Heaven save us from our friends: My US Rep. Ed Markey, chair of the House Select Committee on Energy and Global Warming, seems ready or resigned to rely on — and subsidize the hell out of — so-called “clean coal” technology (CCS — carbon capture and sequestration) . Calling CCS a “viable interim solution”, Markey simultaneously admits it won't even be available until at least 2020.
Of course, that's with money that could be better spent on actual clean technology. But this is the coal lobby's world, and it says it's prepared to really do something (by 2020) with that subsidy $$$, as opposed to actual innovators, like, say, these guys.
We don't need “clean” coal. We need conservation, and real clean energy.
Read Brian Beutler, and the New Republic for more.
schoolzombie87 says
But what is going on with the Cape Wind Farm? Where is the resistance coming from?
charley-on-the-mta says
Cape Wind is now in the evaluation process with the US Minerals Management Service, which is due to give an up or down sometime next year. There may be legal battles beyond that.
peter-porcupine says
I spent ANOTHER night as cannon fodder in this 6 year war last night. The Cape Cod Commission is asserting jurisdiction as well, and may refuse permitting to bring the cable ashore.
5 – 10 pm last night at the Middle School, about 70 testified – and THAT was the ABBREVIATED version, as there is ANOTHER 'in-depth' hearing today.
Of course, the new Executive Director, Paul Niedzwicki, who just replaced Margo Fenn testified AGAINST the project last spring, when the Commission held a hearing to tell Ian Bowles that he couldn't approve the DEIR.
The supporters really need to get down here sometime. Then again, somebody spoke from Greenpeace in Cambridge, misronouncing person and place names which made a GREAT impression, so maybe you should all stay the hell away.
BTW – I really hope Markey's move isn't due to the fact that the main anti-wind group, Alliance to Protect Nantucket Soud, just hired a coal industry executive as thier new president.
charley-on-the-mta says
Where's the state's leverage with the Commission? Is the Commission really a strangle point? What can we do, other than leave our obnoxious Cantabrigian friends at home?
peter-porcupine says
If the project were permitted and built, perhaps the EIR could be amended to have the cable make landfall in…Wareham, say, outside the Commission jurisdiction. Comes to that, it could make landfall in Nantucket or the Vineyard, and enhance their power before being fed into the Grid – again, outside the Commission jurisdiction (of course, each Island has its OWN commission…).
If it were built, Charlie Vinick, Christy, and the other Ostervillians would have to throw in the towel. The PROJECT is entirely Federal – the Commission just wants to screw with the cable making landfall. To protect the sea bed for the crabs and all. Of course, they DID approve an IDENTICAL cable for Nantucket's electriciy upgrade last year. But that was DIFFERENT.
BTW – the Commission Director's testimony last spring? He stated that not ALL the people affected were rich, and in fact the Hyannisport census tract affected had one of the lowest median incomes in the Commonwealth. In the next breath, he talked about how the historic Kennedy Compound in the middle of that tract wasn't being given careful enough consideration.
Kennedy, Kerry, Delahunt. Meet your roadblocks.
schoolzombie87 says
Great – can always count on them. Thanks guys.
peter-porcupine says
Nice kid, blue jacket, dark hair, obviously sincere.
EVERY off-Cape person who spoke got hissed a little, as evil Mainanders trying to shove their high-falutin' ideas down our simple throats.
Me – I like Dorothy Svoboda of West Yarmouth, who described the Cape as a 'ecological wet dream', announced the cable would go right by her front door, and said, 'Bring It On!'.
peter-porcupine says
From Cape Cod Today, a preview of the Commission stance.
Can anyone explain to me how they have found the wind fam to be an impact on 'open space' in Barnstable County when it's five miles off-shore?
stomv says
and to be honest, I don't care if ratepayers or stockholders pay for it — but it shouldn't be from Congress. You use more electricity, you should pay more. Why should, for example, North Carolina and Tennessee ratepayers who refuse to allow wind farms near the Appalacian Trail be subsidized by folks in VT and CA who have allowed wind farms on their mountains?
In the mean time, instead of racing to install as much green energy as possible while we wait for science/politics to find answers to carbon sequestration, improved solar power, and nuclear storage solutions, we hem and haw about coal. Want to build 1000 MW of coal power production? Fine. Take 500 MW of grandfathered dirty coal off line. Want to build green energy installations? You betcha.
