Category Archives: Wind Power

NJ BPU Approves Offshore Wind Farm

Great news from the Jersey Shore. Writing in the Asbury Park Press, David Willis reported Saturday, Oct. 4, 2008 that

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities

gave a green light to a Garden State Wind Offshore Energy

, a joint venture between PSEG Renewable Generation and Deepwater Wind, one of several competitors, including BlueWater Wind, Fishermen’s Energy of New Jersey LLC, Occidental Development & Equities LLC, and Environmental Technologies LLC. David Harper of The Press of Atlantic City covered the story Sunday.Street Insider published the Press Release.

Map showing approximate location of the offshore wind farm.

Map showing approximate location of the offshore wind farm.

“Offshore wind is probably the most cost-efficient and reliable form of energy we can have” said Jeff Tittle, director of the Sierra Club’sNew Jersey Office. “We will have offshore windmills or we will have offshore oil” until the oil runs out and the shore will move as the sea rises and as storms pummel the coasts.

The $1 Billion project will generate 350 megawatts of power, enough for 125,000 homes, and meet approximately 5% of New Jersey’s needs. The $1 Billion cost for the 350 mw facility is $2.86 per watt for construction, compared to $1.87 for the Atlantic City wind farm, and $6.00 per watt, according to Rebecca Smith in the Wall St. Journal for Florida Power & Light’s proposed Turkey Point 3 & 4 nuclear plants.

The wind farm will be generating energy within four years, and be completed by 2013. The first 1 gw wind farm that T. Boone Pickens’ Mesa Power, is building in Texas is forecast to cost $2.00 per watt and be operational by 2011.

New Jersey’s wind farm will be historic. It will be the first offshore wind farm in New Jersey, and with the Delmarva Wind Farm that BlueWater Wind is building off Delaware, and the plant that Deepwater Wind is building off of Rhode Island, one of the first three offshore wind farms, possibly the first in the United States.

While the US will still lag far behind Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain, other nations in Europe and the rest of the world, this is a start.  I hear the sound of a paradigm shifting.

ELECTRICITY: 100% CLEAN AND GREEN BY 2018

The Gore Energy Challenge– 100% clean, renewable, sustainable electricity in 10 years, can be described in 3 words. Reasonable, Achievable, Visionary. Here’s how:

40% Land Based Wind = 150 GW: $300 Billion.
40% Offshore Wind = 150 GW: $450 Billion.
20% Solar = 75 GW: $375 Billion.

100% Clean Energy = 375 GW: $1.125 Trillion.
Save the Earth – Priceless.

The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. And the age of fossil fuels is ending not because we are running out of fossil fuel, (altho we are) but because we are figuring out how better technologies. Biofuels, Geothermal, Marine Kinetic, Solar, Wind, and of course, Conservation.

Obama and McCain on Energy Policy

With gasoline prices between $3.38 and $4.06 per gallon, and electricity increasing 15% per year and therefore doubling every 5 years, energy is a major issue in the 2008 presidential election.

As President, McCain would focus on coal, oil, and nuclear power. Obama would focus on wind and solar, requiring U. S. utilities to get 25% of their electricity from solar and wind by 2025. McCain would require 20% by 2030. He would also reduce the “red tape” to speed construction of power plants and would build 45 nuclear plants by 2030, at which time he would be 94. Obama, who will be 69 in 2030, is concerned about the radioactive waste problem and other challenges of nuclear power. It does not seem likely that he will call for the construction of 45 new nuclear plants in the next 22 years.

McCain would give the oil companies $34 to $55 Billion over the next five years in subsidies and tax breaks (click here). He also spoke about giving drivers a $30 tax break this past summer. However, the money “given” to the drivers would have been made up in other taxes. Obama would give tax payers a $1,000 tax rebate based on a taxing “windfall” profits of the oil companies over the next 5 years.

McCain proposed a $300 million prize to the auto company that develops a next-generation car battery and would commit $2 billion annually to “clean-coal.” Obama would invest $150 billion over 10 years on low-carbon energy sources, double R&D spending on biomass, solar and wind resources; accelerate commercialization of plug-in hybrids, invest in low-emissions coal plants.

The U S Supreme Court ruled, in 2007, that the under the terms of the Clean Air Act, the EPA must regulate Carbon Dioxide. McCain favors a cap-and-trade CO2 approach. He sponsored a bill in 2007 to cut emissions by 30 percent by 2050. Obama would cut carbon dioxide emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.

