Solar without the Panels


April 29, 2008


Investors and utilities intent on building solar power plants are increasingly turning to solar thermal power, a comparatively low-tech alternative to photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight directly into electricity.

This month, in the latest in a string of recent deals, Spanish solar-plant developer Abengoa Solar and Phoenix-based utility Arizona Public Service announced a 280-megawatt solar thermal project in Arizona. By contrast, the world's largest installations of photovoltaics generate only 20 megawatts of power.

In a solar thermal plant, mirrors concentrate sunlight onto some type of fluid that is used, in turn, to boil water for a steam turbine. Over the past year, developers of solar thermal technology such as Abengoa, Ausra, and Solel Solar Systems have picked up tens of millions of dollars in financing and power contracts from major utilities such as Pacific Gas and Electric and Florida Power and Light.

By 2013, projects in development in just the United States and Spain promise to add just under 6,000 megawatts of solar thermal power generation to the barely 100 megawatts installed worldwide last year, says Cambridge, MA, consultancy Emerging Energy Research.

The appeal of solar thermal power is twofold. It is relatively low cost at a large scale: an economic analysis released last month by Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California's Energy Institute, notes that solar thermal power will become cost competitive with other forms of power generation decades before photovoltaics will, even if greenhouse-gas emissions are not taxed aggressively.

Solar thermal developers also say that their power is more valuable than that provided by wind, currently the fastest-growing form of renewable energy. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, wind power costs about 8 cents per kilowatt, while solar thermal power costs 13 to 17 cents.

But power from wind farms fluctuates with every gust and lull; solar thermal plants, on the other hand, capture solar energy as heat, which is much easier to store than electricity.

Utilities can dispatch this stored solar energy when they need it--whether or not the sun happens to be shining. "That's going to be worth a lot of money," says Terry Murphy, president and chief executive officer of SolarReserve, a Santa Monica, CA, developer of solar thermal technology. "People are coming to realize that power shifting and 'dispatchability' are key to the utility's requirements to try to balance their system."

In fact, the capacity to store energy is critical to the economics of the solar thermal plant.

Without storage, a solar thermal plant would need a turbine large enough to handle peak steam production, when the sun is brightest, but which would otherwise be underutilized. Stored heat means that a plant can use a smaller, cheaper steam turbine that can be kept running steadily for more hours of the day.

While adding storage would substantially increase the cost of the energy produced by a photovoltaic array or wind farm, it actually reduces the cost per kilowatt of the energy produced by solar thermal plants.

The amount of storage included in a plant--expressed as the number of hours that it can keep the turbine running full tilt--will vary according to capital costs and the needs of a given utility.

"There is an optimal point that could be three hours of storage or six hours of storage, where the cents per kilowatt- hour is the lowest," says Fred Morse, senior advisor for U.S. operations with Abengoa Solar. Morse says that the company's 280-megawatt plant in Arizona, set to begin operation by 2011, will have six hours of storage, while other recent projects promise seven to eight.

Morse says that while the design of solar thermal power stations is rapidly diversifying, most will use essentially the same system for storing energy: tanks full of a molten salt that remains liquid at temperatures exceeding 565 °C.

"It's basically two tanks with a lot of heat exchangers, pipes, and pumps," says Morse. For a sense of scale, consider that the 50-megawatt plants that Germany's Solar Millennium is building in Spain near Granada will employ 28,500 tons of molten salt in twin tanks standing 14 meters high and 38.5 meters in diameter.

While molten salt is the most popular storage option, developers are experimenting widely to find the best means of collecting heat in the first place, and integrating collection and storage.

Abengoa's plant in Arizona (see below image) will use a "trough" design in which arrays of parabolic mirrors concentrate sunlight onto a glass tube carrying a commercial heat-transfer oil such as therminol. Some of the heated oil heats the molten salt in storage while the rest directly generates steam.

Abengoa Solar's vice president for technology development, Hank Price, says that the plant's trough energy-collection design is the one most commonly used today, thanks largely to improvements in the glass tubes. Ceramic-metal absorption coatings have increased the amount of heat captured by the tubes to the point that plants using them produce 30 percent more power than the first-generation solar thermal demonstration projects of the early 1990s.

Economies of scale: Spanish solar-power-plant developer Abengoa Solar plans to build and begin operating this 280-megawatt solar thermal power plant in Gila Bend, AZ, by 2011. The plant's rows of mirrors, thermal storage tanks, and power-generating turbines will cover nearly three square miles. Phoenix-based utility Arizona Public Service will buy the power--enough to supply 70,000 Arizona homes.Credit: Abengoa Solar

SolarReserve, in contrast, is developing systems that directly heat molten salt. Its designs call for so-called power towers in which arrays of mirrors focus sunlight onto elevated towers. The company, launched in January, is a joint venture between energy investment bank U.S. Renewables Group and aerospace firm Hamilton Sundstrand, whose subsidiary Rocketdyne built molten-salt heat receivers for a 10-megawatt power-tower demo plant that operated in the early 1990s.

SolarReserve's Murphy says that the power-tower system should be cheaper to build than trough-collection systems, since it doesn't require miles of glass tubing. More important, he says, it should produce higher-quality steam. That's because it will directly heat its molten salt to about 565 °C, about 165 degrees hotter than the oils in a trough plant.

That increased thermodynamic efficiency will be key, says Murphy, when water shortages force thermal power plants in hot, dry deserts to abandon water-based cooling of their used steam. (Steam that's passed through the turbine must be cooled and condensed so that it can be reused.) Alternative cooling techniques are more energy intensive, cutting into a plant's overall efficiency.

The hotter a plant runs, says Murphy, the lower the losses from alternative cooling schemes. "We're going to experience 3 to 4 percent loss," he says, "and [the trough plants] are going to be losing 7 to 8 percent."

Abengoa's Price agrees that power towers do, in theory, have thermodynamic advantages, which is why Abengoa has built its own 10-megawatt demo in Spain and is building a second at 20 megawatts. But Price questions whether investors will support the direct jump to 100-to-200-megawatt power-tower plants that SolarReserve envisions. "There's a lot of technical risk in doing that," he says. "We need to scale up in a way that's financeable."

Source:
http://fromshittosweetie.blogspot.com/2008/04/solar-without-panels.html
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Palisades nuclear plant watchdogs warn about earthquake risks


April 21,.2008
Dowagiac Daily News


(Michigan) Friday’s early morning 5.2 magnitude earthquake, originating in southeast Illinois but felt in southwest Michigan, revived concerns of atomic watchdog groups that a powerful enough earthquake jolting the Palisades atomic reactor site could spell radioactive catastrophe for Lake Michigan and communities downwind and downstream.

Palisades has nearly three dozen concrete and steel silos holding irradiated nuclear fuel rods. The silos, called dry casks, rest upon two concrete pads.

