Category Archives: Renewable Energy

The Jobs are in the Trees: Reforestation

Glenn Hurowitz writes in grist that The jobs are in the trees:
With Congress and the White House considering spending scarce dollars to jump-start employment, they’ll need to get the biggest jobs bang for the buck to give Americans confidence that they’re spending our money wisely. Probably the biggest jobs generator of all, and one of the least recognized, is investing in forest and land restoration and sustainable management, with conservation, watershed projects, and park investment coming close behind.

That’s a very interesting jobs comparison; I didn’t know that.

To summarize, reforestation and restoration outperforms even the second-most jobs-intense activity analyzed by 74 percent, and conservation exceeds other major jobs alternatives, including especially new highway construction, Wall Street, and conventional energy sources like oil and nuclear.
In fact, nuclear comes in dead last in this comparison.

And biomass produces less than half as many jobs as reforestation and land resto ration.

Lowndes County Not Recession-Proof

Sea Island Co. had a reputation for immunity to economic whims while over-borrowing and over-expansion? Hm, they’re not the only ones. As recently as 28 April 2008 the VDT published a story “Analyst: Valdosta ‘recession-proof'”:
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, business consultant and president of JobBait.com Mark Hovind ranked every metropolitan statistical area across the country, highlighting those he deemed to be “recession-proof.” The city of Valdosta was the only Georgia city to make the list.
Continue reading →

Sea Island Co. Goes Bust

What happens when you build an economy on real estate:
The once-vaunted Sea Island Co. is awash in debt, badly behind on its loan payments and desperately trying to find a buyer for its five-star portfolio that once seemed immune to the economic whims that batter regular folk.

The company’s downward spiral is a stunning tale of over-borrowing and over-expansion that collided with the worst recession since World War II, a downturn that has pummeled the luxury resort market across the nation.

OK, so a big developer goes belly-up; who cares? Continue reading →

Solar Clubhouse

Johnna Pinholster writes in the VDT about The Residences at Five Points:
Benoit introduced Scott Clark from SolTherm, who will partner with Ambling on The Residences at Five Points.

The eco-friendly business out of Asheville, N.C., will oversee the construction of 23 solar panels on the roof of the complex’s clubhouse.

Those panels, Clark said, will provide between 50 and 60 percent of the clubhouse’s energy, Clark said.

Well, it’s a start. But why not solar panels on the roofs of the residences? And why a company out of Asheville when there are at least three companies in Valdosta who could have done that part?

Encouraging New Energy Production Via Solar

While Georgia did little to deploy renewable energy, Texas has almost doubled its renewable energy source from 2004 to 2006:

How did Texas do that, and how can Valdosta and Lowndes County help Georgia catch up?

Some years back, Austin, Texas, which has been growing rapidly for decades, needed to find a way to produce more energy. Building a coal plant was not really an option for a city that had long sold itself as a home of green industry. Nuclear had a bad taste because in the 1980s Austin had been an investor in the South Texas Nuclear project, which had been late, over budget, never produced what it was supposed to, and had many political problems. So Austin settled on a new plan: instead of spending big bucks to build a dirty coal plant, use the same money to give rebates to homeowners and businesses for installing solar power. Big rebates: 75%, the largest, and among the first in the country. This made perfect economic sense, producing as much new energy as needed, without coal or nuclear, and distributed where it was needed.

Now Austin is trying a new wrinkle:

The Austin, Texas, city council has approved Austin Energy’s solar incentive program, which includes a new approach for commercial, multifamily and nonprofit customers. The new approach saves $2.4 million over the life of the program, according to the utility.
Continue reading →

PCA’s building the greenest mill in the country –CEO

Malynda Fulton writes in the VDT that, according to its CEO Paul Stecko, Packaging Corporation of America (PCA) is building
…the greenest mill in the U.S. and possibly the least costly to operate. This mill will become the mill of the future instead of the mill from the past.
This is at the PCA plant in Clyattville.


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Why green?

Through the new boilers, PCA was able to eliminate the use of fossil fuel and run the boilers on renewable energy, Stecko explained.
In other words, it’s a biomass plant. The article doesn’t say whether the biomass is entirely materials that would otherwise have been discarded, nor how efficient it is.

The article does say: Continue reading →

Longleaf Flood Prevention and Carbon Sequestration

dscn1384_candle_dead_leaves Instead of planting fast-growing slash or loblolly pines just to burn up in a biomass plant, how about plant the south’s iconic longleaf pine trees to capture and hold carbon from the atmosphere?
“Longleaf should be the centerpiece of land-based carbon sequestration efforts in the Southeast,” the report states, urging that national policymakers make the ecosystem as high a priority as the Everglades or Chesapeake Bay.
The report is Restoring the Longleaf Pine: Preparing the Southeast for Global Warming, Published December 10, 2009 by the National Wildlife Federation and two southeast forest conservation groups, America’s Longleaf, and The Longleaf Alliance.

People rightly worry about deforestation in the Amazon basin of Brazil, but forget or never knew that we already did that right here in the southeast: Continue reading →

Solar panels from Lowe’s or Home Depot

Chris Kahn writes in Mail Times about Solar power coming to a store near you:
Solar technology is going where it has never gone before: onto the shelves at retail stores where do-it-yourselfers can now plunk a panel into a shopping cart and bring it home to install.

