Power Plant Protest

Monday, global warming activists will be protesting in front of coal-fired power plant in the nation's capital.

It might seem like the environmental movement doesn't need acts of civil disobedience right now. After all, the president is sensitive to environmental concerns. But Bill McKibben argues this is the perfect time to up the ante.

He says we need a powerful and active movement to give the administration and the Democrats in Congress political space to do what they need to do. Besides, he asks, do you think Dick Cheney would care?

"Consider what has to happen if we're going to deal with global warming in a real way. NASA climate scientist James Hansen -- who has announced he plans to join us and get arrested for trespassing in the action we're planning for March 2 -- has demonstrated two things in recent papers. One, that any concentration of carbon dioxide greater than 350 parts per million in the atmosphere is not compatible with the "planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted." And two, that the world as a whole must stop burning coal by 2030 -- and the developed world well before that -- if we are to have any hope of ever getting the planet back down below that 350 number."

That won't be difficult at all.

McKibben plans to get arrested Monday at the Congressional owned power plant (who knew?) and says you should to (but also cautions that sit-ins aren't the most important tool in the activists' tool box).

I can't get arrested Monday — way too much to do; in fact, I'm getting hives just thinking about it — but I won't stop anyone else from doing so.

Seriously, if anyone goes to this, let me know.

TERRA House Tour

So, I'd just like to mention that I'm a print journalist, first and foremost. And frankly, I've always considered myself better with the writing end of things than the reporting end of things.

That being said, the world is multi-media and we're trying to do our part over here at 460 Tennessee St.

Below you'll find a link to a virtual video tour of the University of Memphis' TERRA House project. DPC's Eric Criswell was nice enough to take me on a tour of the house last week to show me all its environmentally friendly features. And there are a ton so, especially if you can't get to one of the tours in March, you should check it out.

But before you watch it, I think I have to also say, in my defense, that:

1. I am something of a spaz.

2. I have not used any movie editing software before.

3. Next time I will try not to say as much, seeing as how my mouth was right next to the video camera (since I was holding it and all). And I might try to get a professional voice-over person/coach.

4. I was filming at — essentially — a construction site. Not only was there a lot of background noise, sometimes workpeople had to move past me to get where they were going. And it is hard to move your feet without moving your arm.

But as they say, it's a poor carpenter who blames his tools (or, alternately, my dad's favorite, "Excuses, excuses").

So, roll 'em. Don't say I didn't warn you.

It Just Doesn't Have the Same Ring as Dirty South ...

But maybe the Clean South is a better moniker.

A new report by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy says that the 11 Southeastern states can fulfill a national mandate for renewable energy.

"Yes We Can: Southern Solutions for a National Renewable Energy Standard" confirms the states can tap homegrown clean energy resources to generate 15 percent of electric power demands by 2015 and the proposed renewable energy standard of 25 percent by 2025.

SACE says that Tennessee is rich in potential alternative energy, from wind in higher altitudes to solar and agricultural solutions in others: "The Volunteer state is home to nationally important solar and wind manufacturers. With these resources and active state leadership, Tennessee is an emerging powerhouse in clean energy action."

It looks like, however, that TVA-affiliated utility companies are excluded from Renewable Energy Standard requirements. That might be the case, but I'm sure TVA and MLGW will pursue alternative energy sources even if they weren't federally mandated to do so.

Sustainable Unsustainable?

The energy crisis may be more challenging than we think.

A friend of mine sent me a link to this piece from NewScientist, which says that renewable energy needs to come from more renewable resources.

Silicon, which is abundant, is not the most efficient material for solar cells. That would be indium, "which is far from abundant."

"There are fewer than 10 indium-containing minerals, and none present in significant deposits – in total the metal accounts for a paltry 0.25 parts per million of the Earth's crust.

Most of the rare and expensive element is used to manufacture LCD screens, an industry that has driven indium prices to $1000 per kilogram in recent years. Estimates that did not factor in an explosion in indium-containing solar panels reckon we have only a 10 year supply of it left."

Hydrogen energy needs platinum, which "makes indium appear super-abundant."

After reading the piece, I had a very Malthusian dystopia moment like, there are just too many people on this planet.

Then I thought, maybe we could just pay people to generate energy. It could be a job. There are certainly enough people unemployed and underemployed in this country — would it be feasible to set up an energy farm with stationary bicycles or something? Maybe not, but it seems we need to keep thinking on a solution.

New Link

I've added a new link and, though I don't have time to get into a big thing right now, just wanted to point it out.

The Green Jobs Memphis blog. Enjoy! Or learn. Whatever.

More later.

Tower of Power

A friend of mine thinks this would be a good idea for Memphis: concentrated solar power towers.

