Iowa Global Warming

By Julie Schmit, USA TODAY 

The number of clean-energy jobs in the U.S. would more than double by 2025 if the nation adopts a plan to get 25% of its electricity from renewable energy sources, says a report backed by energy firms.Nationwide, 274,000 jobs would be created in the wind, solar, hydropower, biomass and waste-to-energy industries by 2025 if a 25% standard is adopted, says research firm Navigant Consulting. Those sectors now support about 196,000 jobs.

Navigant did the study for the RES Alliance for Jobs, a consortium of renewable energy companies and others that recommends national renewable electricity targets of 12% in 2014 and 20% in 2020.

Unlike three dozen other countries, including China, the U.S. doesn’t have a national standard to drive use of renewable energy, although it’s being debated in Congress. President Obama has pushed for 25% renewables by 2025. Meanwhile, 30 states have renewable standards. Five have set goals.

But company executives say state standards are often unenforceable and lack the punch of a national standard that would more forcefully drive use of renewables. That would entice companies to put manufacturing and operations in the U.S. as opposed to other countries, they say.

“We’re building this industry right now,” says Don Furman, senior vice president of Iberdrola Renewables, a leading wind farm developer. “We’re really in a footrace with China and Europe to secure these jobs long term. When you create demand, you really create jobs.”

Losing jobs to China

Navigant’s research, based in part on interviews with dozens of energy firms and suppliers, found that every state would see job growth with a 25% standard.

The biggest winners include states already strong in wind power generation or manufacturing, including Texas, Pennsylvania and Colorado. California, a leading solar state, would also be a big beneficiary.

The Southeast, meanwhile, would gain jobs in biomass, which includes turning wood and agricultural products into energy, Navigant says.

On the flip side, many states will lose clean-energy jobs if no national standard is passed, Navigant says. Texas, for one, could lose more than 2,500 jobs given its already big presence in wind and expiring tax credits for wind projects, Navigant says.

Without a strong national standard, Furman says, the U.S. wind industry could even lose jobs, especially to China. Last year, China became the No. 1 maker of wind turbine equipment. It’s also the No. 1 maker of solar cells for solar panels.

While the federal government pumped $150 million in stimulus funds into renewable energy, China is moving faster, Obama told governors Wednesday, while calling for more ethanol production and technology to limit pollution from coal.

Southeast raises concerns

A national electricity standard has faced opposition from Southeastern lawmakers, who fear that it’ll benefit states with big wind and good sun. Southeastern states are largely dependent on coal and nuclear power.

“We’re not opposed to renewables, but we’re of the opinion that states should come up with their own plans,” says David Wright, past president and current commissioner of the Southeastern Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. If the Southeast benefits from growth in biomass, he wonders if it’ll lose jobs if coal plants close.

Renewable energy also remains more expensive than coal. Mandates that drive up its use could result in higher energy prices, which could result in lost jobs, says Max Schulz, analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a free-market think tank.

“There’s no question that if you have a national standard, you’ll see an increase in green jobs,” Schulz says. “But you’ll also have harmful effects.”

 Full story here

In the 1980s skin cancer was on the rise and scientists predicted that crops would be adversely impacted if we didn’t stop what was thinning the stratospheric ozone layer. It turned out that chlorofluorocarbons (CFSs) which were used as aerosol propellants, refrigerants, and solvents were the source of the problem. These compounds diffuse up into the stratosphere where they exponentially destroy the bonds between the ozone molecules that protect us from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Once again, opponents said that banning CFC’s would devastate our economy because “we didn’t have any effective alternatives.” However, innovation struck again, alternatives were found and now the ozone layer is repairing itself.

Now, we have global weirding (aka global warming). All over the world weather related disasters are becoming more frequent and catastrophic because the greenhouse effect is warming our planet. Science tells us that methane and carbon oxide (monoxide, dioxide) emissions are the major sources of the problem. However, the very powerful controllers of the sources of these emissions are trying to convince us otherwise. They are digging up alternative theories that are not widely supported by the scientific community. They want to place doubt in our minds so we will continue to burn their products. They do not want us to switch to more sustainable alternatives such as wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and biogases.

In the past people have argued that we couldn’t undo the damage that human beings are inflicting upon the earth. However we did turn things around and we can do it again. Global warming seems like an insurmountable problem, but the stakes are higher than ever before.

Read the full article at the Des Moines Register here

Washington, D.C. – Americans could get at least 10 percent of their power from wind and other renewable sources by 2020, but the industry will need better transmission and consistent government support, researchers say.

