All it takes is the will to get it done, and Apple is doing it:
from 35% renewable energy in 2010 to 75% in 2012, and 100%
at all Apple data centers.
Cost? They’ll save more than they spent.
Time for Georgia Power and Southern Company to stop dragging their feet
and help us get on with it in Georgia.
Peter Burrows wrote for Bloomberg Thursday that
Apple got nudged:
Some thoughts on the
Kay Harris resignation letter.
Certainly a SPLOST is better than a MOST.
-gretchen
Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (RPS) are being proposed
in Georgia and ALEC is trying to do away with them in North Carolina.
If ALEC doesn’t like them, there must be something good about RPS.
Let’s get on with real renewable energy in Georgia.
In Georgia,
HB 503,
sponsored by Karla Drenner, Carol Fullerton, Debbie Buckner, Scott
Holcomb, Spencer Frye, and Earnest Smith,
would create a Renewable Energy Credits Trading program as part of
renewable portfolio standards,
as Kyle wrote for Spencer Frye’s blog 10 March 2013,
Let the Sunshine In.
Unfortunately, HB 503 includes biomass as a renewable energy source.
Maybe they just mean landfill gas, which I consider a special case
since it’s being produced anyway, and since methane is worse as
a greenhouse gas than CO2, burning landfill gas makes some sense.
Nope, in
the actual bill, 46-3-71 (1):
‘Biomass material’ means organic matter, excluding fossil fuels and black liquor,
including agricultural crops, plants, trees, wood, wood wastes and residues, sawmill
waste, sawdust, wood chips, bark chips, and forest thinning, harvesting, or clearing
residues; wood waste from pallets or other wood demolition debris; peanut shells; cotton
plants; corn stalks; and plant matter, including aquatic plants, grasses, stalks, vegetation,
and residues, including hulls, shells, or cellulose containing fibers
The barn door in there is “harvesting”, which can mean whole trees,
but the rest isn’t much better.
We don’t need to be burning things that increase atmospheric CO2
and end up stripping our forests.
In
North Carolina they staretd with just tops and limbs and then tried to escalate
to whole trees.
We already
fought off the biomass boondoggle here in south Georgia;
let’s not have it encouraged statewide.
Especially when we have better solutions: solar and wind power.
HB 503 isn’t going to get passed this year, since it didn’t make
crossover day, so maybe its sponsors can clean up that biomass mess
before they submit it again.
Speaking of North Carolina,
Received today:
PDF, with transcription appended below. -jsq
March 15, 2013Joe Pritchard
County Manager
Lowndes County
327 N. Ashley St.
Valdosta, GA 31601Dear Mr. Pritchard:
It is with great regret that I find the need to step down from the Lowndes County
and South Georgia Regional Library Board of Trustees. I fear that I am no longer
capable of holding this position in light of the county’s recent actions.As you are aware,
Wanting to go to the Industrial Authority meeting tonight?
Oops, you missed it: they held it 11 days ago.
Did you want to speak there?
Nope, no Citizens to be Heard on that agenda, and not much else, either.
To find that agenda on VLCIA’s website:
Home → About Us → Industrial Authority →
Meeting Schedule,
There will be a Special Called Meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes
County Industrial Authority on
Friday, March 8, 2013, 11:00 am at
the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Offices. This
Special Called Meeting will also serve as the Regular March 2013
Meeting.
Agenda (PDF) There will be no meeting on Tuesday, March 19, 2013.
I don’t know when they put that on their website, but they announced
the same thing on
their facebook page on March 4th.
Much of the usual agenda boilerplate
is replaced by an executive session, and the agenda doesn’t
even say for what.
I seem to recall the Industrial Authority’s attorney on several occasions
reminding the Chair that before going into executive session it was
necessary to say for what purpose.
As the
Association of County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG)
puts it:
What is the procedure for going into and holding an “executive session” or “closing a meeting”?
I've been nagging Valdosta for years about putting some of their
cable TV station content on the web.
Turns out they are already doing some of that,
which is a step towards acting like a modern metropolitan area.
Received Wednesday via Tim Carroll;
I added the links and the [clarification].
