This is super cool:
The 42,000 people living in Burlington, Vermont can now feel confident that when they turn on their TVs or power up their computers they are using renewable energy. With the purchase of the 7.4 megawatt Winooski One hydroelectric project earlier this month, the Burlington Electric Department now owns or contracts renewable sources — including wind, hydro, and biomass — equivalent to the city’s needs.
“We’re now in a position where we’re supplying Burlington residents with sources that are renewable,” said Ken Nolan, manager of power resources for Burlington Electric Department, earlier this month. “The prices are not tied to fossil fuels — they’re stable prices — and they provide us with the flexibility, from an environmental standpoint, to really react to any regulation or changes to environmental standards that come in the future.”
According to Nolan, the utility will get about one-third of its power from the Joseph C. McNeil Generating Station, one-third from wind energy contracts, and one-third from the hydroelectric stations Winooski One and Hydro-Québec. The McNeil power station is a biomass facility that primarily uses wood chips from logging residue leftover from the harvesting of wood for other products.
How about since the military itself (that’s Admiral Mike Mullen, not some candy-assed hippy dippy tree hugging freak, mind you- and here is a good .pdf download from the CNA corp’s militry advisory board) states that climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing global security, we slash the military budget by 2/3’s and invest it in renewable energy? That would be great, if for no other reason than allowing me to make it through an election cycle in West Virginia without being inundated by campaign ads with all the candidates fellating the coal industry. Ads like this:
That’s the DEMOCRAT who is about to lose to Shelley Moore Capito in the race to replace Senator Rockefeller, in part because her campaign has been as desultory and insulting to Democrats as Mike Oliverio’s back in 2010. Democrats around here have not yet learned that if you give the people a choice between a Republican and a fake Republican, they’ll choose the real Republican every time. As such, say hello to Rep. McKinley and soon to be Sen. Moore Capito.
At any rate, considering one of our national political parties completely lost their shit over energy saving light bulbs and removing phosphates from dish soap (phosphates that poisoned the waters of Lake Erie rendering Toledo without drinking water, btw) , I’m not going to hold my breath. Not to mention, we have a lot of brown people left to kill in the Middle East, and that costs money.
Can I get a “Fuck Yeah, ‘Murrika!”
*** Update ***
Apparently these communists are also all bent out of shape over a little change in the weather.
WereBear
Burlington is a hop and a skip from me. If I ever long for Big City Livin’ that where I’ll land. :)
Belafon
Don’t forget about all the brown people here we have to kill.
catclub
In the war on coal (miners), industry has already won and wiped out most of the jobs for miners in the 80-90’s. The general knowledge of this may arrive in another 20 years. For the moment, it is still a good line. You could tell Mississippi voters that cotton needs to be protected, but that has passed, – more recently with corn – for methanol, and soybeans since the market for cotton is going away.
Robert Sneddon
Vermont is about to lose 620MW of non-carbon nuclear generating capacity when Vermont Yankee shuts down soon. Gas will be its replacement, mostly although some analysts reckon Vermont’s gas pipeline infrastructure is marginal to keep the lights on in a hard winter and supplying local CCGT generators with fuel on top could be problematic.
Bobby B.
…and they turn on their TVs to watch “Mud Lovin Rednecks” and “Border Wars.”
Elizabelle
Good on Burlington, Vermont. Love hearing some good news.
Mart
Obama, Mitch McConnell, and whatall politician have nothing to do with coal jobs being lost. Why can’t they just tell the simple truth. Fracking has lowered the price of natural gas, and coal is less competitive. Should tell the miners to learn how to frack. Lots of travel, but at least work above ground, or not in a pit.
Lots of co-gen plants located near gas mains I tour have switched back to gas due to the cost/BTU, and issues such as rail fees for staging coal cars. If you cannot hold 100 or more cars, you are penalized by the rail company.
If coal is cheaper than natural gas in the future, they will switch back. The plants already have lime injection, scrubbers, etc. to meet current environmental rules.
See Grimes is running on Mitch losing coal miner jobs, and she will bring them back. I really wanted to like her.
Eric U.
I see these ads for coal jobs and it appears to be simply pointless. Although if they also pushed exporting our natural gas then it would make more sense. I know that’s going on right now, but it’s not working so far
I occasionally work on making mining safer, but also mine automation. Underground coal mining using people is a little silly when it comes right down to it, but right now the technology isn’t there to totally replace them. It’s a no-brainer for the owners though, the way they do things now leaves coal underground that they would be happy to remove if it weren’t such a safety hazard
jc
Oh, there they go again, those VT leftie environmentalist kooks, those hippie eco-commie-nazis. Sustainable yadda yadda, renewable schnewable. REAL Limbaugh-Palin-Cruz Americans burn oil and coal, by the ton, like there’s no tomorrow … Yeee Haaaw!
