It’s Getting Hot In Here

As the ad campaigns intensified before tonight’s primaries, Hillary Clinton made the seriously Energy Dumb decision to promote a gas tax holiday as a way of demonstrating her supposed affinity for “the hard working American middle class.” Too bad the gas tax holiday won’t help anybody’s pocketbook but the oil companies. I guess Mrs. Clinton missed the memo from every single energy and economic policy expert out there! (Seriously, every one of them!)

While his opponent pandered for votes with empty promises of $30.00 in cash, Barack Obama, to his very strong credit, took the Energy Smart position and called the gas tax holiday proposal what it is: “a pander,” a cheap trick to buy your vote.

Here’s Obama’s clear, honest, Energy Smart response on the gas tax holiday (speaking on Meet the Press earlier this week)…

Continue reading ‘Barack Obama Shows Off His Energy Smarts on Gas Tax Holiday’

Hillary Clinton and John McCain support seriously Energy Dumb gas tax holiday

There’s Energy Smart, like Mark Udall and this slate of Energy Smart US Congressional candidates.

Then there’s seriously Energy Dumb, like touting a temporary gas tax holiday as an appropriate response to high gas and oil prices.

Hillary Clinton solidly aligned herself last week with the Energy Dumb camp, vociferously supporting a gas tax holiday first proposed by Energy Dumber John McCain that amounts to blatant pandering for votes.

This “quick fix” proposal, a three month suspension of the 18.4 cents/gallon federal gas tax during the summer “driving season,” would at best save the average American about $30.00 this summer. That’s right, Hillary Clinton and John McCain’s idea of a solution to high energy prices is to mail you a check for half a tank of gas!

So, is $30.00 enough to buy your vote?
Continue reading ‘Hillary Clinton Supports Seriously Energy Dumb Gas Tax “Holiday”’

[Update - May 1st, 2008: "Burning the Future: Coal in America" will be airing again soon on the Sundance Channel, May 13th, 16th, and 18th. In addition, the DVD's will go on sale next week on the film's website: www.burningthefuture.com.]

Can coal ever be clean?

These guys are spending tens of millions trying to convince you, the American voter, that the future of America’s energy lies with “clean coal.”

A new documentary film, “Burning the Future: Coal in America” aims to clue Americans in on why “slightly less deadly coal” is probably a more accurate term for what the spooked coal industry is trying to push these days. Or maybe “laundered coal.” But “clean?” Well check out the trailer and see what you think:

Continue reading ‘Can Coal Ever Be Clean? Check Out “Burning the Future: Coal In America” to Find Out’

The Ohio state Senate unanimously passed legislation setting strong new renewable energy and energy efficiency standards last week, sending the bill on to Governor Ted Strickland for signature. Sub. Senate Bill 221 establishes a 12.5% by 2025 renewable energy standard (RES), making the Buckeye State the 26th state in the nation to adopt a renewable energy requirement for electric utilities (see this previous post on numbers 24 and 25). The legislation also includes a strong energy efficiency standard that is expected to result in a 22% cumulative reduction in energy usage by 2025.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, the Ohio RES is expected to result in 5,000-7,000 MW of new wind power capacity by 2025 and early-year targets will drive 650-750 MW of new wind power installation over the next 4 years. The bill also includes a small solar “set-aside” to help boost solar power in the Buckeye State.

Continue reading ‘Buckeye State Goes Green: Ohio Passes Renewable Energy Standard’

Econ 101 taught us increased supply = lower prices. That’s the main argument for new liquefied natural gas import terminals. Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal warns things are a bit more complicated than that and we shouldn’t bet on LNG to reduce North American natural gas prices. This is Econ 202 stuff at least…

Amidst concerns about a potential North American natural gas supply crunch, several energy developers are betting big on new terminals to import liquefied natural gas into the United States market. Three terminals are proposed in Oregon, and they have generated considerably controversy and strong opposition from local communities.

There are many reasons to be concerned about imported liquefied natural gas, or LNG, natural gas that has been supercooled to -260 degrees F in order to turn it into a liquid ready to transport on specially-designed tankers from LNG exporting countries like Indonesia, Russia, Iran and Qatar. From increased dependence on foreign fossil fuels to increased greenhouse gas emissions, seized farmland for new pipelines and health and safety concerns, citizens of potentially impacted communities have found plenty of reasons to rally against LNG terminals and pipelines.

The principle argument to forge ahead with new LNG terminals despite these concerns is the assumption that increasing North American natural gas supplies with LNG imports will reduce prices. It’s a simple “laws” of supply and demand that increased supply will reduce prices, right? That’s what we all learned in economics 101, right?

Unfortunately, a recent front page article in the Wall Street Journal (April 18th) warns us that the economics of LNG is a bit more complicated than that. This is economics 202 stuff at least (the online copy is here, sub$cr. required).

