On the LAKE Front

Apple: from 35% to 75% renewable energy in two years

All it takes is the will to get it done, and Apple is doing it: from 35% renewable energy in 2010 to 75% in 2012, and 100% at all Apple data centers. Cost? They'll save more than they spent. Time for Georgia Power and Southern Company to stop dragging their feet and help us get on with it in Georgia.

Peter Burrows wrote for Bloomberg Thursday that Apple got nudged:

Renewable Portfolio Standards: GA, NC, and ALEC

Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (RPS) are being proposed in Georgia and ALEC is trying to do away with them in North Carolina. If ALEC doesn't like them, there must be something good about RPS. Let's get on with real renewable energy in Georgia.

In Georgia, HB 503, sponsored by Karla Drenner, Carol Fullerton, Debbie Buckner, Scott Holcomb, Spencer Frye, and Earnest Smith, would create a Renewable Energy Credits Trading program as part of renewable portfolio standards, as Kyle wrote for Spencer Frye's blog 10 March 2013, Let the Sunshine In. Unfortunately, HB 503 includes biomass as a renewable energy source. Maybe they just mean landfill gas, which I consider a special case since it's being produced anyway, and since methane is worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2, burning landfill gas makes some sense. Nope, in the actual bill, 46-3-71 (1):

'Biomass material' means organic matter, excluding fossil fuels and black liquor, including agricultural crops, plants, trees, wood, wood wastes and residues, sawmill waste, sawdust, wood chips, bark chips, and forest thinning, harvesting, or clearing residues; wood waste from pallets or other wood demolition debris; peanut shells; cotton plants; corn stalks; and plant matter, including aquatic plants, grasses, stalks, vegetation, and residues, including hulls, shells, or cellulose containing fibers

The barn door in there is "harvesting", which can mean whole trees, but the rest isn't much better. We don't need to be burning things that increase atmospheric CO2 and end up stripping our forests. In North Carolina they staretd with just tops and limbs and then tried to escalate to whole trees. We already fought off the biomass boondoggle here in south Georgia; let's not have it encouraged statewide. Especially when we have better solutions: solar and wind power. HB 503 isn't going to get passed this year, since it didn't make crossover day, so maybe its sponsors can clean up that biomass mess before they submit it again.

Speaking of North Carolina,

Want to finance solar? Call GA Sen. Jack Murphy today about SB 51

A Georgia Senate committee needs to take it up a bill that would greatly ease financing solar power for your housetop or business roof. Sen. Jack Murphy is the chair, and you can contact him today.

GA SB 51, The Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act, was read to the Senate 16 January 2013 and referred to the Committee on Regulated Industries and Utilities. Here's contact information for the Chair of that Committee:

Forest Bioenergy Conference —GFA

Seen Monday. Seems to me that instead of burning trees tree farmers should start growing solar farms on some of their less useful land.

Forest Bioenergy Conference —GFA

Deadline for early registration is Sunday, February 10...register today to save money!

It's 21 February 2013 in Forsyth.

Interest in forest biomass as a potential feedstock for renewable energy facilities has been especially keen for the past several years and much of the activity has been centered in Georgia. GFA and UGA are excited about hosting our fourth biennial conference to examine where we are with forest bioenergy development in Georgia and where we may be going in the near future. While many issues are becoming clearer, much uncertainty remains with regard to government policy and market prices for fossil fuels. This conference is an excellent opportunity to hear from some of the players on the front lines of developing markets, influencing government policies, and conducting research on how these changes may impact our wood supply system.

These are some of the topics that will be addressed during this conference by many of the people directly involved with these changes that are taking place in our state. Join us and stay abreast of these significant changes taking place in our forest industry.

The talk I think they should pay attention to is:

What does Low-Cost Natural Gas Mean for Future Biomass Use?

GA SB 51, The Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act

Georgia Senator Buddy Carter has introduced a Senate bill for the current session of the legislature, SB 51, "The Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act of 2001". It attempts to fix Georgia's special solar financing problem, the antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act.

Why 2001? Apparently Buddy Carter has been introducing it every year since then. Last year Georgia Power's disinformation campaign nuked it when it was SB 401. Has the legislature gotten tired of Georgia Power and its parent the Southern Company being way late and overbudget on those new nukes? Does the legislature want Georgia citizens to get the savings and job benefits of the fastest growing energy source in the country? Will GaSU help with SB 51, or only with GaSU's attempt to become a solar monopoly utility? You can contact your legislators and tell them what you think. Every one of them who voted for Georgia Power's stealth-tax rate hike for that nuke boondoggle should vote for SB 51 to start getting Georgia on a clean path to jobs and energy independence.

This bill is not perfect: it counts "generator fueled by biomass" as

Carbon bubble? Solar and wind erode coal, gas, and biomass credit quality —Moody's

In Europe it's already happening: solar and wind are causing bond-rater Moody's to warn of downgrades of energy companies that depend on heat from burning coal, gas, or biomass. Moody's earlier even warned the Bank of England of a potential carbon bubble developing. If combustion energy plants are affected like this, the credit effects will be even bigger on even-more-expensive nuclear plants, which Moody's called a bet-the-farm risk way back in 2009.

