Tag Archives: energy efficiency

Southern Company Annual Meeting @ SO 2016-05-25

Road trip to Callaway Gardens for the annual question time with Tom Fanning,
questions provided by environmentalists and Southern Company (SO) stockholders from at least four states.

This figure from page ii of the meeting Notice illustrates both the problem and the solution for Southern Company.
Natural gas has replaced coal as SO’s top energy source, and Nuclear is still
in there.
But renewables are up to 4%.
And over on the right of the same page:

Growth in Renewables

Approximately 3,800 megawatts of announced
or added renewable capacity since 2012. This
includes the development of what is expected to
be the largest voluntary solar portfolio in the U.S.
(at Georgia Power Company).

Interesting use of “voluntary”, but never mind that.
If SO keeps that up, it will Continue reading →

A clean energy future is already arriving –350.org & LNS

I’m thankful we’re already on the way to a clean energy future,

with more jobs, less expense than doing nothing, no new nukes, no coal at all,
much less natural gas, no need for any new pipelines,
better health, clean air and water, and profit.
The COP meeting in Paris can do what it will, and we can still make a better world and profit by it.
We’re already doing it, with solar and wind power, energy efficiency and conservation,

The Clean Energy Future: Protecting the Climate, Creating Jobs, Saving Money,
by Frank Ackerman of Synapse for LNS and 350.org:

[M]eeting the IPCC targets will… create more jobs and save money.

This report, Continue reading →

Citi agrees fixing climate change is profitable

Save more by acting to fix climate change, on similar overall investment for trying to deal with unfixed effects, says

Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions (GPS).
Save more on similar expense:
that’s profiting by fixing climate change.
Fastest way to do that with least expense: deny all new pipelines, all LNG export, and end fracking.

Dana Nuccitelli, Guardian, 31 August 2015,
Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars:
A report from America’s 3rd-largest bank asks why we’re not transitioning to a low-carbon economy, Continue reading →

100% renewable energy for U.S. by 2050

Here’s how to convert everything from air conditioners to trucks

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 →

Most of June electric bill for overbudget nuke, yet the sun rises

While electric bills still are tilted against local solar generation

and Georgia Power continues to levy its stealth CWIP tax for its
nuke boondoggle, yet solar power is rising this year on
Southern Company and Georgia Power.

Bret Wagenhorst posted on facebook 9 June 2015:

I find it decidedly ironic that a large portion of my last month
electric bill went toward paying for a nuclear power plant that is
hundreds of millions of dollars over budget, and which will no doubt
cost millions of dollars a year to run and to manage its potentially
deadly waste. I wonder if the money spent on the nuclear plant were
used to purchase rooftop solar panels for all certified energy
efficient Georgian homes if we citizens might not be better off in
the long run. Thoughts?

Look for

Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery Rider on that bill: Continue reading →

Report of the Historic Courthouse Committee @ LCC 2015-03-09

No education, all law enforcement:

Sheriff’s Office or

Public defender’s office.

Either would save the county money in the long run and preserve the courthouse
through use of its services (heat, light, air conditioning).
Plus some points on renovating the courthouse building and grounds.
Judge McLane referred to this report in his

talk at the Commission Work Session 9 March 2105,
in which he said it would not be possible for VSU to use the courthouse
without “some pretty dramatic and we think negative” changes to the building.

In his cover letter, Judge McLane said he was not sending the actual
report to the Commissioners, yet clearly they were reading it in the
Work Session, because they asked questions from it.
And now you, the public can see the report.
LAKE did not get it from the Commission, which so far as we know has
not published it.
The cover letter and the report are below in full. Continue reading →

Renewables outcompete oil –National Bank of Abu Dhabi

A Middle East bank says:

Renewables accounted for 57 per cent of global power investment in
new generation in the period 2000-2013.

And that’s even with all the legal and financial roadblocks
thrown up by entrenched fossil fuel companies and electric utilities.
The report recommends aligning policy and finance:

To deliver a sustainable energy system for the long term, the
financial community and policymakers need to work collaboratively:
stimulating and de-risking investment, and developing innovative
structures which can support the financing of future energy.

With that collaboration, the Middle East and North Africa could
see this kind of energy deployment scenario: Continue reading →

Pipelines are bad economics: invest in renewable energy instead –Harvard

Let’s stop wasting money on the slide-rule technology of Keystone XL
or Sabal Trail: they’re both bad investments, either short-term or long-term.

Andrew Winston wrote for Harvard Business Review 30 January 2015,

Why the Keystone Pipeline Is the Wrong U.S. Energy Debate,

In the short run, with oil at $50 per barrel, Keystone will connect
refineries to oil that may be unprofitable to extract. In the long
run, as the world turns away from fossil fuels aggressively, the
pipeline will be moot — a relic of the past.

Either way it’s a poor investment.

What, then? Continue reading →

TVA needs to listen to former chair S. David Friedman about solar power

Will you bet on the blinkered money-only policies of the current
TVA Chair, or the accurate clean solar future predictions of former
TVA Chair S. David Friedman?

Seven years ago S. David Friedman wrote:

“As a substitute for oil, coal, and nuclear energy, the sun can
replace the three poisons with inexhaustible fuel.”

The former TVA Chairman wrote that in 2007 his boook

Winning Our Energy Independence: An Energy Insider Shows How,
which also says (page 4):

There are breakthroughs in new technology that promise to make
the cost of solar power as low as that of coal, nuclear, and oil.
Almost simultaneously in South Africa and the Silicon Valley in the
United States, companies are building huge new solar factories to manufacture
a paper-thin solar coating that can generate electricity that could
actually lower our electric bills.
These breakthroughs promise solar power at 75 percent less than today’s price. Continue reading →

Valdosta recognized for solar power, LED lighting, wastewater improvements

City of Valdosta PR today 5 December 2014,

Valdosta Named “Smart Energy Municipality of the Year”,

The City of Valdosta was named “Smart Energy Municipality of
the Year” by the

Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) on
Dec. 4, at an awards banquet held at the Georgia Tech Wardlaw
Building in Atlanta, Ga. The event recognized successful
individuals, businesses and municipalities who have shown dynamic
leadership over the past year in Georgia’s large and growing Smart
Energy sector.

Sixty nominations were received collectively in the three
categories. In the municipality category, which includes cities,
counties and state government agencies, the City of Valdosta was one
of two finalists and the overall recipient of the award ” the
other finalist was the Georgia Department of Corrections.

“We are extremely honored Continue reading →

On the LAKE front

Citizen dialog for transparent process by the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange