The Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy keeps a close eye on what's happening with the climate change debate, and legislation that could impact people here in Alabama. PACE was organized and is run by Lance Brown, who sends out e-mail updates every once in a while, and we'll start sharing them with you. Check out the PACE website to learn more.
PACE NEWS (12/15/09)
Renewables Meet Reality: From Earthquakes to Bats, Ambitious Projects Hit Roadblocks
According to a New York Times article from December 12th, "the company in charge of a California project to extract vast amounts of renewable energy from deep, hot bedrock has removed its drill rig and informed federal officials that the government project will be abandoned."
According to NYT reporter James Glanz, "the project by the company, Alta Rock Energy, was the Obama administration's first major test of geothermal energy as a significant alternative to fossil fuels and the project was being financed with federal Department of Energy money at a site about 100 miles north of San Francisco called the Geysers." The abandonment of the project by AltaRock comes on the heels of a permanent shut down of a similar project in Basel, Switzerland, that caused damaging earthquakes in 2006 and 2007. The geothermal project at the Geysers relied on $6 million from the Department of Energy and five times that amount in venture capital.
On the other side of the country, a major wind project in West Virginia has been stopped in recent days by a smaller - and furrier - concern: bats.
On December 8th, a federal judge in Maryland concluded that "there is a virtual certainty that Indiana bats will be harmed, wounded, or killed imminently by the Beech Ridge Project...", located in Greenbriar County, West Virginia, and operated by Beech Ridge LLC. The company planned to build and operate 122 wind turbines along 23 miles of ridgelines. According to published reports, 40 of the wind turbines are already under construction.
According to this first-of-a-kind ruling, Beech Ridge LLC did not properly determine whether Indiana bats were present at the project site. Acoustic data later revealed that Indiana bats were likely to be present at the project site in the Spring, Summer, and Fall and would be endangered by the wind turbines. The bats hibernate in Winter.
"Whether it's the shut down of geothermal in California or wind in West Virginia, I think we are starting to see that the build-out of renewable energy can be a treacherous road," says Lance Brown, PACE Executive Director. "It should make us think at least twice about whether aggressive national renewable mandates are even achievable in the proposed timeframes, much less equitable or affordable."
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Another update from Capitol Hill
Glenn English, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) has written another opinion column, updating the status of climate change legislation moving through Congress.
As was the case with his previous guest column, we decided to publish it online because the situation in Washington, D.C., is constantly changing, and his words today might not clearly reflect that situation by the time our next issue of Alabama Living magazine is published.
Climate change remedies need change
By Glenn English
We’ve heard a lot about climate change and the impact Congressional action will have on electric bills. Affordability must be a top priority, and electric cooperatives are fighting to make sure Congress keeps this in mind as they work through a number of climate change proposals.
So far, more than 600,000 electric cooperative consumers from across the United States have asked Congress to craft climate change legislation that’s fair, affordable, and technologically achievable. Our message is clear, and our elected U.S. senators must hear us out.
Over the last few months and as recently as early November, electric co-ops urged members of a key U.S. Senate committee to look out for the interests of consumers as they convened hearings on climate change legislation. Electric cooperatives expressed our commitment to help produce legislation that would substantially improve upon what was passed by the U.S. House in June—and help craft climate change legislation that would be economically and politically sustainable over the many years it would be in effect. We offered concrete ideas on how to get this important job done right.
But an early measure passed by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee —S.1733—has ignored these voices and included unachievable emission caps and timelines, inadequate technology development incentives and, most importantly, no guarantee that your electric bill will remain affordable. Rather than moving climate change goals toward a solution that protects consumers, the 959-page measure took a big step backward.
While 11 of the 100 U.S. senators voiced support of S.1733, several other Senate committees and 89 senators have yet to weigh in with their own climate change proposals. In this critical time we must continue to make our voices heard, contacting our senators with one simple message: let’s get this right. Let’s keep this affordable.
Electric co-ops support climate change goals that reduce greenhouse gas emissions while protecting consumers, promote investment in new technologies, and spur economic goals. Our senators must remember to keep climate change goals fair, affordable, and achievable as legislative debate proceeds.
Contacting your U.S. senators at this point is crucial, and calling or writing to them is easy through the Our Energy, Our Future™ campaign. Spend a few moments today making your voice heard. For more information, please visit, www.ourenergy.coop.
Glenn English is the CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA)
As was the case with his previous guest column, we decided to publish it online because the situation in Washington, D.C., is constantly changing, and his words today might not clearly reflect that situation by the time our next issue of Alabama Living magazine is published.
Climate change remedies need change
By Glenn English
We’ve heard a lot about climate change and the impact Congressional action will have on electric bills. Affordability must be a top priority, and electric cooperatives are fighting to make sure Congress keeps this in mind as they work through a number of climate change proposals.
