesday, cleared the way for Secretary of State Kate Brown to assume Oregon's highest office and become the nation's...

Renewables, are not just inefficient, unnecessary, and deadly to wildlife, but they were also a disaster of planning and management. The list of dollars and euros destroyed in the Glorious Renewables Quest has gone “nuclear”. The World Economic Forum estimates $100 billion Euro has been wasted, but its even worse than it looks. I had to read their opening sentence twice. I thought it read “European countries could have saved approximately $100 billion if each country had invested in the most efficient energy source.” I was thinking they could have saved that sort of money by using coal instead of...

Oregon’s top Democrats urged Gov. John Kitzhaber to resign Thursday, saying he cannot lead the state effectively amid a growing ethics scandal involving his fiancée, a green-energy consultant accused of using her relationship with the governor to land contracts for her business. Senate President Peter Courtney said he and House Speaker Tina Kotek asked Kitzhaber, a Democrat who recently started his fourth term, to step down. “I finally said, ‘This has got to stop,’” Courtney told reporters after he and Kotek met with the governor. “I don’t know what else to do right now. It seems to be escalating. It...

One of the nation’s largest solar projects was dedicated Monday in the Riverside County desert, as California rushes to expand its use of green power to meet the state’s renewable energy requirements. The dedication of the Desert Sunlight Solar Farm comes about a month after Gov. Jerry Brown called on the state to increase renewable electricity use to 50 percent by 2030, up from the current goal of 33 percent by 2020. […] The plant, which uses photovoltaic panels, is expected to produce enough power for about 160,000 homes. Constructed on about 4,000 acres of federal land, it is owned...

In 2009, Ventower Industries issued a press release with the headline, “Another ARRA Success Story – New Funds Mean More Jobs in Monroe.” The news was that Ventower, which was supposed to make wind turbine towers and bases, had been given $2.5 million by the federal government under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or the "stimulus" package. U.S. Congressmen John Dingell called it a “watershed moment.” In 2010, the News Herald newspaper in Southgate called Ventower Industries “another successful project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” because it had received a $2.3 million grant and $1.2 million...

On paper, the pitch was simple: A green energy company backed by $217 million in U.S. government loans would convert one of Africa’s poorest countries into the world’s first biomass-driven economy. But the plan to help Liberia collapsed amid questionable business decisions and oversight. The company, Buchanan Renewables, dismissed 600 workers and left the country amid complaints of workplace injuries, environmental harm and, at times, sexual abuse. Backing the company at every stage was the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a federal agency with a global mandate but low profile. The agency approves more than $3 billion a year in financing,...