From: Sementha Mathews
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 11:48 AM
To: Tim Carroll
Subject: RE: "The rest of the story"Councilman Carroll,
Thank you for the recent phone call. As a result, I will research
the Austin, Tx media practices to see if they can be implemented in
any way here at Metro 17. We used to include a council wrap segment
in each show, and I'll ask
Shemeeka [Johnson, Valdosta Channel 17 Media Coordinator]
why we took that out. But we
can easily add that back in.
City of Austin posts
Some interesting questions have come up in
Gabe Fisher's continuing correspondence with the City of Valdosta
about
sewage in his back yard
and
under his house,
while
City Council Tim Carroll continues to respond,
both copying a long list of people.
From: Gabe Fisher
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2013 14:23:12 -0500All, I appreciate the update on where the city stands on moving the
sewer all together—I just wish we had been kept informed of
the plans over the last 4 years. Living with the *real* threat of
flooding is stressful enough, add in the guaranteed associated
sewage spill is more than I can handle.I also appreciate the city workers spreading lime and working on the
sewer line behind my house today. But I have questions—What
about the sewage in my yard and under my house? Is this my
responsibility?Thanks, Gabe
Tim Carroll responded with a couple of suggestions:
Groundbreaking for solar power to save Dublin High 40%,
thus reducing teacher furloughs,
financed by municipal bonds,
made possible by cooperation among a wide range of
government officials, private companies, and individuals:
that was the groundbreaking story in Dublin, Laurens County, yesterday,
videod by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE.
Dublin City Schools are willing to try something new, and that’s why
they were groundbreaking,
said Chuck Ledbetter, Superintendent, yesterday.
He
recognized members present of the Dublin City Council, the
Laurens County Commission, the Dublin-Laurens Development Authority,
and state representative Matt Hatchett, and
Public Service Commissioner Bubba McDonald.
Ledbetter’s theme,
Everybody worked together to make this happen.
was echoed over and over by many other speakers.
What they worked for was economic help for Dublin City Schools
through solar power, financed by municipal bonds.
The Mayor of Dublin, Phil Best added to the list
The VDT's Sunday front page was covered with wastewater stories,
continuing the circular firing squad of the local powers that be.
Meanwhile
in Dublin, GA, they're breaking ground for solar panels
at the local high school, using a bond financing
model that we could use here, if local leaders would look up.
In addition to
some detail about the city's FEMA application
and
following up on flooded yards,
the VDT followed up on
its EPD and EPA scrutiny story
with one saying
City received help from EPD to keep EPA away.
It's good the VDT is covering these issues, but it's still leaving out
important parts of the local water story.
Apparently firing back at
Thursday's Valdosta City Council session,
perhaps especially
Robert Yost's very pointed criticisms of the VDT,
the VDT concluded its
rather rich Sunday editoral:
City leaders, please, no more of the blame game. The citizens of
this community are imploring you to just accept responsibility and
fix it.
Yet the VDT has
spent the last week blaming the city,
and has accepted no responsibility for its own role, or that of
its editor, Kay Harris, in the recent loss of the SPLOST referendum
that would have further funded wastewater work in Valdosta.
Now, I agree with the VDT that
Fracking, coming to north Georgia soon.
Dan Chapman wrote for the AJC Sunday,
Gas drillers turn to Georgia
DALTON, Ga. — Trillions of cubic feet of natural gas believed
to lie below the hills of northwest Georgia have remained virtually
untouched and unwanted — until now.Shale gas drilling is slowing across the country, but a handful of
companies are poking around this corner of the state looking for the
next natural gas “play.” If they succeed, Georgia could join the
ranks of states reaping jobs, revenue and fears of environmental
damage from energy production, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has
learned….In Alabama, the Conasauga shale field contains 625 trillion cubic
feet of gas, according to Bill Thomas, a geologist who taught at the
University of Kentucky and Georgia State. A similar amount could be
underground in Northwest Georgia, he added.
Wish I didn’t have to say I told you so:
Fracking: coming soon to a state near you? 26 Dec 2012.
No fracking.
No nuclear.
No biomass.
Let’s get on with solar and wind.
-jsq
