Bush Says Blackout Was 'Wake-Up Call'; United States and Canada would set up a joint task force

Reuters ^ | 08-15-03

[Brian S]

By David Morgan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Amid sweltering heat, the United States and Canada slowly recovered from the largest power outage in North American history on Friday, with President Bush calling the blackout a "wake-up call" to fix an antiquated electricity grid.

The White House said the United States and Canada would set up a joint task force to determine the cause of the blackout, which hit tens of millions of people in New York, Detroit, Cleveland, Ottawa, Toronto and other cities.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Friday evening that power had been restored to 85 percent of the city. But transit officials said it would be several hours before the city's subways would be back in action.

"We are getting there," he said, applauding the 8 million residents for efforts to get by without electricity and air conditioning as temperatures rose above 90 degrees (32 C).

On Broadway, shows reopened after canceling performances on Thursday, the Mets played baseball at Shea Stadium and traffic was light as many people took the day off.

As Americans digested the speed with which the electricity system collapsed, they also expressed relief that the blackout was not the result of terrorism.

Emergency procedures designed to evacuate people from subways and elevators worked. People took the inconvenience with good humor and law and order prevailed in most placed.

Police in Ottawa reported some looting and also attributed two deaths to the outage. New York reported only one death.

The recovery was far from smooth. Air Canada canceled all flights worldwide after emergency power systems crashed at its main operations control center near Toronto, stranding thousands of passengers.

TELEPHONE GLITCHES

Telephone systems slowly began returning to normal but there were still difficulties, particularly on wireless networks. Banks worked to reopen branches and automatic teller machines.

In Washington, the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee said it would hold an investigation into the blackout.

Bush, visiting California, praised the country's emergency response system, saying work since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to upgrade procedures had paid off. Now, the nation needed to make the same investment in its electricity grid.

"I view it as a wake-up call," Bush told reporters, adding that the blackout was "an indication we need to modernize the electricity grid."

As a symbol of recovery, Mayor Bloomberg rang the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange. Stocks closed slightly higher and trading was much thinner than usual.

Outside, confused, tired and sweaty New Yorkers wandered the streets. By afternoon, most of the garish electronic hoardings in Times Square were back on.

But New York power operators asked for permission to impose rolling blackouts to prevent customers from overloading the system. Canadian power generators also expected to impose controlled power cuts.

New York Gov. George Pataki said he wanted to know why the system crashed so catastrophically.

"How did this happen, why did it happen and why did we have a systemic failure across the power grid in the northeast when we were told after the blackout in the 1960s that this would not happen again?" Pataki said.

PROCEDURES FAILED

Procedures put in place after a huge blackout in 1965 to isolate breakdowns to small areas failed.

Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said much of the U.S. electricity system was 50 or 60 years old. "We're a superpower with a third-world grid. We need a new grid," said Richardson, now governor of New Mexico.

William Museler, president of the New York Independent System Operator, said initial analysis suggested the event began somewhere in the U.S. Midwest.

Ontario's premier Ernie Eves advised citizens to remain home and save energy, as officials in the province said it could be days before power was fully restored.

Airlines canceled at least 1,200 flights as airports struggled to restore service. Some Cleveland residents lacked tap water after the outage shut down pumping stations.

(Reporting by Christina Ling, Ben Berkowitz, Jeremy Pelofsky, James Jelter)

[jatfla]

I'm wanting to vent. Does anyone else think that the "world" and the US in particular, seem to think that our government and it's leaders are omniscient and omnipotent???? All things considered.....people behaved very well. Good job everyone. But get use to it!!! These kinds of things are about to become a part of our lives. Remember all that civil defense stuff we've heard about since the 50's? Well, take it to heart.

There are tons of things wrong in this world. I listened to O'Reilly tonight and he was screaming for answers. (Each guest had their opinions, ok?) But how much can one leader or his administration really do?

People are looking for "God" to make all things right. Well, He ain't coming yet. So in the mean time, we need to buck-up and begin to expect these kinds of things to happen. We have a good President and a good Administration, but they are not able to solve these huge problems that have been "stuffed" for years.

[Domestic Church]

Check out the London stock run (4 hours prior) that ties into the blackout:

http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/f-news/964969/posts

[Crusader21stCentury]

People are looking for "God" to make all things right. Well, He ain't coming yet.
And how do you know he hasn't already arrived?

[AMNZ]

Clearly we need to have safeguards that insure we can stand on our own. Canada's Prime Minister has demonstrated his willingness to withhold support from the U.S. I am for backing the good Canadian's up any time we can. But, we must be prepared to stand on our own under any circumstances. Look at the global implications, militarily, of this failure on our part. Frightening.