This is how idiotic our political culture / discourse has become. One side tries to do something sane, the other side acts like children, who’s paycheck depends on them staying that way.
cleek
Winooski: the town that, for a while, was thinking about putting a dome over itself.
http://hplusmagazine.com/2009/09/30/doomed-dome-future-never-was/
i remember hearing the song about it, on local radio. can’t find it now.
WereBear
@Bobby B.: It’s bizarre, isn’t it? Except that it’s exotic and unusual to them.
Me, I grew up with it. Babysat in trailers where all the food was kept in a broken fridge so the roaches wouldn’t get at it. Observed more instances of “hold my beer and watch this” than I could count on my fingers and toes. Decided my only hope of a feminist husband was to flee North. (That worked out.)
To most people, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is just like watching the Kardashians.
Jay C
I’d worry about this if I were a Burlingtonian – while wind may always blow, and water always flow – they may not always do so in sufficient quantity to keep up with electric demand – and relying on “biomass” also seems dicey: I am assuming that they have thoroughly researched the parameters of their potential fuel sources; but one can only hope that they aren’t going to be so dependent on by-products that, say, one sawmill closing down won’t curtail their supply tot he point where they might have to harvest significant quantities of trees just to keep the plant fired up. Yeah, trees do (eventually) grow back – but is living in a clear-cut former forest really worth the “renewable” part?
burnspbesq
Capito was probably going to win no matter who the Dems ran against her. She’s kinda like royalty, as the daughter of former Gov. Arch Moore.
Elizabelle
@Mart:
No fracking, please. Its cost savings will not be savings at all, once the environmental damage is toted up. We’ve had regulatory capture and there are not sufficient safeguards in place. Gonna be a disaster.
By which time the frackers will be long gone.
khead
Folks in southern WV are straight up delusional. Coal has been dying for 50 years – there’s a reason that a lot of people are FROM southern WV – but a whole bunch of people there think that if they just get rid of Obama…
Mart
@Elizabelle: I agree with you. In fact, fracking may be worse on the environment than coal.
Just speaking from big company’s perspective. They have little regard for environment, but lots of regard for operating costs. From a practical matter, companies will switch to whatever is cheapest, and that includes associated environmental regulations. That is why gas is currently winning against coal.
rikyrah
Go Vermont…Go!!!!
Someguy
I wouldn’t call hydro “sustainable” unless by that you mean “the kind of damage to an ecosystem that is politically sustainable as long as we got cheap electricity.” Hydro typically wipes out whole fish habitats. No big deal, right, because nobody eats salmon, or the billions of baitfish like menhaden and sheepshead that breed inland and migrate out…
WereBear
It’s not that trees don’t grow back. I love birches, but they max out at 50-60 years, tops. We’re not talking sequoias.
p.a.
Future historians will look back and see a country which emerged victorious from the Cold War succumbed to the viral insanity of one political party one aided by the craven triangulating fear of its opposition.
balconesfault
50 years from now, the term “pennywise and pound foolish” will be applied to every single freaking politician who complained that doing something about climate change would be too expensive.
Seanly
@Someguy:
One can take steps to mitigate the damage. There are fish screens & monitoring. I live in SE Idaho and much of our power comes from hydro. A substantial portion of our electric bills go to maintenance and monitoring of the dam mitigation efforts.
Birds get killed by wind turbines. Fracking & extraction industries poison water. Burning fossil fuels or coal release pollutants (that includes individual homes). Nuclear plants have a host of long term issues and short term potential disasters. All power sources are going to cause damage to something.
Elizabelle
What could West Virginia do to create/sustain an economy?
It’s such a beautiful state (as are Kentucky and Tennessee and…)
Makes me sad there are such limited opportunities. What do you do with modern Appalachia area? What replaces extractive industries?
Trollhattan
@khead:
And it’s a miniscule fraction of the state’s employment base. But it’s something on which our tyrant-in-chief is waging war [while not waging war on the real enemy: everybody that’s not American] so, save that coal!
At some point the Chinese will drop all pretense and come in and buy the mines and claims outright, and coal country USA will thereafter function like Africa does for them now–a raw material resource. That should go over well. How do you say “Don Blankenship” in Mandarin?
