|
|
Headlines
Click on Headline for Full Story
Famous names fight wind farm plan in millionaires' playground
As she put the finishing touch to a watercolour outside the gated community of Oyster Harbours, Nancy Walton wrinkled her nose at the thought of America's first offshore wind farm popping up on the horizon of Nantucket Sound. "I believe in wind power," she said, "but these will be higher than the Statue of Liberty. There are so precious few places on earth as unspoilt as this. Why can't they just put them somewhere else?"
Oyster Harbours is ground zero in a very uncivil war in which some of the wealthiest and most famous people in the country have joined forces with one of America's dirtiest businesses – the coal industry – to block an ambitious clean-energy project.
As Hyannis filled up with traffic ahead of the Independence Day holiday today, there was a whiff of cordite rather than fireworks in the air as both sides blasted away at each other.
So far, the opponents have spent more than $20m trying to kill off the project, which is known as Cape Wind and is planned for a location widely deemed ideal for offshore wind turbines.
During the summer, 130 slowly spinning windmills located five miles offshore should be invisible to the naked eye because of haze. On winter days, when the "snowbirds" (as the locals call summer visitors) have departed for Florida, the windmills will look like rotating matchsticks out on the horizon.
But a problem arises because the wind farm will at times be visible from some of the most expensive summer homes and private beaches in the US, most notably the Kennedy family compound in Hyannisport. And whether Obama Democrats or McCain Republicans, vulgar billionaires or old New England money, opponents of the project decided long ago to throw in their lot in with Big Coal to try and kill off Cape Wind. "This is like trying to put a wind farm in Yellowstone National Park as far as we're concerned," said former coal executive Glenn Wattley, who runs the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.
July 4, 2008
Program readies workers for environmental jobs
It was Hurricane Katrina that inspired Henry Alvarez to end a seven-year career as an emergency medical technician to explore jobs in waste-water management and water purification. Alvarez felt burnt out and wanted to focus on environmental issues.
"I saw the damage that was inflicted by Katrina and that level of destruction," says Alvarez, 36, of Lynn. "My thinking is I spent too long trying to heal the sick and injured."
Last year Alvarez started a 14-week environmental technology program at JFYNetWorks - a workforce development organization that targets career changers, immigrants, and the underemployed - where he learned how to handle hazardous materials. Two months ago he started working as a temporary laborer at a waste-water treatment center in Concord. If Alvarez passes a certification test in November, he can move up to a job as a waste-water treatment technician.
JFYNetWorks trains participants in a variety of environmental services jobs. But Gary Kaplan, executive director of JFYNetWorks, believes that more green jobs will develop in another area - the energy services field - as this country deals with climbing energy prices and the effects of global warming. The cities of Boston and Cambridge, for instance, have announced programs focused on making their buildings energy efficient. This summer JFYNetWorks is meeting with energy service companies to find out what green positions the industries need to fill. If there is demand, says Kaplan, JFYNetWorks could launch a clean-energy training program focusing on solar panel and energy audits, and energy retrofits as soon as this fall.
|
 |
|
"It could be a landmark event; if it's just a disaster, it could be my epitaph," laughs Donald P. Hodel. He's referring to his $2.8 billion dream to develop the first large-scale coal-gasification power plant that captures the bulk of the carbon dioxide it produces. Selling both the juice and the CO 2, supposedly he won't need any government handouts to make this business work.
Hodel was once the scourge of environmentalists as Reagan's Secretary of Energy and, after that, of the Interior. Later he enraged moderates as head of the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family. Now, as chairman of Summit Power Group, a small energy consultancy, he's kicking dirt in the face of … economics. Converting coal to gas before burning it is plausible, but finding an economical way to dispose of the carbon dioxide besides venting it is, to put it mildly, an ambitious goal.
"It's hard to see a payoff--a financial payoff--on this project in my lifetime," concedes Hodel, 73, from his Lakewood, Colo. living room, near a stack of ski magazines and a book about global energy. "But this really would be an exciting legacy: It allows us to use one of our most plentiful resources in an environmentally acceptable way."
Carbon-spewing coal plants are a tough sell these days. The buyout of TXU Corp. last year took place after KKR and Texas Pacific dropped plans for eight such plants. Presumably a carbon-sequestering plant would get a free pass from the environmentalists. It would also get an economic boost from any legislation taxing or capping carbon emissions coming from competing power plants that don't sequester. Cap-and-trade just died in Congress, but the debate will resume next year.
Summit has so far spent $2 million on its 600-megawatt quixotic quest. Hodel has some pretty hefty support--Siemens (nyse: SI - news - people ), with which he has developed gas-fired plants in ten states, and the Linde Group, the industrial gases and engineering company in Munich. The amounts of their investments have not been disclosed. "We think it's interesting enough to continue our efforts," says Ronald D. Key, who heads Linde's North America technology and sales division.
At a high temperature and pressure, gasification converts coal, or other carbon fuels, into synthesis gas that is either burned in a turbine to produce electricity, as in Summit's case, or turned into other products, like diesel oil, fertilizer and pipeline-quality natural gas. In most cases pollutants such as sulfur and mercury are stripped out after the fuel gas has been synthesized.
ROCKVILLE, Md. — Dragged by a federal appeals court into a rare public discussion of the risks that terrorists could attack a nuclear plant, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission heard arguments on Tuesday from a California group that the commission’s staff had overlooked one category of potentially serious attacks.
The commission, determined to dispose of the issue promptly, heard the arguments directly instead of delegating them to administrative law judges, the first time since 1989 that the sitting commissioners have heard such oral arguments.
But the three-hour session was not a revealing one, largely because the lawyer for the commission staff said there were major issues that could not be described in open session without compromising national security.
