Coverage of RENEW by others
2008
11.13.08 Public Service Commission takes a stand against coal, Isthmus (Madison, WI)
Forward Wind Center open for public tours, Oct. 22
Invenergy, the wind project developer, invites the public to attend the Forward Energy Center Open House.
When: October 22, 2008
Open House: 1-6 PM
Tours start on the half hour from 1:00 to 5:30 PM
Brownsville Community Club
871 Main St., Brownsville (on Hwy 49)
Come learn more about the Forward Energy Center and how wind power benefits Wisconsin.
Forward began operations in February 2008, becoming one of the first large-scale wind energy projects in Wisconsin. Forward is owned and operated by Chicago-based Invenergy, which is implementing one of the largest programs of wind development in the United States, Canada and Europe, and is committed to building strong relationships with landowners, communities and utility customers.
Please wear appropriate shoes for walking on uneven surfaces. Reservations are not required.
For more information, contact Susan Dennison at sdennnison@invenergyllc.com
Caravans of wind turbines routed through state; Minnesota aims to be model for wind transport
From a media release posted on BusinessNorth.com:
Duluth, Minn – Caravans of specially-built trucks, accompanied by escort vehicles and state patrol cars have been heading out of the Port of Duluth most every morning since June, loaded with wind turbine components destined for wind energy farms across the Midwest. The pace of that movement is about to pick up as one wind energy leader, in particular, ramps up delivery schedules.
Not surprising, as the demand for wind energy has expanded so, too, has heavy truck traffic. Often those vehicles face road restrictions due to over-weight/over-dimensional (OW/OD) loads and must be rerouted along some circuitous routes to avoid bridges, tight turns, and road construction. As such, motorists along city streets and rural roadways have had to wait patiently while an increasing number of oversized vehicles pass by loaded with huge, white towers, blades, nacelles, hubs and spinners. Freight handlers indicate that those traffic patterns may intensify during the next month as final shipments of wind components head west and south before the snow flies.
Some of these units, the nacelles, weigh 180,000+ pounds. Top tower sections alone are over 100 feet long, with blades measuring up to 150 feet. Permits to haul the majority of OW/OD loads require at least one escort vehicle and a state trooper. For one manufacturer alone, Siemens, there have been four (4) permitted, escorted loads leaving Duluth almost daily this summer carrying nacelles and tower sections, plus an additional six “smaller” trucks loaded with hubs and spinners.
Milwaukee searches for solar contractors
From a story by Sean Ryan in The Daily Reporter:
Milwaukee wants its hometown builders to reap the benefits of a surge in solar energy, but the contractors that do that work are from Madison.
Hiring Madison talent both increases project costs and sends cash to out-of-town businesses, said Ann Beier, director of Milwaukee’s Office of Environmental Sustainability.
“We want the jobs here,” she said. “It’s pure and simple. We want Milwaukee residents to do the work.”
But Milwaukee doesn’t have contractors with the necessary certifications to draw public money for solar energy projects. Focus on Energy, the Madison-based group that offers grants for solar projects, requires contractors have experience and education before installing photovoltaic panels.
Most Focus on Energy-sponsored projects use Madison contractors, said Niels Wolter, solar electric program manager for the organization.
“Of course, that adds to the cost (in Milwaukee),” he said, “and of course Milwaukee wants to keep its money in the city.”
Focus on Energy requires contractors to take weeklong solar-installation courses before working on a project, Wolter said. Then, by the time contractors have worked on a maximum of nine projects, they must get certified by the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners Inc.
Banks, like Focus on Energy, don’t like financing projects if the contractor installing the panels is not certified, said Don Albinger, vice president of renewable energy solutions for Johnson Controls Inc., Milwaukee. But he said there are not many classes to prepare contractors to take the exams.
The Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA) offers the necessary classes.
Oconomowoc utility and others making renewable energy easy to use
From a story by Matthew Inda in Living Lake Country:
City of Oconomowoc – One thing that makes Oconomowoc unique is its publicly owned utility company, which strives for environmental efficiency and cheaper prices.
From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, Oct. 13, adults and children have an opportunity to visit the Oconomowoc Utilities office, 808 S. Worthington St., for an open house that will educate everyone about the local power plant, as well as give customers a chance to purchase blocks of renewable energy.
“You get to learn about all the different things the utility does, and specifically green power,” said Lisa Geason-Bauer, owner and marketing director of Evolution Marketing, and consultant of the Oconomowoc Utilities open house.
Open house visitors can learn about the utility that they, as customers, partially own, and can help the utility become more efficient.
One of the first steps in doing so is for customers to sign up to purchase blocks of renewable energy, varied amounts of kilowatts per hour, by which customers can essentially increase the amount of green energy used in their home.
For example, if someone purchases one block of energy for the $3 price tag, they will receive and be charged for 300 kilowatts per hour of renewable energy that is likely coming from wind power, according to Greg Hoffmann, energy service representative for Wisconsin Pubic Power Inc., the regional public power company to which Oconomowoc Utilities belongs.
