Free Republic

This is our favorite news item this week, hands down. The Europeans, so enamored by things green that they have implemented subsidies, mandates and regulations that have nearly strangled their economy, have found a way out of their dilemma. “Energy from gas power stations has been rebranded as a green, low-carbon source of power by a €80bn European Union programme, in a triumph of the deep-pocketed fossil fuel industry lobby over renewable forms of power,” reports the Guardian in Great Britain. There you have it. To make the green quota, simply reclassify a fossil fuel as green enough. Voila! ....

A $9 billion Obama administration grant program for renewable energy projects has created tens of thousands of jobs, an Energy Department report out Friday concludes. The report comes just one week after Speaker John Boehner slammed Energy Secretary Steven Chu over the claim and challenged him to provide proof of the jobs creation. The report — conducted by DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory — concludes that the program supported 52,000 to 75,000 construction and installation jobs on average over the three years it was in effect. Between 43,000 to 66,000 of those were indirect jobs in the supply chain (for...

March 21, 2012 Gingrich: Obama's no friend of renewable energy GOP presidential candidate on why advocates of renewable energy should be outraged at the Obama administration

"Clean." "Green." What do those words mean? When President Obama talks about "clean energy," some people think of "clean coal" and low-carbon nuclear power, while others envision shiny solar panels and wind turbines. And when politicians tout "green jobs," they might just as easily be talking about employment at General Motors as at Greenpeace. "Clean" and "green" are wide open to interpretation and misappropriation; that's why they're so often mentioned in quotation marks. Not so for renewable energy, however. Snip..... Renewable energy sounds so much more natural and believable than a perpetual-motion machine, but there's one big problem: Unless you're...

California's increasing use of renewable power will come at a price, pushing up electricity bills across the state. And while it's impossible to tell how big the cost to consumers will be, some experts fear the total cost of renewable energy in California will be in the billions of dollars. In the next three years, many long-planned solar plants and wind farms will come online, bringing California closer to its goal of getting one-third of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 2020. As soon as they start delivering power to utility companies, the utilities' customers will start paying for...

Halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, on a former cattle ranch and gypsum mine, NRG Energy is building an engineering marvel: a compound of nearly a million solar panels that will produce enough electricity to power about 100,000 homes. The project is also a marvel in another, less obvious way: Taxpayers and ratepayers are providing subsidies worth almost as much as the entire $1.6 billion cost of the project. Similar subsidy packages have been given to 15 other solar- and wind-power electric plants since 2009. The government support — which includes loan guarantees, cash grants and contracts that require...

The United States faces a clear choice of pushing forward quickly to refine solar, wind and other renewable energy sources or continue to ignore the less obvious costs of reliance on oil, coal, and nuclear energy, Robert Kennedy Jr. told a group of environmentalists Sunday afternoon. In discussing other costs that are often ignored, Kennedy cited the process of transporting coal from West Virginia. The government spends millions of dollars per mile to fill thousands of miles of road in the state with 22 inches of asphalt, Kennedy said. "Coal claims to be cheap but is probably the most catastrophically...

Agave a better biofuel than sugar cane Agave produces a highly-efficient intoxicant, as anyone who’s woken up “Wasting Away in Margaritaville” can attest. According to a joint Sydney University / Oxford University study, the plant could also be a highly-efficient feedstock for biofuels... [Agave is] an arid plant, which means it’s suitable for regions where food crops are at best marginal... By moving ethanol feedstock away from high-quality farmland, agave-driven ethanol production would therefore solve one of the conundrums of biofuels: the accusation that corn- or sugar-based ethanol production displaces food production... Study of a trial plantation near the regional...

What does the word "renewable" mean? Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a thousand-page report on the future of renewable energy, which it defined as solar, hydro, wind, tidal, wave, geothermal and biomass. These energy sources, said the IPCC, generate about 13.8% of our energy and, if encouraged to grow, could eventually displace most fossil fuel use. It turns out that the great majority of this energy, 10.2% out of the 13.8% share, comes from biomass, mainly wood (often transformed into charcoal) and dung. Most of the rest is hydro; less than 0.5% of the world's energy...

Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Tuesday a mandate that 33% of electricity in California must come from renewable sources by 2020. Executives at solar, wind and other clean energy companies said the new regulations could help California reclaim its green leadership position after losing ground to states such as Texas and Iowa. "This is tremendous," said Mike Hall, chief executive of Borrego Solar. "A legislative solution provides a lot more clarity and firepower for regulators and proponents." Brown, along with U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, signed the bill while helping dedicate a new solar panel manufacturing plant in...