[ckilmer]

I read an amazing article about the latest upgrade in biomass conversion. This is dull stuff except that the newest generation technology brings the cost of converting sewage, municipal garbage, industrial and agricultural waste -- to oil down to $15@barrel. They do it by imitating and accelerating the process in the earth that by heat and pressure breaks down carbon compounds and converts any carbon based substance to oil. They say with some tweaking and economies of scale--they can do it for $8-12@barrel. According to the article, agriculture wastes alone would produce 4 billion barrels of oil annually. The US imported 4.2 billion barrels of oil in 2001. Put these biomass converters around every city in the US and then use the oil make electricity and voilla--you have a distributed power generation network.

Sound too good to be true? Read the article and look at the people and agencies in the government, business and scientific establishment who have put their names behind it.
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/940151.asp?0sl=-42
Here's a couple more articles on the same subject
http://www.discover.com/may_03/gthere.html?article=featoil.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030717/energy_garbage_1.html
http://www.mindfully.org/Air/2003/Burn-Turkey-Waste-Energy16may03.htm
This is the company website
http://www.changingworldtech.com/techfr.htm
Here's a press release from the website:
West Hempstead, NY, April 8, 2003 – Changing World Technologies, Inc. announces the first commercially successful application of thermal technology to convert organic waste into clean energy. Building on scientific research dating to the 1920s and human history extending from the Stone Age, CWT has patented, tested and deployed a technological process that has been awarded $12 million in grants from the US government and produced a joint venture with ConAgra Foods, Inc.

Utilizing low-value waste by-products such as tires, plastics, municipal sewage sludge, paper, animal and agricultural refuse as feedstocks, CWT's thermal technology provides a commercially viable solution for some of the earth’s gravest environmental challenges, including arresting global warming by reducing the use of fossil fuels, and reforming organic waste into a high-value resource. In addition, it has the potential to substantially reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

“If the process works as well as its creators claim, not only would most toxic waste problems become history, so would imported oil,” says Discover magazine, which features a full-length article on CWT's thermal process in the May 2003 issue.

“From the point of view of pollution and the point of view of energy production, this is a remarkable story. This technology offers all of us an opportunity someday to have a more peaceful and a freer world, a world that is not dependent on turbulence and chaos,” said R. James Woolsey, former Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency and a senior advisor to CWT.

Cornerstone Technology
Where earlier attempts at thermal conversion failed, CWT’s thermal process succeeds in breaking down long chains of organic polymers into their smallest units and reforming them into new combinations to produce clean solid, liquid and gaseous alternative fuels and specialty chemicals.

The conversion process emulates the earth’s natural geothermal activity, whereby organic material is converted into fossil fuel under conditions of extreme heat and pressure over millions of years. The cornerstone technology, called Thermal Depolymerization Process or TDP, mimics the earth’s system by using pipes and controlling temperature and pressure to reduce the bio-remediation process from millions of years to mere hours.

The process entails five steps:
(1) Pulping and slurrying the organic feed with water.
(2) Heating the slurry under pressure to the desired temperature.
(3) Flashing the slurry to a lower pressure to separate the mixture.
(4) Heating the slurry again (coking) to drive off water and produce light hydrocarbons.
(5) Separating the end products.

TDP is 85% energy efficient. The process has very low Btu requirements, due to the short residence times of materials at each stage and to the holding of water under pressure.
In addition, it generates its own energy, utilizes recycled water throughout, and uses the steam naturally created by the process to heat incoming feedstock, thereby recapturing expended energy. In addition, TDP produces no uncontrollable emissions and no secondary hazardous waste streams.

"This is not an incremental change. This is a big, new step," said Alf Andreassen, a principal of Paladin Capital Group and former Technical Advisor for Naval Warfare and Science Advisor to President George Bush. "In Europe, there are mountains of bones piling up" due to new

regulations for handling bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, he says. "When recycling waste into feed stops in this country, it will change everything."

Plant Commercialization
To test and refine the technology, CWT established a Research & Development plant at the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Naval Yard in partnership with the Gas Research Institute, which opened in December 1999. There the company successfully applied its thermal conversion process to a range of feedstocks, including animal waste, tires, mixed plastics and paper.