The concrete slabs are located upon loose sand amidst the dunes of the Lake Michigan shoreline.

Some containers of radioactive waste are just 150 yards from the water.

The earthquake is a reminder that Palisades’ mounting radioactive wastes put Lake Michigan and the drinking water supply at risk.

Source:
http://www.dowagiacnews.com/articles/2008/04/21/columnists/dncolumn03.txt
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Idaho county approves special-use permit to build wind project


April 25, 2008
Platts – (Idaho)

Ridgeline Energy on Thursday said the Bingham County, Idaho, Planning and Zoning Commission has approved its special-use permit to build the 450 megawatt Goshen South wind project near Idaho Falls.

While the wind farm will be sited on 20,212 leased acres, the 150 turbines and power equipment only will use about 200 of those acres, said the energy vice president of Ridgeline.
Construction is expected to start in 2009.

The wind farm would avoid the emission of more than two billion pounds per year of carbon dioxide compared with coal-fired power plants, he said.

Source:
http://www.platts.com/Electric%20Power/News/8690736.xml?sub=Electric%20Power&p=Electric%20Power/News&?undefined&undefined
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State environmental laws drive power producers to renewable resources


April 22, 2008
Washington Post


25 states have adopted laws that require electric utilities to use more renewable resources, and that has sent utilities scrambling to line up wind, solar, and biomass projects across the country.

Wind power accounted for 30 percent of all new U.S. generating capacity last year, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

Most state laws carry stiff financial penalties for firms that fail to comply.

According to a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, state renewable-electricity standards will lead to the addition of 60 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2025, equal to 4.7 percent of projected U.S. generation.

Some executives lament the lack of a national policy because the patchwork of state regulations pushes investment away from some of the most economical wind and solar projects.

In California, the president of Sempra Energy said a federal standard might allow utilities to link up with projects outside the state, including wind power in Texas or Wyoming, where wind blows stronger and steadier.

Source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24250436
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Storing energy using ammonia


April 22, 2008
Peak Energy


South Australian company Wizard Power is putting together a solar concentrator dish and a closed loop thermochemical energy storage system using ammonia.

Wizard plans to start construction of a demonstration plant in October and to begin generating power from July 2009.

Most solar thermal projects use molten salt or water to store energy in the form of heat.

According to the Australian National University, advantages of this energy storage mechanism using ammonia include the following: a high energy storage density by volume and mass; the reactions are easy to control and to reverse and there are no unwanted side reactions; all constituents involved are environmentally benign; and all reactants for transport and handling are in the fluid phase, which provides a convenient means of energy transport without thermal loss.

Source:
http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/
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Arrival of toxic sand Port of Longview in Washington delayed until Thursday


April 22, 2008
Longview Daily News (Idaho; Washington)


A ship unloading containers of sand contaminated with hazardous depleted uranium through the Port of Longview in Washington will not arrive until Thursday, the port’s executive director said Monday.

Once the ship arrives, longshoremen will take two to three days to unload the 6,700 tons of sand in 306 containers, said a spokesman for American Ecology, the company shipping the material.

The containers will be loaded by train to a toxic waste dump site in Idaho in two waves. All the material will be out of Longview within 20 to 30 days, he said.

Source:
http://www.tdn.com/articles/2008/04/22/area_news/doc480d42f04d6f4740047164.txt
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SLO group alleges Diablo Canyon muzzles workers concerned about nuclear plant safety


April 22, 2008
San Luis Obispo Tribune


San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace has filed a complaint with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), alleging that workers at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant face possible retaliation if they raise safety concerns.

In an April 14 letter to the NRC, the group cites one incident in which a worker filed a complaint document called a differing professional opinion during a recent refueling outage for steam generator replacement.

An investigation validated most of the worker’s concerns, but he received a downgraded performance evaluation because he was not a team player.

The letter states the incident, and those similar to it, has caused a chilling effect in which workers fear raising safety concerns out of fear of retaliation.

An unspecified number of power plant employees contacted the group after they became frustrated with the internal complaint resolution process at the plant, a group member said.

The NRC says it will investigate.

Source:
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/story/339145.html
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Ron Paul Campaign Dominates Convention


By J. Patrick Coolican
Apr 27, 2008
Las Vegas Sun


Reno — Call 2008 the year of the great tumult, the year of the outsiders, the young, the tech-savvy who are changing American politics.

Although most of the attention, money and passion lie with the long saga of the Democratic presidential contest, Nevada’s state Republican convention here offered evidence of the ground shifting across the spectrum, with an actual earthquake Friday night serving as an apt symbol.

Rep. Ron Paul, a Republican with a libertarian’s heart, followed his second-place finish in Nevada’s January presidential caucus by out-organizing the state’s Republican establishment. In the process, the Paulites embarrassed the campaign of Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

They seemed to make up more than half of the 1,300 or so state delegates to the convention.

They won a key procedural vote on the rules, and their boisterous presence created significant delays, causing the convention chairman, Bob Beers, a state senator from Las Vegas, to recess the convention without selecting delegates to the national convention. The state convention is to resume at a later date.

Paul supporters occasionally shouted down the chairman, then rocked the convention with noise when Paul, their diminutive doctor icon, appeared to rally them.

The passion of the libertarians showed the sense of unrest of some grass roots Republicans following the party’s 2006 defeat and worrisome signs of another this year.

A surge in Democratic registrations has dealt Nevada Republicans a 50,000 voter deficit, while nationally, the GOP faces the biggest party identification gap to Democrats ever recorded by the Gallup polling organization.

Although it is largely papered over by the GOP establishment’s unifying behind McCain, party regulars are debating the future of the party, and especially whether to return to the small-government principles of the late Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential candidate.

Republican conventions are usually well-organized, rather staid affairs for bashing Democrats and rallying around the presidential nominee, in this case, McCain.

Not so this time, as many of the more than 1,300 delegates were Paul supporters who viewed themselves as insurgents taking on the establishment.

As Kelly Edinger, a delegate from Washoe County, put it: “On one side you’ve got a candidate with principles, on the other, Tammany Hall,” referring to the corrupt New York City political machine of the 19th and 20th centuries. It was a wildly exaggerated accusation, but a reflection of insurgent attitudes.

The convention was filled with first-timers, including Shawn Moshos, a member of the carpenters union and a 34-year-old lifelong Republican energized for the first time this year.

The southwest Las Vegas resident is head of marches, activism and special projects for a Ron Paul Meetup group, which is an online tool for organizing offline.

“It’s a little like going to church,” he said of Paul’s Las Vegas supporters. They meet socially and enjoy talking about shared libertarian principles.

Jon Martin is a young management consultant who lives in Las Vegas also at his first political convention. “Paul has ignited a fire,” he said.

