NStar’s plan is in the right direction, but unfortunately many homeowners and small-businessmen won’t be able to take advantage of it. We need to offer tax incentives to businesses and homeowners who use renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. I’ve spoken with clean energy start-up companies such as New England Breeze, and they tell me that middle-class families and small businesses simply can’t afford to put solar panels on their roof. They ought to have that ability. Environmentally friendly ways to provide power to the district such as the “Cape Wind Farm” are a good idea, and we need to encourage more Wind farms across the state so we can make clean energy affordable for everyone.
Congress has failed us on this issue. I can remember 35 years ago, waiting in line with my dad to get gasoline. We still haven?t solved the energy crisis in this country. Just the price of gasoline increase over the past months is having a devastating effect on working families in the 5th district. Clearly, we need a revolution of new ideas in Washington.
This issue is far too important to leave to the special interests in Washington. Massachusetts and the 5th district shouldn’t have to buy energy from New York. They should be able to do it right here at home. We need a leader in Congress who understands both environmental concerns and that of a business. As a life-long farmer, I believe I am uniquely able to understand the needs of small businesses and the environment and I will make bold choices that will benefit our district and the country as a whole. That is why the people of the 5th district should vote to send me to congress on October 16th.
…I only wish any one of MY three Federal representatives took the same attitude.
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BUILD CAPE WIND!
This response is good, but still political.
Converting land mass from food production to fossil fuel replacement only transfers the cost from fossil fuels to the cost of food. A net loss to most consumers.
The solution is simple.
1. Require solar gardens (passive heat absorbong and Oxygen producing entities) on all mew as well, as much as possible, existing commercial structures.
2. Require minimum percentage shade coverage of parking lots.
3. Require street planting, and more importantly, maintebabce by all cities/towns.
4. Require all energy providers to utilize an increasing percentage of BTU/KWH tpward renuable resources.
5. Have strict and costly fines for noncompliance.
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That depends entirely on how much food was produced on that particular patch of land and how much energy will be produced, no? For example, converting a 1000 square foot of land from pumpkins to the monopole for a wind turbine is likely a net loss for consumers — since the market value of the electricity exceeds that of the pumpkins.
….the “net loss to consumers” was meant to highlight the fact that using what is already a food product, like corn, that is used in countless consumer food applications, and diverting it to fuel without the reasonable possibility of an exponential increase in corn production ends up meaning that any savings in the cost of fuel is nullified by the increase in cost of the food products that are now more expensive because the price of corn has been driven up by increased demand. The very thing that is happening now.
and there’s a gain and a loss — is the “net” a net gain or a net loss? Hard to say, given the enormous subsidies all the way around.
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As far as food stock, it’s all moot. Reducing our production of meat would result in far more calories of food to go around — not to mention a dramatic decrease in water shortage problems and heart disease.
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Price is a metric for value, and now that corn has more value for energy than for feeding animals, there will be price consequences all over the place. S’OK. That’s exactly how market economics work. Winners and losers to be sure, but don’t worry about the loss of available food calories to eat by people — a few less quarter pounders with cheese and a few more salads or potatoes will more than make up for the calorie deficit caused by increased demand on corn for non-food usage.
….confess that what you have written makes no sense to me whatsoever, and not because I don’t understand the open market or economic theory. Corn, while renewable, is available in a limited supply and its use is so varied in many industries, not just food (textiles, paper, adhesives, lubricants, etc) so for the govt. to support as a cornerstone of its energy policy a product that will create a sustained increase in corn’s price is at best and economic nullification of any fuel side cost benefit and at worse an economic detrement on the whole. A few less cheeseburges and more potato salad are certainly going to make little difference and since subsidies are lop-sided I don’t see that as an answer either. Ethanol has its place, but it is not a reasonably sustainable cornerstone of the energy policy of the US.
Ethanol does have a reasonable place in US energy policy. Just not corn-based ethanol. Depending on the calculation methodology, corn-based ethanol either produces somewhat less energy than it takes to produce or slightly more. Other plants (I think sugarbeets) produce far more ethanol energy than they require for production.
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Corn is used for many industries in part because of the subsidies the government provides for growing it. Corn is typically sold for less than the cost to grow it. This causes many market distortions. For example, corn syrup is the dominant sweetener used in the US, while the rest of the world uses sugar. Most people prefer sugar, but because of farming subsidies, Americans are stuck with corn syrup in all their food.
of US energy independence. It simply can’t be; there’s not enough energy in a bushel of corn.