Popular Logistics prefers that we accept Al Gore’s challenge

: 100% Clean and Green by 2018. The details of the McCain and Obama positions, compiled by Ayesha Rascoe and Chris Baltimore, from their web-sites Reuters and the International Herald Tribune and Friends of the Earth, are below.

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The Popular Logistics Plan for Clean, Renewable, Sustainable Energy for the United States

The Gore Energy Challenge: Clean and Green by 2018.  Visionary, Reasonable, Achievable. Ask T. Boone Pickens at The Pickens Plan, and Peter Mandelstam at Blue Water Wind.

We could meet the electric power requirements of the United States, estimated at 250 Gigawatts, GW, of generating capacity with wind turbines and photovoltaic solar arrays, for about $811 Billion in 10 years.

  • Land Based Wind: 100 GW, or 40%, at $2.0 Billion per GW: $200 Billion.
  • Offshore Wind: 100 GW, or 40%, at $2.86 Billion per GW: $286 Billion.
  • PV Solar: 50 GW, or 20% at $6.5 Billion per GW: $325 Billion.
  • Total Cost: $811 Billion. (less than has been squandered on the war in Iraq.)
  • Saving the earth: Priceless.

Key Benefits:

  • Good Jobs.
  • Healthy Economy.
  • Enhanced Emergency Response Capability.
  • Stronger National Security.
  • Clean Environment.
  • No Toxic Wastes.
  • No Mercury.
  • No Radioactive Wastes.
  • No Coal Mining Disasters.
  • Less Government Regulation.

This plan doesn’t exploit solar thermal, marine kinetic, geothermal, deep geothermal, cogen, biofuels, or conservation, which will be integrated into this plan in the near future. The plan also focuses on current electricity demand. It does not yet forecast increased electricity demand from population growth, transition from fossil fuels for heating or cooking, or increased reliance on plug-in hybrid cars.

Clean and Green By 2018!

"Swift Boat Veterans" For Wind Power

T. Boone Pickens, Oil billionaire turned wind power developer, says “oil is too expensive. The answer my friends,” to quote Bob Dylan, “is Blowin’ in the wind.” The Pickens Plan talks more about how harnessing the winds can the meet our power needs and eliminate the need to import oil – and export hard currency and wealth. Pickens talks more about money and geopolitics and less about the environmental hazards of burning fossil fuels.  While he wants to burn natural gas (which I use to heat my house) he’s not building coal or nuclear power plants.

Pickens’ Mesa Power is building an $8 Billion 4 Gigawatt (GW) power plant in W. Texas – at $2 per watt. This compares favorably to the plan by Florida Power & Light (FPL) to spend $18 Billion to build a 3.0 GW facility at the Turkey Point plant near Miami. Cost – $6 per watt. The wind farm is 1/3 the cost of a nuclear power plant.

Pickens’ Mesa Power will complete phase 1 of the wind farm, a 1.0 GW facility, by 2010. At that rate the 4 MW will be complete by 2015, the first 3.0 GW by 2013. Mesa Power will also add transmission lines to connect the system to the electrical grid, at a cost of another $2 billion, or $0.50 per GW. According to the Wall St. Journal, FPL estimates their new nuclear facility may be completed in 2018 or 2020. The wind farm – which can be built in stages – can be built for 1/3 the cost and in about 40% of the time.

Solar is more expensive – the Atlantic County Municipal Authority’s 500 KW solar energy system cost about $3.25 Million – about $6.5 per watt. Slightly more than a comparable nuclear plant today , according to estimates based on the cost of the FPL plant. However, when you factor in the costs of fuel (which must be imported), security, regulation, waste management, and the external costs to the environment, solar, which has $0 fuel, $0 waste, and close to $0 maintenance, when you factor in that solar works where it’s needed – and therefore provides a level of security and emergency preparedness – you can only conclude that Pickens is right – wind is a key technology for the future. I would add solar, geothermal, marine current, and conservation.

Liz Borkowski at Pump Handle on Pickens’ wind farm

Liz Borkowski at the Pump Handle has a few thoughtful words to say about T. Boone Pickens’ Texas wind project – I didn’t know that his stated larger plan is to free up natural gas for electricity production. I’d add only that – whatever the plan is, building wind capacity to power a few million households will likely demonstrate that wind is a profitable venture. And that’s good, notwithstanding Pickens’ involvement in the “Swift Boat” attacks on Senator Kerry in 2004.

Put another way – if a right-wing oil man is investing in wind – even if only as a hedge that counts as good news.

As always, Liz Borkowski and the Pump Handle crew are watching and making sense of details that matter.

Nuclear v Wind: The Answer is Blowin’ In The Wind.

