Great day for renewables in Virginia: Onward & upward!

On the heels of Secretary Salazar’s offshore wind energy announcement yesterday in Norfolk, both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly passed the Voluntary Solar Resource Fund Bill (HB 2191 and SB 975), which aims to set up a revolving loan fund for residential solar energy projects. The loan program will promote economic development and the production of clean, renewable energy at no cost to the state.

Solar Panels on a roof

This bill is a win-win-win for all major parties involved: the citizens of Virginia who will receive the loans, the commonwealth’s solar energy industry, and utilities with an interest in distributed solar power.

“Renewable energy has had two major boosts today: first the announcement that Virginia could begin leasing offshore wind sites by the end of this year, and also from the passing of the Voluntary Solar Resource Fund bill in the Virginia General Assembly,” said Chelsea Harnish, Virginia Policy Coordinator for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. Continue reading

New Era of U.S. Climate Leadership Starts Saturday

Years from now when historians look back for a turning point in America’s efforts to address the global climate crisis, they could very well point to 2011 as the year when it happened. This might seem counterintuitive after an election which saw a wave of climate-change deniers sweep into Congress, but that’s only if you’re looking for the leadership to come from Washington. If you consider the plans that are afoot right here in Maryland, it’s a different story altogether.

Without a doubt, a climate-denier controlled Congress likely closes the door on a federal climate bill for the next two years, but it certainly does not close the door on state legislation that could spur national-level action. A lack of federal leadership on climate change is hardly something new Continue reading

Where's Bob on Wind?

Hey, Governor McDonnell, are you serious about renewable energy sources like wind and solar, or are you just pulling our leg? I mean, you won’t even commit just $400 to power the Governor’s Mansion with renewable energy in 2011. What’s the deal??

Yes, you read that right. We asked the Governor to buy renewable energy credits as a symbolic gesture that he was leading the Commonwealth towards a future that includes an increased emphasis on clean energy, but he won’t do it. Continue reading

Green and Gorgeous

While politicians are busy arguing over the exact degree to which humans have impacted climate change, innovative designers are diving into clever new energy technologies and green designs.

The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) competition, sponsored by the United Arab Emirates’ “clean technology zone” Masdar City, generated one theoretical wind power generation design that draws its inspiration and its visual appeal directly from field of grass. Continue reading

Old Technology, Just With a "New Spin" :)

Wind power. It lauded as this futuristic form of energy. A possible solution at some point in the future but not commercial ready now.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Wind has been around well forever. It’s the source of all our electricity, if not for the ability to harness the power of wind with a kite, Ben Franklin may have never discovered electricity in the first place!

But obviously it takes more than lightning and a kite to power a society. But Wind power is not a myth, just this week the New York Times ran a story on an ancient italian town generating a surplus of energy off of wind and making a profit!

It might seem like a stretch to link an ancient town in Italy to a thriving modern metropolis like Virginia but this dream is more of a reality than you think! Oceana released a report just this week that stated:

Offshore wind power could exceed Virginia’s current electricity demand and create up to 26,660 in-state jobs, according to a report issued Tuesday.

Written by Oceana, an ocean-oriented environmental group, the report examines the East Coast. It found that wind farms could supply nearly half the region’s current electricity generation and provide up to 212,000 jobs.

The report looked at water that averages at least 12.5 mph winds, is three to 24 miles off the coast, and is no deeper than 100 feet. It excluded 67 percent of these areas due to potential military, environmental and shipping conflicts

Wind has blowing since the time of the dinosaurs and it’s not stopping any time soon. It’s time we start tapping into this infinite resource.

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind

Next week, some of the CCAN staff is headed to Ocean City, Maryland, where we’re part of a coalition of organizations organizing a town hall meeting about efforts to harness Maryland’s offshore wind power. The winds blowing off Ocean City’s Atlantic Coast have the strength to power thousands of homes, or provide up to one third of Maryland’s current electricity needs.

Offshore wind power offers many advantages over dirty fossil fuel sources like oil and coal. Choosing to build wind farms off our shores, rather than drill for oil, alleviates the horrifying risk that Ocean City would ever suffer from an oil spill like the devastating spill in the Gulf. Currently, Maryland imports much of its electricity from dirty coal plants in surrounding states, which sometimes makes our energy supply unreliable and costs unstable. Clean, renewable wind power offers price stability because the fuel is free, and it would be more reliable because it would be harnessed locally. Also, a moderate investment in offshore wind development could provide 15,000 new jobs for Marylanders over the next 20 years. This means more stable, year-round employment opportunities for Ocean City, where many jobs leave town with the tourists at the end of the season.

A human wind turbine
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CCAN director reports from oil disaster site in Louisiana

It’s Sunday morning and I’m writing from Grand Isle, Louisiana on the front line of the BP oil disaster. President Obama was here Friday walking the beach, viewing the small tar balls that continue to wash up here. I’ve now seen this battered coast from the air in a small sea plane. I’ve seen the oil in the marshes from the boat of an out-of-work crab fisherman. And I’ve walked the beaches myself, smelling that smell in the air that people here say is a mix of oil and “agent orange,” their name for the toxic chemical dispersant BP is spraying on the oil to make it sink out of site.


CCAN director Mike Tidwell gets a firsthand
look of the BP oil disaster during a flyover May 27th.

I’ve come here on a three-day tour to see for myself just what’s at stake for states like Virginia and Maryland if any plan for new offshore drilling moves forward in the mid-Atlantic region. Thankfully, due to the activism of people like you, President Obama last week announced the cancellation of a plan to sell drilling leases in an area just 50 miles off the Virginia coastline. That’s a good start. But it’s not a done deal. The cancellation could just be temporary.


Photo of oil invading Louisiana wetlands as seen
from air by CCAN director Mike Tidwell on a May 27th
tour of the disaster zone.

Based on my trip to Louisiana this week, here’s why we need a permanent ban on all new offshore drilling everywhere in America: We will never be safe with oil. Never. Besides the fact that it’s wrecking our climate, there’s no way to permanently regulate away human error and equipment failure. As long as we have thousands and thousands of drilling rigs off our shores, our shores will sooner or later see another spill. Oil is a destructive fuel on every level.

Here’s the human level. I’ve spent three full days now visiting and interviewing innocent Louisiana fishing families who are now being wiped out by the spill. Many of them weep openly as they talk. They describe spending their whole lives fishing here only to be told in May 2010 that they’ll get a $10,000 fine if they drop a single net or line in the water.


CCAN director Mike Tidwell flies over the Louisiana
oil disaster site May 27th with Aaron Viles of
the Gulf Restoration Network.

Fear and anger run rampant here. No one knows when the oil disaster will end. Will the Gulf be biologically dead by the time this is over? Will a proud 200-year fishing culture be doomed? People cry a lot over those questions here. Grown men in their 70s cry. Working mothers in their 20s cry.

If a similar blowout occurred off the coast of Virginia, we’d have oil from Virginia Beach to Cape May, NJ. And it would be innocent Virginia watermen crying. Innocent motel owners and dockworkers crying. Virginia offshore wind power, conversely, using a small portion of the coast, could provide enough electricity to power 3.6 million electric cars forever. With practically zero pollution even if, god forbid, a hurricane blew through and knocked down some or all the windmills. It’s clean energy.

Yesterday I spent time with a Cajun woman named Phyllis Melancon of Leeville, Louisiana. Standing next to her idle shrimp boat, here nets hanging dry for the first time anyone can remember in the month of May, she said, “BP thinks they can repay us with money. But they’ve take away something no money can repay. They’ve taken away our way of life. Our life on the water. Now all we have are dry nets and a big emptiness inside.”

We are all victims of climate change all over the world, of course. But these are the victims, right now, of one of our more obscene addictions within the climate crisis. It’s our responsibility to make sure the suffering down here is not in vain.

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Dubinsky, Gulf Restoration Network

Misleading "Energy Sprawl" Study Pollutes Climate Debate

Misleading “Energy Sprawl” Study Pollutes Climate Debate

This is cross posted from The Huffington Post and iLoveMountains.org

As Congress was returning from the August recess, there wasn’t much news about the climate bill. The only energy-related news breaking through the coverage of the rancorous health care debates and town-hall tea parties was a study on “energy sprawl” published by five staff members of the Nature Conservancy.

“Renewable Energy Needs Land, Lots Of Land” was the headline of an August 28th story on NPR about the study.

“Renewable technologies increase energy sprawl,” was the headline summary on the journal Nature’s website.

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, in an Op/Ed published in the Wall Street Journal, summed up the message that was heard by legislators and the public from the news coverage of the study:

“we’re about to destroy the environment in the name of saving it.”

The interesting thing about the news coverage is that none of it addressed the actual analysis. The study didn’t actually measure the impacts of different energy technologies, but rather compiled estimates from a smattering of reports, fact sheets and brochures from government and industry sources in order to arrive at an acre-per-unit of energy figure for each energy technology. Those figures were then applied to the Energy Information Administration’s modeling of four climate policy scenarios under consideration by Congress.

So the coverage was generated not by the study’s results, but entirely by the assumptions that went into it about the relative impacts of renewable versus conventional energy technologies. Looking at the counter-intuitive findings (wind is 8 times as destructive as coal), it’s no wonder that the media took such an interest.

To put those assumptions in perspective, the habitat impact of the Mount Storm Wind Farm in the first image is assumed to be 25% greater than the impact of the 12,000 acre Hobet mountaintop removal mine in the second image (images are taken from the same altitude and perspective; the bright connect-the-dots feature in the windfarm image is the actual area disturbed):

MtStorm2  Mount Mine Site from 9 miles

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And the fight goes on…

For those of you who were wondering what’s happening with that whole nuclear expansion thing in MD, never fear! We’re still fighting the new reactor at Calvert Cliffs, and we need your help to launch a new phase of the campaign.

First, a quick reminder about why CCAN, a climate group, cares about nuclear power. Isn’t it carbon neutral? Well, it may produce less CO2 than dirty coal-fired power plants, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous. And the most nefarious costs are the ones that are hidden: particularly the fact that investment in nuclear pushes out renewable energy. Dr. Peter Bradford, a former commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and utility expert, said it best:

The “all of the above” approach to our national energy portfolio does not necessarily play out well at the local level. Sometimes solutions [to energy demand] drive out other solutions. If a region commits to a 1,600 Mw reactor, than there is little motivation to do efficiency or renewables.

There’s the reason. If we get new nukes, then we won’t get more wind. On the local level, here in MD, it’s an either/or decision. I’d rather have wind, thanks. (see? wind turbines are so cute!)

So what can you do? Sign this petition, asking the Public Service Commission to continue to stay engaged in the regulatory process, so that citizens have the opportunity to share their concerns.

**Bonus News!** This just in: in yet another example of how ridiculous this whole process is, bullets from a nearby firing range hit buildings at the Calvert Cliffs plant.