MILPITAS, Calif. — Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation requiring California utilities to get one-third of their power from renewable sources, giving the state the most aggressive alternative energy mandate in the U.S. California utilities and other electricity providers have until the end of 2020 to draw 33 percent of their power from solar panels, windmills and other renewable sources.

California Governor Jerry Brown will sign a bill today which will raise the required amount of costly renewable energy for electric generation in the Golden State to 33% while Texas Governor Rick Perry is likely grinning from ear to ear. Texas and other business-friendly Western states such as Arizona and Utah, stand to benefit from California's latest payoff to the green lobby.  The bill boosts the electric renewable energy standard from its current 20% to 33% by the year 2020, and California consumers and businesses will be stuck with the additional cost.  Businesses will have one more reason to leave...

California's Assembly on Tuesday approved one of the most ambitious renewable energy programs in the nation. The bill requires the state's utilities to get 33 percent of their power from renewable resources like biomass, geothermal, solar and wind by 2020, up from the current target of 20 percent by 2010. Currently, the state's three investor-owned utilities -- Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric -- get 18 percent of their electricity from wind farms, solar power plants, geothermal, and biomass facilities, according to a new report from the California Public Utilities Commission. But they...

California is easy to spot from space: It’s the place on the far left of the U.S., the area seemingly teetering on the edge of the Pacific. But, if there were any doubt, astronauts could nail down their geography these days by the reflection emanating from the Golden State — not the glitter of gold, but the glare from hundreds of thousands of solar panels generating electric power. California is the solar capital of the U.S., if not the world. There are now more than 72,000 systems in the state, generating an estimated 724 megawatts of power.

The end of the year -- and the expiration date for a Treasury grant program that buoyed the renewable energy industry during the economic slowdown -- is just around the corner, and solar and wind power leaders are bracing for the blow. A one-year extension proposed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus was shot down over the weekend. This week’s tax agreement between President Obama and congressional Republicans doesn’t include a lifeline for the Treasury grant program. The program grew out of a federal tax credit that covered up to 30% of the cost to build a renewable energy...

The Obama administration Monday increased the amounts of ethanol and other renewable fuels it wants to see as part of the nation’s gasoline supply, but a senior official took aim at the practice. Responding to a congressional mandate, the Environmental Protection Agency will require that 13.95 billion gallons of transportation fuel comes from renewable sources in 2011, or about 8 percent of domestic gasoline and diesel supplies. The overall percentage is lower than the 2010 standard, but the total volume is larger than this year’s mandate of 12.95 billion gallons.

Attack mailer labels Snowmass senator 'The Appropriator'Schwartz 'deeply disgusted' by 'thuggish and deceptive' tactic By Troy Hooper Real Aspen – October 8, 2010 The executive director of Colorado Conservation Voters has two words for a new mailer that features the face of state Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass, superimposed over the body and hair of Donald Trump: “poor taste.” “It is an obvious leading candidate for the most tasteless piece of mail so far in the 2010 election cycle,” CCV’s Pete Maysmith said Thursday. “It’s over the top and in poor taste.” Western Tradition Partnership is responsible for the mailer, which,...

power prices are set to increase dramatically. Origin Energy boss Grant King said that complying with the mandatory renewable energy target (RET) and network spending would put upward pressure on energy prices. "That's not of our making, or anybody other than policymakers...That's just the inevitable and logical consequences of the policies" that governments are implementing. His comments follow both federal Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson and his opposition counterpart Ian Macfarlane warning in separate interviews... that power prices were likely to double in the next five to seven years. Mr King said that estimate was "possibly conservative" and added...

The U.S. Senate's proposed Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) would force electric utilities to generate a large and increasing percentage of their power from wind and solar -- rising to 15% by 2021. These goals resemble those of the Waxman-Markey bill that barely passed the House in June 2009. It's disturbing that some Republicans on the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted for ACELA (the American Clean Energy Leadership Act). If the Senate were to take up an energy bill, it is likely that Sen. Brownback (R-KS) will introduce an amendment for RES.

California boasts some of the toughest standards in the nation for boosting the use of renewable power. Getting utilities to meet those mandates is proving to be even tougher. State law requires the Golden State's three large investor-owned utilities to procure 20% of their retail electricity sales from clean sources by the end of 2010. But with less than six months left to meet that requirement, even government watchdogs don't expect the power companies to make it. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. are likely to end this year with a...