Back in May, Rebecca Smith reported in the Wall St. Journal (click here for Popular Logistics posting) that Florida Power & Light wants to spend $12 to $18 Billion to build a 2.2 GW or 3.0 GW nuclear plant at the aptly named “Turkey Point” facility. At about the same time, Reuters reported that T. Boone Pickens ( click here for Popular Logistics posting ) – who made his money in oil – is building a 4 GW wind farm for $10 Billion. FPL says the nuclear plants may be finished by 2020. Pickens says Phase 1 of the wind farm – a 1 GW installation – will be complete by 2011. CNN has also picked up the story .

Nuclear power requires fuel. The fuel cycle produces greenhouse gases. Nuclear power operations produce tons of radioactive waste. Wind power requires no fuel and produces no waste.

On the one hand – $6 per watt, 10 to 12 years to build, tremendous amounts of extremely hazardous wastes. On the other hand $2 per watt, 3 years to build, no waste.

Wired Gets It Wrong – Nuclear Power is Not Good For the Planet

Hummers: Illogical, Un-Economical, and Bad for The Environment. But They Sure Are Big!

Spencer Reiss, writing inWired Magazine says “Nuclear Power is The Most Climate Friendly Insdustrial Scale Form of Energy “. Forgetting for a moment that nuclear power requires fuel, waste management, national security infrastructure, massive government subsidies, including artificial limits to liability, nuclear releases tremendous amounts of heat into the environment, and new nuclear are estimated to cost about 2 to 4 times the price of new wind facilities, without cost overruns (and cost overruns are a given with nuclear power plants) and take 10 to 12 years.

The climate friendly industrial scale forms of energy are Solar, Offshore Wind,large scale Marine Kinetic –tapping the Gulf Stream, Deep Geothermal, CoGen, and the NegaWatts available via conservation. Just as a screw can propel a ship thru the water, a screw anchored to the ocean floor will spin because of currents, and can power turbines. Marine Current Turbines, Ltd., based in Bristol, England has just completed the world’s first megawatt scale tidal/marine current driven power plant in the Strangford Narrows in Northern Ireland. If with wind, the sky’s literally the limit, with MCT the sea’s the limit. Geothermal exploits temperature differentials for heating and cooling. Deep Geothermal

would use the earth’s heat in abandoned mines and wells to generate steam for industrial process power. Recycled Energy Development, RED

, of Westmont, Il does CoGen. REDcaptures industrial waste energy to produce electricity and thermal power, often without burning any additional fuel or emitting any additional pollution. For industrial partners, RED reduces energy costs substantially, increases reliability, and offers the opportunity for emissions credits. Akeena, Evergreen Solar, First Solar

, Sunpower, World Water and Solar, and Vestas Wind are old news. Ausradevelops and deploys utility-scale solar thermal technologies to serve global electricity needs in a dependable, market competitive, environmentally responsible manner.

Wired Magazinealso published a companion piece by Matt Power that says “Pound for pound, making a Prius contributes more carbon to the atmosphere than making a Hummer” (click here). The fallacy here is that they forget to mention that a Hummer weighs about three times more than a Prius, so to have an honest statistic you need to compare 3 pounds of Hummer to each pound of Prius. They do note that the operating efficiency of the Prius outweighs any manufacturing inefficiency. And they point out that it is better for the planet to buy a used car than a new car.

Nuclear Plants: High Cost in Time and Money

Rebecca Smith reported in the Wall Street Journal that Florida Power and Light, FPL, is considering spending $12 to $18 Billion to construct two nuclear reactors at its appropriately named Turkey Point facility in southeast Florida.

Florida Power says “two advanced-design nuclear plants at Turkey Point that would add between 2,200 and 3,000 megawatts. If built, the units are expected to go into service in the years 2018 and 2020.”

John Dorschner writes in the Miami Herald that FPL wants to start billing today for plants that may or may not be built and running in 10 to 12 years!“ The average home electric bill in South Florida is likely to increase about $2.50 a month next year to start paying for two nuclear power plants that Florida Power & Light hopes to put in service in 10 or 12 years.” That’s like “buy now pay later,” except it’s “pay now, buy later”. And the plants haven’t been approved by Florida’s Public Service Commission. So it’s “Pay now, buy later — maybe!’

What about Wind Power? The 7.5 MW Atlantic County Utilities Authority Wind Farm cost an estimated $12 million, approximately $1.6 per watt. (click here)

Putting the pieces of this puzzle together, FPL wants to spend $12 to $18 Billion, assuming no cost overruns, to add 2200 to 3000 mw of capacity in 2018 or 2020. If $12 Billion builds 2200 MW, then we are looking at $5.46 per watt of capacity. Similarly, if $18 Billion builds 3000 MW, we are looking at $6.00 per watt. That’s about what it costs to install commercial scale PV solar, and about four times what it costs to build land based wind farms, and twice what it costs to construct an offshore wind farm. And it takes a whole lot less than 10 or 12 years to install solar panels and build wind farms. Since there is no fuel, there is no fuel cycle, there are no fuel costs, there is no waste heat, and are no toxic or radioactive wastes with wind and solar.

Let’s ignore for a second the fact that nuclear plants present terrorists with targets, the massive subsidies that the government provides nuclear power, the national security ramifications of nuclear power, and the fact that the NRC fires whistleblowers and ignores critics — which in and of itself is a cause for concern — the regulator appears to be incompetent. Why should we spend Billions to build nuclear plants that won’t be operational for at least 10 or 12 years when we could spend a fraction to build solar and wind systems — which are available almost immediately with no pollution, no security challenges, no potential for disaster, and no need for incompetent government regulators?

  Nuclear PV Solar PV Solar Wind — Offshore Wind — Onshore
  FPL Turkey Point NJ Residential NJ Commercial Estimated NJ ACMUA
Cost $12 Billion $80,000 $20 Million $24 Million $12 Million
Capacity 2.2 GW 10 KW 3.5 MW 7.5 MW 75 MW
Cost / watt $5.45 $8.00 $5.71 $3.20 $1.60
Fuel Unknown $Zero $Zero $Zero $Zero
Safety & Oversight Unknown $Zero $Zero $Zero $Zero
Security Unknown $Zero $Zero $Zero $Zero
Waste Management High $Zero $Zero $Zero $Zero

BMCC Student Channels Jack Abramoff

Curtis Brown, president of the Student Government at the Borough of Manhattan Community College is following in the footsteps of a young Jack Abramoff. As reported in the New York Daily News:

May 13, 2008, Brown is trying to evict the New York Public Interest Research Group, NYPIRG from BMCC.The PIRGs have always focused on things like responsible government, consumer protection, and an informed citizenry making intelligent decisions. As chairman of the College Republicans, in 1983, Abramoff and his right-wing storm troopers did not “seek peaceful coexistence with the left.” They felt that their “job is to remove them from power permanently.” Brown is doing what Abramoff tried to do 25 years ago.

Here’s what Thomas Frank wrote in the New York Times, August 29, 2006, “Defunders of Liberty:”

Abramoff and his clean-cut campus radicals pushed their own “defund the left” campaign with characteristic elan, declaring war on Ralph Nader’s Public Interest Research Groups, or PIRG, environmental and consumer activist outfits that were funded by student activity fees on some campuses. The young conservatives were always careful to cast the issue as a matter of “student rights” versus political coercion, but Abramoff clearly saw it as an avenue to ideological victory. “When we win this one,” he boasted in 1983, “we’ll have done more to neutralize Ralph Nader than anyone else, ever.”

The NY Times article is re-published in the blogosphere, click here, and here, and can be googled or yahooed.

Abramoff, currently serving 70 months for conspiracy and fraud, has also admitted to tax evasion, defrauding his clients and conspiring to bribe public officials.

The Future of Energy

Thursday, March 6, 2008, I attended a seminar on solar and wind power at the Atlantic County Utilities Authority, ACUA, clean energy plant, hosted by Cassandra Kling of Clean Energy Holdings. It’s a small plant: 7.0 MW of wind and 0.5 MW of solar, it provides about 0.1% of New Jersey’s power. On the way back I drove into the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Ocean County, NJ, to look around and to get a visceral feel for the place. Oyster Creek provides about 10% of New Jersey’s power. (Click here for the official story or here for NJPIRG.)

There are armed guards outside the nuclear plant. There are watchtowers, presumably with armed sentries. They really don’t want people looking around, “getting a feel for the place”. They looked me over, looked at my driver’s license, searched my car – looked in the trunk, looked under the hood, looked in the front seat, the back seat, under the car, and then escorted me out of the complex. I felt like Arlo Guthrie in ” Alices’s Restaurant” (Click here for Arlo on YouTube“, here for Arlo.net) exceptin’ the fact that I wasn’t arrested.

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Outstanding information graphic: New York Times chart of growth in wind energy capacity

Check out the following information graphic, prepared by The New York Times based on data provided by the American Wind Energy Association: [singlepic=248,419,391,,right] This graphic accompanied Clifford Krauss’s

article “Move Over Oil, There’s Money in Texas Wind

,” in yesterday’s paper.