The gist of the story is that we shouldn’t be betting on increased LNG imports to help lower natural gas prices in the US. Read on to find out why…
Continue reading ‘WSJ Says: Don’t Bet on LNG to Reduce US Natural Gas Prices’

Gentle reader,

In the course of your readings in the blogosphere, your academic research, or your energy-related activism, you will likely see a number of similar and often confusing terms bandied about to describe how much power a power plant can produce (MW vs MWa), how much it generates (KWh vs MWh), how much an appliance consumes (watts vs amps), etc., etc. etc. Furthermore, these units and terms apply to two related but very different concepts - energy and power - which while often used interchangeably in common parlance, have very different technical meanings.

The end result is that all this can all be very confusing as you can often find yourself accidentally comparing apples and oranges, kilowatt-hours and horse power or nameplate capacity and average capacity, etc. Confusing these terms is easy and common and mix-ups can have major consequences for your conclusions (this post was prompted by this one, for example, which confuses energy and capacity, leading to very different conclusions…)

The following is an primer on some of the different units of power and energy and descriptions of power plant generation you may encounter and what they mean. There is a lot here and you may not encounter a need for all of it immediately. However, if you don’t have a strong physics background (and that means most of us!), or you (like me) get your kilo-whats-its and mega-whos-its confused sometimes, you may find what follows a useful summary of many of the concepts and units you need to know (and some you probably don’t). Use this as reference if you want, for times when you get confused later (and you probably will):

Power vs. Energy - What’s the Big Diff?

When trying to explain electricity, power and energy, I invariable fall back on analogies to water flows. You see, electricity flows a lot like water, following a path of least resistance, from source to sink, spring to sea. So to understand the difference between power and energy, let’s start by taking a bath. Ok, you don’t really need to get into the tub (although you can if you want… just keep that laptop dry!), but I think we can all visualize one…

Power, is a measure of the rate at which work can be done, or in our bathtub analogy, the rate at which water can flow out of your faucet. To visualize what power means, think about the size of your faucet. How high can you turn up the water? Bigger faucet = more water flow is possible = more power.

Energy is a measure of the amount of work actually done. In our bathtub analogy, energy is a measure of the water actually in the tub. How many gallons are in their after five minutes?

Continue reading ‘Kilo-who’s-its and Mega-what’s-its: A Primer on Energy, Power and Capacity’

[So I know Jamie beat me to the punch, and I owe Dana a tip of the hat for bringing the interview to my attention, but here's my rant on Hillary's apparent love for coal...]

In an interview on West Virginia Public Radio this morning, Hillary Clinton revealed some pretty profound ignorance about the true costs of coal and especially about the destruction mountain top coal mining is wrecking on both communities and ecosystems in Appalachia. Give it a listen:

Sure sounds like Hillary has drunk the (sour) kool-aid being peddled by coal-front group “Americans for Balanced Energy Choices” (or ABEC, which might as well stand for “American Blowhards Excited about Coal”). Lets compare what Hillary is stumping and what the coal industry’s PR machine has to say:

Continue reading ‘Hillary Clinton Loves Her Some Coal’

With the science of climate change pretty solidly unimpeachable at this point, the rag tag camp of climate change deniers, detractors, doomsayers and other flat-earthers have a new tactic these days: talk up the supposedly disastrous economic consequences of regulating carbon.

The Flat Earth camp pulled out all the stops at the Wall Street Journal’s ECO:nomics conference held last week in California.

Hosted by “climate change experts” from the WSJ’s notoriously ideological, knuckle-dragging, anti-climate editorial board, the WSJ assembled the full cast-of-characters of the Flat Earth Society of America: Fred Smith and Myron Ebell of CEI (makers of the hilariously funny “CO2: some call it pollution, we call it life” ad), Steve Milloy of JunkScience, and the WSJ’s own ideologues came into the conference to put America’s leading “green-minded” CEO’s to the test, show them they were simply tools for liberal, socialist hippies, and expose carbon regulation as the sure-fire end of the treasured American way of life.

“Instead, they ended up looking small, shrill, and utterly marginalized,” David Roberts, who covered the Eco:nomics conference for Grist.org writes. “Despite their claims to be pro-business, the business community disdains them.”
Continue reading ‘The Last Gasp of the Climate Deniers, Detractors and Doomsayers?’

While this isn’t strictly climate or energy related, I figured I’d pass on this humorous video today (planting trees helps solve climate change, right?). Enjoy, and TGIF!

Continue reading ‘Some TGIF Humor: Treeless Squirrel Says “Plant Trees Please”’

This is a great video skit from the Blue Man Group I just ran across (thanks to Architecture 2030). It’s old, I know, but new to me. Check it out: