Tag Archives: Wind

The costs of coal on your neighbors’ health

We can’t afford the costs of coal on our health.

John Sepulvado wrote for CNN Radio 1 April 2012, A power plant, cancer and a small town’s fears,

The two of them invested their life savings building their home. It’s a large ranch house on several acres, and the plan was the two of them would leave it for their sons and grandchildren. They gave up that dream after Maddox’s mother developed a rare form of ear cancer and died after living at the home for three years.

“I’m not going to bring my grandchildren up in this,” Maddox says. “Anybody who does would be a fool, I think.”

The problem, Maddox explains, is now he and his neighbors are getting sick. For Maddox, the first signs of trouble would come in the middle of the night, when he would wake up with nose bleeds mixed with clear mucus. Then his muscles started twitching, and then he got kidney disease, and then sclerosis of the liver.

Where does he live? Down the road from Plant Scherer in Juliette, Georgia: the nation’s dirtiest coal plant.

Georgia Power’s solution? Buy houses like his, cap the well, and raze the house.

Better solution? Get off of health-destroying moribund coal and get on with clean distributed wind and solar, for the profit (even to Georgia Power), for energy independence, for resilience, and yes, for our health.

-jsq

Bulgaria cancelled a new nuke

If Bulgaria can do it, Georgia can do it: end a new nuke boondoggle. Bulgaria started opposition when building the plant seemed irreversible, yet they reversed it. We can, too. And we can get on with solar and wind.

Rayna St. wrote for Global Voices 31 March 2012, Bulgaria: Construction of the Nuclear Power Plant “Belene” Cancelled,

On March 28, Bulgaria officially announced the cancellation of its newest nuclear power plant (NPP) “Belene” construction. The Parliament has stopped this controversial project after years of discussion and more than half a billion euros invested in the construction of the first reactor.

Nuclear opponents in Bulgaria undid a done deal, starting with this:

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Fresh Kills Landfill Solar Farm

New York City’s new wind and solar farm will be a dump.

Mathias wrote for Cleantechnica 22 March 2012, NYC to Build Wind and Solar Farm on Old Dump Site,

Who would know that an old garbage dump at Staten Island in New York City would house 20 MW of renewable power? If they succeed with their plans, “Fresh Kills landfill” will be transformed into a combined solar and wind farm that could generate enough electricity to power 6,000 average American households!

The old landfill has serviced the city for 53 years, and taken care of a whopping two billion tons of thrash, before closing early in 2011.

Sounding like a mayor from Texas with a vision,

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Solar eating fossil fuels’ cake in Germany

Why is Georgia Power still peddling misinformation about solar power instead of moving ahead with it? What’s happening in Germany could be a clue.

Giles Parkinson wrote for Crikey.com 28 March 2012 (it’s tomorrow in Australia), Why power generators are terrified of solar,

The first graph illustrates what a typical day on the electricity market in Germany looked like in March four years ago; the second illustrates what is happening now, with 25GW of solar PV installed across the country. Essentially, it means that solar PV is not just licking the cream off the profits of the fossil fuel generators — as happens in Australia with a more modest rollout of PV — it is in fact eating their entire cake.

So solar is taking the profits out of coal and natural gas. So sad!

Deutsche Bank solar analyst Vishal Shah noted in a report last month that EPEX data was showing solar PV was cutting peak electricity prices by up to 40%, a situation that utilities in Germany and elsewhere in Europe were finding intolerable. “With Germany adopting a drastic cut, we expect major utilities in other European countries to push for similar cuts as well,” Shah noted.

Analysts elsewhere said one quarter of Germany’s gas-fired capacity may be closed, because of the impact of surging solar and wind capacity. Enel, the biggest utility in Italy, which had the most solar PV installed in 2011, highlighted its exposure to reduced peaking prices when it said that a €5/MWh fall in average wholesale prices would translate into a one-third slump in earnings from the generation division.

You know, if the utilities got out in front and generated energy from solar and wind themselves, they wouldn’t be having this problem.

Here in Georgia, even Georgia Power could get going and do that, instead of fighting this:

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Missouri has defeated CWIP: so can Georgia

A veteran of the original No Nukes movement calls Plant Vogtle
and CWIP like he sees it.

Harvey Wasserman wrote Friday for EcoWatch,

Nuclear Power’s Green Mountain Grassroots Demise,

The accelerating revolution in renewables has allowed solar, wind


and other green sources to outstrip atomic reactors in cost, time to
build, ecological impact and safety. As billions pour into
Solartopian sources, private investment in atomic energy has all but
disappeared—except where there are massive taxpayer subsidies.

Even that’s not enough. In 2011, President Obama handed $8.33
billion in federal loan guarantees to the builders of two reactors
at Georgia’s Vogtle. But Peach State ratepayers are already being
soaked for billions more in pre-payments, and the cost of the
project is soaring. A parallel financial disaster looms at the
Robinson site in neighboring South Carolina. Though the industry
assumes these four reactors will eventually be finished, economic
realities may say otherwise.

Cost estimates for new nukes have been soaring even before
construction begins. Even with federal money, the builders still
demand that state ratepayers foot the bill as the process proceeds,
meaning consumers are on the hook for multiple billions even if the
reactors never open. Pitched battles over this Construction Work in
Progress scam have already been won by consumers in Missouri and are
being fought in Iowa and elsewhere. As the years of building drag
on, costs will escalate while renewables continue to become cheaper.
Sooner or later, construction is likely to stop, as it did at
numerous projects in the 1970s and 1980s which were never finished.