So far, more than 600,000 electric cooperative consumers from across the United States have asked Congress to craft climate change legislation that’s fair, affordable, and technologically achievable. Our message is clear, and our elected U.S. senators must hear us out.
Over the last few months and as recently as early November, electric co-ops urged members of a key U.S. Senate committee to look out for the interests of consumers as they convened hearings on climate change legislation. Electric cooperatives expressed our commitment to help produce legislation that would substantially improve upon what was passed by the U.S. House in June—and help craft climate change legislation that would be economically and politically sustainable over the many years it would be in effect. We offered concrete ideas on how to get this important job done right.
But an early measure passed by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee —S.1733—has ignored these voices and included unachievable emission caps and timelines, inadequate technology development incentives and, most importantly, no guarantee that your electric bill will remain affordable. Rather than moving climate change goals toward a solution that protects consumers, the 959-page measure took a big step backward.
While 11 of the 100 U.S. senators voiced support of S.1733, several other Senate committees and 89 senators have yet to weigh in with their own climate change proposals. In this critical time we must continue to make our voices heard, contacting our senators with one simple message: let’s get this right. Let’s keep this affordable.
Electric co-ops support climate change goals that reduce greenhouse gas emissions while protecting consumers, promote investment in new technologies, and spur economic goals. Our senators must remember to keep climate change goals fair, affordable, and achievable as legislative debate proceeds.
Contacting your U.S. senators at this point is crucial, and calling or writing to them is easy through the Our Energy, Our Future™ campaign. Spend a few moments today making your voice heard. For more information, please visit, www.ourenergy.coop.
Glenn English is the CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA)
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
NRECA boss gives legislative update
Glenn English, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), has written a guest editorial addressing the progress of climate change legislation in Congress. Because the situation on Capitol Hill is fluid, we thought it best to share his comments with you here. If we waited until our next publication date, what English has to say now might no longer be accurate or relevant.
Please pass a link to the story along to anyone you know who might feel the impact of higher energy prices due to climate change legislation (that would be everyone you know...)
Co-ops Bring Postcard Blitz to Capitol Hill
By Glenn English, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO
Here in our nation’s capital, elected officials are hunkered down for a legislative marathon many observers believe could stretch to Christmas Eve. With health-care and financial services reform, as well as energy and climate legislation, on active tracks, I cannot remember a time when so many ambitious and potentially game-changing proposals have been in play simultaneously.
Needless to say, the stakes are high and competition fierce. As you might expect with so much going on, it’s difficult to be heard above the din of paid media advertisements, “astroturf” public relations initiatives, and partisan political punditry. That’s why in August, in anticipation of a crowded congressional fall schedule and inevitable consideration of a climate change bill by the U.S. Senate, NRECA’s Our Energy, Our Future™ campaign launched an aggressive “postcard blitz.” The goal: urging senators to work with electric cooperatives to minimize the cost of curbing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and asking that they fight for provisions that are fair, affordable, and achievable.
The postcards entered the mail stream in late August, arriving at the homes of electric co-op consumers directly or stitched into statewide publications. The results of this effort have been immediate and overwhelming.
During the last week of September — literally hours before U.S. Senate leaders released their first draft of climate change legislation — delegates from electric co-ops across the nation converged on Capitol Hill to hand-deliver more than 500,000 signed postcards. These postcards serve as a physical representation of politically aware and engaged electric co-op consumers, demonstrating the incredible depth and breadth of our grassroots strength much more than any e-mail string or electronic petition. As a result, they effectively drive home the point that folks back home are watching how senators vote on this critical issue.
The initial draft of a climate change bill in the U.S. Senate, however, missed the mark. Electric cooperatives have significant concerns with the Senate bill and changes will need to be made.
The economic impact of climate change remedies will be enormous, ultimately driving up the price we pay for electric power. Just how high monthly electric bills will soar has become a matter of some debate. But the Congressional Budget Office — the non-partisan arm of Congress entrusted with determining the price tag of federal legislation — estimates that H.R. 2454, the climate change measure passed by the U.S. House in late June, would cost the average American household $175 a year by 2020. That works out to about $14 or $15 a month: an average that will vary depending on where you live.
Congress needs to ensure that consumers are protected from soaring increases in electric bills because of the legislation they consider. Now is the time to shape this legislation into something electric co-op consumers can afford to live with, and already we are seeing discussions that could make the bill more realistic in its goals and timelines. The Our Energy, Our Future campaign can keep the discussion going.
If your voice has not yet been heard, please get involved. I urge you to visit ourenergy.coop and join with the hundreds of thousands of co-op members who have already sent postcards. If you have taken the time to fill one out and mail it in, thank you.