From the Guardian:

"Concentrated solar power (CSP) technology, as it is known, is seen by many as a simpler, cheaper and more efficient way to harness the sun's energy than other methods such as photovoltaic (PV) panels. But CSP only works in places with clear skies and strong sunshine."

In a Spanish project that's on the verge of completion, more than 1,000 mirrors are positioned to reflect sunlight at a central, 160-meter tower. Water in the tower is heated to 260 degrees Celsius, which produces steam that turns an electricity generating turbine.

Once it's completed, the CSP project near Seville will power 11,000 homes.

"John Loughhead, executive director of the UK Energy Research Council, said that [Spanish Energy company] Abenoga's tower approach at the new plant was relatively efficient 'because what you're doing is concentrating a very large area of sunlight on top of a very small area so you can get very high temperatures.'"

The EU plans to generate 20 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020.

My friend thinks it would be a good idea for Memphis to build a similar tower here, as well as a factory to manufacture the mirrors (which could then be sold to other cities). Memphis could then become a center for clean energy production.

The tower costs about $100 million, but as my friend points out, we spent $250 million on the FedExForum. And what kind of economic return are we getting on that right about now?

Windy City

New York is beginning to look a little like my parents' hometown of Sweetwater, Texas.

(If such a thing is possible.)

In Sweetwater, wind turbines are some of the tallest structures around. In New York, wind turbines are on top of some of the tallest structures around.

From the NYTimes:

"A handful of buildings are already drawing electricity from wind turbines, which typically resemble table fans, or mounted airplane propellers. ...

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg stoked excitement among wind-power advocates in August when he announced that he supported putting turbines atop city skyscrapers.

Of the 60 proposals that were later submitted to the city under a request for renewable-energy projects, the majority were wind related, including technologies for apartment-mounted machines, said Jen Becker, a vice president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. 'It’s definitely something we are looking at seriously,' she said."

Unfortunately, the city's many buildings make it difficult to capture enough strong, steady gusts, but, in one project, the turbines are expected to cut utility costs in half.

If we can give billions to Detroit ...

... why not fully fund the Green Jobs Act?

I got an email this morning from Van Jones and Green for All, the group that brought the Dream Reborn conference to Memphis in April for the 40 anniversary of Martin Luther King's death. Green for All's mission is to create a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.

"We believe all people deserve access to healthy food and clean energy sources," Jones said at the time. "Environmental solutions are not just for people who can afford to buy a hybrid car or put solar panels on their second home."

In short, the environment affects everyone, (advocates of environmental justice would say it affects people of color disproportionately and I would agree) and the industry has the potential to help America's struggling workers.

Green for All is asking people to write Congress and tell them to fully fund the Green Jobs Act:

"The Green Jobs Act will create green pathways out of poverty in this country. Working with allies, Green for All got the program included in the Energy Bill of 2007. Bush signed the program into law last December. But he failed to include a penny for it in his 2008 budget proposal."

Frankly, at $250 million, funding the act seems like a bargain. And if we're giving out money to companies with older, out-dated business models, why not invest a small amount in promising technologies? We have nothing to lose, but quite a bit to gain.

To send an email to your Congressional representatives, click here.

More of the Green Stuff

Been busy this morning, but didn't want to overlook these:

— USAToday has a story about three companies that have made technological advances in solar, wind, and geothermal energy production. It's definitely worth the read if you're interested in alternative energy. (It even includes a simple explanation of how these forms of energy are "collected.")

— On a similar note, NPR did a story about president-elect Barack Obama's so-called "green team," picking Nobel laureate Steven Chu to lead the Energy Department.

"Obama said his energy appointees will aim to make public buildings more efficient, modernize the electricity grid, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and preserve natural resources."

The story notes that Chu has been an advocate for reseearch into global warming and the need for carbon-neutral renewable sources of energy.

— NYT's science blog Dot Earth the last meteorological year — from December through November — was cooler than recent years, but still warmer over all (since temperature record keeping began in 1880). Look for the scary graphs.

— A little off topic, but still interesting, from Slate: How foreign car factories have transformed the American South:

"Time was, the Big Three were the U.S. auto industry. No longer. Over the past two decades, enticed by cheap labor and massive incentives, a second auto industry has emerged: nonunion, Southern-based, and foreign-owned. Large plants, with names of Asian and European carmakers emblazoned upon them, now dot the Southern landscape. By moving aggressively into Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, foreign manufacturers — call them the 'Little Eight' — have transformed the economic geography of the nation's auto industry and the political debate surrounding its future. ...

"Today's Southern solons have watched their local economies blossom thanks to a younger, more-vibrant auto industry unencumbered by the Big Three's legacy costs and union work rules—a sort of anti-Detroit that has the flexibility and ability to turn profits by making the types of cars that Americans actually want to buy."

