Tag Archives: Wind

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.

Energy Mix 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 →

Wind and Solar are winning by 2 to 1 over gas and coal

Guess what’s really inevitable, pipeline companies? Solar and wind power.

Utility scare tactics that no coal means pipelines are so much hot air. Scare tactics that no pipelines would mean LNG trains are burnt up by solar power. Stop pipelnes or fracking and stop the other and LNG export along with it. And we’re winning!

Tom Randall, Bloomberg, 6 April 2016, Wind and Solar Are Crushing Fossil Fuels: Record clean energy investment outpaces gas and coal 2 to 1. Continue reading →

Southern Co. gets serious about smart grid: buys PowerSecure

While FPL wastes $3 billion on the 20th century Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline, Southern Company (SO) shows it’s serious about distributed energy by buying distributed grid infrastructure company PowerSecure (POWR) for $431 million. That announcement not only bumped POWR stock up by about 75%, the same day (yesterday) smart grid company EnerNOC (ENOC) shares went up 20%. That last could be coincidental, since ENOC announced earnings. But with two smart grid companies going up, the renewable solar and wind energy future is coming closer.

PRNewswire, 24 February 2016, Southern Company to Acquire PowerSecure International, Inc.: Addition of PowerSecure’s proven expertise positions Southern Company to advance distributed infrastructure development, Continue reading →

Georgia Power studying wind off Tybee Island, GA

Instead of even considering oil drilling off the Atlantic coast, which is massively opposed by coastal communities, how about get on with offshore wind turbines? They’re no harder to build than deep-sea oil rigs, and if a hurricane blows them over, they don’t leak oil, like BP did into the Gulf, which will never be cleaned up, anymore than the Exxon Valdes disaster in Alaska. Japan is already doing it, in waters with typhoons just as strong as Atlantic hurricanes. Wind is clean, just what we need!

Cory Dickstein, SavannahNow, 20 June 2014, Georgia Power studying possible wind turbines, Georgia’s Coast, or Tybee’s shore, Continue reading →

Is Porter Ranch the natural gas industry’s Three Mile Island?

Thirty-six years ago, Three Mile Island turned public opinion against nuclear power. The worst in history, right now still spewing after three months and Los Angeles County and the state of California have declared emergencies at Porter Ranch, is the “natural” gas industry’s Three Mile Island.

Nuclear, too was touted as safe, clean, and infamously “too cheap to meter”. It turned out to be none of those things, and neither is fracked methane. Three Mile Island alone didn’t stop the thousands of nukes President Nixon promised, but it sure helped. The Porter Ranch disaster has already lasted far longer, had worse direct effects, and is in the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area.

Plus TMI was the first U.S. civilian nuclear accident. The “natural” gas industry has leaks, corrosion, fires, explosions, and now earthquakes monthly and sometimes daily. Sure, the shadow of nuclear war hung over the nuclear power industry, but the monthly fireballs from methane explosions hangs over the natural gas industry. The 2010 San Bruno, California explosion is back in the news because, says AP 13 January 2015: PROSECUTORS: PG&E RESISTED RECORD-KEEPING CHANGE AFTER SAN BRUNO BLAST.

It’s time for a complete moratorium on all new natural gas projects, like the moratorium on all new nuclear projects after Three Mile Island. Instead, let’s get on with what we didn’t have back then: solar and wind power already less expensive than any other sources of power, far cleaner and safer, much faster to deploy, using no water, and requiring no eminent domain.

In 1962 President John F. Kennedy famously said: Continue reading →

Sun and wind are winning over fracked methane shale gas –Goldman Sachs

Solar PV, onshore wind, electric vehicles, and LED lighting will win for all of us and profit in the next five years, says Goldman Sachs, which just put $150 billion of its own money where its mouth is. How about you, world leaders gathered in Paris?

Chris Martin, BloombergBusiness, 30 November 2015, Wind, Solar Power to Supply More Energy Than Shale, Goldman Says,

New wind turbines and solar panels worldwide will provide more energy over the next five years than U.S. shale-oil production has over the past five, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Four Front Runners

The leading renewable-energy technologies will add the equivalent of 6.2 million barrels of oil a day to the global energy mix, exceeding the 5.7 million barrels a day pumped from U.S. shale oil wells since 2010, analysts including Brian Lee and Jaakko Kooroshy said in a research report Monday….

“Wind and solar are on track to exceed 100 gigawatts in new installations for the first time,” 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, Big Light bulb 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 →

Renewable energy world’s second largest source of electricity

Why are we building any new natural gas pipelines when solar and wind have already won the world? Plus solar and wind don’t frack, don’t need any fuel, don’t require eminent domain, and don’t suck up any cooling water.

Alex Kirby, Climate News Network, 19 August 2015, World’s Second Largest Source of Electricity Is Now Renewables, Continue reading →

100% renewable energy for U.S. by 2050

Here’s how to convert everything from air conditioners to trucks 300x170 End-Use U.S. Power Change over Time, in 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States, by Mark Z. Jacobson et al., 27 May 2015 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 →