by jboullion | May 25, 2010 | Uncategorized
From an article by Nathaniel Shuda in the Stevens Point Journal:
In his last batch of funding requests before his retirement, U.S. Rep. Dave Obey, D-Wausau, is seeking almost $2 million in earmarks for Portage County.
Four of the 85 projects Obey submitted for consideration in the 2011 federal budget are specific to the county, with several focused on central Wisconsin and others on statewide projects.
Despite being a retiring congressman, the likelihood Obey’s projects will get funding remains relatively high, given his seniority in the House of Representatives and position as Appropriations Committee chairman, said Ed Miller, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
“It’s more difficult when you’re going out of office, but given that he’s the chairman of the committee, I think he’s going to handle it well,” Miller said.
Among the projects, which the Appropriations Committee and full House and Senate still must approve, are funds to help the UWSP Institute for Sustainable Technology, Project Learn Program, redevelopment in the city of Stevens Point and the continued reconstruction of Highway 10.
Among other projects in central Wisconsin is an expanded renewable energy center at Mid-State Technical College.
Mid-State’s board of directors recently approved a $2 million renewable energy center at its Wisconsin Rapids campus, but that could more than double if Congress approves another $4.5 million Obey requested for the project.
“It will allow us to basically complete the whole project,” said Al Javoroski, dean of Mid-State’s technical and industrial division, who still expressed some hesitation after Congress rejected a $20 million request in 2009.
“The big picture is we’re going to do what we need to (in order) to support our renewable energy initiative.”
by jboullion | May 20, 2010 | Uncategorized
From an article by Larry Bivins in the Stevens Point Journal:
WASHINGTON — Wisconsin is the nation’s fifth most coal-dependent state for generating electricity, according to a report released this week.
Because the state has no coal supplies of its own, it spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to import the fuel for power generation. Coal imports accounted for 68 percent of all power used in the state in 2008, research by the Union of Concerned Scientists found.
Wisconsin spent $853 million in 2008, or $152 per person, to import 25 million tons of coal from nine states, according to the report released Tuesday.
The state ranked 12th in the amount spent and in the amount of coal imported. Wyoming, which provided 40 percent of all U.S. coal in 2008, received $702 million of Wisconsin’s money.
Coal-fired plants are the nation’s biggest source of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas that leading scientists say is causing global warming. Carbon dioxide emissions pose a danger to public health as well as the environment.
The Union of Concerned Scientists report, “Burning Coal, Burning Cash: Ranking the States that Import the Most Coal,” covers 38 states that are net importers of domestic and foreign coal. Those states spent $27.7 billion on domestic and foreign coal imports in 2008, the latest year for which figures were available from the U.S. Energy Department.
Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky produce most of the domestic coal burned in U.S. plants.
The report’s authors conclude that all states would be better served if the money spent on coal were diverted to the development of renewable energy and energy-efficiency programs.
by jboullion | May 20, 2010 | Uncategorized
Disregarding the pleas from RENEW and others for a veto, Doyle signed Senate Bill 273, as reported by Tom Content in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Gov. Jim Doyle on Wednesday signed into law a bill that wind power developers and environmental groups had asked him to veto.
The bill, known as the Renewable Resource Credits bill, would allow energy generation produced from waste such as garbage to be classified as renewable and qualify that electricity for the state’s renewable power mandate.
The bill was drafted to grant renewable status to the Apollo light pipe, a a small glass skylight dome that, when mounted in a roof, reflects daylight inside to help cut energy use. The light pipe is a technology developed by Orion Energy Systems Inc. of Manitowoc, a maker of high-efficiency lighting systems.
Environmental and renewable energy groups had called on Doyle to veto the bill after it was amended to allow garbage-to-energy projects to be classified as renewable as well.
Doyle said he was torn on whether to sign the bill but said that, ultimately, Orion is the kind of business the state wants to see grow and succeed.
“I certainly didn’t want to be in the position I was in. To me the (state) Senate’s refusal to go ahead with the Clean Energy Jobs Act put everybody in a very difficult spot on this bill,” he said.
Doyle conceded that there would be some effect on the wind industry from the new law but said it would be so slight as to be negligible.
A waste-to-energy process known as plasma gasification is being envisioned by Alliance Federated Energy, which announced a plan in February to build a waste-to-energy plant in Milwaukee that would create up to 250 construction jobs and 50 permanent jobs.
by jboullion | May 13, 2010 | Uncategorized
From the announcement of keynote speakers for the Energy Fair of the Midwest Renewable Energy Associaiton:
On Saturday, June 19, 2010, join us to hear an inspirational keynote address from noted environmentalist, activist and author, Bill McKibben. Bill is the founder of 350.org, an international climate campaign. He frequently writes about global warming, alternative energy, and the risks associated with human genetic engineering. Beginning in the summer of 2006, he led the organization of the largest demonstrations against global warming in American history.