Although McCain is the presumed nominee, Paul continues to rack up big vote totals in primaries, including 126,000 votes, or nearly 16 percent, in Pennsylvania.

In his speech, Paul called for an end to the IRS and the protection of constitutional liberties. He never mentioned McCain.

Martin is the type of libertarian voter who should concern Republicans. He said McCain is a “warmonger.”

Martin, who is hoarding precious metals for a predicted economic calamity, also showed the sometimes confusing ideological space these people occupy. He said he would vote for the radical leftist Ralph Nader if Paul isn’t a general election candidate.

Jeff Greenspan, Paul’s southwest director, said the Paul convention plan had been in the works for months. They dominated county conventions. And, in Reno on Saturday, they communicated strategy on the convention floor by mass cell phone text messaging, which no doubt kept them a step ahead of party leadership.

Robert Uithoven, a party strategist and adviser to McCain, acknowledged “there are divisions in the Republican Party. It’s April. I hope they’ll come over, and I believe they will.”

Uithoven said Paul supporters were able to gain a strong foothold at the convention because McCain’s lean campaign team had racked up victories by relying on free media rather than paid staff or volunteers. The campaign is adding staff and getting organized, Uithoven said.

As he noted, the division among Republicans is nothing compared to the battle going on between the Democrats, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.

Indeed, the minor skirmish among Republicans wasn’t the most telling incident of the day. That came from former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Dean Heller, who both sketched out the attacks Republicans will launch on Democrats from now until November.

Romney said Clinton and Obama are “more concerned with what the ACLU lawyers think than protecting the American people.”

“I know Americans are going to chose a great patriot, a man who’s been tested and proven,” he concluded, which was a thinly veiled way of saying Obama is untested, unproven and has suspect associations.

Heller, a one-time moderate who has become a rock-ribbed conservative since joining Congress in 2007, threw the crowd some red meat. “If you cannot score above a 40 when you’re bowling, you probably are not physically fit to be president,” he quipped, referring to Obama’s failed attempt in rural Pennsylvania.

Playing off Clinton’s ad about being ready to answer the call at 3 a.m. in the White House and her fibbing about landing amidst sniper fire in Bosnia during the ’90s, Heller said, “If you cannot remember if you’ve been under sniper fire, you shouldn’t be answering the phone at 3 o’clock in the morning.”

Then he returned to Obama: “If you think our closets are full of guns, and if you think we go to church every Sunday because we’re bitter, well, I’ll let you answer that.”

Paul notwithstanding, that’s the campaign to come.

Source:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/apr/27/ron-paul-campaign-dominates-convention/
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PSE&G receives green light to launch solar investment program


April 8, 2008
Public Service Electric and Gas Company


Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) today received approval from state regulators to begin offering $105 million in loans to help finance the installation of solar systems on homes, businesses, and municipal buildings throughout its electric service area.

The funding will provide a source of stable, secure capital to spur additional investment in solar energy. Initially, the program will only be available to non-residential customers.

PSE&G needs approval from the state Department of Banking and Insurance to provide direct loans to residential customers.

There are also plans to review residential loan documents with a group of stakeholders before the program is offered to residential customers.

The program will support the development of 30 megawatts of solar power, designed to fulfill about 50 percent of the renewable portfolio standard requirements in PSE&G’s service area for the energy years 2009 and 2010.

Source:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080408/nytu111.html?.v=101
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Trace amounts of depleted uranium burned


April 9, 2008
Hill AFB (Utah)


Military officials say trace amounts of depleted uranium were incinerated during the destruction of classified components at a burn plant near Layton, Utah.

Hill Air Force Base (AFB) officials say less than five pounds of depleted uranium were burned over eight months before it was discovered last month that the parts contained the material.

The military says there were no public health, safety, or environmental risks.

Crews conducting the work were not aware the parts contained depleted uranium because the 40-year-old drawings and other information describing the components were not readily available.

Hill AFB officials said they also met with health officials, elected leaders, and others to discuss the releases.

Base officials say engineers at the plant are now looking at other ways to destroy the components.

Source:
http://www.localnews8.com/Global/story.asp?S=8144102
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New ways to store solar energy for nighttime and cloudy days


April 15, 2008
New York Times

The solar power industry is finding ways to capture the sun’s heat so that demand for electricity can be met whenever the sun is not shining.

Ausra, a Palo Alto, California-based company is making components for plants to which thermal storage could be added, if the cost were justified by higher prices after sunset or for production that could be realistically promised even if the weather forecast was iffy.

Ausra uses Fresnel lenses, which have a short focal length but focus light intensely, to heat miles of black-painted pipe with a fluid inside.

SolarReserve plans a slightly different technique.

It is a “power tower,” a little bit like a water tank on stilts surrounded by hundreds of mirrors that tilt on two axes, one to follow the sun across the sky in the course of the day and the other in the course of the year.

In the tower and in a tank below are tens of thousands of gallons of molten salt that can be heated to very high temperatures and not reach high pressure.

A manager at Black & Veatch said that with a molten salt design, “your turbine is totally buffered from the vagaries of the sun.”

A tower design could also allow for operation at higher latitudes or places with less sun.

Designers could simply put in bigger fields of mirrors, proponents say.

A small start-up, eSolar, is pursuing that design.

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/earth/15sola.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin
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Duke Energy sets goals to reduce emissions


April 14, 2008
Charlotte Business Journal


According to Duke Energy Corp.’s 2007-08 Sustainability Report, Duke Energy Carolinas will retire about one-third of its coal-fired plants, while tripling its gas-fired plants and doubling its nuclear power plants.

In addition, the company will nearly double its natural gas-fired generating plants in the Midwest by 2030 and retire about one-fourth of its coal-generating capacity by then.

Renewable sources of energy will provide about ten percent of the company’s power generation by 2030.

The company’s goals also include: Reducing nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions this year from its coal-fired plants by ten percent and 35 percent, respectively, from 2006 levels; reducing emissions from its on-road and off-road vehicles by an average of 35 percent by 2012, compared with 2006; and replacing older natural gas lines to reduce leaks.

Duke Energy has operations in the Carolinas, Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.

Source:
http://charlotte.bizjournals.com/charlotte/stories/2008/04/14/daily11.html
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Contaminated sand from Gulf War to pass through Longview, Washington


April 15, 2008
Longview Daily News


A ship carrying 6,700 tons of sand contaminated with low levels of hazardous waste at a U.S. Army base in Kuwait during the first Gulf War will be unloaded at the Port of Longview in Washington on April 22.

The vessel BBC Alabama is delivering 306 containers of the sand, which contains low levels of uranium, to the port, which will then be loaded onto trains bound for a disposal site in Grand View, Idaho, said the port’s director of operations.

