Tag Archives: Economy

Time to call it: Carbon Crash, Solar Dawn

Another observer gets it that

green solar power is winning.
Letting a fracking deliver company turn us into “stakeholders” in a white
elephant methane pipeline would be an even huger waste after the
pipeline stopped being used in a decade or so because

sun, wind, and water power everything by then,
winning like the Internet did.

Paul Gilding wrote on his blog 19 March 2013,

Carbon Crash Solar Dawn,



I think it’s time to call it. Renewables and associated storage,
transport and digital technologies are so rapidly disrupting whole
industries’ business models they are pushing the fossil fuel
industry towards inevitable collapse.

Some of you will struggle with that statement. Most people accept
the idea that fossil fuels are all powerful — that the
industry controls governments and it will take many decades to force
them out of our economy. Fortunately, the fossil fuel industry
suffers the same delusion.

In fact, probably the main benefit of the US shale gas and oil
“revolution” is that it’s keeping the fossil fuel
industry and it’s cheer squad distracted while renewables, electric
cars and associated technologies build the momentum needed to make
their takeover unstoppable — even by the most powerful
industry in the world.

Why are the fossil fuel companies still pushing, then? Continue reading →

Videos: Mostly Paving and Bridges @ LCC 2014-03-24


Yesterday morning they discussed a

turnkey government website service.
And an

annexation request by the City of Hahira.
And they may actually be serious about coming into the 21st century with

online county services.

Turns out the

road resurfacing of four roads
is actually mostly from a GDOT LMIG grant,
but the other three,
shoulder paving on

Val Del Road
and

Boring Pond Road
and a

bridge replacement on Cat Creek Road
are all from SPLOST VII funds.
Plus

some trucks for Animal Control and

tablets for the Fire Department,
an

alcohol license, and some alphabet-soup agreements,
one of which turned out to be for

a grant for a victim advocate position in the Solicitor General’s office.

Here’s

the agenda.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

PROPOSED AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MARCH 24, 2014, 8:30 a.m.

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2014, 5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor

Continue reading →

Animals, Alcohol, Alphabet Soup, Paving, Bridges, and Fire @ LCC 2014-03-24



Got to spend those SPLOST dollars widening roads and bridges
to promote development farther out in the country!
Plus some trucks for Animal Control and tablets for the Fire Department,
an alcohol license, and some alphabet-soup agreements.
It may be healthy as food, but I wonder if opaque acronyms
unexplained in the agenda is good for local government.

Here’s

the agenda.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

PROPOSED AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, MARCH 24, 2014, 8:30 a.m.

REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2014, 5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor

Continue reading →

There are things you can do about the Sabal Trail Pipeline –Mario Bartoletti @ LCC 2014-03-11



Apparently the community believes the Commission thinks

there’s nothing they can do,
but Mario Bartoletti, speaking for himself and for

WACE,
said he thought there were things the Commission could do
about that 36-inch methane pipeline, and he listed some things,
at the

11 March 2014 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

Here’s

the video:



There are things you can do about the Sabal Trail Pipeline –Mario Bartoletti

Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),

Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 March 2014.

His list included:

Continue reading →

Utility-owned rooftop solar: Tom Fanning and Steven Chu agree



Tom Fanning is getting support for his idea of utility-owned
rooftop solar.
Can we see that tiger team report, Tom?
And FPL, how about you get on with this, instead of

trying to gouge an unneeded yard-wide methane pipeline through here?

Sun, wind, and water can power each U.S. state,
so how about FPL in the Sunshine State and Southern Company in the southeast
get out in front and lead?

Jeff McMahon wrote for Forbes yesterday,

Steven Chu Solves Utility Companies’ Death Spiral,

Utility companies have been looking for new regulations and higher
connection charges to save them from a “death spiral”
spurred by a surge in rooftop solar installations. Instead, says
former Energy Secretary Steven Chu, they should get into the rooftop
solar business.

Continue reading →

VLCIA high noon last week @ VLCIA 2014-03-13



An Industrial Authority board member resigned to run for an office
he qualifed for the previous day, at a meeting that had apparently
been rescheduled the day before he qualified.
OK, who’s going to replace him, and when and by whom will that be decided?
Oh, and that rescheduling means there’s no VLCIA meeting today.

The Industrial Authority rescheduled its March meeting for Thursday
last week at noon, and at that meeting,

according to the VDT, VLCIA board member Norman Bennett said:

“I am announcing that at the end of the day today, I will
resign from the Industrial Authority,”

Puzzled by that, I called the Board of Elections to ask if they
had told him there was some conflict of interest.
They said no, they had read about it in the newspaper like
everybody else.

I asked when he qualified to run for District 5.
Answer: March 12th, which was the day before he resigned
from VLCIA at its rescheduled board meeting.

When was that meeting rescheduled?
Their website gives no clue.
But their facebook page notice of the new meeting
is dated
March 11 at 3:15pm.

What do all those dates mean? Probably nothing, since local appointed
and elected boards reschedule on whims around here.
But it’s a curious series of coincidences:

More interesting is:
when and by whom will a new board member be appointed to the Industrial Authority?

Here’s

the agenda.
Maybe some year we’ll get to see

their minutes.
It’s been more than two years since Roy Copeland said he’d try to make that
happen.
He’s no longer Chairman (although he did get reappointed to the board),
and another board member has just resigned.
You know, that

VDT editorial I’m fond of quoting was actually about
the Industrial Authority’s minutes:

When officials act like they have something to hide, they often do….

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority

Thursday, March 13, 2014 12:00 p.m.