Bill has written many books including The End of Nature and is a frequent contributor to various magazines including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Rolling Stone, and Outside. He is also a board member and contributor to Grist Magazine. Bill has a new book out, Eaarth, that details how we can’t continue the unsustainable consumer culture and gives us hope for a more sustainable future.
Visit Bill McKibben’s website to learn more.
by jboullion | May 6, 2010 | Uncategorized
A commentary
by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
May 4, 2010
Renewable energy businesses and activists entered the month of April with high hopes of seeing the State Legislature pass the Clean Energy Jobs Act (CEJA), a comprehensive bill designed to propel Wisconsin toward energy independence, along the way creating thousands of new jobs and strengthening the sustainable energy marketplace. This comprehensive bill would have raised the renewable energy content of electricity sold in Wisconsin, while stepping up ratepayer support for smaller-scale renewable energy installations throughout the state.
Unfortunately, on April 22, the State Senate adjourned for the year without taking action on the Clean Energy Jobs Act bill, effectively killing the measure and leaving hundreds of businesses and individuals who campaigned for the bill empty-handed.
If life imitates poetry, then the line that opens T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land—“April is the cruelest month”—aptly encapsulates the evolution of a campaign that overcame many obstacles in the final weeks only to be undermined by the unwillingness of Senate leaders to schedule a vote on the bill. The sense of anticipation that began the month was swept away by a combination of personal feuds, extreme partisanship, and increasingly polarized public attitudes toward climate change. That the bill’s demise coincided with the 40th anniversary of Earth Day was seen by supporters as an especially cruel twist of fate.
It certainly didn’t help matters that the some of the state’s most politically entrenched constituencies banded together to fight CEJA at every stage of the process. Among the hard-core opponents were Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the Paper Council and the Farm Bureau. Their vociferous opposition scuttled bipartisanship, eliminating the possibility that a Republican legislator would vote for the bill.
Working hand-in-glove with vitriolic right-wing radio talk show hosts, the opposition supplied their grassroots faithful with a smorgasbord of exaggerated claims, hyperbole, outright fantasy, and pseudoscience. Though the analysis purporting to document the opposition’s assertions set a new low in academic rigor, it succeeded in its aim, which was to plant the seeds of fear among certain legislators about the ultimate cost of this legislation before the bill was even introduced.
Working just as vigorously for the Clean Energy Jobs Act, a broad spectrum of interests answered the requests for help. Whether they were one-person solar installation businesses or Fortune 500 corporations like Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls, CEJA supporters wrote letters, made phone calls, and corralled their legislators at the Capitol on several days during March and April.
In dozens of face-to-face meetings with their representatives, CEJA supporters made the case for this bill by bringing out their own experiences as business owners, farmers, educators, builders, and skilled tradesmen. They presented a local and highly personal angle to the clean energy policy debate that many legislators had not appreciated before. Their passion and energy were instrumental in giving this bill a fighting chance for passage at the end of the session. Unfortunately, the campaign could not overcome the pique of the Senate Democrats.
One legislator who kept pushing this ambitious bill up the legislative hill until the very last day was Assembly representative Spencer Black, who was one of the four principal authors of the measure. CEJA supporters are indebted to Rep. Black for his vigorous leadership and his determined efforts to round up support among his compatriots for passing this bill.
Two rays of sunlight did manage to pierce through the heavy clouds at the close of April, prompted by the dedication of the two largest wind turbines owned by Wisconsin schools. In each case, the school erected a 100-kilowatt Northwind turbine manufactured by Vermont-based Northern Power Systems. One serves Wausau East High School while the other feeds power to the Madison Area Technical College’s Fort Atkinson branch. The turbines will offset a significant fraction of the electricity consumed at each school.
Located well within the city limits of Wausau and Fort Atkinson, these 155-foot-tall wind generators eloquently testify to the breadth and depth of public support for renewable energy across Wisconsin. Next January, the Legislature will witness the return of clean energy supporters with similar legislation for strengthening Wisconsin’s renewable energy marketplace. In the meantime, we will be working hard to achieve a very different outcome.
END
Michael Vickerman is the executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a sustainable energy advocacy organization headquartered in Madison. For more information on Wisconsin renewable energy policy, visit RENEW’s web site at: www.renewwisconsin.org.
