Category Archives: Climate Change

Question for John Kerry

40 KW Solar array on Whilehall St Ferry Terminal

40 KW PV Solar Array on SI Ferry Terminal

While Chinese subsidies of their solar energy industry have decimated the manufacturing base of the American solar industry, solar energy continues to expand across the country.

What if we stimulated the solar industry with a public works program?

What if we decided to deploy a 40 kilowatt photovoltaic solar array on each of the approximately 90,000 public schools in the country?

The best kept secret in NYC may be found on the Staten Island Ferry, or more precisely, on the south roof of the Whitehall Street terminal. It’s a 40 kilowatt photovoltaic solar array.

Taxpayers pay the electric bills of the ferry terminal, which today are much lower because of the energy the system produces. Taxpayers also pay the electric bills of public schools, courts and other municipal, state and federal office buildings – and the externalized costs of pollution and “health effects” related to mining coal and uranium, drilling oil or frakking gas.

I met Senator John Kerry at the Harvey Nash Inc. Leadership Breakfast at the Plaza Hotel in NYC on Friday, March 2, 2012. At the conclusion I asked him to consider a 40 kw photovoltaic solar energy system on each of the approximately 90,000 public schools in the US.

At $5.00 per watt, which is less than the cost of new nuclear and much less than coal with carbon sequestration, these 90,000 systems would cost $18 billion. They would produce electricity without burning fuel, creating wastes, or creating targets for terrorists, and would pay for themselves in eight to 15 years, depending on the market price of electricity. They would also produce energy for 25 to 40 years – paying for themselves several times over.

This kind of a public works project would create jobs. Even if we didn’t mandate that these used products made in American factories, which I think we should, installation and maintenance would have to be local.

It would also lessen our dependence on fossil fuels.

And each solar energy powered building could be designed to generate electricity during the day during an emergency which shuts down the grid, further enhancing our emergency response capability.

Senator Kerry responded that this would be a perfect project for the Infrastructure Bank that he wants to create. However, the political climate is such that it can’t get done.

BBC News – Global warming 'confirmed' by independent study

Richard Black, Environment correspondent for the BBC News, reports that – no shocker here –  global warming does, in fact,  seem to be occurring.

The Earth’s surface really is getting warmer, a new analysis by a US scientific group set up in the wake of the “Climategate” affair has concluded.The Berkeley Earth Project has used new methods and some new data, but finds the same warming trend seen by groups such as the UK Met Office and Nasa.The project received funds from sources that back organisations lobbying against action on climate change.”Climategate”, in 2009, involved claims global warming had been exaggerated.Emails of University of East Anglia UEA climate scientists were hacked, posted online and used by critics to allege manipulation of climate change

via BBC News – Global warming ‘confirmed’ by independent study.

Beyond Fuel – for the 21st Century – Cocoa Beach, Sept. 17

Space Coast Green Living Festival

Follow LJF97 on Twitter Tweet I will be presenting Beyond Fuel: From Consuming Natural Resources to Harnessing Natural Processes at the Space Coast Green Living Festival, Cocoa Beach, Florida, Sept 17, 2011.  The festival  is sponsored by the Cocoa Beach Surfrider Foundation and the Sierra Club Turtle Coast Group. It will be at the Cocoa Beach Courtyard by Marriott. Haley Sales, (Website / Facebook / Youtube),a local singer / songwriter, will perform.

Hayley Sales

Our current energy paradigm today is to fuel based. We burn oceans of oil and methane mountains of coal. And there are consequences.  We suffer oil spills, polluted water, mercury, coal mine disasters, nuclear power plant melt-downs, we fight wars …

According to the DoE, in 2010 we burned 1,085,281 thousand short tons of coal and 15,022 thousand short tons of coke (here).

Wind and solar don’t burn fuel. The winds blow, the sun shines, you put a widget in the path of those moving particles in the air or those photons of light and you get electricity – without greenhouse gases, radioactive wastes, toxic wastes, and it costs less. So the question is not ‘Can we meet our energy needs with clean, sustainable renewable energy technologies?” The real question are How? How Much? And How quickly?

100% Clean Energy
100 Gigawatts Wind $300 Billion
100 GW Marine Hydro $300 B
50 GW Solar $200 B
50 GW Geothermal $200 B
200 GW Equiv Efficiency $200 B
A Smart Grid $100 B
500 GW or GW Equiv. $1.3 Trillion

And we could do it within 25 Years if we wanted to.

Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, coined the term “Negawatt” to mean energy you don’t need to buy, as in “The cheapest unit of energy is the one you don’t have to buy.” The next cheapest, the “nega-fuel-watt” is the unit of energy that doesn’t require fuel.

"Beyond Fuel" at the Space Coast Green Living Festival

Space Coast Green Living Festival

Green Living Festival

Follow LJF97 on Twitter Tweet I am presenting “Beyond Fuel: From Consuming Natural Resources to Harnessing Natural Processes,” a discussion of the hidden costs, or “economic externalities,” of nuclear power, coal, and oil, and the non-obvious benefits of wind, solar, marine hydro and efficiency at the Space Coast Green Living Festival, Cocoa Beach, Florida, Sept 17, 2011.

The festival  is sponsored by the Cocoa Beach Surfrider Foundation and the Sierra Club Turtle Coast Group. It will be at the Cocoa Beach Courtyard by Marriott.

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Clean Energy, Good Jobs, and a Vibrant Economy … But

 

Earth from Space, courtesy NASA (our tax dollars at work)

courtesy NASA (our tax dollars at work)

Follow LJF97 on Twitter  Tweet  It sounds too good to be true:

*   100 gigawatts of offshore wind, $300 Billion,
*   100 gw of landbased wind, $200 Billion,
*   75 gw of solar, $300 Billion,
*   75 gw of geothermal, $200 Billion.
*   200 gigawatt equivalents of efficiency – $200 Billion.
*   100 & Clean, Renewable, Sustaianble Energy: 1.2 Trillion.
*   2.7 Million New Jobs and a Healthy Economy: Priceless!

This is happening, slowly, inexorably, by the “invisible hand of the market.” But it will happen faster if the “invisible mind of the community” acts. This means the government!

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Would Ayn Rand be Concerned about Climate Change? You Betcha!

TweetFollow LJF97 on Twitter On Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and Climate Change

Ayn  Rand would not “believe” in climate change.  She would try to objectively determine whether the theory correctly modeled the data. While it is legitimate to question both the conclusions of scientists and the methodologies by which data are gathered, denying objective validity of the data, which people who call themselves “Objectivists” are doing with respect to climate science, is well, in a word, anti-Objectivist, at least as described  by Ayn Rand in 1962.

“The essence of my philosophy” she said, is:

  1. Metaphysics Objective Reality
  2. Epistemology Reason
  3. Ethics Self-interest
  4. Politics Capitalism

“Translated into simple language, ” she continued, “it would read:

  1. “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” or “Wishing won’t make it so.”
  2. “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.”
  3. “Man is an end in himself.”
  4. “Give me liberty or give me death.” Continue reading

Keynes, Reluctance to hire, & 21ST Century Energy

John Maynard Keynes, in black and white, because some ideas are.

in black and white, because some ideas are.

Tweet Follow LJF97 on Twitter   During the Great Depression the Classical Economists said “Unemployment is voluntary. Business owners will not voluntarily keep the means of production idle.”  While he had been a student of classical economics, John Maynard Keynes observed that the data didn’t fit the theory. And, he reasoned, if the observable data don’t fit the theory, the theory must be flawed.   “Business owners are risk averse,” he saw. “A employee needs to be productive, needs to make widgets. But if no one is buying widgets, then contrary to classical theory, factory owners will fire workers and keep capital idle rather than hire workers to create excess inventory. That’s just common sense.”

We see this today.

When unemployment was low, for example in the United States during the tech boom of the 1990’s, people acted on the premise that “There is so much work that we could hire and good people and train them.”  Today hiring managers seem to be acting on the premise that “There are so many people looking for work that they can wait for the perfect candidate.” Perfection being unattainable, jobs go unfilled. This is ok, in this context, because

  • “Budgets are tight.”
  • “The future is uncertain.”
  • “Money not spent on a new hire can be saved or used to pay down debt.”

Keynes also observed that the government is an employer that does not need to worry about going out of business. Building infrastructure is government employment that is investment for the future. These observations are as valid today as they were 80 years ago.

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NegaWatts Save MegaBucks

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The Newark Star Ledger reported (here and here) that Public Service Electric and Gas, PSE&G, a subsidiary of Public Service Enterprise Group, PSEG, is installing a  2,700-ton chiller the University of Medicine and Dentristy of New Jersey, UMDNJ. This an $11.4 million investment in negawatts. The Star Ledger reported that UMDNJ will save $1.3 million per year on energy costs.What’s the payback? An $11.4 million investment will save $1.3 million per year. That means the system will pay for itself within 9 years, assuming the price of energy remains constant.  I think it’s a much more reasonable to assume that the price of energy will go up, so the payback will be higher and the system will pay for itself sooner.

The system will work long after it is paid for. It will save $13 Million over the next 10 years and $26 Million over the next 20 years – assuming electricity costs are constant.  Assuming electricity costs increase an average of 5% per year, this will save $16.35 Million over the next 10 years, and $42.99 over the next 20 years.

  • Projected Savings of $11.4 Million investment.
  • After 1 Year: $1.3 Million, a return on investment of 11.4% in one year.
  • After 5 Years: Save $7.18 Million, for a total ROI of 63%, assuming a 5% annual increases in cost of energy.
  • After 10 Years:  Save $16.35 M; total ROI of 143.4%).
  • After 15 Years: Save $28.05 M; total ROI of (246%)
  • After 20 Years: Save $42.99 M; total ROI of 377%).

We have Governor Corzine to thank. as well as Governors Whitman, McGreevey, Codey, and Christie.

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Risk Assessment of Energy Infrastructure: Renewables Lower Risk

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UN Panel: “Renewables could supply 80% of the world’s energy by 2050”

Energy Policy and Game Theory

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ((an organization staffed by two distinct United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization and the World Heath Organization)), has issued a report estimating that 80% of the world’s energy needs could be met by renewable sources by 2050. Link to Report, including video (0:3:37) of Ottmar Ettenhafer, chair of the IPCC, regarding the report.

We believe that barriers are not ultimately economic or technical, but political, social, and attitudinal.  Since we’d prefer to think that most people don’t wish the ill effects of climate change on their grandchildren – or would take that bet with any bookmaker (what our British cousins call a “turf accountant”), putting the lives of those they know will outlive them at risk,  we prefer to think that it’s some form of social acquiescence – less politely, “groupthink,” rather than avarice, which leads to dismissal of concerns about global warming. Viz this excerpt from a post we found on the Peak Energy blog.  This is from a column by Paddy Manning, business columnist at the Sydney Morning Herald:

From Corporate leaders in a climate of disbelief

Scepticism hung heavy in the air. At a packed Australian Institute of Company Directors lunch on climate change, the institute’s former chief executive, Ian Dunlop – a petroleum engineer who was a Shell executive and now is the deputy convener of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil – rose to put a question to keynote speaker, David Mortimer, the chairman of Leighton Holdings, the world’s biggest contract coalminer.

In full, Dunlop’s question ran for three minutes: ”The temperature increase we’ve seen so far is about 0.8 degrees Celsius. We’ve already seen a clear trend in extreme weather events related to just that increase. We probably have locked in already a temperature increase of around 2.4 degrees. If we were to follow the path that you’re suggesting in terms of continued fossil fuel usage to 2030, the likely outcome will be a temperature increase somewhere between 4 and 6 degrees. That probably means world population drops to a carrying capacity of somewhere around a billion people (you can argue 1 to 2 billion).

We  recommend reading Manning’s excellent reporting on Dunlop’s presentation. But we’d like to put the question another way, strictly as a thought exercise in two parts.

Part 1: A Wager on Climate Change

  1. A 1% probability that serious consequences will be the result of continuing our current energy policies;
  2. If – on the 1% probability that the “alarmists” are right – in which case this isn’t something rapidly reversible ;
  3. Would you take a 1% bet – even if it paid 5,000 to 1 – if the loss meant the death or impoverishment of your grandchildren?
  4. How much does your moral calculus change if it someone else’s children -someone else you don’t know and will never know?

Part 2: Who Gets To Play?

  1. We’re all making this wager with our actions – but certain groups of us – people with the most to gain with the continued use of non-renewables
  2. If this is, in effect, a multiplayer version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma ((See Wikipedia’s excellent introduction to the Prisoner’s Dilemma, one of the fundamental problems in game theory)) we’re already making this bet – but we’re pooling the risk onto a set of most or all “children” or “grandchildren.”

What if we were to decide the risk was unacceptable, and apply the Precautionary Principle? Moving to a renewable-focused energy policy would inevitably have certain effects, some of them bad for small groups of people, no doubt – the others pretty good for most of us:

  1. Energy would be more expensive in the short run, while capital investment is made;
  2. The investment in new infrastructure will stimulate the economy, unemployment will decrease, wages and wealth will increase, GPI, Genuine Progress Indicator, will increase.
  3. Energy would become more efficient,  i.e. less energy for the same amount of economic activity. Except for energy producers, transporters and resellers, this is in effect a lowering of overhead costs without general deflation.
  4. The unquestioned risks of certain energy uses (air quality, water quality, the risks inherent in extracting, refining, transporting, and storing various energy types) and associated safety and health costs would be reduced.

This assessment gives most of us at least a short-term interest opposed to parties with economic interests in the current system. It also gives us a long term interest in investing in renewables. And it makes the current unsustainable paradigm a bet against future generations.

Why Cape Wind Still Matters


Follow LJF97 on Twitter On May 25, 1961 President John Kennedy said, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” (Kennedy library and NASA)

Ten years ago, before Sept. 11, Jim Gordon and his team set out to build a small wind farm on the waters on which the young President, his wife, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews sailed. Size is relative. It’s small compared to a large coal or nuclear power complex. The wind farm will be composed of 130 turbines and produce up to 430 megawatts of power (here).

Former Mass. Gov. Deval PatrickIn 2010 Jim Gordon and Cape Wind, LLC, finally, got their permits to build the wind farm. For a variety of reasons it took longer for Cape Wind, LLC to get the permits to build the wind farm than it took this nation to land a man on the moon and bring him home safely.  Had the wind farm been built by the winter of 2004, Cape Wind would have provided power during the bitter January of ’04, the heat wave of ’05, and every day, especially the coldest days of winter and the hottest days of summer – when the winds are strongest and New Englander’s electricity needs are highest.

 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Virginia Senator John Warner

Mass. Senator Scott Brown

Former Mass. Gov. Willard Mitt Romney

It’s also clear, from reading Cape Wind, by Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb, that the alliance to “Save Our Sound,” created an anti-wind rogue’s gallery, a bipartisan coalition of moneyed special interests which led Senator Edward M. Kennedy, D-MA, Governor Willard Mitt Romney, R-MA, Senator Ted Stevens, R-AK, Representative Dan Young, R-AK, Sen. Trent Lott, R-MS, Sen. John Warner, R-VA, and very wealthy residents of Cape Cod, including Bill Koch, the late Richard Egan, Rachel “Bunny” Lambert Mellon (Sen. Warner’s ex-mother-in-law), professional environmentalist Robert F Kennedy, Jr. to obstruct the regulatory and the legislative processes and which slowed the development of Cape Wind and offshore wind farms off of the mid-Atlantic and elsewhere.

For them to oppose this project or say “I favor wind power, as long as it’s somewhere else,” was and remains cynical. Given that we have combat troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, that Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006 described the mission in Iraq as a war for oil, was unpatriotic, perhaps traitorous.

Senator Olympia Snowe

Senator DomeniciYet another bipartisan coalition rose up to challenge them and support Cape Wind: Ted Roosevelt, IV, who lives on the Cape, Rep. Jim Bass, R-NH, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-ME, Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM, Matt Patrick, Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick,  Greenpeace, unions, Fox News’ Sean Hannity. What these politicians have in common is an understanding of the values of energy independence and renewable energy.

Popular Logistics is a policy blog, not a politics blog. However, it’s worth noting that several political campaigns were won in Massachusetts by Democrats who supported Cape Wind, including Matt Patrick, the 5-term Democratic Representative of the 3rd District of Barnstable, Cape Cod, and Deval Patrick who started his 2006 Gubenatorial campaign in front of the Hull, MA, wind turbine.

Mitt Romney, who signed Ted Kennedy’s health care plan into law in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, (also known as Obamacare 1.0) appears to be running for President in 2012. He lost in the 2008 Primary to John McCain. Mr. Romney signed on to the Kennedy-Koch-Egan-Mellon anti-Cape Wind jihad. Americans favor wind power. Will they support Romney in 2012?

Scott “Mitt-Lite” Brown, said (here) “While I support the concept of wind power as an alternative source of energy, Nantucket Sound is a national treasure.”  Massachusetts voters favor Cape Wind 70 to 30. Will they support Brown in his re-election campaign in 2012?  The Statue of Liberty is a “National Treasure,” as is the Constitution.  I last visited Cape Cod when I was 7. Nantucket Sound is not a “National Treasure.” Getting America off coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power, moving to clean, renewable, sustainable energy means our children and grandchildren will enjoy our national treasures.

In their book Williams and Whitcomb suggest that Senator Kennedy may have realized that he had made a bad decision in opposing Cape Wind, but that for a variety of reasons he refused to back down. They may be right. While I think Kennedy was wrong, I can’t speak to whether he came to that understanding. As I noted on this blog, back in August, 2009, (here) President Obama said of Ted Kennedy,”His ideas and ideals are stamped on scores of laws and reflected in millions of lives: in seniors who know new dignity; in families who know new opportunity; in children who know education’s promise; and in all who can pursue their dream in an America that is more equal and more just, including myself.

Obama said “More equal and more just,” but he didn’t say “perfect.” America is not perfect. It is nation of men and women governed by the rule of law. The laws are not perfect, and neither are the men and women who make, enforce and interpret the laws.

Our energy policy is electricity flows when people flip a switch. Most of that electricity comes from burning fossil fuels and harnessing nuclear fission. We can pretend that the carbon we are pumping into the oceans and the atmosphere will have no effect, that we have unlimited supplies of fossil fuels, and uranium, that all the waste from coal mining, processing, transporting, and burning, and all the radiation leaks from nuclear plants (and radioactive waste from coal) are trivial or routine. Or we can get real. The choice is between coal, oil, methane, and nuclear, or wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal. I choose wind, solar, tidal and geothermal; for myself, for my backyard, not just for people who are my equal in the eyes of the law, whether they have more or less money than me.

Offshore wind farm. monopoles are about 100 m.

Index to the series that explores Offshore Wind and Politics:

  1. Cape Wind, Leadership and Vision, here.
  2. Why Cape Wind Still Matters, here.
  3. Ted Roosevelt, IV, on Cape Wind (coming soon).

Cape Wind, Leadership and Vision

Jim Gordon


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On Friday, March 25,2011, Cape Wind LLC‘s CEO Jim Gordon spoke at Columbia University about the long delayed project. When he started the project, back in 2001, the Europeans were 10 years ahead of us. Today the Europeans are 20 years ahead of us, and the Chinese too are years ahead of us.

Mr. Gordon quoted Theodore Roosevelt, IV, as saying, “I live on the Cape. If we don’t do this, in 50 years the Cape will be under water.” Cape Cod’s highest point is about 300 feet above sea level so Mr. Roosevelt was exaggerating.  His home may wind up under water, but at least some of the Cape will be one or more islands. Speaking of islands, Nantucket, which in 2006 had the highest median property values in Massachusetts, rises some 30 feet above sea level. If sea level rises 30 feet, Nantucket will get washed away.

Mr. Gordon said, “Cape Cod has the most polluted air in New England. When you harness the wind you get clean electricity: No arsenic, lead, mercury, thorium, uranium, or zinc or carbon dioxide like you get from burning coal. No barges of oil that can spill. No radioactive waste like you get from nuclear power. Last year we read about the coal mine disaster in West Virginia. Then the Deepwater Horizon. Now we’re reading about the disaster in Japan.  With wind there is no possibility of a disaster, Zero.”

And, he added, “Fossil fuels are a finite resource. New England has neither coal, oil, or natural gas – but there is a tremendous amount of wind. When you factor in the costs of storms and sea level rise – you would think it’s a no-brainer.” The question is not “Can wind power provide base line capacity?” But “How can wind power provide base line capacity.”

Mr. Gordon told how during a trade mission to China, one of his engineers was grilled about wind power, offshore wind, engineering, costs, and siting. After the end of the grilling his hosts said “we read Cape Wind, by Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb. We would never allow that here.” In 2009 China built a 100 mw wind farm off the coast of Shanghai – completed the project quickly. By the end of 2010 they had 41.8 gigawatts of nameplate capacity wind power – enough for about 45 million Americans (wikipedia). Continue reading

21 Century Energy or Business As Usual?

NY Times Special (Business As Usual) Energy Section

Clifford Krauss’ “Can We Do Without the Mideast?”
sets the tone for the “Special Energy Section” in the NY Times, March 31, 2011. “The path to independence – or at least an end to dependence on the Mideast – could well be dirty, expensive and politically explosive.” Is this an April Fool’s Day joke? The path to sustainable energy requires vision and hard work. a solar array on every roof and insulation in every wall and every attic. It will be better for the economy, better for the environment, and better for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren. Continue reading

Election Day, 2010

John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

President Kennedy once said “Politics is the only game that matters.” It’s winner take all, and the winner decides how your money is spent. President Clinton used to say “It’s the economy, stupid.” This still applies. Neither the President nor the Congress was focused on putting Americans back to work. They need to re-read Keynes, and also study Ecological Economics. (And Mr. President it’s not the economy according to the economists, it’s the economy according to voters who are up to their eyeballs in debt, unemployed, or facing foreclosure, and their kids, with health care, courtesy of your law, but fresh out of college, with huge college loans, and no jobs.)

Gov. Elect Cuomo

Gov. Elect Cuomo

Andrew Cuomo’s win of the NY Governor’s race was not a surprise. Altho the margin – 1,135,214 votes (2,565,869 votes, 61%, to 1,430,655, 34%, Washington Post) is staggering . Some of my conservative Republican friends voted for Cuomo. Others abstained. How could they vote for Carl Paladino, with such an obvious inability to govern, a guy who is uncomfortable with gay people but who owns 2 gay bars?

Congratulations to Governor-Elect Cuomo, and the State of New York. Popular Logistics would like to see Gov. Cuomo run for President in 2016.

Lucy Liu, Actor

Lucy Liu, Actor

Jennifer Lopez, aka Jennie from The Hood

Jennifer Lopez, Singer & Actor

Senator Harry Reid won reelection, thanks to Hispanics, Asians, and African Americans, by a margin of 5%. Hispanic citizens were 10% of the vote, with 66.7% voting for Reid.  According to the AP, on NPR, “Reid won two-thirds of the Hispanic vote” 80% of African-Americans and 75% of Asians.

(Note to Sharron Angle – like Asians and Hispanics generally, both Lucy Liu, on the left in blue, and Jennifer Lopez on the right in beige, have black hair and brown eyes. Even if I didn’t know who they were, I’d know the woman in blue is Asian and the woman in beige is Hispanic, or white-with-a-tan.) Continue reading

Google announces Biggest OffShore Wind Project

Schematic Map of Atlantic Wind Connection

Schematic Map of Atlantic Wind Connection

Google is putting its money where its mouth is. Back in early September, 2008, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said, “We have a total failure of political leadership, at least in the U. S., and perhaps the world.” He then called for 100% of U. S. power to come from green energy in 20 years – with 500,000 wind energy jobs. (See “Google’s Eric Schmidt Details Energy Plan, Chides Lack of Leadership,” by By Katie Fehrenbacher, Sep. 9, 2008, on Gigacom.) Schmidt combined Al Gore’s call for 100% clean electricity in 10 years with Intel CEO Andy Grove’s call for millions of plug-in hybrid cars.  (I would like to add that they should be plug-in hybrid biofuel, with the fuel coming from sewage and factory farm waste, not food crops.)

Recently, 10/12/10,  Erick Schonfeld at GreenTech (onTechCrunch) wrote Google Backs Biggest U.S. Offshore Wind Project:

Arklow Bank Wind Farm

Arklow Bank Wind Farm. Copyright (C) 2005, GE. Used with permission.

“Using its cash to kickstart renewable energy businesses, Google is now backing the largest U.S. offshore wind farm project to date. The Atlantic Wind Connection is a proposed string of offshore wind turbines that will stretch 350 miles off the Atlantic coast from Virginia to New Jersey. Once completed, the project will produce 6,000 megawatts of power, which is equivalent to 60 percent of all the wind power built in the U.S. last year. The wind project will serve nearly 2 million homes. Continue reading

For the Future

Arklow Bank Wind Turbines

Arklow Bank Wind Farm, offshore of Ireland. Copyright, C, GE Energy. Used with permission.

Conferences –

Academics – An MBA for Changing the Climate of Business (click here). Continue reading