Industrial Authority Conference Room

2110 N. Patterson Street

Agenda


General Business

  • Call to Order
  • Invocation
  • Welcome Guests

Minutes

  • Regular Meeting, February 18, 2014

Financial

  • Review Compiled Balance Sheet and Income Statements for February 2014

Public Relations & Marketing Update-Meghan Duke

  • Public Relations Opportunities
    • International Trade Representatives
    • County Commission Presentation
  • Marketing Opportunities
    • Marketing Materials
    • ValdostaLowndesProspector Mobile Site
    • South Georgia Classic

Project Report-Allan Ricketts

  • Project Maroon

Existing Industry-Allan Ricketts

  • Existing Industry Visits
  • Existing Industry Expansion Projects
    • Project Wire
    • Project Treadway
    • JHS-14
  • Community Business and Industry Partnership

Executive Director’s Report- Andrea Schruijer

  • Business Development Opportunities
    • Georgia Quail Hunt February 2013
    • March Regional Marketing Trip to Consultants
    • Recruitment activities
    • International Representative Visit South Joint Regional Development Authority
    • Staff Planning Session
    • Board Planning Session
    • Met with Department of Agriculture to discuss regional food processing activity

Attorney Report


Citizens to Be Heard


Adjourn General Meeting Into Executive Session


Adjourn Executive Session into General Meeting


Adjourn General Meeting


Mission of the Valdosta Lowndes County Industrial Authority

“Create an environment to attract new industry and promote the growth of existing industry to drive job
creation and capital investment.”

-jsq

100% sun, wind, and water can power each U.S. state and the world –Stanford study



We have all the technology right now that we need to power
the U.S. state by state and the world with solar, wind, and water power.
No burning coal or oil or fracked natural gas and no nukes.
No need for any new destructive and hazardous methane pipelines.
No waiting for batteries.
All we have to do is get on with it.


100% RENEWABLE ENERGY IS FEASIBLE AND AFFORDABLE, ACCORDING TO STANFORD PROPOSAL,


Stanford University researchers led by civil engineer Mark Jacobson
have developed detailed plans for each state in the union that to
move to 100 percent wind, water and solar power by 2050 using only
technology that’s already available. The plan, presented recently at
the

AAAS conference in Chicago, also forms the basis for

The Solutions Project nonprofit.

“The conclusion is that it’s technically and economically
feasible,” Jacobson told Singularity Hub.

The plan doesn’t rely, like many others, on dramatic energy
efficiency regimes. Nor does it include biofuels or nuclear power,
whose green credentials are the source of much debate.

The proposal is straightforward: eliminate combustion as a source of
energy, because it’s dirty and inefficient. All vehicles would be
powered by electric batteries or by hydrogen, where the hydrogen is
produced through electrolysis rather than natural gas.
High-temperature industrial processes would also use electricity or
hydrogen combustion.

The rest would simply be a question of allowing existing fossil-fuel
plants to age out and using renewable sources to power any new
plants that come online….

“The greatest barriers to a conversion are neither technical
nor economic. They are social and political,” the AAAS paper
concludes.

For
Georgia,
that’s 40% solar PV plants, 35% offshore wind, 13% rooftop PV (6% residential and 7% commercial), 5% concentrating solar plants, 5% onshore wind, and 1% each wind, tide, and conventional hydro power.
Plus 210,200 construction jobs and 101,000 operation jobs.
And saving $14.3 billion per year Continue reading →

Sierra Club Chapters Oppose Sabal Trail Gas Pipeline –read by Danielle Jordan @ FERC 2014-03-04



Danielle Jordan, VSU student and president of Students Against
Violating the Environment, stood up for local landowners and
the environment against Spectra’s Sabal Trail pipeline
at the

Valdosta FERC Scoping Meeting 4 March 2014,
by reading a statement against the pipeline by the
Sierra Club chapters of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia.



Here’s the text she was reading:

TRI-STATE SIERRA CLUB CHAPTERS OPPOSE GAS PIPELINE:
Statement of the Georgia, Florida, and Alabama Sierra Club
Chapters Opposing the Sabal Trail Pipeline.

Here’s

the video:



Sierra Club Chapters Oppose Sabal Trail Gas Pipeline –read by Danielle Jordan

Sabal Trail Methane Pipeline,

Scoping Meeting, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC),

Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 March 2014.

-jsq

Corporate power comes home –Jim Parker

Letter to the Editor in the Valdosta Daily Times yesterday.
-jsq



How is it that one foreign corporation,
that has just come into existence to do this project,
can have greater power than all of the thousands of citizens affected,
and their elected governments?

No, I’m not talking about the Keystone XL pipeline, but he issues are the same.
This one wants to run a 36-inch gas pipeline through a number of states and counties,
including Lowndes, affecting thousands of landowners.
It’s known as Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC, and is the
unholy offspring of Spectra Energy Corp. and NextEra Energy.



How can one foreign corporation (they’re from out of state),
have so much power vis-avis the thousands of landowners and
citizens of Lowndes County, that the citizens must give up a hundred-foot-wide
swath of their land, along with the depreciation of their
property values, not to mention their personal safety, and allow
this pipeline to come through?
The gas is not even for use in Lowndes County, or even the State
of Georgia.

However, the general feeling is we have to give in to the
corporation’s demands.
County Commission Chairman Bill Slaughter is quoted as saying,

“There’s nothing we can do.”



Does anyone else see the problem here? Continue reading →

4 out of 5 pictures remain @ LCC-Budget 2014-03-10



Somebody took down a Commissioner picture from the
entry way to the Lowndes County Commission Chambers.
Could it be

this one?

He did show up briefly this afternoon to collect his stuff. Continue reading →