A cleanup contractor packaged the sand in bags designed to hold hazardous waste and then placed them in a container, said a project manager for Idaho-based American Ecology, the company responsible for disposing of the material.

The shipment is safe because the concentration of uranium in the sand is so low – about 10 parts per trillion.

American Ecology was required to file a spill-response plan with the government for transporting the material.

Longview longshoremen are receiving further instruction later in the week on handling the cargo.

Source:
http://www.tdn.com/articles/2008/04/15/area_news/doc48044bd6e597d443239356.txt
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A new twist for light bulbs that conserve energy


By Paul Davidson
USA TODAY
April 22, 2008


Earth Day is bringing brighter prospects for perhaps the most pervasive symbol of the environmental movement: the compact fluorescent bulb.

Starting Tuesday, all three of the world's top bulb manufacturers plan to roll out CFLs this year that look and perform more like traditional incandescent bulbs.

"Any time you can make those compact fluorescent lights more easily and readily exchangeable for incandescents, the more attractive they are for consumers," says Kateri Callahan, president of the Alliance to Save Energy. "It's really very exciting."

GOING GREEN: Marketing efforts may end up in a blur

The energy bill passed by Congress last year mandates the phaseout of the traditional incandescent from 2012 to 2020 in favor of more efficient bulbs.

CFLs are about 75% more efficient than standard bulbs, but consumer adoption has been slow because they cost more ($3 to $10 vs. 25 cents for an incandescent), are slightly larger, turn on a bit more slowly and can give off less light or a bluish tint. But CFLs last about 10 times as long and save up to $50 in energy costs over their life spans.

The new offerings:

• Osram Sylvania today kicks off the CFL makeover with a model called the micromini Twist, which is 3.7 inches in length. A standard CFL is 4.6 inches, or about 1/10 of an inch longer than an incandescent.

Many CFLs don't fit in certain light fixtures that have harps above the bulb or in kitchen or bathroom fixtures that feature glass ornaments around the socket. Sylvania managed to squeeze the bulb's electronics into a tighter space and eliminate the two prongs that typically connect the base to the spiral light fixture.

"It's the first CFL designed to fit everywhere a standard incandescent can go," says Sylvania spokeswoman Stephanie Anderson.

The bulb, she says, also turns on instantly. Some CFLs have a half-second or so delay, though the industry has gradually been chipping away at that interval.

The micromini, which costs $10 for a two-pack, also has a color temperature close to incandescents. Many CFLs have higher temperatures that cause them to emit a bluish hue.

Finally, the bulb contains 1.5 milligrams of mercury, vs. 3 to 5 milligrams for typical CFLs.

Mercury can pose a health hazard, especially to children and fetuses.

• Philips Lighting later this week is introducing a three-way CFL that functions like a typical three-way bulb. It turns on instantly and shows three distinct bands of light. Many three-way CFLs turn on more slowly, and the light levels eventually tend to look similar. Price: $10 to $15, slightly higher than other three-way CFLs.

• GE Consumer & Industrial later this year is coming out with a CFL that looks exactly like an incandescent. Although some CFLs sport the same shape, they're larger.

The bulb, which will cost $5 to $6, also will be the first CFL to match an incandescent's light output, says Gary Crawford, GE's global product manager for compact fluorescents.

CFLs' output is slightly less than incandescents'.

Source:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/environment/2008-04-21-light-bulbs_N.htm
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Ground broken on wind project


April 17, 2008
Tribune-Democrat


EverPower Renewables Corp. will construct 25 new wind turbines on former Adams Township strip mines to produce clean energy.

Construction will begin immediately on the $140 million project’s first phase, to be completed by December, the company’s president said.

The 25 turbines will produce 62 megawatts of electricity – enough to power 30,000 homes.

At the same time, EverPower will work to restore the former strip mine. “We are taking a brownfield site and turning it into a green site,” he said.

A second, 25-turbine phase is in the works for next year, raising the Highland Wind Project’s output to more than 130 megawatts.

That would make it the second- largest wind project in the state, he said.

Source:
http://www.tribune-democrat.com/local/local_story_108231514.html
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Maybe Ron Paul Was Right

The Price of Oil Hasn't Budged Since 2001 (If You Pay for Black Gold with Gold)


The Daily Green
April 15, 2008


The American Geological Institute Workforce Program has published an interesting analysis of world oil prices.

As we know, the price of oil has risen steeply. We pay more dollars for the same amount of oil.

Those who purchase in Euros also pay more, though not as much as we pay in dollars. But if you compare the spot prices of oil to gold, there has been almost no increase.

As AGI wrote:

"The steep increase in the price of crude oil in the United States remains a headline issue, along with the falling US dollar. The drop in the dollar has caused concern in oil-producing countries which use it as the economic basis for the commodity, and often their currency."

The chart shows the spot market price of crude oil per barrel (BBL) in US dollars and in euros from 2001 to today. The price of oil has grown faster relative to the dollar than to the euro. Yet, a portion of the rise in oil prices is due to the fall of the value of the dollar. The graph also shows the number of barrels of crude oil per cost of an ounce of gold, demonstrating the parallel growth in commodity pricing.

"If the US dollar had remained strong in the global economy, oil might, in theory, be around $65 per barrel. However, oil is priced in dollars, and oil prices continue to rise. The impact of increased oil prices can not be ignored in the US economy, and, in turn, can further weaken the dollar. Resource economics is a complex feedback loop where today’s resource boom is driven by many external factors."

Republican longshot candidate Ron Paul has talked about how monetary policy, as much as energy policy, is behind inflationary problems like the run-up in oil prices.

Source:
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/oil-gold-commodities-47041507
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NASA's Top Climate Scientist Says Big Oil is Hiding a "Planet in Crisis"


EcoGeek post by Magnus Hølvold
Daily Galaxy post by Casey Kazan
April 8, 2008


In shocking and completely unexpected news, NASA's top climate scientist, James Hansen, was quoted by Daily Galaxy as saying that fossil fuel companies have a stranglehold on the United States government.

This probably isn't news to any of you; after all, Dick Cheney is in charge of U.S. energy policy.

Nonetheless, it's nice to see a prominent (and government-employed) ecogeek speaking out about the infiltration. According to Hansen, our planet has reached dangerous levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, and Big Oil is doing its best to keep people uninformed.

Hansen has some ideas on what needs to be done to save us from our current crisis, though. His wish is for all coal-fired plants to be phased out by 2030 and putting a tax on them until that happens. Also, he wants new plants to have to conform to the criteria of trapping and segregating their CO2 emissions.

This goes right back to the aforementioned stranglehold and is the reason why his wishes probably won't come true without a fight. How many times do we have to be reminded that we have no power before we decide to take that power back, eh? Something needs to happen. I say it's time for a real bloody brawl!