Greening Hawaii

Residents of Hawaii, with plenty of sun and wind but no oil, have begun a campaign to wean the islands from fossil fuels in 10 years.

Backed by Tetris licenser (for Nintendo, beating out Atari) and software entrepreneur Henk Rogers and his private Blue Planet foundation, the campaign is designed to supercharge a state effort to cut its reliance on foreign oil by 70 percent by 2030.

From a NYT editorial: "Jeffrey Mikulina, a longtime environmental activist in Hawaii, jokes that his home state, which is almost completely dependent on imported oil, is one supertanker away from being Amish. It also is one superheated ocean away from being underwater."

The NYT says that the plan includes revamping the obsolete electrical system of Hawaii's main utility to allow customers with solar panels to sell power back to the grid.

The push, should it be successful, seems like it could prove to other states that energy independence is a real possibility. This will be an interesting initiative to watch exactly for that reason. (Plus, I really like Tetris. Still.)

Manufacturing Wind

The NYTimes has an pretty long business story about traditional manufacturing areas turning to wind energy, including one factory town in Iowa that started manufacturing wind turbines after the Maytag plant closed.

From the story:

"No one believes that renewable energy can fully replace what has been lost on the American factory floor, where people with no college education have traditionally been able to finance middle-class lives. Many at Maytag earned $20 an hour in addition to health benefits. Mr. Versendaal now earns about $13 an hour.

Still, it’s a beginning in a sector of the economy that has been marked by wrenching endings, potentially a second chance for factory workers accustomed to layoffs and diminished aspirations."

In fact, one person quoted in the story calls wind energy the biggest ray of hope for the manufacturing industry.

The U.S. power grid can't accomodate all the energy that comes from wind power yet, but the good news is that, because wind turbines are as big and heavy as they are, the plants need to be close to the turbines' final destination. And that means jobs making those turbines probably won't be outsourced overseas.

“'I like this job more than I did Maytag,' Mr. Crady says. 'I feel I’m doing something to improve our country, rather than just building a washing machine.'”

Potential Energy Potentially ... Someday

I've been meaning to post this for a few days now, a story in the NYTimes about wind energy and how the nation's aging power grid makes it difficult to use that power efficiently ... or at all.

From the story:

"Wind advocates say that just two of the windiest states, North Dakota and South Dakota, could in principle generate half the nation’s electricity from turbines. But the way the national grid is configured, half the country would have to move to the Dakotas in order to use the power."

And this:

"The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not."

In fact, electric generation is growing four times faster than transmission. I won't go into the technicalities of why the grid system is incapable of moving the energy (the story explains it well) and who needs to do something about it (cough, Washington), but I will say that with all the interest in alternative energy and promises about energy independence, the reality of the situation is somewhat frustrating.

And solar power runs into a similar problem.

On a smaller scale, MLGW will tell you that it's simply not cost effective to install solar panels on your house. And that going off the grid or selling power back to them simply isn't realistic.

Having looked at a $300 photovoltaic kit that would produce enough energy to power a (that's right, ONE) toaster — not to mention the $24,000 estimate ($22,000 after tax incentives) that Sharp gave me for a residential system — I can see what they mean.

Well, I'm sure we'll all enjoy North Dakota.

Fill 'er up

For those of you who like maps (and you know who you are), here's two from the Center for Neighborhood Technology that might interest/horrify you.

The first is the annual household gasoline expenditure for 2000. (Click to enlarge.)


In this map, only people who live in Tipton County are spending more than $3,800 on gas. People who live near Millington, Arlingon, and Tunica are spending anywhere from $2,400 to $3,000 but the majority of the metro area is spending less than $1,600 a year.

The second is the annual household gasoline expenditure for 2008.


In this map, it looks like they need to add some more colors and some higher numbers. The people in all the outlying areas are now spending more than $3,800 and only the people in the core city are spending less than $3,000 a year.

And it looks like, based on other Center for Neighborhood Technology data, that that figure is about 20 to 28 percent or greater of income each month.

Harnessing the Wind

USA Today has an interesting story about oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens and how he wants to drive the U.S. political and economic agenda — to wind power.

From USA Today:

"'We're paying $700 billion a year for foreign oil. It's breaking us as a nation, and I want to elevate that question to the presidential debate, to make it the No. 1 issue of the campaign this year,' Pickens says. ...

'Nixon said in 1970 that we were importing 20% of our oil and that by 1980 it would be 0%. That didn't happen,' Pickens says. 'It went to 42% in 1991 with the Gulf War. It's just under 70% now. Where do you think we're going to be in 10 years when our economy is busted and we're importing 80% of our oil?'"

The place he kicked off his media blitz is Sweetwater, Texas, home of the annual Rattlesnake Roundup and 1,500 wind turbines by the end of the year.