“This project and the work that Changing World Technologies is doing in Philadelphia will revolutionize the way we deal with waste products on a broad commercial scale, the production of energy, and the reduction or elimination of waste by-products which enhances economic development… improving air quality, our quality of life as well as our environment,” says Denise Chamberlain, former Deputy Secretary for Air, Recycling & Radiation Protection for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

"The Environmental Protection Agency doesn't even consider us waste handlers. We are permitted as manufacturers. Our process has undergone the scrutiny of an Environmental Assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and received a Finding of No Significant Impact, or FONSI,” said Brian Appel, CWT Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "This process changes the whole industrial equation. Waste goes from a cost to a profit."

ConAgra Foods was one of the first enterprises to express early interest in the commercial application of CWT's thermal process. A joint venture between the companies was entered into in December 2000 for the first commercial application of the technology for the conversion of poultry offal at one of ConAgra's large Butterball Turkey plants. When it is commissioned later this month, the $20 million facility in Carthage, Missouri -- funded in part by a $5 million
grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency -- will process 200 tons per day of fats, bones, feathers, grease and oils.

“If the technology is successful, it could offer enormous opportunities to address farm waste problems in the Midwest. It could be applied to all sorts of other wastes. This looks extremely positive,” said William Rice, EPA Acting Regional Administrator.

According to Howard Buffett, who represents ConAgra's investment, "We've got a lot of confidence in this… We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't anticipate success."

“This is a remarkable opportunity to use new technology to turn a troublesome liability – waste – into a valuable asset – renewable energy,” said Senator Christopher (Kit) Bond of Missouri, when construction of the Carthage plant first began.

About CWT
Mr. Appel, formerly a principal of Atlantis International and Ticket World USA, has assembled a team of high level scientists, technologists and former government officials to lead the commercialization of CWT’s thermal process and related technologies. They include Alan L. Libshutz, President & Chief Operating Officer, a former Managing Director of the energy and finance groups at Salomon Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns; Franklin D. Kramer, Executive Vice President, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; Terry N. Adams, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer, a specialist in heat transfer, fluid flow and combustion and a former Technical Advisor to Weyerhaeuser R&D; James H. Freiss, PE, Vice President of Engineering, an agricultural engineer who was previously Director of Environmental Affairs for ContiGroup Companies, Inc.; and William Lange, Director of Engineering, an accomplished electromechanical, mechanical, electronics circuitry, and electromagnetic design specialist.


CWT is a holding company dedicated to identifying emerging technologies that address specific energy and environmental needs, and then developing them into viable business opportunities. It is currently commercializing its patented thermal technology, which converts hydrocarbons and organic materials into clean fuels and specialty chemicals. Founded in 1997, CWT’s subsidiaries and affiliated companies include Resource Recovery Corporation, Inc.; Thermo- Depolymerization Process, LLC; and Renewable Environmental Solutions, LLC, a joint venture with ConAgra Foods, Inc. established as the exclusive vehicle to apply CWT’s processes in the global agricultural sector.

For more information, visit CWT at www.changingworldtech.com or call (516) 486-0100.

Contact:
Julie Gross Gelfand
CWT Press Office
(516) 536-7258
jgelfand@hldcreative.com

[Taiwan Bocks]

Bush: The blackout was "a wake-up call."

Sounds prophetic! Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!

Another prophetic statement by President Bush: "The Columbia is lost. There are no survivors."

If you look in the dictionary, one of the definitions of "Columbia" is 'the United States of America.'

[Joe Hadenuf]

Atlas Shrugged.

[Cdnexpat]

The the US and Canadian power grids are very closely tied, it would be difficult to disentangle them. The peak US demand is in the summer, power for a/c; in Canada it is in the winter, for heating. The utility companies sell their excess power to each other during their off season. To be independent the US and Canada would both have to have a huge surplus of energy that would go unused for a large portion of the year. Not very economical, nor environmentally friendly either as fossil fuel plants are most able to start up and shut down seasonably. This is further complicated by the fact most of the cheap generating capacity and potential lies in the northern reagions of Quebec and Labrador. I wonder if the residents of New York state are starting to regret the fact they shut down the Great Whale hydroelectic project. I guess like most good liberals they see no conection between their choices and the later outcomes of these choices.

[Revel]

This was not such a bad thing in one way. It wakes people up and teaches them to be a bit more self-sufficiant and prepared. The changes that will take place in modernizing the grid will also have a down side. Expect utility costs to rise in order to cover the costs of such modernization. Also expect that people will be "Taken out of the loop". So a good hacker will be far more dangerous than in the past. Needless to say that someone with high security access could do a lot of damage with a few key strokes.

[AMNZ]

My call is that we insure that we have the ability to go it alone. Work together with Canada when we can and they will, yes. But powering our country's flight and transport systems is critical to our economic and defensive well being.

