Who would know that an old garbage dump at Staten Island in New York City would house 20 MW of renewable power? If they succeed with their plans, “Fresh Kills landfill” will be transformed into a combined solar and wind farm that could generate enough electricity to power 6,000 average American households!
The old landfill has serviced the city for 53 years, and taken care of a whopping two billion tons of thrash, before closing early in 2011.
School lunches, speculators —Garry Gentry Farm Bill Forum, Senator Saxby Chambliss, Gary Black, Charles Hall, Robert Redding, John Maguire, Tifton, Tift County, Georgia, 16 March 2012. Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
Bring our troops home —Gretchen Quarterman Farm Bill Forum, Senator Saxby Chambliss, Gary Black, Charles Hall, Robert Redding, John Maguire, Tifton, Tift County, Georgia, 16 March 2012. Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
The first graph illustrates what a typical day on the electricity market in Germany looked like in March four years ago; the second illustrates what is happening now, with 25GW of solar PV installed across the country. Essentially, it means that solar PV is not just licking the cream off the profits of the fossil fuel generators — as happens in Australia with a more modest rollout of PV — it is in fact eating their entire cake.
So solar is taking the profits out of coal and natural gas. So sad!
Deutsche Bank solar analyst Vishal Shah noted in a report last month that EPEX data was showing solar PV was cutting peak electricity prices by up to 40%, a situation that utilities in Germany and elsewhere in Europe were finding intolerable. “With Germany adopting a drastic cut, we expect major utilities in other European countries to push for similar cuts as well,” Shah noted.
Analysts elsewhere said one quarter of Germany’s gas-fired capacity may be closed, because of the impact of surging solar and wind capacity. Enel, the biggest utility in Italy, which had the most solar PV installed in 2011, highlighted its exposure to reduced peaking prices when it said that a €5/MWh fall in average wholesale prices would translate into a one-third slump in earnings from the generation division.
You know, if the utilities got out in front and generated energy from solar and wind themselves, they wouldn’t be having this problem.
Here in Georgia, even Georgia Power could get going and do that, instead of fighting this:
Andrea Schruijer, Executive Director of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA), made a presentation to the Lowndes County Commission at their Work Session 26 March 2012. VLCIA Board member G. Norman Bennett was also present. Congratulations to VLCIA on proactively getting the word out about what they are doing!
Industrial Authority presentation Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 March 2012. Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
Other notable parts of this meeting were when
staff
said conservation status was a small detail and
and
Commissioners
proceeded to get rid of it in a rezoning.
Videos
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission, (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
A month ago (28 February 2012), Chairman Ashley Paulk
chastised the VDT for how it reported on recent changes to the alcohol
ordinance.
This month he singled out an applicant for an alcohol license and said:
We expect you to run a clean, quiet establishment.
If not, we expect the Sheriff to enforce the law.
“We expect you to run a clean, quiet establishment” —Ashley Paulk @ 2012-03-13
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission, (LCC), Lowndes County Commission,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 March 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
What’s this about, and what’s the connection with the meeting of a month ago?
The Chairman was referring to
Continue reading →
ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization
— that is, on turning the provision of public services, from
schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the
most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online
education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections
Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved
with the organization.
What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for
limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large
extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized
government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer
dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In
short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is
about expanding crony capitalism.
And in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC
promotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories,
what we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools,
for example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the
way of educational achievement.
Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony
capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal
justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to
protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap
from a larger prison population.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail in 1963:
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
And today we have an organized threat to justice everywhere.
That threat is called ALEC.
Paul Wolff told us how he came to invest in solar energy:
I did the math on it ahead of time.
I had a bunch of mutual funds that hadn’t done anything in a long time.
I figured out given the
state and federal tax credits
what the payback would be,
and it came out to be about eight years.
So I just divided that out, and by selling mutual funds
and investing that money in solar panels on my roof
it’s an eleven percent return.
And in this economic climate I have nothing else
yielding anywhere near that.
So that’s a selling point.
11% return on solar panel investment —Paul Wolff
Tybee Island, Chatham County, Georgia, 17 February 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
Videos of VSU Debate 2012-03-20 between VSU Democrats and VSU Republicans,
Valdosta State University, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 20 March 2012.
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
Who would know that an old garbage dump at Staten Island in New York City would house 20 MW of renewable power? If they succeed with their plans, “Fresh Kills landfill” will be transformed into a combined solar and wind farm that could generate enough electricity to power 6,000 average American households!
