Category Archives: energy efficiency

VDT announces Occupy Valdosta

In the paper paper today,
David S. Rodock wrote, “Occupying Valdosta: Protesters to hold rally in Drexel Park Friday.”
The pullquote top center of the page is:

“We initially wanted to go out and target corporate greed
and get the corporations out of the government.
There needs to be a separation.”

Erin Hurley

Occupy Valdosta event coordinator.

You can see it here, thanks to Michael Noll:

Y’all come:

“Basically, we want to exercise our right to peaceably assemble,”
said Hurley,
“We want everyone to join in and let their voice be heard.
I feel a lot of people have lost that sense of freedom we once had.”

Meet at Drexel Park before noon.
The VDT got the route wrong, but just come along and you’ll get there.
If you aren’t able to walk a few miles, head directly to the Chamber of
Commerce around 1:30 PM, and we’ll meet you there a bit later.

Yes, I’m one of the organizers, in case I haven’t said that before.
Here’s the Facebook event.

I’d like to add my usual plug for

Continue reading →

Do you have solar energy yourself? Why yes, yes, I do

Grady Blankenship wrote a LTE in the VDT Wednesday, in which he asked
“do you have solar energy yourself?”
Why yes, yes, I do.
And I have some questions for everyone at the end.

Back

in 2009 we installed solar panels on our farm workshop.


At the time the closest certified solar installer I could find was in Marietta.
Four years ago there were 4 in the state.
now there are forty.
And that’s in a state that’s trailing

North Carolina
and even

New Jersey
in solar installations.

Also, I applied some weeks back for a USDA REAP grant for solar
for Okra Paradise Farms.


Much to our surprise, last week we

Continue reading →

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Network met yesterday

Yesterday the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Network had its second
monthly organizationl meeting at the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce.
It’s working up a business plan to submit to the Chamber Board for next year.
The Chair is the eminent Dr. Dennis Marks, VSU Emeritus Professor,
and the Chamber contact is ReKasa Deen of

Opportunity Central.
Here everybody says “renewable energy and solar power!”





Sherry Wheat (Hannah Solar), Sharon Jackson (South GA Solar Power), Ron Jackson (Production Community Services), Bill Branham (21st Century Telecom), ?, Dr. Dennis Marks (Chair), Matt Jansen (Boys and Girls Club), John S. Quarterman (Okra Paradise Farms), ReKasa Deen (VLCoC Opportunity Central)

picture by Myrna Ballard (VLCoC President) for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange

Sherry Wheat of Hannah Solar drove down from Atlanta to help me announce
that

Okra Paradise Farms got the USDA REAP grant we applied for,
to add about 52 solar panels to our farm workshop.
Hannah Solar helped us submit the paperwork in 3 days.
More on that as it transpires.

-jsq

Solar: Infinite and Clean —Michael Noll

In today’s VDT. -jsq

If we are to believe Fox News and the Tea Party, solar doesn’t work


because the solar panel manufacturer Solyndra went belly up, despite the
fact that it received $535 million in subsidies. While wasting an enormous
amount of tax dollars on a company with a flawed business concept should
raise everyone’s eyebrows, the conclusion that the Solyndra mess means
“solar doesn’t work” is mind-boggling. It’s like saying “cars don’t
work” because Chrysler went bankrupt in 2009, or “T-shirts don’t work”
because Fruit of the Loom filed for Chapter 11 in 1999.

Solar is one of the most attractive renewable sources of energy throughout

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Solar is cost-effective —Dr. Noll @ LCC 13 September 2011



Dr. Noll made the case for the cost-effectiveness of solar energy
through, among other things, an analogy to finaninc buying a car.

First Dr. Noll thanked people who had supported

WACE’s anti-biomass work,
and hoped people had had time to read his recent LTE in the VDT,

Waste Not, Want Not.
Then he addressed Commissioner Raines’

comments of the previous day.
Dr. Noll pointed out that solar is

fast becoming less expensive
and with financing costs little more than a car or truck.

Here’s

the video:




Solar is cost-effective —Dr. Noll @ LCC 13 September 2011

Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 September 2011.

Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

Waste Not, Want Not —Michael Noll

VDT LTE today. -jsq



We can only prosper as a society if we work together. Despite the
differences we might have, we share so much more in common. Yet it seems
that we prefer to fall into separate camps, that we seek to view issues
in black and white, and that we like to belong to those who have “got
it all figured out”. Just pick your side (liberal, conservative)
and you “know” who got it all wrong.

