Tag Archives: Biomass

Southern Company Shareholder meeting: renewables more than doubled in one year 2017-05-24

While its natural gas percentage remained flat, and coal and nuclear decreased, Southern Company (SO) more than doubled its renewable energy generation percentage in one year. Maybe I’ll mention that at the annual shareholder meeting in May.

2017 Mix:
2017 Energy Mix
2016 Mix:
2016 Energy Mix

When: 10:00 a.m., ET
Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Where: The Lodge Conference Center
Callaway Gardens
4500 Southern Pine Drive
Pine Mountain, GA 31822-2593

Event: Annual Southern Company
Shareholder Meeting

Southern Company has all its SEC filings online, including Continue reading

U.S. electric power source projections: solar still most by 2023

According to FERC’s own figures from 2012 and 2016, my solar projections from 2013 (and former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff’s) were pretty good, and more U.S. electricity will still come from solar power by 2023. LAKE Solar Table 2017 Since coal and nuclear are already crashing, and natural gas isn’t increasing even as fast as formerly projected, solar could win even faster.

I constructed table below from the 2012 and 2016 summaries of total U.S. electric power generation from all sources, by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Look at the 2012 column: only coal and natural gas generated more than 25% of total U.S. electricity.

But in 2016 it’s only natural gas, because coal’s growth rate actually turned negative: utilities are shutting down coal plants, not building them. Back in 2013 I did not predict that to happen so quickly.

Now look at the growth rates, both Continue reading

Pipelines companies don’t detect corrosion or stop explosions

A reminder of why to stop pipeline companies from burying investors’ money in the ground and get on with solar power: the pipeline that exploded in Texas last week was half owned by Spectra Energy, the pipeline company behind Sabal Trail, AIM, Penneast, and numerous other fracked methane invasions and behind thirty years of undetected corrosion resulting in leaks, explosions, property damage, and deaths. The pipeline company didn’t detect it and couldn’t even turn it off quickly. Want to bet that it, like Spectra’s Pennsylvania explosion last spring, was corrosion?

A very Texas report said “no people or cattle were injured” and also notice: “The fire is under control and will burn itself out.” Continue reading

Renewable energy world’s second largest source of electricity

Why are we building any new natural gas pipelines when solar and wind have already won the world? Plus solar and wind don’t frack, don’t need any fuel, don’t require eminent domain, and don’t suck up any cooling water.

Alex Kirby, Climate News Network, 19 August 2015, World’s Second Largest Source of Electricity Is Now Renewables, Continue reading

100% renewable energy for U.S. by 2050

Here’s how to convert everything from air conditioners to trucks 300x170 End-Use U.S. Power Change over Time, in 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States, by Mark Z. Jacobson et al., 27 May 2015 from fossil fuels to 100% renewable sun, wind, and water power by 2050, generating more jobs than would be lost from dirty energy, stopping tens of thousands of premature deaths from pollution, saving about 4% of U.S. GDP, plus saving $3.3 trillion worldwide climate change costs.

That’s 100% as in no coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, or biomass, just clean solar, wind, and water power: 90% by 2035, 80% by 2030, and 25% by 2025. No new technology required: just existing solar, wind, and water power production with batteries and hydrogen fuel cells for transportation, plus huge efficiency savings both from using electricity directly and through other well-known techniques.

A cleaner, healthier world is within our reach. And when even the country’s most corrupt legislature can unanimously pass and the Georgia governor who took campaign funds from six pipeline companies can sign a solar financing law, while Georgia has already become the fastest-growing solar market in the country, renewable energy is producing the political will to get this done.

Stanford Report, 8 June 2015, Continue reading

Jimmy Carter’s dream of a solar-powered world is coming true now

U.S. president Jimmy Carter had a dream, 300x300 10360845 897383750328270 6241606373708524983 N, in Work together to turn our vision and dream into a solar reality --Jimmy Carter, by Climate Reality Project, 20 June 1979 thirty six years before Pope Francis spelled out why we all need to escape a dark hot nightmare, and Jimmy Carter’s sunny dream is now coming true.

Today, in directly harnessing the power of the Sun, we’re taking the energy that God gave us, the most renewable energy that we will ever see, and using it to replace our dwindling supplies of fossil fuels.

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Southern Company Annual Stockholder Meeting @ SO 2015-05-27

Solar power made much of SO’s increased energy revenues for 2013 and 2014. What else will we learn at the Southern Company 2015 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, Wednesday, May 27, 2015? Has Southern Company finally looked up, and will it say, like Thomas Alva Edison in 1931, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy”?

To attend the SO shareholder meeting you have to have owned stock by Monday, March 30, 2015, or you’ll need to get somebody to appoint you their proxy. Since I’m an SO stockholder, I got the 216-page Southern Company Notice of 2015 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, Proxy Statement and 2014 Annual Report, page D-8:

In 2014, wholesale revenues increased $329 million, or 17.7%, as compared to the prior year due to a $326 million increase in energy revenues and a $3 million increase in capacity revenues. The increase in energy revenues was primarily related to increased revenue under existing contracts as well as new solar PPAs and requirements contracts primarily at Southern Power, Continue reading

Stealth VLCIA real estate meeting last Wednesday @ VLCIA 2014-08-13

Well, the agenda says the Invocation was “For the purpose of discussing real estate”; it doesn’t say what the Executive Session was for.

Maybe they’ve got a customer for one of those empty industrial parks Brad Lofton talked them into building before he left the state.

Maybe they’re going to build some of those spec buildings they and Valdosta Mayor Gayle admire in Vidalia and Douglas.

Maybe they’re still negotiating with Continue reading

VDT has selective smell

To the VDT the county government always smells like azaleas and the city of Valdosta government always smells like sewage. The local newspaper of record doesn’t seem to smell sewage or landfill problems from Lowndes County. Today’s VDT editorial complains about environmental groups paying attention to “theoretical disasters” (presumably referring to the Sabal Trail pipeline), yet the VDT has never covered the group that has most consistently followed the watershed-wide flooding issues that cause Valdosta’s flooding problems: WWALS Watershed Coalition. The VDT recommends citizens get more involved in sniffing out Valdosta’s sewage problems, yet it doesn’t seem to cover Citizens Wishing To Be Heard anymore, nor has the VDT called for the citizen participation sessions promised by the local governments for the Army Corps of Engineers flooding studies. Maybe the VDT could encourage citizen participation, rather than ignore it.

VDT editorial today, It just plain stinks, Continue reading

EU could cut 40% emissions with little cost: and we can, too

If Europe can do it, the U.S. can do it. And we know Georgia can get a third of its power from wind, and even Spain is north of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, which have a lot more sun for solar power than anywhere in Europe. Solar power is already winning, even in Georgia. Let’s help it win even faster, plus wind.

PR from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) 16 January 2014, EU could cut emissions by 40 percent at moderate cost,

The costs of achieving a more ambitious EU climate target are estimated to be moderate. Upscaling greenhouse-gas emissions reduction from the current 20 percent by 2020 to 40 percent by 2030 would be likely to cost less than an additional 0.7 percent of economic activity.

And that apparently doesn’t count the additional economic activity that would be produced by all those wind and solar deployments, not to mention related activities like electric cars. This is actually a pessimistic study, because it doesn’t account for such likely positive corollaries.

Many options to choose from—wind power could expand sevenfold

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