Global warming has plunged the planet into a crisis and the fossil fuel industries are trying to hide the extent of the problem from the public, NASA's top climate scientist says.

"We've already reached the dangerous level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," according to James Hansen, 67, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "But there are ways to solve the problem" of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which Hansen said has reached the "tipping point" of 385 parts per million.

Hansen calls for phasing out all coal-fired plants by 2030, taxing their emissions until then, and banning the building of new plants unless they are designed to trap and segregate the carbon dioxide they emit.

The major obstacle to saving the planet from its inhabitants is not technology, insisted Hansen, named one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2006 by Time magazine.

"The problem is that 90 percent of energy is fossil fuels. And that is such a huge business, it has permeated our government," he maintained.

"What's become clear to me in the past several years is that both the executive branch and the legislative branch are strongly influenced by special fossil fuel interests," he said, referring to the providers of coal, oil and natural gas and the energy industry that burns them.

"You need a new Kyoto protocol with all the major emitters committed to it. Then you are cooking with gas."

Sources:
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1535/
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/04/nasas-top-clima.html#more
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Why the Global “Food Crunch” Could Make the Credit Crunch Look Tame


by Justice Litle
Taipan Publishing Group
April 7, 2008


Forget the credit crunch for a moment. We are now in the early stages of a global “food crunch” that could have far more serious consequences.

Take a look at the price of rice, a global food staple that feeds half the world. Rice is the barometer of the global food crunch.

Back on December 28, 2007, I noted the price of rice at 20-year highs. (You can view that Chart of the Day here.)

The reasoning was given as follows:

The relentless rise in agricultural prices shows how all markets are connected. The high cost of oil has encouraged a politically subsidized ethanol boom; this in turn has led to record corn acreage in the United States. But more acreage for corn means less acreage available for other crops. When acreage goes down, supply goes down. When supply goes down and demand stays strong, prices go up. The United States is the fourth-largest exporter of rice in the world, so that makes a difference.

Big economic strides in the developing world are also taking their toll on food prices. As hundreds of millions of new laborers aspire to a middle-class lifestyle, meat consumption rapidly rises. Meat is very grain-intensive -- you have to feed the cows and pigs -- and that puts an even bigger demand on crop acreage.

As rice shows, the unfortunate reality is that the world’s poor may be the hardest hit by energy and food inflation.

That was all a mere 14 weeks ago. The price of rice has gone up 60% since then.

That is alarming news when you are talking about the main food staple for 3 billion people. The credit crunch is no small thing, but house-poor Americans are not starving. With the price of rice where it is, starvation is a real concern. Not just tens of millions, but hundreds of millions of families are at risk.

The headlines are getting worse as desperation turns to anger. “Food Riots Rock Yemen” is a recent example. The World Bank has declared 33 nations at risk for “social unrest” due to the high cost of getting something to eat.

So why the deadly acceleration of this long-running trend? Is it all down to biofuels and increased meat consumption in China? Unfortunately, no. Things have entered a much more disturbing phase.

Credit Crunch Redux

What we have here is a looming market failure with no small resemblance to the credit crunch. The global grain markets are caught up in a vicious cycle, not unlike the one that gripped global financial markets.

As the subprime crisis unfolded, and news of toxic balance sheets spread, it became clearer that lending to one’s fellow bankers was a dangerous proposition. And so the banks began to hoard their capital, keeping it to themselves for fear of getting burned.

The banks’ refusal to lend touched off a self-fulfilling prophecy of downward-spiraling credit conditions, to the point where leveraged financial institutions began to fail. As the financial system “seized up” like an engine in vapor lock, it took massive cash injections from a lender of last resort, the Federal Reserve, to get things going again.

In this new and deadly “food crunch,” grain exporting countries play the role of frightened banks.

With the price of grains going through the roof, government officials in grain-exporting countries have become alarmed by rising food costs at home. Their natural response has been to artificially limit grain exports, through the use of expensive tarriffs and outright quotas.

With normal supply lines cut short -- or in some cases, cut off completely -- the global grain markets have been tipped into a panic. Suddenly, the marginal suppliers are no longer there. If you think of grain availability like financial liquidity in a time of crisis, the picture becomes clear.

No Luck for Farmers

Farmers everywhere (except, perhaps, in Europe and the United States) are furious at these export restrictions. The seizing up of the global grain trade has denied them an ability to profit.

After many years of struggle, when it looked like their hard work would finally be rewarded, many developing world farmers have discovered that they still can’t win. The export profits that would have come their way in a free market system have been diverted or destroyed instead, thanks to emergency measures from the local government.

The global food crunch is a “market failure” in the truest sense of the term. No one is really benefiting from this turn of events. The restrictive actions of grain-exporting governments are reminiscent of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.

Instead of a “beggar thy neighbor” policy, we are seeing the results of a “starve thy neighbor” policy. These tragic results are not intentional -- but then, Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley probably didn’t intend to kick off the Great Depression, either.

Do countries have the right to punish their farmers in the name of national food security?

A good question, but not one we are interested in here. Export restrictions are a driving factor in the global food crunch, whether anyone likes it or not. And so it becomes more vital to understand the effects than to debate the merits of the cause.

Hoarding Mentality

The anger of the farmers and the shutting down of grain supply lines has fueled a “hoarding mentality” that only intensifies as grain prices rise. Vertical price trends and scary headlines only reinforce the hoarding instinct.

As a result of all this, there is no simply no telling how high the price of rice and other food staples could go.

In economist terms, food is the ultimate “inelastic good”; people have to eat, or they will die.

Countries that are net importers of grain have to pay up, no matter the price.

So what can you and I do about all this? Unfortunately, not much.

It wouldn’t hurt for America to lay off the insanity of biofuel subsidies… burning up corn and taxpayer dollars in our gas tanks as the world wrestles with mass hunger. But that’s a problem of political will, a gigantic aircraft carrier that could take many years to turn around.

One thing we can do is recognize the importance of the agricultural supercycle. We will ultimately get through this global food crunch, one way or another. Somehow a long-run solution will be found.

Source:
http://www.taipanpublishinggroup.com/TPG/archives/Daily_040708a.html
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Fed loses its unified voice


By Michael M. Grynbaum
April 9, 2008


The biggest U.S. financial crisis in a generation - a downturn that officials at the Federal Reserve Board acknowledged in minutes released this week may be "prolonged and severe" - is turning the traditionally reserved and omniscient central bank into an institution that seems to be in the throes of family therapy.

In a speech Tuesday, Paul Volcker, the imposing former Fed chief who felled the runaway U.S. inflation of the 1980s, chided the current chairman, Ben Bernanke, for toeing "the very edge" of the bank's legal authority in orchestrating the bailout last month of the beleaguered investment bank Bear Stearns.