The commission’s ruling could be important because the spent fuel storage system proposed for the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, near Avila Beach, Calif., is being adopted at scores of other reactor sites around the country because of the Energy Department’s failure to establish a national burial site for used fuel. At issue was whether storage casks that the Pacific Gas and Electric Company wants to build at the Diablo Canyon plant could be hit with incendiary missiles, piercing the steel and concrete shell and lighting the metal cladding of the fuel. If that happened, plant opponents contend, the fire could turn radioactive cesium into a gas, which would float widely with the wind and then resolidify.
It's no longer if, but when, where, and how many wind farms will go up along the U.S. coast
Cape Wind’s Gordon may soon get the O.K. to build turbines
Wind farms are springing up in Midwestern fields, along Appalachian ridgelines, and even in Texas backyards. They're everywhere, it seems, except in the windy coastal waters that lap at some of America's largest, most power-hungry cities. That's partly because the first large-scale effort to harness sea breezes in the U.S. hit resistance from an army led by the rich and famous, waging a not-on-my-beach campaign. For almost eight years the critics have stalled the project, called Cape Wind, which aims to place 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound about five miles south of Cape Cod. Yet surprisingly, Cape Wind has largely defeated the big guns. In a few months it may get authorization to begin construction. Meanwhile, a string of other offshore wind projects is starting up on the Eastern Seaboard, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Great Lakes.
Much of the credit—or blame—for this activity goes to Jim Gordon, the man who launched Cape Wind in 2000. His goal is to provide up to 75% of the electric power on Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard by tapping the region's primary renewable resource: strong and steady offshore breezes. He has methodically responded to every objection from Cape Cod property owners and sometime-vacationers, ranging from heiress Bunny Mellon and billionaire Bill Koch to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). "This is like trying to put a wind farm in Yellowstone National Park, as far as we're concerned," says Glenn Wattley, CEO of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the opposition's lobbying arm.
Since 2000, Cape Wind's Gordon has burned through $30million of his own wealth, much of it to pay for studies of the site. The result is a four-foot-high stack of environmental reports, including three federal applications looking at the wind farm's potential impact on birds, sea mammals, local fishermen, tourism, and more. "We've gone through a more rigorous evaluation process than any prior energy project in New England," says Gordon, who built natural-gas-fired power plants before starting Cape Wind.
Victory is by no means certain. Cape Wind could yet bog down in litigation or be nixed by the feds, Gordon concedes. Even if Washington O.K.'s the project, he must find a way to finance it. Expected costs have more than doubled in the last eight years, to over $1.5billion, by some estimates. And assuming the funding comes through, engineering and construction could drag on for three or more years.
Regardless of how this all plays out, Gordon has secured his spot as one of U.S. wind power's pioneers. When it comes to building natural gas and oil rigs in federal waters, energy companies must follow clear government rules. But until Cape Wind floated its first proposal, Washington had never spelled out how to develop an offshore wind farm. Gordon's plan prodded the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that oversees energy extraction from public lands, to take action. The regulators hope to release detailed rules for utilizing wind, wave, and tidal power by yearend, at which point the path will be cleared for applications from a dozen or so wind projects in federal waters, with nearly as many under way in state areas. "We'll see an incredible flurry of proposals to tap ocean resources for clean and renewable energy," says Maureen A. Bornholdt, program manager at the MMS's Office of Alternative Energy Programs.
It's easy to understand why entrepreneurs are rushing in. Winds at sea blow stronger and more steadily than on land, where they are slowed by forests, hills, and tall buildings. Unlike terrestrial winds, sea breezes also tend to keep blowing during the hottest times of the day, when the most power is needed. Within a few miles of much of the U.S. coastline, in almost any direction, wind resources are more abundant and dependable than anywhere outside the Great Plains. Exploiting this resource could supply about 5% of all U.S. electricity by 2030, says the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California air regulators on Thursday released the country's most sweeping global warming plan, outlining ambitious measures for cleaner cars, renewable energy and a cap on major polluters.
The 75-page draft outlines for the first time how regulators expect to achieve cuts in greenhouse gases mandated under the landmark global warming law signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger two years ago.
"This is by far the most significant step yet in California's effort to fill the void that's left by the absence of a national policy," Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols said.
Most of the ideas have been floated for months, but making them work is expected to be difficult. Many of the proposals are general, still undergoing cost analyses and must go through lengthy rulemaking processes before they become law.
While the board works to meet a year-end deadline to finalize its plan, Republicans in the Legislature are threatening to hold up the state budget this summer unless the global warming law is delayed.
Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines said the initial plan would increase the price of fuel, electricity and natural gas while imposing costly mandates on businesses.
Members of the California Air Resources Board acknowledged the difficulties but said California must do its part to combat global warming.
Illegal immigration, ethnic violence, humanitarian crises and national security issues will worsen during the next two decades because of global warming, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.
WASHINGTON — Global warming is likely to have a series of destabilizing effects around the world, causing humanitarian crises as well as surges in ethnic violence and illegal immigration, according to an assessment released Wednesday by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Rising temperatures could weaken already fragile regimes around the world and create a new set of national security challenges for the United States over the next two decades, the report warns.
"Climate change alone is unlikely to trigger state failure" during that period, said Thomas Fingar, chairman of the National Intelligence Council, in remarks prepared for a joint congressional hearing.
"But the impacts will worsen existing problems -- such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions," Fingar said.
The report represents the U.S. intelligence community's most comprehensive assessment to date of the long-term security consequences of global warming. It also marks a reluctant foray into a politically charged topic.
Democrats and environmental activists praised the assessment, calling it formal acknowledgment by a key part of the government that the threat of rising temperatures is real.
But the report was also criticized, particularly by skeptics of global warming and people who oppose using U.S. intelligence resources to track something as amorphous as the environment.
|
|