James Murray wrote for businessGreen 6 Nov 2012, Moody's: Renewables boom poses credit risk for coal and gas power plants: Credit ratings agency warns increases in renewable power have had ‘a profound negative impact’ on the competitiveness of thermal generation companies,

"Large increases in renewables have had a profound negative impact on power prices and the competitiveness of thermal generation companies in Europe," said Scott Phillips, an assistant vice president and analyst at Moody's Infrastructure Finance Group, in a statement.

"What were once considered stable companies have seen their business models severely disrupted and we expect steadily rising levels of renewable energy output to further affect European utilities' creditworthiness."

And not just rising, rising increasingly

New biomass plant near Dublin, GA: what it's really about

Not really about jobs, and not about feeding electricity into the grid: the new biomass plant near Dublin, GA is about saving that company money on electricity: but at what cost to the state and to local residents?

Mike Stucka wrote for Macon.com 6 December 2012, Deal announces $95 million biomass power plant for Laurens County,

A new biomass power plant announced Thursday is expected to bring hundreds of related jobs and a direct $95 million investment.

A statement from the office of Gov. Nathan Deal said the plant itself will bring 35 permanent jobs to Laurens County.

Compare 35 permanent jobs for $95 million to MAGE SOLAR's 350 jobs for $30 million. That's about $2,700,000 per job for this deal, vs. $85,714 per job for MAGE SOLAR. Which would make MAGE SOLAR's facility more than 30 times more effective at producing permanent jobs.

OK, but what's this one supposed to do?

Land Development For Future Industries —Andrea Schruijer of VLCIA

Executive Director Andrea Schruijer explained the Industrial Authority's theory behind all those industrial parks. And she mentioned market analysis for a sustainable local economy. Nothing about market analysis about whether industrial parks actually bring in new businesses....

Valdosta CEO posted 28 NOvember 2012, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Invests in Land Development For Future Industries,

Andrea Schruijer, Executive Director of the Valdosta Lowndes County Industrial Authority. A few years ago the community had the foresight to approve a mill that they would set aside for the Industrial Authority to provide for economic development. And because the community did that, the industrial authority is able to better plan for the future in growing our opportunities for economic development. One of the things that we noticed a few years ago is that we didn't have enough land for development. And we didn't have the right sized tracks in case we had a large user coming in looking at the community, where would we put them?

She says "the community did that"? That's funny, Gary Minchew said he organized that. Kari L. Sands wrote for VDT 20 June 2007, Lowndes preps for vote on budget,

Help the military stop climate change through sustainable renewable energy

In memory of Armistice Day, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when World War I ended, let's help the military get us off of oil and to deal with climate change so fewer people will die in wars.

John M. Broder wrote for NYTimes 9 November 2012, Climate Change Report Outlines Perils for U.S. Military,

Climate change is accelerating, and it will place unparalleled strains on American military and intelligence agencies in coming years by causing ever more disruptive events around the globe, the nation’s top scientific research group said in a report issued Friday.

The group, the National Research Council, says in a study commissioned by the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies that clusters of apparently unrelated events exacerbated by a warming climate will create more frequent but unpredictable crises in water supplies, food markets, energy supply chains and public health systems.

Hurricane Sandy provided a foretaste of what can be expected more often in the near future, the report's lead author, John D. Steinbruner, said in an interview.

“This is the sort of thing we were talking about,” said Mr. Steinbruner, a longtime authority on national security. “You can debate the specific contribution of global warming to that storm. But we’re saying climate extremes are going to be more frequent, and this was an example of what they could mean. We’re also saying it could get a whole lot worse than that.”

...

Climate-driven crises could lead to internal instability or international conflict and might force the United States to provide humanitarian assistance or, in some cases, military force to protect vital energy, economic or other interests, the study said.

This is in addition to the even more obvious connection between war and U.S. dependence on foreign oil which the veterans in Operation Free want to fix by helping us shift to clean renewable energy.

“In Iraq... the lines would stretch up to ten miles long under the hot sun, under constant risk of attack by extremists. I realized then just how vulnerable it makes any country to be dependent on oil, especially the United States, which uses nearly a quarter of the world's supply.”

We also heard last year from Col. Dan Nolan (U.S. Army ret.) that the Marines in Afghanistan realized

Wind and solar were all the new U.S. electric generation in September 2012

Wind and sun provided all the new electric power generation deployed in September 2012. As Moore's Law continues to decrease solar prices, solar power gets deployed still more rapidly, and wind also gets installed on time and on budget. Meanwhile, nuclear takes a three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool and hardly any new reactors get finished anyway.

Stephen Lacey wrote for TP Climate Progress 24 October 2012, Wind And Solar Make Up 100% Of New U.S. Electricity Capacity In September,

September was tied for the hottest of any September on record globally. It was also a very hot month for renewable energy in the U.S. According to figures from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, wind and solar accounted for all new electricity capacity added to America's grid in September.

New wind is up 25% Jan-Sep 2012 over the same period last year, and new solar is up 78%. For comparison, new coal is