"Out of perceived necessity, sweeping powers have been exercised in a manner that is neither natural nor comfortable for a central bank," Volcker told members of the Economic Club of New York.

His remarks came on the same day that Alan Greenspan, Bernanke's immediate predecessor as chairman, deflected criticism of his tenure in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, dismissing claims that his policies had stoked an untenable housing bubble as "unfair."

But in defending his own stewardship of the economy over 18 years, a period of generally healthy growth and low inflation, Greenspan was forced to dredge up some painful memories that have come back to haunt the Fed.

"I don't know of anytime when previous chairmen were so openly discursive about the current arrangements," said Allan Meltzer, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the leading historian of Fed policy. In the past, he said, "they just didn't discuss."

Indeed, Volcker also implicitly questioned Greenspan's cheerleading of the "bright new financial system," that "for all its talented participants, for all its rich rewards, has failed the test of the marketplace."

In his time as chairman, Volcker insisted that the Fed speak in a single, firm voice and sought to quell dissent in its ranks. He faced only one open revolt on the board of governors, in 1986, which nearly led to his resignation. But it was his challenger, Preston Martin, who stepped down.

Greenspan continued the autocratic tradition, gaining a reputation for opaque policy pronouncements that, like Volcker's, required a carefully cultivated expertise to interpret. And he stood firm: In his interview Greenspan said he did not regret a single decision he had made during his time as the Fed chairman.

Bernanke, who took over the chairmanship in 2006 promising greater transparency for the Fed, has struggled to maintain the same level of support.

Minutes released Tuesday of the Fed's March 18 policy meeting revealed strenuous disagreements among top central bankers, with 2 of the 10 officials present voting against the decision to lower interest rates by three-quarters of a point.

While not unprecedented, it was the first dual dissent since September 2002.

"It's a club and the members of the club tend to be supportive of a club, and particularly of the chairman," Meltzer said. "It's not popular to dissent."

The dissenters - Richard Fisher of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and Charles Plosser of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia - said a rate cut would further fuel inflation, which has grown faster than anticipated on the back of high prices for gasoline and food.

Plosser argued that the Fed "could not afford to wait until there was clear evidence that inflation expectations were no longer anchored, as by then it would be too late to prevent a further increase in inflation pressures."

The dissenters also argued that the Fed's other efforts to restore confidence among lenders - including its decision to provide cheap loans to investment banks in exchange for relatively risky collateral - were a more effective and time-sensitive approach to improving the economy.

"Two voting members who explicitly see the world differently is a notable development," said Robert Barbera, chief economist at ITG, an investment and research firm.

Ultimately, the minutes said, "most members judged that a substantial easing in the stance of monetary policy was warranted."

At the meeting, most of the members said they believed the U.S. economy would probably contract in the first half of the year, and they said a "prolonged and severe economic downturn could not be ruled out."

The U.S. housing slump has shown few signs of recovery, the board said in the minutes, and they predicted home values would continue to drop.

Fed officials also confirmed that the board found itself in an extremely difficult situation.

"Members noted that appropriately calibrating the stance of policy was difficult," the minutes said, as officials weighed the benefits of lowering interest rates against the possibility that inflation will get out of hand.

Meltzer concurred. "Bernanke is under tremendous pressure from the Congress, from the market, and from the president likely," he said. "As Mr. Greenspan has discovered, even after you leave, you run into people who criticize what you did even though they may have applauded it when you did it."

Source:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/09/business/fomc.php
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Power to Build Border Fence Is Above U.S. Law


By ADAM LIPTAK
April 8, 2008


Securing the nation’s borders is so important, Congress says, that Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, must have the power to ignore any laws that stand in the way of building a border fence. Any laws at all.

Last week, Mr. Chertoff issued waivers suspending more than 30 laws he said could interfere with “the expeditious construction of barriers” in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

The list included laws protecting the environment, endangered species, migratory birds, the bald eagle, antiquities, farms, deserts, forests, Native American graves and religious freedom.

The secretary of homeland security was granted the power in 2005 to void any federal law that might interfere with fence building on the border. For good measure, Congress forbade the courts to second-guess the secretary’s determinations. So long as Mr. Chertoff is willing to say it is necessary to void a given law, his word is final.

The delegation of power to Mr. Chertoff is unprecedented, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service. It is also, if papers filed in the Supreme Court last month are correct, unconstitutional.

People can disagree about the urgency of border security and about whether it is more or less important than, say, the environment. Congress is entrusted with making those judgments, and here it has spoken clearly. In the process, it has also granted the executive branch more of the sort of unilateral power the Bush administration has so often claimed for itself.

No one doubts that Congress may repeal old laws through new legislation. But there is a difference between passing a law that overrides a previous one and tinkering with the structure of the Constitution itself. The extraordinary powers granted to Mr. Chertoff may test the limits of how much of its own authority Congress can cede to another branch of the government.

Mr. Chertoff explained the reasoning behind the law in a news release last week. “Criminal activity at the border,” he said, “does not stop for endless debate or protracted litigation.”

Mr. Chertoff has issued three similar waivers, and a challenge to the constitutionality of one of them has just reached the United States Supreme Court. If the court decides to hear the case, its decision will almost certainly apply to last week’s waivers as well.

The case was brought by two environmental groups, Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club.

They sued Mr. Chertoff last year over his decision to suspend 19 laws that might have interfered with the construction of a border fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in Arizona.

Congress, the groups said, had given Mr. Chertoff too much power.

“It is only happenchance that the secretary’s waiver in this case involved laws protecting the environment and historic resources,” the groups told Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of Federal District Court in Washington. “He could equally have waived the requirements of the Fair Labor Relations Act to halt a strike, or the provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act in order to force workers to endure unsafe working conditions.”

(Happenchance? You don’t see that word every day, and certainly not in a court filing.)

The groups said Congress cannot hand over unbridled power to the executive branch even as it cuts the courts out of the picture. They relied mostly on a 1998 Supreme Court decision striking down the Line Item Veto Act, which had allowed the president to cancel parts of laws.

In December, Judge Huvelle rejected the challenge and allowed construction to proceed. She said she had no jurisdiction to decide whether Mr. Chertoff was correct in saying the waivers were necessary, and she ruled that the delegation of power to him was constitutional.

“The court concludes that it lacks the power to invalidate the waiver provision merely because of the unlimited number of statutes that could potentially be encompassed,” Judge Huvelle wrote.

A petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the case was filed three months later.

Did you notice the missing step? In addition to forbidding judges from second-guessing Mr. Chertoff’s decisions, Congress forbade federal appeals courts from becoming involved at all.

After losing before Judge Huvelle, the groups’ only recourse is to hope the Supreme Court decides to hear their appeal.