We can end CWIP in Georgia.
It will benefit Georgia Power and the EMCs as well as all the rest of us
when we stop wasting tax and customer dollars on boondoggles like Plant Vogtle
or biomass or private prisons and get on with clean, profitable, job-creating
renewable energy in Georgia: wind off the coast and sun inland.

-jsq

How to ban CWIP in Georgia

A one-paragraph law can do it; that’s all it took in New Hampshire
to ban

Construction Work in Progress (CWIP)


after

Three Mile Island.
OK, plus a state Supreme Court ruling, but that would be easier in Georgia
since the New Hampshire Supreme Court already set a precedent of upholding
the NH law.
After Fukushima,

Georgia could ban CWIP and end the new Plant Vogtle construction.
The we could

get on with building solar.

Here’s the text of the NH law, taken from

the NH Supreme Court ruling:

“378:30-a Public Utility Rate Base; Exclusions. Public utility rates or
charges shall not in any manner be based on the cost of construction
work in progress. At no time shall any rates or charges be based upon
any costs associated with construction work if said construction work is
not completed. All costs of construction work in progress, including,
but not limited to, any costs associated with constructing, owning,
maintaining or financing construction work in progress, shall not be
included in a utility’s rate base nor be allowed as an expense for rate
making purposes until, and not before, said construction project is
actually providing service to consumers.”

Simple enough.
The

Georgia legislature could do it.
Knowing the NH CWIP ban caused PSNH

to go bankrupt on costs for the Seabrook nuclear plant,
Georgia Power might back off on Plant Vogtle rather than have such a law passed.

-jsq

What we can learn from no nukes and solartopia of 30 years ago

Why were only 12% of the projected 1000 nuclear plants built in the U.S. by
the year 2000?
Because of the no nukes movement started in Seabrook, New Hampshire
in 1977.
And because New Hampshire banned CWIP.
Here in Georgia in 2012 we can cut to the chase and do what they
did that worked.

Harvey Wasserman wrote for The Free Press 13 May 2007,

How creative mass non-violence beat a nuke and launched the global green power movement,

Thirty years ago this month, in the small seacoast town of Seabrook,
New Hampshire, a force of mass non-violent green advocacy collided


with the nuke establishment.

A definitive victory over corporate power was won. And the global
grassroots “No Nukes” movement emerged as one of the most important
and effective in human history.

It still writes the bottom line on atomic energy and global warming.
All today’s green energy battles can be dated to May, 13, 1977, when
550 Clamshell Alliance protestors walked victoriously free after
thirteen days of media-saturated imprisonment. Not a single US
reactor ordered since that day has been completed.

How effective?

Richard Nixon had pledged to build 1000 nukes in the US by the year
2000. But the industry peaked at less than 120. Today, just over a
hundred operate. No US reactor ordered since 1974 has been
completed. The Seabrook demonstrations—which extended to
civil disobedience actions on Wall Street—were key to keeping
nearly 880 US reactors unbuilt.

The only new nukes ordered since then are the ones Georgia Power
wants to build at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River, for which

Georgia Power customers are already getting billed Construction
Work in Progress (CWIP).

Thirty years later, some things haven’t changed:

Continue reading →

2/3 of new European electrical capacity comes from solar and wind

If Europe can deploy mostly solar and wind for new electricity,
we can do the same here, especially in sunny south Georgia.

Stephen Lacey wrote for Climate Progress 12 Feb 2012,

More than 68% of New European Electricity Capacity Came From Wind and Solar in 2011,

That’s almost a 10-fold increase over deployment in 2000, when only
3.5 GW of renewable energy projects were installed. Last year, 32 GW
of renewables — mostly wind and solar — were deployed
across European countries.

If Europe can change its energy strategy that quickly, so can we.

-jsq

PS: Owed to William House.

Southern Company has 3 biggest CO2 plants in U.S.

David Ibala wrote for the AJC 11 January 2012,

Study: Southern Company plants are 3 biggest greenhouse gas emitters

Two Southern Company coal-fired electric generating plants near


Atlanta are the biggest contributors to global greenhouse gases in
the United States, and a third Southern plant in Alabama is the
third-biggest emitter, an analysis of environmental data found
Wednesday.

The nation’s No. 1 producer of carbon dioxide — the
heat-trapping gas that is held chiefly responsible in models of
global warming — is Plant Scherer in Juliette, about 65 miles
southeast of downtown Atlanta, according to the Associated Press
analysis of data reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency for 2010.

That’s the plant that supplies most of our power in south Georgia,
whether you get it through Georgia Power or Colquitt EMC.

The No. 2 producer is Plant Bowen, just west of Cartersville, about
50 miles northwest of central Atlanta, and the third-largest is
Plant Miller in Quinton, Ala., about 165 miles west of Atlanta near
Birmingham, the AP said.

The story also notes (as a picture caption):

Georgia Power recently installed pollution-control equipment, called
baghouses, to curb mercury pollution at Plant Scherer. EPA rules
that will regulate mercury likely will lead to the utility to install
additional baghouses at other coal-fired plants

Hm, that’s exactly what Southern Company said

it was incompetent to do.
Apparently it figured out to do what other power companies already knew how to do.

Anyway, pumping out CO2 from coal plants is what Southern Company is doing
instead of solar and wind.

-jsq