Tag Archives: export

The shift has come: GE, Siemens massive job losses as fossil fuels crash and the sun rises

The carbon bubble is bursting,
as jobs fly from some of the biggest companies in the world,
because solar and wind power are taking over right now.
It’s too late to bet on the wrong nuclear horse
or the wrong pipelnie snake.
Get out of fossil fuels now: the sun is rising.

Tiffany Hsu and Clifford Krauss,
New York Times, 7 December 2017,

G.E. Cuts Jobs as It Navigates a Shifting Energy Market,

General Electric, whose new leadership is moving to eliminate bloat
and grapple with the fallout from earlier, ill-timed decisions, is
taking drastic steps to keep pace with seismic shifts in the global
energy industry.


GE ranks first in 2017 downsizing after 12,000 more jobs: Brandon Kochkodin, Bloomberg, 7 December 2017

Brandon Kochkodin, Bloomberg, 7 December 2017,
GE Ranks First in 2017 Downsizing After 12,000 More Job Cuts.

The company said on Thursday that it would cut 12,000 jobs in its
power division, reducing the size of the unit’s work force by 18
percent as part of a push to compete with international rivals in a
saturated natural gas market, adjust to “softening” in
the oil and gas sectors and stay abreast of the growing demand for
renewable energy.

Solar and wind energy technology is increasingly being deployed Continue reading →

HB 59 to waive sovereign immunity in certain cases



Sue the state? You’ll lose, because of sovereign immunity,
unless HB 59 passes.
Then you might be able to sue GA-DNR for circumventing permiting
in allowing construction on the Georgia Coast, or if it
should approve a compressor station in Albany, or if it
should issue any other permits for the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline.

State agencies such as the Department of Natural Resources (GA-DNR),


can use “letters of permission” to do things like make alterations to
Georgia’s coast, and anyone suing to stop it runs up against sovereign immunity
unless the issuing agency has expressly waived it.
Now that may change with

HB 59,
“State tort claims; waiver of sovereign immunity for declatory judgment or injunctive relief; provide”.
It has six co-sponsors, including

Jay Powell, District 171, Camilla, Mitchell County, GA.

Here’s the key part: Continue reading →

A Hazardous Sabal Trail to LNG Export

Here are


the slides for the talk I gave at the
Alabama Sierra Club Retreat 1 November 2014.

The outline, with links to supporting evidence:

Afterwards, somebody asked me if there was a study on LNG exports
driving up domestic natural gas prices.
Turns out there is, requested by LNG-export-authorizing
Office of Fossil Energy from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

EIA’s summary of 29 October 2014: Continue reading →

Southern Company downgraded to sell over Kemper coal and Vogtle nuclear



Time to break out of the utility death spiral by breaking
away from cost overruns at Kemper “clean” Coal
and the Plant Vogtle nuclear boondoggle
and getting on with real renewable solar and wind power.

UBS wrote 5 May 2014,

Southern Company: Kemper Tantrums; Reducing to Sell,

Reducing to Sell on continued delays for the Kemper IGCC project

With further delays and increased costs for the Kemper IGCC project
resulting in yet another $380M of writedowns (further slippage
costing $25M/month) and now the likely loss of $120M-$150M of bonus
depreciation as well, we view the current premium P/E multiple as
untenable.


While the Vogtle nuclear project appears to be on track,
the presence of two major risky projects, Continue reading →

Ask your Congress members to oppose TPP today

Here’s

a handy form by EFF
to oppose the secretly-negotiated privacy-deleting corporate-greed-defending
natural gas export pipeline-enabling Trans-Pacific Parternship treaty.

Parker Higgins and Maira Sutton
wrote for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
28 December 2013,

2013 in Review: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement,


Stop Secret Copyright Treaties

The biggest TPP story this year was the publication by WikiLeaks
in November of the chapter titled “Intellectual Property.” Unfortunately,
its contents confirmed many of our worst fears: from
ratcheting up copyright term lengths
around the world, to
boxing in fair use, to mandating a draconian legal regime around DRM software, section
after section contained clauses plucked from corporate wishlists and
snubbed the public interest altogether.

And then there’s

Ted Poe’s House Subcommittee pushing TPP for LNG exports that would propel
“natural” fracked gas pipelines
such as Spectra Energy’s Sabal Transmission gas pipe
through private property and

public rivers and watersheds and

aquifers.

Here’s what’s up next: Continue reading →