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My point was that folks are pointing out that there’s not enough land to both (a) feed people and (b) grow corn for energy in huge amounts. That’s true if Americans continue to eat as much meat as we do, about twice the average of most developed nations. As corn prices go up, so will the price of beef, and people will eat less of it — replacing it with cheaper products like grains and starches. The price changes will ripple through to be sure; my point is that there’s an order of magnitude more than enough calories grown to feed people if we don’t run them through a bovine’s stomach or four first.
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We do agree that the price of corn will shoot up. I don’t concede that high corn prices are inherently bad though. They’re good for corn farmers, bad for ranchers, etc.
…completely ignores the industrial applications for corn. And americans are not going to eat less meat. They are going to plow more of the rain forest to produce it more cheaply.
…so no, I don’t support ethanol programs, for all the usual reasons. I’d love to see a carbon tax – how about working it out so that the average electric bill is slightly higher than the electric bill of someone purchasing wind-power at a premium?
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I pay extra for my electricity so that all of it is generated by renewable sources – this past month, I paid $19 more than I would have for electricity from any source, green or carbon emitting. I signed up for the program through this web site:
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http://www.massenerg…
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That specific program is only for national grid customers, but they have others for the other utilities, check it out. If a carbon tax on your electric bill pushed your bill higher by $25 a month, would you switch to green power?
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IMHO, it’s only by hitting people in the wallet that the problems we face will be solved. You want to see people dumping their gas-guzzling SUVs, Hummers, etc, and clamoring for electric cars? $6.00 a gallon gas will do that – want to see people begging for wind power? Charge them for the carbon their electricity spews into the atmosphere…
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Massachusetts and the 5th district buys energy from PA, KY, WV etc in the form of coal, from Canada in the form of natural gas, from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Canada, AK, TX, etc in the form of oil, from ME, NH, VT, CT, RI in the form of electricity, and, technically speaking, from just about every state and every country in the form of calories — food.
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No state is an island, my friend [well one is and another claims to be, but I digress]. There’s nothing wrong with buying wind energy from NY. Should we be generating more in MA? Youbetcha. But, this idea that MA should be self-sustaining or somesuch in renewable energy but not in all other forms of energy is tripe.
A couple of weeks ago, we were driving from the Munich airport to our little hovel just west of Munich. We were astounded by the number of buildings along the way that were adorned with solar panels, even on top of farm buildings in rural areas. There are several homes and shops here in our little Dorf whose roofs are adorned with solar panels. I was actually amazed at the number of buildings with solar panels.
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So, why the dearth of solar panels in the US?
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As an aside, I usually (OK, always) agree with stomv, but I’ll just add that, IIRC, the US is also buying hydro power from Canada. (At least it used to.) This idea that the US should be independent in one commodity (energy) is about as dumb as the idea that the US should be independent with all other commodities. That is impossible. Some important ores for industrial production just aren’t available in the US.
Our uranium ore for nuclear power comes from Australia and Canada, IIRC.
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As for solar panels, that’s a good question. I’ll reverse it — why do we see so many elsewhere? Without substantial subsidies, they’re almost never fiscally responsible for buildings already “on the grid”. So, while they make sense in Japan [a country that has to import nearly all energy], why are they so prevalent in Germany? For that matter, why don’t we see far more passive/active solar hot water heating — a technology that is far cheaper, far less difficult to install, and fiscally responsible just about anywhere? I’m a proponent of solar panels to ease the necessity of peaking plants, but there’s still plenty of lower hanging renewable energy fruit, particularly wind [global wind power increased 26% last year alone].
P.S. While we’ve both got science backgrounds and liberal politics, we certainly don’t agree on everything. I, for example, think chicks are way sexier than dudes.
why are they (solar panels) so prevalent in Germany?
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Maybe there is a government incentive to have them installed. During the Schroeder administration in Germany, there was a push from his junior partner in the government (the Greens) to have nuclear power plants in Germany shut down. That hadn’t come to pass before his coalition was voted out of power, but maybe incentives were instituted for solar photovoltaic panels in anticipation of the closure of the nuclear power plants, and those incentives were never rescinded after the idiot Merkel took power.
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BTW, I’ve seen pictures of wind farms in Germany, but I’ve never seen them myself, and I don’t know where they are.
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On the issue of hot-water solar panels–not the photovoltaics–they were touted in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but I frankly have no idea what happened to them. I never saw any in Germany. I did see a few in the Boston area; I presume that they were too heavy for a standard roof and hard to maintain, and for those reasons they never caught on. One other possible reason was that, at the time, natural gas prices were relatively low, so it did not make a lot of sense to install the hot-water solar panels. Of course, the price of natural has increased substantially since then, but I doubt that the earlier manufacturers are still manufacturing them.