Two blocks of energy, or 600 kilowatts per hour, would be $6, three blocks (900 kilowatts) would be $9, and so on.
So if a household used 900 kilowatts per hour of electricity in one month, but bought three blocks of renewable energy, then their household would be using 100-percent renewable energy. Hoffmann said the price of the renewable energy, whether $3, $6 or incrementally greater, is tacked on to whatever that home’s monthly bill is.
Hoffmann said the concept is one that many public and private power companies are using, whether it is wind-, solar- or hydro-based.
Palin's Folly
by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
October 7, 2008
What three things do Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela have in common? The first commonality is that they are among the top 10 leading exporters of petroleum worldwide, which is another way of saying that they are the biggest accumulators of foreign cash on the planet.
Commonality No. 2: Gasoline prices in those nations are lower than they are in the United States. The swollen river of revenues that flows into their national treasuries enables these governments to subsidize the price of motor fuel sold to their citizens. In Iran, the portion of federal revenues spent on maintaining price caps on gasoline approaches an astonishing 40%. . . .
Considering the finite nature of their chief exports, these nations would do well to reinvest their windfalls into domestically developable sources of wind and solar energy, to name two energy sources that do not have decline curves associated with them. However, that brings up Commonality No. 3, which is their shared aversion to all energy sources that have the capacity to displace oil and natural gas in some capacity. Renewable energy sources like wind and solar certainly figure prominently in that category.
It is nothing short of amazing to watch these nations squander their colossal fortunes on ephemeral social control measures that only hasten the drawdown of their most economically valuable resource. Subsidizing gasoline is simply a wealth distribution scheme that discounts the future for the present. Its legacy will be to leave billions of people without the capital to invest in building up a sustainable energy future.
Under more enlightened regimes, these nations would be plowing their retained earnings into technologies that harvest locally available self-replenishing energy sources to serve future citizens. They would make it a point of emulating Germany, a nation bereft of native oil and gas reserves but certainly not lacking in foresight and political will. Cloudy skies and weak winds notwithstanding, Germany is deploying considerable amounts of social and financial capital to retool its energy infrastructure so that it can take full advantage of its modest solar ration.
In contrast to Germany, there is not a single commercial wind turbine operating in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela and Russia. While Mexico and Iran look like go-getters by comparison, their efforts to date amount to less than one-half of Wisconsin’s current wind generating capacity. Moreover, even at this late date, oil-exporting nations have invested only a piddling amount of their capital investments in solar energy.
To demonstrate the aversion that oil-exporting jurisdictions have towards renewable energy, consider the example of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. According to Michael T. Klare, who covers defense and foreign policy for The Nation, Alaska is a “classic petrostate,” featuring a political system that is “geared toward the maximization of oil ‘rents’–royalties and other income derived from energy firms–to the neglect of other economic activities.”
Among the economic activities neglected is renewable energy development. Like Russia, with which Alaska shares a “narrow maritime border,” Alaska does not have a single utility-scale wind turbine in operation, a rather remarkable statistic given its sprawling size and a wind resource that in certain locations can be accurately described as “screaming.” But as long oil revenues are sufficient to allow Alaska to dispense with a state income tax, renewable energy development will remain in a deep freeze.
In a recent article, Klare recounts a talk Palin gave at a February 2008 meeting of the National Governors Association, where she said that “the conventional resources we have can fill the gap between now and when new technologies become economically competitive and don’t require subsidies.”
When asked to elaborate on that point, Palin’s antipathy towards renewable energy was revealed. “I just don’t want things to get out of hand with incentives for renewables, particularly since they imply subsidies, while ignoring the fuels we already have on hand,” Palin said.
Had those words been uttered by the Secretary General of OPEC, they would have been forgotten in a matter of seconds. Coming from someone who could become the next vice president, however, is cause for consternation, in that she is clearly recommending a course of action that would invariably lead to greater dependency on oil.
Certainly, the Palin prescription would reverse the decline in oil revenues propping up Alaska’s state government. But the amount of petroleum that could be extracted in 2020 from Alaska and the Outer Continental Shelf is trifling compared with current U.S. imports of Mexican crude. Even if a mini-surge of petroleum materialized as a result of a McCain-Palin energy policy that put Alaska’s wishes above the best interests of the other 49 states, it wouldn’t even compensate for the declining yields from such aging oilfields as Cantarell or Prudhoe Bay, let alone achieve the chimerical goal of energy independence.
Like the other petrostates of the world, Alaska has no Plan B to fall back on when its endowment of fossil fuels is no longer sufficient to support a state government in the style to which it is accustomed. Let us hope and pray that the voters of the other 49 states see the “drill, baby, drill” mantra for the folly it is, and reject it out of hand in favor of an energy policy that stresses energy security through conservation and renewable energy development.
Sources and complete article here.