By 2035, it’s reasonable to estimate that 20 percent or more of the nation’s electrical supply could be renewable, according to a study issued Monday by the National Academy of Sciences.

Non-hydropower renewables accounted for 3.4 percent of U.S. electricity in 2008, up from 2.5 percent the year before, the study said.

The study’s conclusions echoed findings by earlier reports on the prospects for and barriers to renewable energy, including a study issued last year by the Energy Department on prospects for wind energy.

A major impediment to development of renewable energy, the studies agree, is the lack of transmission lines to carry power from the areas such as Iowa, where the wind power is available, to the urban centers where the electricity is needed.

Check out the rest of the story here.

Swift Wind, a renewable energy corporation based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has featured a wonderful tool to let homeowners see if it might be profitable to add a wind turbine to you home. Its really easy: just enter your email and your address, and it will couple information about your home’s wind potential with current electricity costs in your area and state incentives to use renewables. What results is an easy to read graph telling you if wind is a good idea. I just looked up the house where I’m living, and found at most of the Des Moines area has a strong, steady wind stream. But don’t take my word for it: do it yourself here

Amidst troubled economic reports, it looks like renewable energy sectors might be revived under the new stimulus act, Rueters reports.

Though the recent lending crisis has frozen credit normally extended to renewable energy companies, the stimulus package passed last week affords new funds for wind and solar projects via government tax credits and federal grants.

“We’re feeling very optimistic, and it feels like the message got to Congress,” said Arno Harris, chief executive officer of Recurrent Energy, a California-based solar power developer. “If the bill passes, (it did) I think we’re going to be off to the races.”

Read more here

By Dave DeWitte
The Gazette
dave.dewitte@gazettecommunications.com

The $790 million compromise stimulus bill should help get the nation’s wind industry moving again, industry leaders said this week.

The bill included a three-year extension of the production tax credit, which provides an economic incentive to wind developers to invest in new wind farms. It also funds a new grant program to finance up to 30 percent of projects that are not able to benefit from the wind tax credit, and a loan guarantee program.

Backers of the bill include Clipper Windpower, which recently laid off close to 90 employees at its Cedar Rapids wind turbine plant because customers were not able to obtain financing.

Douglas Pertz, Clipper’s CEO, said the three-year extension of the production tax credit is key for the industry’s growth, because previous one-year extensions haven’t provided a long enough window of certainty for project financing.

“We can now plan better,” Pertz said.

The $7.5 billion loan guarantee program should help “prime the pump” for project financing in tight credit markets, Pertz added.

The American Wind Energy Association also praised the agreement.

“The renewable energy provisions in the final bill will stimulate economic and job growth in the wind industry,” said Greg Whetstone, the association’s senior director of governmental affairs. He called the bill a “a critical down payment on long-term policies needed to meet the President’s ambitious renewable energy goals, enhance America’s energy security, grow our economy and reduce global warming pollution.”

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sometimes referred to as the father of the wind energy tax credit, reportedly favored an even longer five-year extension of the credit.

Pertz said the stimulus bill doesn’t solve all of the wind industry’s challenges, but certainly helps. He said it could take all of 2009 for the impact of the bill and other federal interactions to begin to thaw financial markets enough that business gets back up to last year’s levels at Clipper.

An energy bill expected to come up before Congress this spring could further improve the prospects for green energy, Pertz added.

Read the article here

The state of Iowa now produces more wind energy than any other in the nation except Texas, according to a report released yesterday by the American Wind Energy Association .

Iowa has more than doubled its installed generation capacity in the last year alone, going from 1,273 MW at the beginning of last year to 2,790 MW at the beginning of this year.

National employment numbers in the wind energy sector rose as well, up from 50,000 jobs last year to 85,000 this year.

“Because wind projects can be built quickly,” Says AWEA CEO Denise Bode, “positive legislation from Congress will have immediate and visible effects. Looking forward, it will also be important for the new Administration and Congress to put in place long-term, supportive renewable energy policies to make the new clean energy economy a reality.”

Read more about it here: (AWEA Newsroom)

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver said he urged President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday to include money to expand Iowa’s electrical capacity in the new administration’s plan to jump-start the economy.

Culver was attending the National Governors Association meeting in Philadelphia. He said he prodded Obama, who has promised a massive jobs bill, to include public works provisions that go beyond road and bridge work.

“I particularly focused on the importance of getting our electric grid built out so that Iowa can really maximize our potential to be a net exporter of wind energy,” Culver told reporters in a conference call.

Read the full article here