More on Krauss’s excellent article in another post – but – if you’re also aware that Krauss reported a 45% increase in wind-energy production from 2006 to 2007 – and have that in mind while looking at this chart – this is very good news. If we were to continue at this rate, it would mean a doubling of capacity would occur in slightly over two years.

This is part of a Times series called The Energy Challenge. Check out this series, and you can see that the Times has, perhaps slowly but steadily, been providing good, detailed coverage of energy issues; look closely at the bylines, and it’s apparent that the Times has assigned some of its best reporters to covering energy issues. (As to the chart – which is only credited “The New York Times” – we suspect that Khoi Vinh may have had something to do with it. Why the infographic designer, as who, as much as the reporter and her/his editors, has interpretive responsibility, gets no byline, we don’t understand).

Nuclear Power – Not Green, Not Cheap. But It’s A Security Nightmare.

This Letter to the Editor, written by Larry, was published in the Asbury Park Press , Wednesday, Jan 23, 2008 (Click Here).

The full text is reproduced below.

Nuclear power too dangerous.

Nuclear power is not green or cheap. It is a security nightmare.

When you look at mining, milling and transporting nuclear fuel, nuclear power emits four to five times as much carbon dioxide as wind and solar. The fuel cycle also creates massive amounts of radioactive waste — 100,000 metric tons per plant per year. Thermal pollution from Oyster Creek kills fish, shellfish and amphibians. And radioactive wastes must be isolated from the environment for a long time.

No new nuclear power plants were built in the United States after electricity was deregulated. That’s not because of the Three Mile Island accident or the Chernobyl disaster, and not because of the protests against nuclear power or rational fears of the technology, but because of the time and expense to build new nuclear power plants. When you look at the capital costs of building nuclear plants, and add the costs of insurance, evacuation plans, security systems and government regulation, nuclear power becomes too expensive to compete.

So in 2005, the federal government mandated $125 million in tax breaks for each new nuclear power plant and provided loan guarantees of 80 percent of a plant’s cost, including overruns. Taxpayers pay for those tax breaks and loan guarantees. That does not make it cost-effective; it just shifts the burden.

Nuclear power is a security nightmare. If the Sept. 11 killers had crashed one of the hijacked planes into Oyster Creek rather than the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, much of the Jersey Shore would be like the area around Chernobyl — condemned, abandoned and uninhabitable.

If we were smart, we would move forward quickly on offshore wind, photovoltaic solar, geothermal, ocean current turbines and conservation.

Larry Furman

Energy Bills – Good for the Environment and the Economy.

Last summer’s energy bills were not good for the environment.

Yes, both houses of Congress passed energy bills “oriented toward increasing energy efficiency and boosting renewable power and biofuels.” But the House version had no Corporate Average Fuel Economy program (CAFE) car mileage mandate, thanks to the shortsightedness of Michigan Rep. John Dingell, (who believes himself to be an auto industry champion, but is killing the patient), and the Senate version had no Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) due to strong opposition from Senate Republicans. People who think about sustainable economies and environmentalists wanted both mandates in a final bill.

The final bill now includes a 35 mpg CAFE standard, an Renewable Electricity Standard of 15 percent, and 21 billion dollars of investment in the renewable energy economy.

Among other things, the 21 billion dollars will fund production tax credits for solar and wind power over a four-year period; it will fund research and development programs for renewable energy and job training programs for solar power installers; and it will fund individual tax credits for solar energy, home weatherization and purchase of fuel efficient vehicles like plug-in hybrid cars.

And 50 billion dollars in loan guarantees for new nuclear plants were dropped from the Senate version. (They were in the summer’s version.

While the Republicans like subsidizing the nuclear industry, and they like subsidizing the oil industry, they don’t like the Renewable Electricity Standard and the $21 billion tax package that will fund the bill, especially the $13.5 billion in higher taxes on oil companies. President Bush warned that he is likely to veto the bill if it passes the Senate. Sen. Pete Domenici said, “If it comes over here, we have no alternative but … war.” One sardonic environmentalist said “This war is as well thought out as the War in Iraq. Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who put a hold on the bill back in October, called the tax increase “discrimination against one industry.” (Please note that Hutchison received $284,000 in contributions from the oil and gas industries in 2005 and 2006, (click here) and a total of$1.3 million as of May, 2001 (click here).

The Republicans will fall on their swords. Then they will return as lobbyists. Truthout.Houston Chronicle.Washington Post.LA Times.