James Hare
Burlington is quite literally the best place on earth. I miss living there more than just about anything else in my life. Just a beautiful place with beautiful people.
ranchandsyrup
Way to go soshulists! Good to show that it can be done on a larger scale and needs to keep scaling to more customers.
Time to start a campaign urging wingnuts to boycott electricity.
Roger Moore
@Jay C:
The people who live near that clear-cut former forest probably do think it’s worthwhile because they’re the ones whose jobs depend on cutting it. Also, FWIW, the biomass they’re using right now is the leftovers from turning those trees into lumber. If the lumber mill shuts down, they could continue to run the plant by cutting fewer trees and using the whole things rather than just the scraps as they do now.
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: Antiecotourism. Every pol, pundit or self-described “Free Market Conservative” should be taken on a walking tour of MTR sites and encouraged (required?) to breathe the air, drink the water and generally take in the experience. That goes double for geniuses like Ms. Tennant.
There’s a very strong conviction within the business communities of that state that it it’s something new and different, there just isn’t the capacity in-state to be productive. I looked briefly at an IT consulting partnership there a few years back: everyone I talked to advising incorporating in OH and using an address there because a WV business would never be seen as professional/capable/whatever.
Sterling
@Someguy: Using any energy source is going to have an impact on the environment. Reduced fish habitats on some rivers are costs that have to be measured against using combustion as an energy source, which people say will result in global warming and even more widescale environmental destruction. Sustainable could mean in this context any energy source that helps reduce the threat of global warming.
Steeplejack (phone)
Got to McCarran about 1h45m before my flight, curb-checked a bag and zoomed through TSA Pre. Got to the gate about 1h30m ahead of departure. Now I wait. Thanks, Obama.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack (phone): Have a good flight, Dullas or National?
Dan
Awesome for Burlington! Cincinnati’s been doing this for over two years now: http://cleantechnica.com/2012/05/03/is-cincinnati-the-greenest-city-in-america/
James E Powell
@burnspbesq:
I had the same impression. And I wonder, do these candidates have consultants who tell them this will work? Or is the whole campaign a trial run or audition?
Steeplejack (phone)
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Dulles. Only nonstops to Vegas are from there. Bro’ Man picking me up, should be home by 10:30.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack (phone): The first time I flew into Dullas, 1970, they had these buses that would elevate up to the plane level to de-plane passengers and then de-elevate and take the passengers to the one terminal building.
Steeplejack (phone)
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Still have the people-movers, but they don’t go right to the plane.
burnspbesq
@Steeplejack (phone):
Aren’t the people-movers in line to be phased out, in favor of underground rail a la Denver?
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack (phone):
Happy jet trails. Lovely coolish early fall weather here. You will enjoy.
Not promising you a whippet, though.
Elizabelle
@boatboy_srq:
Agreed. Not good to live in “chemical valley.”
Trollhattan
@BillinGlendaleCA:
They got rid of those? Haven’t been for quite awhile.
My first flight out of Dulles was cool–as we left the gate to one side of the plane was a Concorde and to the other was the mothballed shuttle Enterprise. It was like being in The Jetsons.
Elizabelle
@Trollhattan:
Pictures or …
Yeah, it was cool when we could see a Concorde streaking across our skies.
RobertB
@Elizabelle: Tourism gets thrown around as a mining replacement, but that’s not a high value-added industry either.
Off the top of my head, I’d start out by getting involved in some highly technical area, related to what’s going on in the state (or close to the state) right now. ‘Clean’ fracking technology, or something that looks like it enough to sell it. Smart wind tower management systems to minimize wear and tear on the towers and maximize their efficiency. You subsidize this at first, until enough of the field settles in to make new startups and new corporate divisions want to go there.
RobertB
@boatboy_srq: I’d agree with that, not because the state workforce is any less educated than any other, but because what concentrations there are in WV are centered around the coal and chemical industries. Coal is what it is, and not many 5-man startups are focusing on the chemical field. Some companies are taking advantage of tax incentives for ‘high-tech’ startups and relocations, but it’s more ‘throw it at the wall and see if it sticks’ than any targeted focus on particular fields.
scav
@BillinGlendaleCA: Ages ago on a flight to Amsterdam there were those same busses at a midpoint Canadian airport. Landed middle of the night, took us from the plane directly to what seemed to be some physically isolated terrifically lit terminal to wait for refueling. Thrilling for a kid. The busses even more than the simple plane, and I loved planes.
cleek
@burnspbesq:
there’s an underground rail line between terminals at Dulles (was on it yesterday).
