Tag Archives: Highland Renewable Energy Strategy

How about some real clean energy jobs, and a renewable energy strategy for Georgia?

This is a response from me to
Brad Lofton’s letter of 22 September 2010.
I also refer to Leigh Touchton’s response of the same date.



From: “John S. Quarterman”

To: blofton@industrialauthority.com, Leigh Touchton

Cc: [VDT, elected officials, and other people]

Subject: Re: Brad Lofton, Executive Director Industrial Authority

Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 11:23:39 -0400

Brad,

I also appreciate you taking the time to meet with people,
but I am disappointed in the information provided by VLCIA.

For example, you say:

You are absolutely correct in stating that we provided you peer reviewed
scientific literature proving that biomass plants are indeed carbon neutral

Excuse me? What journal accepts a stack of powerpoint slides for
peer review?

Maybe you mean it’s based on some journal article. Citation, please:
journal, date, and page.

The only thing I can find in it that was peer-reviewed was a quote
from an IPCC 2007 report, which asks for “a sustainable forest
management strategy”. That’s what we don’t have; that stack of
slides certainly isn’t it.

You mention:

Continue reading →

Center of Innovation – Energy

Where’s Waldo?
And where’s the

state renewable energy strategy for Georgia, or for the southeast, or for just south Georgia?
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA)
Project Manager Allan Ricketts

found another candidate.

“Forests Dominate Georgia’s Land Use”



That’s the title of slide 10 of 21 in

Center of Innovation – Energy (CIE)
by Jill Stuckey, Director.
Actually, massively pesticided planted pines dominate south Georgia’s land use;
not the same as actual forests with species diversity and diverse ages of trees.
The same CIE slide equates

Georgia Forestry = Biomass Energy

That is what the state government seems to want it to be.

Back on slide 9, solar is defined as a southwestern regional energy
source; nevermind that the solar map on that page shows Georgia
with the same insolation as most of Texas (more on that later).
And wind is defined as a central U.S. regional strength,
nevermind that even Georgia Power has started exploring the
possibility of wind off the Georgia coast.

I get it that Georgia has trees and forestry is a big industry in Georgia.
I’m a tree farmer myself.
I’d love to be convinced that biomass from trees is one good way to go.
But at what costs?
And compared to what?

Continue reading →

State Energy Strategy of Georgia

Among the questions local citizens asked the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) was

where is the south Georgia, state, or southeast U.S. renewable energy strategy?
VLCIA Project Manager Allan Ricketts looked, and he couldn’t find it, either.


He did find
this list of “renewable energy strategy”
hits from a GEFA search.
At least one of those links points us to http://www.georgiaenergyplan.org/,
which now gets us

Are you interested in buying this domain name?

The state has apparently abandoned that domain.
Is that an indication of how seriously Georgia takes renewable energy?

Here’s something that looks promising:

State Energy Strategy for Georgia (SESG),
December 14, 2006, Governor’s Energy Policy Council, GEFA.
It says it’s an energy strategy, but it’s mostly
about transportation of existing fuels such as natural gas.
Towards the end of the document in Figure 2 (shown above) the SESG illustrates
the pit we’re in: about a third of Georgia’s energy comes from coal,
another third from petroleum, a sixth from natural gas, and so little
from renewable sources they apparently weren’t worth putting on the pie chart.

The SESG does contain this:

Continue reading →