It's also, though the story fails to mention this, where my parents live. (I don't really understand how there could've been such an oversight.)

The story does note that Sweetwater's Nolan County — were it its own country — would rank sixth on the list of wind-energy-producing nations (though state by state, North Dakota produces more). And, frankly, it's been pretty amazing to watch in the last few years.

I don't get back often (once a year, at most, and then only for a few days) but the horizon, once red plateaus and big sky, is now lined with huge white turbines. Locals feel two ways about this, as you can imagine.



When you see them in the distance, they don't look overly imposing, but you definitely can't overlook them. When you're right next to one of the SPOKES, however — and it's being hauled down the highway by an oversized semi — it can be a little humbling.

(Of course, there are also oil derricks in this part of the world, pumping away on the side of the highway. It makes for an interesting contrast, the black oil derricks versus the white wind turbines.)

But for a town that several years ago was on the verge of collapse, wind energy has made a world of difference.

But I'll leave it to Sweetwater mayor Greg Wortham:

"People hear about the 8-foot-tall wind turbines at Logan airport in Boston or the five turbines at Atlantic City and think 'interesting,' " Wortham says. "But they don't see how we can get to the 300,000-megawatt-production level" established by the Bush administration as a national goal for 2030. "Once you come to Sweetwater, you see that it can be done, and be done pretty easily, not only here, but … anywhere there are prime wind conditions. None of this existed seven years ago. Now, we produce enough electricity in this one county to power a large city, and we do it cheaply and cleanly."

Ew.

I know this is an oversimplification, but ethanol is a good alternative fuel because it's made from a renewable resource — corn — but it's not a good alternative fuel for the same reason.

But in Sweden, there's an alternative fuel derived from a renewable resource that doesn't have another use (beside being gross).

Yes, that's right, they've been using sewage waste.

From a story in the International Herald Tribune:

"Cars using biogas created a stir when they began to be rolled out on a large scale at the start of the decade. The tailpipe emissions are virtually odorless, the fuel is cheaper than gasoline and diesel, and the idea of recovering energy from toilet waste appealed to green-minded Swedes.

'When you're in the bathroom in the morning and you can see something good come of that, it's easy to be taken in by the idea - it's like a utopia,' said Andreas Kask, a business consultant who drives a taxi in Goteborg. 'But it hasn't worked out that well in reality.'"

Ford-owned Volvo had been making the cars, but said they would stop production to focus on cars powered by an ethanol/gasoline blend. But Mercedes and Volkswagen plan to introduce new biogas cars in Sweden this year.

Of course, biogas doesn't sound like it's a complete solution: from what the average person flushes down the toilet each year, it creates enough biogas to drive about 75 miles.

Food vs. Fuel

Here's another startling confession: My all-time favorite food is movie-theater popcorn. So much so that sometimes I go to the movies not because I want to see a particular film, but because I want to eat popcorn for dinner.

Yesterday, USA Today had a story about the rising cost of popcorn, driven by the rising cost of corn. In a companion story, the newspaper also wrote how ethanol is becoming decidedly less popular as the price of corn rises:

"Rising global food prices and shortages have spurred calls in Congress to roll back the federal mandate to blend more ethanol and other biofuels with the gasoline supply. Critics say so much corn is being used for ethanol that there's less available for people and animals to eat, raising prices of everything from tortillas to meat."

And, apparently, movie theater popcorn.

But Pete Moss, president of agricultural consultants Frazier, Barnes & Associates, says "don't blame it all on ethanol."

Yesterday, at a West Tennessee Clean Cities Coalition meeting, Moss said that the culprit behind rising food prices is a combination of high energy prices and increased demand from India and China.

China used to be a net exporter of corn; now they're a net importer of corn. Higher fuel costs are compounded in each step of the growing process, from planting to delivery.

"Some of the [corn crop] is being devoted to ethanol, but it's not a large percentage," Moss says, citing that figure at about 20 percent.

But it seems biofuel producers are meeting with some pushback. The Grocery Manufacturers Association has a fact sheet on its website entitled, "Forcing Food into Fuel: How Congressional Mandates are Making it Harder for Americans to Feed their Families."

(Of course, it mentions other causes for higher food prices — "rising energy costs, strong Asian demand" — but notes that the congressional mandate is the only factor that the government has the power to change.)

On the other hand, Moss says that if biofuel producers weren't increasing output, oil and gas prices would be up another 15 percent.

"My hope was that we'd become energy independent. Biofuel was never meant to be a short-term solution," Moss says. "We have some long-term problems."

To read a Flyer cover story about biofuel in Memphis, click here. To read a Flyer story about Memphis gas stations that sell ethanol, click here.