Tommy
I don’t think a lot of folks know this, we got a shit load of coal here in Southern Illinois. Why Obama as a Senator came here and talked up clean coal. The thing is it is out of sight out of mind. Here you don’t have to blow a mountaintop to get at the coal. Often just under a field. You almost don’t even see it being mined. I had two friends in highschool in the 80s whose parents worked for Peabody, the coal mines.
Not a “clean” job. A hard job.
StringOnAStick
To frack or not to frack should really depend on local geologic conditions, not political ones. This is a fight we are going to continue to have because there is a lot of natural gas that won’t be extractable without it. In a sane world we’d be using this “fracking interlude” to transition to non-fossil fuels, but who am I kidding?
As a former geologist with an MS degree in environmental geology, I did a lot of environmental work and work with groundwater resources, so I spent time around drill rigs for water, but not for oil/gas (there are strong similarities and the science is universal). Fracking has been going on for decades, but it had mostly been in areas with thousands of feet of dense, high clay content shales on top of the sandstone layers that contained the oil/gas. The DOD even exploded a nuclear device underground near Rifle, CO in the early 1970s to open up “tight” sandstones that had nat gas in them, failing to think through that the gas that could be recovered would also contain high levels of radiation. That was a whole hell of a lot more energy being released than is used now in conventional fracking, and none of the radiation leaked out or got into the water supply. Wells can be properly sealed and cemented, to the point that a nuclear explosion doesn’t result in leakage (I’m glad they iced that program though – that was a stupid level of risk to be taking on).
The problem happened when they expanded fracking into areas that were shallow, and/or had thin beds of weak rock layers, layers of coal, etc., anything except the deep, thick layers of shale with high clay content. This sort of scenario meant that cementing the wells becomes a lot harder, and that meant that it was a lot easier for fracking fluids or gases to escape up the well bore because such geologic conditions make it super difficult to cement completely. The industry screwed themselves on this one; these types of situations weren’t fracked before for this very reason, and now that there isn’t much easy gas left to drill, we’re on to the harder to extract resources, where “harder” also means “higher risk”.
People don’t want fracking here in CO, not realizing it has been going on here since even before that big nuclear frack job in 1970-something. People in general are scared of fracking because of the total cluster the industry has created in PA and other eastern US areas with unsuitable rock layers, but no one wants to dial back their lifestyle either. Unfortunately the O&G industry is so winger/climate change denier-infested that there is no room for rational conversation now, and if there’s money to be made, they will keep at it.
The Other Chuck
@Elizabelle: Meh, Concorde was a white elephant through and through. Guzzled fuel, sky-high maintenance costs, needed extra-long runways, and oh yeah LOUD AS HELL, so they even had their landing patterns restricted.
Might be nice if we could make suborbital flights economical, but there’s not much to miss about the concorde, other than that they looked really cool.
Roger Moore
@The Other Chuck:
Yep. So was the Russian equivalent, the Tu-144. Boeing was talking about making a SST, but Congress refused to subsidize it the way the other countries were doing, so they bet the company on the 747. We all know how that one played out.
boatboy_srq
@RobertB: That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence when we’re talking about a consultancy where I’d be a partner (as in founder of the business, NOT an employee) – and relocating to the state would also mean renting office space across the state line just to get respectability.
Matt McIrvin
@The Other Chuck: I grew up under Dulles’s approach patterns. Having Concordes fly over all the time was cool, but even though they weren’t going supersonic over inhabited land, those turbojets were incredibly loud even by low-flying-jetliner standards.
Those “mobile lounges” seemed futuristic at first glance but they were horrible things. In the era when they docked directly with the plane, they’d use them as sort of mobile holding pens, and just sit out on the tarmac for long periods… and the air conditioning in those things was inadequate to deal with an entire planeload of people in a 98-degree NoVa summer. It was not very different from being trapped in the plane itself.
Eventually they built more conventional terminal buildings out in the field, and the mobile lounges were mostly just used as shuttle service to the midfield terminals. My uncle was involved in the project to put in the underground tunnels and rail system and phase out the mobile lounges.
And, yes, the Enterprise was just sitting out on the tarmac for a little while in the 1980s. I saw the carrier 747 fly it in. Eventually they moved it to a hangar, then to the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center nearby, then to the USS Intrepid in New York (when Discovery replaced it at Udvar-Hazy).
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@The Other Chuck: If you like the Ozone Layer, you don’t like the idea of a fleet of SSTs – emissions high in the atmosphere damage ozone.
Cheers,
Scott.