If the Feds are going to subsidize, they ought to be subsidizing conservation measures. Energy Star, mass transit, R&D. Want to go further? Help the states and localities change building and zoning codes that create more conservation. Help state governments develope energy efficiency programs.
Don't subsidize coal. Ever. It's nasty to it's workers, it's nasty to the areas where it's mined, and it's never clean. Carbon sequestration will be the 21st centruy nuclear waste problem. We won't ever quite know where to put it, and we'll always be worried that there'll be an immediate emergency, and we'll burden future generations with maintaining the storage site for 100s of years.
raj says
Calling CCS a “viable interim solution”, Markey simultaneously admits it won’t even be available until at least 2020.
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…follow the money. Who are the likely contractors for this? This reminds me of yet another failed government program–Star Wars, started under the Reagan administration. Billions of US$ thrown at defense contractors, who generated nothing that worked. (We actually know how to do it now, using lasers, but even they don’t work very well, either.)
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We know how to do coal, at least partially. The technology to liquify and gassify coal has been known for–what? a century. The only issue is sequestration. If they can’t figure out how to do that in an environmentally friendly manner well before 2020, there has to be something wrong.
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BTW, I have been quite clear that I tend to favor photovoltaics and that I have no objection to wind for electricity, but someday it will come that mankind will have to consider coal. I have no objection to research regarding sequestration, but coal is not the panacea. Provided, of course, that it is mined in an environmentally sensitive manner. Bluntly put: let’s let the middle-easterners despoil their environment before we despoil ours.
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Actually, with off-shore oil-drilling of the US coasts, we’ve done a pretty good job of despoiling our environment, too.
raj says
…Who owns the property on which Cape Wind is supposed to be built? If the schiki-mickies (Bavarian) on Nantucket want to control development, they should buy the property and (or outbid the proposed developer for the property. After they have done that, they can control development. It isn’t as though the windmills will eject noxious fumes or otherwise pollute the environment.
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Let them buy or lease the property. Do they have enough cash on hand to do that? Apparently not. So they’re trying to do an end-around through the “legal” system.
peter-porcupine says
It's IN the ocean, in Federal waters. The project has agreed to pay the Feds and the State a lease through the Minerals Mgmt Service, similar to that for logging or mining on Federal land. It was a provision in the 2005 Energy Bill of the Great Satan, George Bush, to eliminate the 'land grab' argument by providing compensation to the state and the US.
To date, the Feds haven't offered to put the Shoals on the market.
raj says
…I had believed that I used the term “lease” in my comment.
noternie says
They're spending money on something that won't be available for 13 years? And then it's only an interim solution?
What “patch” takes that long to develop?
Thinking backwards: 13 years before 2007, I was browsing a mostly text-based internet and using an email address 50 characters long. I could only send email to a few people and only the biggest companies and individuals had “internet web pages.” Even though I was going from college to graduate school, I was just getting my first computer. And it only ran one program at a time.
And I wasn't behind the times. Most of my undergraduate classmates, like me, used electronic typewritters that had three or four line screens or a word processor that couldn't store more than 14 pages of my 17 page paper.
We can't have wind/wave/solar/battery technology ready to go by then? Seems a much more earth-friendly alternative. Especially when combined with some serious conservation.
raj says
…the carbon sequestration technology probably won’t be ready before 2020.
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There’s a rather significant difference.
noternie says
Um, yeah. I know. I was commenting on carbon sequestration technology. That was the topic of the original post.
See, when you comment on another comment, it indents. Notice how this one indented from your comment? Now look at that comment I made below? See how that's not indented from your comment? That's because it wasn't a comment on your post. It was a comment reply on the original post.
There's a rather significant difference.
focus, raj, focus
schoolzombie87 says
raj says
…on my IE browser, your comment was not an indent, so as far as I can tell it was a comment on the original post.
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Learn how to copy and paste to make it somewhat clear what you are responding to. I still could not figure out what you were referring to. It made no sense.
noternie says
Read the original post–way up at the top–and then read my comment. Here, let me help so you don't have to scroll back and forth.
Charlie…
Me…
Charlie…
Me…
My point, if you still do not get it, is that I find it somewhat disgusting that we may spend a pile of money to develop an “interim solution” (CSS) over the course of 13 years. Especially when such dramatic developments have been made in the same period of time in our world. (example: internet, computers, email) I wonder, as did Charlie, I believe, why we couldn't invest that money in some things that could be more desirable (no pollution, renewable) and don't require finding another solution to the problems they create.
schoolzombie87 says
jconway says