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:
Continue reading
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, Continue reading
Received today: PDF, with transcription appended below. -jsq
Continue readingMarch 15, 2013
Joe Pritchard
County Manager
Lowndes County
327 N. Ashley St.
Valdosta, GA 31601
Dear 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:
Continue readingWhat is the procedure for going into and holding an “executive session” or “closing a meeting”?
Risks at
Southern Company’s Kemper Coal plant in Mississippi?
Push those costs onto the public, of course!
Southern Company and its subsidiary Mississippi Power
got the MS Public Service Commissioners to approve super-CWIP
(Construction Work in Progress)
for Kemper Coal: automatic rate increases for MS Power customers for years.
Just like Southern Company and its biggest subsidiary Georgia Power
got the Georgia legislature to approve Super-CWIP for the new nukes
at Plant Vogtle back in 2009.
And both CWIP projects are already over budget.
How about we cancel those boondoggles and build solar and wind instead?
AP reported 13 December 2012, After spending $1.88 billion, Southern Co. still faces risks on plant in Kemper County,
Continue reading
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:
Continue reading
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 Continue reading
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 Continue reading
Dublin gets the jump on the rest of Georgia again:
Dublin High School will get a megawatt of solar electricity
through a lease agreement with a private company
using local government bonds to get around Georgia’s special financing problem.
Kenny Burgamy reported for for 13wmaz.com Thursday, Solar Plant To Be Located at Dublin High,
Dublin High School of Dublin City Schools will soon implement 1 megawatt of solar energy.
The 4,000 panel solar power plant will be the largest in Central Georgia and is expected to save the school 40 percent in energy costs.
Dublin City Schools Superintendent Chuck Ledbetter told 13WMAZ, “The facility will be built and owned by private business and the school system will lease the solar power plant, saving us money in energy costs.”
The original plan was developed more than 15-months ago by German based MAGE SOLAR, which has a plant located in Laurens County.
The story has been carried by GPB by Athens Banner-Herald via AP.
This installation is similar to but slightly different from Continue reading