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Here are five recommended reads for today (5/18/12)

1. According to the Associated Press, “China’s government on Friday rejected a U.S. antidumping ruling against its makers of solar power equipment and Chinese manufacturers warned possible higher tariffs might hurt efforts to promote clean energy.”
2. UPI reports: “Europe’s photovoltaic market continued to boom in 2011, with installed capacity doubling across the 27 EU member countries, new research indicates… Photovoltaic’s 2011 growth, at 21.5 gigawatts-peak, also handily beat the growth of other types of generating technologies. Some 9.3 gigawatts of new wind power came online in Europe last year, along with 2.2 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity.
3. National Public Radio is running a weeklong series on natural gas fracking, including the first segment, “With Gas Boom, Pennsylvania Fears New Toxic Legacy.”
4. CleanTechnica links to a map showing how offshore wind power alone could power the world.
5. At Grist, David Roberts asks “Why are U.S. taxpayers subsidizing coal mining?” Roberts argues that doing this “makes sense for no one other than the coal companies.”

Does this sounds like an “awesome” energy law to you, as it does to Grist’s David Roberts and as it does to us?

Wouldn’t it be cool if we passed a rule mandating that all new federal buildings had to be carbon-neutral by 2030? The feds buy and build a lot of real estate. An effort to wring fossil-fuel energy out of those buildings — by increasing their efficiency and supplying them with renewables — would seriously bolster domestic markets for efficiency and distributed energy. Beyond that, it would serve as a proving ground and an example for the communities where those buildings are located. It would be galvanizing.

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…We do have such a rule! It was passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush! It’s on the books, the law of the land. Specifically, it is Section 433 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. It says that new federal buildings, or major renovations ($2.5 million or more) of federal buildings, must reduce their consumption of fossil-fuel energy (relative to a similar building in 2003) 55 percent by 2010, 80 percent by 2020, and 100 percent by 2030…

Sounds like a win-win, in which taxpayers – that’s you and me – save money, while also cutting pollution and enhancing the health and productivity of workers in those buildings. Who would possibly be against such a law? One guess.

On April 12, representatives from the American Gas Association (AGA) and the Federal Performance Contracting Coalition(FPCC) met at the White House with administration officials from DOE, CEQ, and OMB. At that meeting they offered this issue brief[PDF], which called on Congress to “substantially modify or eliminate EISA section 433.” You can bet that issue brief hit all the relevant congressional offices as well.

Less than a month later, Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) of the House Appropriations Committee offered an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2013 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill that would “prohibit funding” to implement Section 433.

What is motivating this stealth attack on one of the few genuinely ambitious energy laws in the U.S.?

For the AGA, it’s pretty simple: no fossil fuel means no natural gas.

In other words, the fossil fuel industry once again is using its financial muscle and political power to keep their gravy train going as long as possible, even if it holds back our country. There’s certainly nothing “awesome” about that.

Here are five recommended reads for today (5/17/12)

1. Renewable Energy World highlights “Five Shining Examples of Renewable Energy Innovation and Investment.” Among them: reduced costs for concentrated solar power, an Atlantic wind underwater transmission line, and a “real replacement for coal.”
2. Greentechsolar looks at “Thin Film Manufacturing Prospects in the Sub-Dollar-Per-Watt Market,” asking “What happened to the promise of thin-film PV?”
3. The Center for American Progress has a new report on “America’s Future Under ‘Drill, Baby, Drill.’” The nightmare scenario? “ Instead of choosing to invest in clean and efficient energy solutions post-2012, giving consumers and businesses a choice in what kind of electricity and fuel to produce and use, we committed ourselves to a carbon-intensive, extractive economic future. We kept drilling and burning, and we kept spewing noxious CO2, smog, and other pollutants into the air at exponential rates.”
4. According to CleanTechnica, “the wind energy industry is supporting federal guidelines that hold it to a higher standard than any other industry in the nation when it comes to wildlife protection.”
5. Grist reports: The brewmeister of Brooklyn Brewery says toxic fracking chemicals like methanol, benzene, and ethylene glycol (found in antifreeze) could contaminate his beer by leaking into New York’s water supply.

An article in yesterday’s Des Moines Register caught our eye, as it provides yet another piece of compelling evidence that clean energy remains popular, on a bipartisan level, at the local level.  The article is by “Iowa farm boy” Rob Hach, a self-described “registered Republican” who “believe[s] in voting for the best candidate and the one who understands that clean energy is helping to revitalize small towns across Iowa and bringing manufacturing back to America when so many other industries have fled town.”  Here are excerpts (bolding added for emphasis) from Rob Hach’s article:

Today my wife and I have 28 employees and four offices in four states at Anemometry Specialists. We work in the wind industry on turbines. We are proud to be among those who help make Iowa the No. 1 state in the country for wind jobs. Iowa also ranks second in electricity generation from wind.

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And we were able to keep jobs in Iowa. The majority of the people I employ here in Alta are either farm kids or still working on the family farm in the evening. Today, the school district in Alta receives somewhere between 16 percent and 20 percent of its revenue from wind turbines. And almost 30 percent of the taxes paid into the county are off wind turbines.

Wind is an American success story in Iowa.

Hach adds that he’s “not reaping massive profits like the oil billionaires funding these ads with their billions in subsidies and tax breaks,” but is “living invoice to invoice, praying we have enough money to make payroll every two weeks,” participating in an industry which “supports the American farmer and is good for our national security because we still are too dependent on Middle East dictators for our energy needs.” The fact is, this “American success story” can happen in any state, not just Iowa, with smart policies at the state and federal level.  As long as we all listen to people like Rob Hach, not the “oil billionaires.”

Here are five recommended reads for today (5/16/12)

1. A study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance finds that “Power generated from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels is much closer to competitiveness with conventional electricity generation than many policy-makers and commentators have realized,” and that “The shift in prices of solar technology carries major implications for policy and investment decision-makers, especially when it comes to the choice of generating technology and the design of tariff, fiscal and other support policies.”
2. DeSmogBlog reports: “FreedomWorks, the sister organization to theKoch-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP), has launched a new website and advertising campaign to convince American voters that the Obama administration and the EPA are out to destroy American jobs.”
3. According to the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch, First Solar and SunPower are looking to benefit from Saudi Arabia’s $109 billion solar plan, which aims “to have 41,000 megawatts of solar capacity by 2032.”
4. Renewable Energy World reports, “Seven months after a trade investigation was launched, American solar companies and Chinese solar manufacturers will finally get a clear picture of the challenges ahead…A determination on the second of the two tariffs is set to be made on May 16 and announced on May 17.”
5. Iowa Governor Terry Branstad writes in the Wall Street Journal, “Our state is receiving 20% of its electricity from wind farms at stable and dependable rates, and there are over 215 wind-related businesses operating in 55 counties across Iowa, providing jobs for more than 5,000 workers. This success has been replicated across the nation, with more than 470 factories in 43 states producing parts for the industry.”