P.S. Can you imagine how quickly we would have been DOING something about this instead of planning hearings on it HAD THIS HAPPENED IN D.C.

[Cdnexpat]

I don't want you to misunderstand, I respect your opinion, h*ll I even agree with it, but I do not think you will see it happen for the reasons I have given. The best solution would be to create a new series of micro grids that would allow one to go down without bringing everything else down with it. I am not even sure that is possible in Canada. Most electicity companies in Canada are owned by the respective provincial governments. They are heavily saddled with debt because they have been mismanaged on a titanic scale. I don't know that they could finance rewiring the whole country. I don't know what the balance sheets for the US industry looks like but it may not be much better. (anyone know) The best solution for the US might be to require that Canadian companies run transmission lines independent of their grids to US markets as a condiction of market entry. One way or the other the solution is going to be enormously expensive.

[AMNZ]

No question it's going to cost a fortune to make up for the deferred maintenance and upgrading of our energy system. It has been ignored for close to twenty years, no we'll pay the price. It just "P's" me off that this President is going to get so much heat for this after Clinton did nothing at all over his 10 years.

[Dr. Luv]

"The best solution for the US might be to require that Canadian companies run transmission lines independent of their grids to US markets as a condiction of market entry. One way or the other the solution is going to be enormously expensive."

Since it appears it was an American utility that caused millions of Canadians to lose power, don't you think they would view your suggestion as a tad arrogant?

[Cdnexpat]

It is not clear yet which side of the border the failure started on, we may never know what caused it. It is clear that the American government is serious about solving the problem, it is not so clear that the will to solve the problem exists on the Canadian side. I am working on the presumption that the Canadian utilities will not upgrade their grids. In Canada the power companies are owned by the respective provincial governments, their purpose in the eyes of there owners is to be a source of graft and patronage. With the exception of Hydro Quebec, the Canadian utilities are broke (HQ remains solvent largely because it is stealing a fortune from NFLD and Lab). If we, I believe fairly, presume that the Canadian grid will not be upgraded then these occurances will become more common on the Canadian side. I would love to be proved wrong on this but I don't think I will.

[Dr. Luv]

"It is not clear yet which side of the border the failure started on, we may never know what caused it."

NERC (who should know) claims they will find out and all indications point to FirstEnergy Corp in Ohio. Perhaps you are blinded by your dislike for your former country, but electric utilities in the U.S. are in the same sorry state of affairs as Ontario's.

We receive an enormous amount of electricity from Quebec and we must NOT put up ANY barriers to ensure that that supply continues. This appears to be the fault of an American utility - let's not blame others for our own mess...

[Cdnexpat]

The last news report I saw said that the Ohio power corp said it was not responsible http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/afp/20030818/bs_afp/us_power_firstenergy_2ndlead_030818205650&e=5 I may be blinded by my dislike of the liberal government in my former country, I still love my country, or what is left of the country I love. I prefixed my position with the belief that Canada will not rewire, AMNZ stated he believe the US will but that it will be expensive. I believe that the US will find the funds to rewire, I am certain that Canada will not. The richest province in Canada (Ontario) has a lower standard of living than that of the poorest state (Missouri). All the electical utilities are wasteful patronage organizations that return minute profits on investment dispite the fact they are monopolies. The money is not available in Canada to set up new grids. Perhaps as you say, the money is not available in the US. If that is the case and if the US does not rewire, then it does not matter we can all go to hell in a hand basket together. If the US rewires and Canada does not then the US will need to be seperate from the Canadian grid.
Why do you think it has taken so much longer to get the power back on in Canada? The most likely explanation is that we have fewer resources to solve the problem.
As for setting up barriers to purchasing power. Where do you think Hydro Quebec will sell that power if the US does not buy it? The Great Whale project was stopped because the Cree and environmentalists in the US convinced American utilities not to buy the power.
Lets assume that it is the fault of a US power company. Why did it take out power in Ontario? We still don't know why power in Ontario was effected. What are Canadian leaders doing to solve the problem? So far Canadian leaders have done nothing but ask people not to use electicity. What did our respective leaders say? The US pres. said that they would find the cause and solve the problems that caused it. The Canadian PM could not take time out from his vacation to speak to the press. His subordinates gave conflicting causes for the outages, a burning nuclear power plant in Penn. was my favorite. When the PM finally spoke, he said that is was an American problem end of story.
The US position is that they will find the problem and solve it, the Canadian position is that their is no problem and if their is it is an American problem. Doesn't exactly read like Canadians are thinking about solving the problems in their grids.