In their petition, the environmental groups said the Supreme Court had never upheld a broad delegation of power like that given to Mr. Chertoff without the possibility of judicial review of executive branch determinations. Nor, they said, has any appeals court.

It is the combination of those two factors — the broad granting of power to the executive branch and cutting the judicial branch out of the process — that makes the 2005 law so pernicious, the groups say.

The government’s response is due next week. In a brief filed in the district court last year, Justice Department lawyers told Judge Huvelle that the urgency of border security must trump other interests. They added that Congress may delegate particularly broad powers in the areas of national security, foreign affairs and immigration because the Constitution gives the executive branch great authority in those areas.

The line-item veto decision does not apply, the government lawyers said, because Mr. Chertoff is not repealing laws for all purposes, just suspending them for his fences.

It is true, of course, that Congress gave up its powers here voluntarily. But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy had a response to that point in his concurrence in the line-item-veto case.

“It is no answer, of course, to say that Congress surrendered its authority by its own hand,” he wrote. “Abdication of responsibility is not part of the constitutional design.”

Justice Kennedy made a broader point, too, one perhaps more apt today than it was 10 years ago.

“Separation of powers was designed to implement a fundamental insight,” he wrote.

“Concentration of power in the hands of a single branch is a threat to liberty.”

Online: Court documents and an archive of Adam Liptak’s articles and columns: nytimes.com/adamliptak.

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/us/08bar.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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Washington to Bear Stearns Shareholders: Drop Dead


by Justice Litle
Taipan Publishing Group
April 4, 2008


Attention, ticked-off Bear Stearns shareholders: It’s the government you should be mad at.

That was perhaps the most interesting piece of news to come out of the grilling that just took place on Capitol Hill. In testimony to congress, treasury officials admitted they were the ones demanding a super-low share price in the Bear Stearns-JP Morgan deal.

The logic was to “send a message” that the Fed’s historic move was not charity. By letting Bear’s investors get crushed, the Fed’s $30 billion backstop was supposed to look less like a golden parachute. Bernanke stated flatly, “We did not bail out Bear Stearns.” The awful price was intended to make that statement true.

In the “adding insult to injury” department, Bear Stearn’s CEO, Alan Schwartz, thought he had 28 days of leeway to find a white knight for Bear. He understood the Fed’s emergency loan provisions to be good for that long.

That was on Friday morning, March 14. Schwartz’ mistaken impression was corrected a few hours later. “No, you don’t have 28 days to find a buyer,” the Fed told him. “You have until Sunday afternoon.” Oops.

All parties -- the Fed, the Treasury and JP Morgan -- loudly defended the historic rescue. If the government had not acted as it did, they argued, all hell would have broken loose. (Not the exact words heard by the Senate Banking Committee, of course… but close enough.)

In other news, the Fed chairman openly admitted that a recession is “possible.” This type of plain-as-day statement (Gee whiz, really? Ya think?) counts as courageous candor in Washington.

The best sum-up of the whole sordid deal goes to economist Ed Yardeni in a note to clients: “The Government of Last Resort is working with the Lender of Last Resort to shore up the housing and credit markets to avoid Great Depression II.”

Yup. Yardeni pretty much nailed it. And how about the market?
After a joyous start to the second quarter, the major indexes are all once again at a crossroads.

The Dow and S&P sport a roughly similar pattern. All are headed into prior resistance territory, even as the going is set to get tough again. The employment numbers are rolling out as I write, and boy are they ugly… the biggest monthly decline in five years.

[Did you know that JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon is also on the board of the Federal Reserve? Do you see a little more clearly now what is going on? Ed.]
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Cut your everyday

electricity use NOW

Track down and remove phantom power vampires.


By Stephen Pritchard
Financial Times
April 2 2008


Phantom load, or vampire power, is one of the chief spooks that are – or should be – keeping CIOs awake at night.

Phantom loads are not as other worldy as they sound. They occur when a device, such as a computer, a router or a mobile phone charger, draws electricity from the grid when it is not in use.

Energy companies have been monitoring the impact of phantom loads for several years, spurred by the growth of consumer-electronics devices, especially those with a “standby” mode.

These include TVs, DVD players, set-top boxes and internet access hardware such as routers and wireless access points, but also white goods such as microwave ovens and dishwashers.

Calculations carried out by environmental groups suggest that anywhere between 30 and 50 per cent of electricity used in the home could be due to phantom loads.

Research into the impact of vampire power on businesses is harder to come by. But Pacific Gas and Electric , the utility covering the San Francisco area, has targeted savings of 50 per cent in the phantom or “plug load” power used by equipment in both home and office through a programme known as “Flex Your Power”.

Much of the saving is expected to come from manufacturers fitting more efficient transformers or adapters to their equipment, and especially, from reducing the power used in standby mode.

For CIOs, however, the advantages of more energy-efficient equipment have to be set against the growth in devices used in the business, especially personal electronics and portable equipment.

Much of this equipment – whether a BlackBerry, an iPod or a laptop – draws its power from plug-in chargers. These chargers continue to draw power even when the device they are attached to is fully charged, and even when the device is not attached to the charger at all.
Electricity companies have identified these plug-in chargers as one of the causes of growing phantom loads. As well as the sheer number of devices in use, portable chargers are typically low-cost items and so relatively inefficient converters of mains power.

Then there are behavioural factors. For business users of a mobile phone or PDA, a second charger is one of the most popular accessories. All too often, employees leave those chargers connected to the mains, when the associated device is elsewhere.

Tackling such behaviour should be high on any green CIO’s list of priorities, says Markus Terho, director of environmental affairs at Nokia.

“If you keep your phone charger plugged in 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the energy used is far greater than in the other lifecycle phases of the phone, manufacturing and disposal,” he says. “Simply unplugging the charger from its socket will minimise at least 35 per cent of its environmental impact.”

Of course, changing behaviour is not easy, especially in large organisations and Mr Terho remains realistic. Nokia aims to provide the “most efficient” chargers, with models shipped this year drawing a phantom load of less than 50 milliwatts.

“That is two thousand times less than a single lightbulb when the device is not charging, but our aim is to get that as close to zero as possible,” says Mr Terho. Nokia, along with other manufacturers of high-volume electronics goods, has also looked at adding LED status lights to chargers as a visual prompt to unplug, or where possible, switch off the device.

Within a few years, more radical options could be available. Siemens Home and Office Communications (SHC) of Germany has developed ECO DECT for its cordless phones. The manufacturer says that ECO DECT handsets use between 20 and 30 milliwatts, or 60 per cent less power than a conventional DECT phone, due to a more efficient power supply.

Further savings come from technology that reduces the transmission power between base station and handset to as low a level as possible.