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As an aside, the recent problems in the nuclear power plants in northern Germany (Kruemmel, in the ehemalige DDR, and at least one other in Schlesswig-Holstein, near Denmark) has increased the tension here (Germany) regarding nuclear power. Apparently, there was no radiation released in either incident. But radiation was released from nuclear power plants in Japan after the recent earthquake there.
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As a further aside, regarding your “ps,” I do believe that we agree on more than you think. I would recast your comment as follows. Some dudes think that chicks are sexier than dudes. Some chicks think that dudes are sexier than chicks. But, there is a subset of dudes who think that dudes are sexier than chicks, and there is a subset of chicks who think that chicks are sexier than dudes. And there is a further subset of both dudes and chicks who think that everyone is sexy. I’d phrase it that way, and I’d almost be willing to bet that you’d agree with that formulation đŸ˜‰
as I flew from Rome to Boston via Frankfurt. It seemed like there were hundreds in what looked like mostly sparsely populated rural areas outside of Frankfurt (as we descended.)
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Good luck building windmills in MA … an handful of committed activists, joined in legal action, can stop (or fatally delay) any project, the Commonwealth’s “Ten Taxpayer” law.
My sympathies. We try to avoid the Frankfurter airport at all costs. It’s a mess.
She has on occasion said that women are far better looking than men and she’d rather see a naked woman than a naked man. She has 5 kids, so she’s very straight, but I dont get it.
I’m sure there is/was gov’t incentive in Germany, and there’s gov’t incentive in tUSA too. The details and the amount of the incentive naturally play a large role. You’re thoughts on why seem quite plausible.
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As a side note, I just read that in 2006 the power industry in Europe and North America added more capacity in wind than it did in coal and nuclear combined. That means that if the growth in wind power doubles again [growing at over 20% per year, that’ll be in 4 years] then we may actually see wind farms being used to decommission other power plants.
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As far as solar hot water heaters, I understand that they’re on just about every single building in Israel [I’ve never been there]. Apparently since Israel doesn’t have much natural carbon energy, they’ve made it public policy to really try to find ways to not fund the rest of the Middle East, which seems rational enough. I don’t think that weight is the problem — you don’t have to store all 50 gallons of water on the roof at once; just a few gallons at a time, circulating with a pump. In fact, with passive hot water heaters, you don’t even circulate water — you circulate antifreeze instead, and use the warmed antifreeze to head the water by conduction. I don’t know why they aren’t more common — the combination of solar hot water heating and tankless hot water heaters [or, less effective, insulating blankets on tank hot water heaters] save a tremendous amount of energy.
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Regarding your further aside, I do agree with the formulation đŸ˜€
My understanding is that solar water heaters are uncommon because people installed a bunch of bad solar water heaters in the 70’s. The technology wasn’t sufficiently well-understood, but people wanted to install them anyway. Most of them didn’t work, and it gave solar water heaters a bad reputation. With low fuel prices in the 80’s and 90’s, nobody cared enough to install many solar water heaters. Energy prices haven’t been high for long enough to lead to infrastructure changes yet. If oil prices don’t fall, solar water heaters will probably be standard for all new construction within 10 years. Installing them in older houses will be more gradual.
…limited to Tel Aviv, in the mid ’90s. I don’t recall seeing solar water heaters, but I was not looking for them.
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Regarding
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Apparently since Israel doesn’t have much natural carbon energy, they’ve made it public policy to really try to find ways to not fund the rest of the Middle East, which seems rational enough.
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I suspect that that policy has as much to do with the Israelis’ natural concern that the oil-rich Near East countries would cut them off from supply of oil&gas, as it does with their desire not to fund the Near East. That would be a serious concern. Recall OPEC’s admittedly short-lived oil embargoes of the 1970s (1973 and 1978) that totally disrupted the US economy. And, only in recent months Russia’s Gasprom has disrupted supplies of gas to White Russia (Belarus?) because of disputes over political policies. Energy supply is a serious weapon.
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On the subject of the weight of the hot water panels, I was not even considering the weight of the fluid circulating therethrough. The infrastructure of the ones that I’ve seen in the US appeared to be rather heavy, irrespective of the amount of fluid in them at any point in time, and it seemed to me that the standard American roof might have difficulty supporting them. Roof supports in our little hovel outside of Munich are much better (they have to be, because they support a tile roof) than our hovel in MA and might be able to support a solar hot water panel. I’d prefer a few photovoltaic panels, instead, on our hovel outside of Munich.
I also noticed that there was a loooot of wind mills all over the place. Did I every hear anyone whine and cry about them? Nope.