Please pass a link to the story along to anyone you know who might feel the impact of higher energy prices due to climate change legislation (that would be everyone you know...)
Co-ops Bring Postcard Blitz to Capitol Hill
By Glenn English, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO
Here in our nation’s capital, elected officials are hunkered down for a legislative marathon many observers believe could stretch to Christmas Eve. With health-care and financial services reform, as well as energy and climate legislation, on active tracks, I cannot remember a time when so many ambitious and potentially game-changing proposals have been in play simultaneously.
Needless to say, the stakes are high and competition fierce. As you might expect with so much going on, it’s difficult to be heard above the din of paid media advertisements, “astroturf” public relations initiatives, and partisan political punditry. That’s why in August, in anticipation of a crowded congressional fall schedule and inevitable consideration of a climate change bill by the U.S. Senate, NRECA’s Our Energy, Our Future™ campaign launched an aggressive “postcard blitz.” The goal: urging senators to work with electric cooperatives to minimize the cost of curbing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and asking that they fight for provisions that are fair, affordable, and achievable.
The postcards entered the mail stream in late August, arriving at the homes of electric co-op consumers directly or stitched into statewide publications. The results of this effort have been immediate and overwhelming.
During the last week of September — literally hours before U.S. Senate leaders released their first draft of climate change legislation — delegates from electric co-ops across the nation converged on Capitol Hill to hand-deliver more than 500,000 signed postcards. These postcards serve as a physical representation of politically aware and engaged electric co-op consumers, demonstrating the incredible depth and breadth of our grassroots strength much more than any e-mail string or electronic petition. As a result, they effectively drive home the point that folks back home are watching how senators vote on this critical issue.
The initial draft of a climate change bill in the U.S. Senate, however, missed the mark. Electric cooperatives have significant concerns with the Senate bill and changes will need to be made.
The economic impact of climate change remedies will be enormous, ultimately driving up the price we pay for electric power. Just how high monthly electric bills will soar has become a matter of some debate. But the Congressional Budget Office — the non-partisan arm of Congress entrusted with determining the price tag of federal legislation — estimates that H.R. 2454, the climate change measure passed by the U.S. House in late June, would cost the average American household $175 a year by 2020. That works out to about $14 or $15 a month: an average that will vary depending on where you live.
Congress needs to ensure that consumers are protected from soaring increases in electric bills because of the legislation they consider. Now is the time to shape this legislation into something electric co-op consumers can afford to live with, and already we are seeing discussions that could make the bill more realistic in its goals and timelines. The Our Energy, Our Future campaign can keep the discussion going.
If your voice has not yet been heard, please get involved. I urge you to visit ourenergy.coop and join with the hundreds of thousands of co-op members who have already sent postcards. If you have taken the time to fill one out and mail it in, thank you.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Outage tonight will impact more than 10,000 members
Cullman EC, the Cullman Power Board and TVA will be working at the North Cullman substation tonight, and starting at 11 p.m., an outage lasting 20 to 30 minutes will take place.
The outage is to fix a "hot spot" inside the substation. We regularly use infrared cameras to look for hot spots in substations. If equipment overheats, it can cause a major power outage — usually at a time that is most inconvenient for everyone. During a check earlier this week, a hot spot was discovered, and the decision was made to fix is ASAP.
The outage will effect North Cullman as well as all of the substations that it feeds along a 46 kv line. Among those are Trade, Trimble, Jones Chapel, Holy Pond, Berlin to name a few.
The outage is to fix a "hot spot" inside the substation. We regularly use infrared cameras to look for hot spots in substations. If equipment overheats, it can cause a major power outage — usually at a time that is most inconvenient for everyone. During a check earlier this week, a hot spot was discovered, and the decision was made to fix is ASAP.
The outage will effect North Cullman as well as all of the substations that it feeds along a 46 kv line. Among those are Trade, Trimble, Jones Chapel, Holy Pond, Berlin to name a few.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Climate change comes with a high price
Interesting guest column today in the Washington Post, written by Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and the author of "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming."
Click on the link above to read the whole article, which is very interesting, but below are some excerpts that we found particularly interesting.
...Imagine for a moment that the fantasists win the day and that at the climate conference in Copenhagen in December every nation commits to reductions even larger than Japan's, designed to keep temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius. The result will be a global price tag of $46 trillion in 2100, to avoid expected climate damage costing just $1.1 trillion, according to climate economist Richard Tol, a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change whose cost findings were commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Center and are to be published by Cambridge University Press next year....