The logical next step is solar power, says Jochen Eickholt, CEO of SHC. “Our prototypes suggest we can reduce power by 16 to 25 per cent, although that depends on the performance parameters of [miniature] solar cells, and they are still in their infancy,” he explains. “At the moment, the concept is to use solar to supplement existing power sources.”

Dr Eickholt says manufacturers have also made progress in reducing the power consumption of devices such as broadband routers, gateways and internet telephony adapters that, by their nature, need to be left switched on all the time.

Much of this has been done by using better power management software algorithms. A self-sufficient device using only solar power is possible, he suggests, but obtaining sufficient light to power it remains the crux.

Nonetheless, Dr Eickholt says that customers, especially business buyers, are demanding better environmental performance.

This trend has also been observed by Barry Carroll, master technologist for mobile power Subsystems in Hewlett-Packard’s Personal Systems Group. “Corporate customers are extremely interested [in more energy-efficient hardware] and countries, such as Australia and China, are accepting US Environmental Protection Agency standards.”

The Environmental Protection Agency requires laptop computer makers to follow a code of conduct for “no load” power use when a charger is plugged in but the laptop is disconnected, or shut down, limiting it to 0.5 watts. HP says its notebooks already draw less than that.

For CIOs, buying greener equipment is only part of the solution. They also need to manage how staff use existing equipment, including personal devices.

Portable devices lack the sophisticated energy monitoring technology built in to servers and other data centre hardware, and CIOs might not even know exactly how much equipment their business owns.

“IT folks are focused on the data centre, which is seen as the energy hog,” says Chris Mines, lead analyst for environmental issues at Forrester Research.

“The next tier is fixed devices such as PCs and peripherals. Few IT people even think of the tier after that, mobile devices such as PDAs. They have no corporate asset tag, and no visibility.”

What is visible, though, is the moving dial on the electricity meter. If CIOs cannot monitor portable devices from their data centres, walking the office floor and unplugging unused chargers should go some way to keeping vampire power from troubling their dreams.

Source:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0b6e6010-ff06-11dc-b556-000077b07658,s01=1.html
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Drilling rules forged anew


April 1, 2008
Denver Post


The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission unveiled Monday proposed rules designed to protect the environment, public health, and wildlife.

Among the new rules: a 90-day drilling ban could be implemented in wildlife breeding areas; limits on drilling near public water supplies; odor controls on well equipment located within a half-mile of occupied buildings in the San Juan and Piceance basins; and reporting requirements for chemicals used at each well site.

The oil and gas industry has opposed the new rules, contending they would jeopardize energy development, which has been booming with a record 6,368 drilling permits approved in 2007.
Public hearings will be held on the rules in June.

The commission is expected to vote on them in mid-July for implementation November 1.

Source:
http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_8763743
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The ‘flagrant violation’ in Carbon County is for a buildup of potentially explosive material


April 1, 20008
Salt Lake Tribune


The Mine Safety and Health Administration announced Monday that it has issued a “flagrant violation” to operators of the West Ridge mine in Carbon County, Utah, the second time in two weeks MSHA has aggressively gone after violations at mines owned by Murray Energy Corp.

On March 20, MSHA announced it was assessing $420,300 in fines for flagrant violations at the Tower mine, which is operated by a subsidiary of Murray Energy.

Both the violation at West Ridge announced Monday and the Tower violations stem from the accumulation of potentially explosive material.

In the case of the West Ridge mine, coal dust had accumulated in the crusher building and the company was ordered on three occasions – in December 2006, January 2007, and in January 2008 – to clean it up.

MSHA assessed a $4,800 fine for each of the previous two West Ridge violations.
Both are delinquent.

The agency has not assessed a fine in the latest violation, but it could impose a fine of up to $220,000.

MSHA found that the Tower mine contained unacceptably high levels of coal dust and liquid hydrocarbons.

Last week, UtahAmerican Energy Inc., which operated the Tower mine, said it was closing the mine because of unexpected structural issues.

Tower was the deepest operating mine in the U.S.

Source:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_8765449
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FPL Energy plans to build solar power facility in California


March 31, 2008
Electric Light & Power
Utility Automation & Engineering T&D


FPL Energy, through a wholly-owned subsidiary, has filed an application for certification with the California Energy Commission to construct, own, and operate a 250-megawatt solar plant in the Mojave Desert to be called the Beacon Solar Energy Project.

The Beacon Solar Energy Project will be located on an approximately 2,000 acre site in eastern Kern County, California.

More than 500,000 parabolic mirrors will be assembled in rows to receive and concentrate the solar energy to produce steam for powering a steam turbine generator.

The generator will produce electric power for delivery to the nearby electric grid.

FPL Energy expects to begin construction on the project late in 2009 and take approximately two years to complete.

Source: http://uaelp.pennnet.com/display_article/324502/22/ARTCL/none/none/1/FPLEnergy-plans-to-build-solar-power-facility-in-California/
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NRG Energy begins construction on Texas wind farm


March 31, 2008
Electric Light & Power
Utility Automation & Engineering T&D


NRG Energy Inc., through its wholly owned subsidiary Padoma Wind Power LLC, began construction on the Elbow Creek Wind Project, a 122 megawatt (MW) wind farm in Howard County near Big Spring, Texas.

Construction of the Elbow Creek Wind Project is expected to take nine months with commercial operation achieved by year end.

The project will use 53 Siemens 2.3 MW wind turbine generators. The Elbow Creek Wind Project will be built on an approximately 6,700-acre tract of land.

The ground elevation where wind turbines will be installed is approximately 2,800 feet above sea level.

Source: http://uaelp.pennnet.com/display_article/324503/22/ARTCL/none/none/1/NRGEnergy-begins-construction-on-Texas-wind-farm/
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Groups criticize DOE’s GNEP program as too costly and too risky


March 31, 2008
Platts


The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) is a poorly-supported program that could pose significant risks to public health and safety, a group of organizations said in a report Monday.

The partnership, which began in 2002, involves 21 countries whose goal is to spur the construction of civilian nuclear power plants while ensuring that spent fuel would not fall into the hands of terrorists. Partnership countries would send their spent fuel to be reprocessed in the U.S.
The report – sponsored by Friends of the Earth USA, the Government Accountability Project, the Institute for Policy Studies, and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy – said the project is too risky and too costly and should be cancelled.

The groups plan to urge Congress to eliminate funding for GNEP. A senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies said the groups want spent nuclear fuel to stay where it is, buried at reactor sites.

They also want the government to abandon the idea of Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear waste repository and start a process for selecting a new site.

The report said that none of the GNEP technologies and processes is commercially viable at the moment.

Source:
http://www.platts.com/Nuclear/News/6847559.xml?sub=Nuclear&p=Nuclear/News&?u ndefined&undefined
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