Lowe’s has begun stocking solar panels at its California stores and plans to roll them out across the country next year.

This shows how far the highest of the high-tech alternative energy technologies has come. Solar power is now accessible to anyone with a ladder, a power drill, and the gumption to climb up on a roof and install the panels themselves.

You can’t get tham at Lowe’s of Valdosta yet.

The article also says Home Depot offers panels on its web pages.

In either case, to get the Georgia 35% state tax installation rebate you’d have to have them installed by a certified Georgia solar installer.

Even so, commodity solar panels in doit it yourself stores is a big step. If nothing else, it should keep prices down on panels bought through installers.

And if you really want to buy them yourself, what appear to be the same 80 watt Sharp panels Lowe’s lists on its web pages go for $343 at Affordable Solar online. The article says Lowe’s sells 175 watt panels; Home Depot lists those for $997.97. Affordable Solar list them for $594; plus shipping, of course. Solar Blvd lists them for $541.50. Or you can buy panels with more wattage, or more panels. If you want to buy your own solar panels, you can.

You can also find out your local rebates and sales tax exemptions online from DSIRE.

Local Thanksgiving

Here in Lowndes County and the surrounding area we have plenty of things to be thankful for:
  • A growing local food community, anchored by Jason DeLoach’s F.M. Guess Pecan Company of Valdosta, the Packhouse Market of Hahira, and of course Jim Fiveash’s Food Store of Hahira. Let’s not forget the Valdosta Farmer’s Market (1500 South Patterson Street) and Farmer Brown’s Produce. There’s even at least one local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) starting up.
  • Long distance transportation: Interstate 75 near I-10, numerous state highways, and an airport.
  • Delta Airlines (I never thought I’d be writing this) for competitive airfares (except during holidays). And landing on one of the longest runways in the state.
  • Railroads going in every direction carrying freight, which can also carry passengers whenever state and local people and governments get organized to do it.
  • Businesses moving in to take advantage of the transportation; working towards enough good jobs that young people don’t have to move away to find one.
  • County and city governments that are at least a little bit sceptical about exactly which businesses they encourage to move in.
  • Moody Air Force Base, by far the biggest employer, bringing diversity to the community both in serving personnel and in later retirees.
  • Two hospitals: South Georgia Medical Center and Smith Northview Hospital.
  • There’s even a Valdosta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) including the counties of Lowndes, Brooks, Lanier, and Echols, with a combined population of about 130,000. This is enough people to try things without waiting for Atlanta or Washington to tell us what to do.
  • Valdosta State University, one of two large regional campuses of the University of Georgia System, and one so active politically that it got its own voting precinct this year, the only college precinct in the state.
  • Live election results during each election, on the Lowndes County website. It’s the only county in the state that does this!
  • Georgia Military College, a liberal arts junior college.
  • Valdosta Technical College, or whatever it’s being called since the state reorganized it.
  • Thriving downtowns in Valdosta and Hahira. First Friday, Winterfest, Honeybee Festival: those are doing more to attract attractive businesses than any number of road projects.
  • Grand Bay Wildlife Management Area, preserving a little bit of the original ecosystem of the area; you know, pine trees, live oaks, wiregrass, pitcher plants, cypress swamps, alligators, great blue herons, and bobcats. Maybe you don’t. Go and see!
  • Trees, for forestry, and for themselves. See Patterson Street (a little planning kept it from looking like Ashley Street), and the oldest longleaf pines in the county are on the VSU campus; older than Valdosta. There are even a few left elsewhere in the county. Protecting forests is not just the right thing to do, it’s good business.
  • Rain, so trees and crops will grow.
  • Sunshine, much more than Germany, for example, so we can do solar if we want to.
  • Winning sports teams in Lowndes County and Valdosta high schools and VSU caused ESPN to name Valdosta TitleTown. Maybe that winning attitude can carry over to improving academics.
  • Theatre at the Dosta, VSU, and the high schools. If theatre was a sport, we’d be winning that, too!
    Dites-moi
    Pourquoi
    La vie est belle,
    Dies-moi
    Pourquoi
    La vie est gai?     		    Tell me why
    The sky
    is filled with music,
    Tell me why
    We fly
    on clouds above?
We live in an area with many advantages. You can probably list more of them.

Why stop with what we’ve got? Why not play up our advantages of transportation, natural environment, local culture, etc., and attract jobs for young people and make the place even better for everybody?

Germany: As much new solar power as 3 large coal or nuclear plants

Germany leads the world in solar installation, according to Erik Kirschbaum in Reuters 23 Nov 2009:
Germany, the world’s leader in photovoltaic which turns sunlight into electricity, had 5.3 GW installed at the end of 2008, including a previous record 1.6 GW added in 2008.

That was about a third of the world’s total of 15 GW. Three GW installed this year would produce as much power as three large coal-burning plants or three nuclear power plants.

Remember, Stuttgart gets about as much sunlight as Pittsburgh. And that’s in the sunny south of Germany. Georgia gets as much sunlight as Cyprus in the Mediterranean or Algiers in Africa.