...Today, coal accounts for almost half of the planet's electricity supply, including half the power consumed in the United States. It keeps hospitals and core infrastructure running, provides warmth and light in winter, and makes lifesaving air conditioning available in summer. In China and India, where coal accounts for more than 80 percent of power generation, it has helped to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
There is no doubt that coal is causing environmental damage that we need to stop. But a clumsy, radical halt to our coal use -- which is what promises of drastic carbon cuts actually require -- would mean depriving billions of people of a path to prosperity.
To put it bluntly: Despite their good intentions, the activists, lobbyists and politicians making a last-ditch push for hugely expensive carbon-cut promises could easily end up doing hundreds of times more damage to the planet than coal ever could.
Click on the link above to read the whole article, which is very interesting, but below are some excerpts that we found particularly interesting.
...Imagine for a moment that the fantasists win the day and that at the climate conference in Copenhagen in December every nation commits to reductions even larger than Japan's, designed to keep temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius. The result will be a global price tag of $46 trillion in 2100, to avoid expected climate damage costing just $1.1 trillion, according to climate economist Richard Tol, a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change whose cost findings were commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Center and are to be published by Cambridge University Press next year....
...Today, coal accounts for almost half of the planet's electricity supply, including half the power consumed in the United States. It keeps hospitals and core infrastructure running, provides warmth and light in winter, and makes lifesaving air conditioning available in summer. In China and India, where coal accounts for more than 80 percent of power generation, it has helped to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
There is no doubt that coal is causing environmental damage that we need to stop. But a clumsy, radical halt to our coal use -- which is what promises of drastic carbon cuts actually require -- would mean depriving billions of people of a path to prosperity.
To put it bluntly: Despite their good intentions, the activists, lobbyists and politicians making a last-ditch push for hugely expensive carbon-cut promises could easily end up doing hundreds of times more damage to the planet than coal ever could.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Phone scam — members beware!
Word is spreading across the electric co-op world of a billing scam that some co-op's are dealing with. So far, none of Cullman EC's members have reported such an incident, but we wanted to share this with everyone so you are aware and prepared.
Here is the e-mail Cullman EC received Tuesday morning:
All, just an FYI that NRECA is getting some reports from various states where co-op consumers are receiving phone calls from fraudsters posing to be from the co-op and asking the consumer to provide credit card or other financial account information and personally identifiable information over the phone. (Co-ops are not alone here, this is hitting utilities of all stripes.) There are at least two flavors of this scam -- one is to say the consumer owes on his/her account and will have service shut-off unless payment information is provided immediately. The other appears aimed more specifically at seniors. The caller claims the consumer can receive Federal stimulus dollars to pay their utility bills or some sort of a bill credit but the consumer must first provide his/her personal information (e.g. Social Security Number and utility account number).
As a reminder, here is a link to Cullman EC's bill pay policies. Please know that no employee from Cullman EC will ever call you and demand payment over the phone or make unsolicited attempts to get information about your credit card or bank accounts.
For more information on protecting your identity, visit the Federal Trade Commission's website page on identity theft.
Here is the e-mail Cullman EC received Tuesday morning:
All, just an FYI that NRECA is getting some reports from various states where co-op consumers are receiving phone calls from fraudsters posing to be from the co-op and asking the consumer to provide credit card or other financial account information and personally identifiable information over the phone. (Co-ops are not alone here, this is hitting utilities of all stripes.) There are at least two flavors of this scam -- one is to say the consumer owes on his/her account and will have service shut-off unless payment information is provided immediately. The other appears aimed more specifically at seniors. The caller claims the consumer can receive Federal stimulus dollars to pay their utility bills or some sort of a bill credit but the consumer must first provide his/her personal information (e.g. Social Security Number and utility account number).
As a reminder, here is a link to Cullman EC's bill pay policies. Please know that no employee from Cullman EC will ever call you and demand payment over the phone or make unsolicited attempts to get information about your credit card or bank accounts.
For more information on protecting your identity, visit the Federal Trade Commission's website page on identity theft.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Hurricane season comes to life
After 2 1/2 months of inactivity, the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season saw it's first three names storms — Ana, Bill and Claudette — develop over the weekend. Ana appears to be of no concern to residents in Alabama and other Gulf Coast states. Bill has reached hurricane level and could be a major storm (category 3 or higher) by the middle of the week, but he's a long way from the U.S. mainland right now.
Claudette is been downgraded this morning to a tropical depression as it moves inland over South Alabama. Cullman and Winston counties can expect the possibility of some rain this afternoon or evening and a slight tropical breeze, but not much more.
For anyone interested, here is a link to the National Weather Service Hurricane Center.
Claudette is been downgraded this morning to a tropical depression as it moves inland over South Alabama. Cullman and Winston counties can expect the possibility of some rain this afternoon or evening and a slight tropical breeze, but not much more.
For anyone interested, here is a link to the National Weather Service Hurricane Center.
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