I have been humbled by the wide-ranging support WACE received to stop
a biomass plant that was once considered a done deal. In the end what
mattered was the realization by people across all ages, racial and
ideological lines that we want to breathe clean air, and that we don’t
want to waste millions of tax dollars on a project that will lead to
increases in respiratory illnesses, heart diseases, and cancer. Thus
the people spoke up, and with the help of elected representatives and
the Industrial Authority “no biomass” became the consensus.

In the last couple of months I noticed another issue many agree on.

Continue reading →

Growing talent instead of population

What are some ideas for economic and cultural growth that don’t require huge population growth? Richard Florida has many ideas for large and mid-sized population areas in the article discussed below. Who’s the Richard Florida for places the size of Lowndes County?



Richard Florida wrote in the Atlantic in December 2009,

How the Crash Will Reshape America:

Big, talent-attracting places benefit from accelerated rates of “urban metabolism,”

The question we need to address is how to be a small
talent-attracting place, and even more a smallish place that grows its own
talent and jobs.

This part is especially relevant:

Continue reading →

Retrofitting suburbia —Ellen Dunham-Jones

There are many jobs in this.
The

Five Points redevelopment
is an example of what she’s talking about.
It’s a lot better than building more sprawl:
safer, less expensive, more jobs, less energy cost, more energy independence,
better health, and more community.

Georgia Tech Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones spole January 2010 at TEDxAtlanta,

Retrofitting suburbia



In the last 50 years, we’ve been building the suburbs with a lot of
unintended consequences. And I’m going to talk about some of those
consequences and just present a whole bunch of really interesting projects
that I think give us tremendous reasons to be really optimistic that
the big design and development project of the next 50 years is going
to be retrofitting suburbia. So whether it’s redeveloping dying malls
or re-inhabiting dead big-box stores or reconstructing wetlands out
of parking lots, I think the fact is, the growing number of empty and
under-performing, especially, retail sites throughout suburbia gives
us actually a tremendous opportunity to take our least-sustainable
landscapes right now and convert them into more sustainable places. And
in the process, what that allows us to do is to redirect a lot more of
our growth back into existing communities that could use a boost, and
have the infrastructure in place, instead of continuing to tear down
trees and to tear up the green space out at the edges.

Here’s
the video:

Continue reading →

Because of my mother —Dr. Noll @ VLCIA 19 July 2011



Dr. Noll, president of WACE, welcomed VLCIA’s new executive director Andrea Schruijer, and
then reminded the board that the honking cars outside
indicated an ongoing community assessment of biomass,
and he encouraged them to consider previously presented
materials and to prevent the biomass plant from
finding a back door to come back in.

He remarked that he had visited his mother in Germany:

One and half years ago she was in the intensive care unit for about three weeks
because she had severe lung issues.
She moved away after that
to an area where there isn’t the kind of air pollution she was
exposed to before hand,
and every single day she wakes up she feels like she’s on vacation.

Here’s

the video:




Because of my mother —Dr. Noll @ VLCIA 19 July 2011

Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),

Norman Bennett, Tom Call, Roy Copeland chairman, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett,

Andrea Schruijer Executive Director, J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Project Manager,

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 July 2011.

Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

Stockholm Fossil Fuel Free City 2050

If a

cold Nordic city at the latitude of Anchorage
can do this, sunny Valdosta can do this:



The City of Stockholm’s “Action Programme on Climate Change”
involves the participation of several groups: the City of Stockholm’s
own departments, local businesses and those who live and work in the
city. The work has been successful so far and the emission of greenhouse
gases has been reduced. In 1990, emissions of 5.3 tons of CO2e* per
person were registered compared with 4.0 tons CO2e per person in 2005.

The long-term target is for Stockholm to continue to reduce emissions of
greenhouse gases at the same rate as between 1990 and 2005. In theory,
this means that Stockholm will become a fossil fuel free city by 2050.

Greenhouse gas targets for the period of 2005-2050 compared with the
base year of 1990.

* CO2e = means of specifying the effect of a gas on the emission of
greenhouse gases compared to carbon dioxide.

-jsq

PS: This post owed to Tim Carroll, who saw it in Time Magazine.