Fracking the Eagle Ford Shale: Big Oil & Bad Air on the Texas Prairie | InsideClimate News

Editor’s Note: This Inside Climate News piece is some of the best journalism we have seen in years.  It’s a real case study in Laissez Faire Republican governance and why society can’t rely on the market to police itself as conservatives and libertarians would have us believe.  This is a story of market failure, legalized corruption, and the dangers of small government.  We highly recommend taking the time to read the full report by clicking on the below link, and have included the Summary Findings below: Fracking the Eagle Ford Shale: Big Oil & Bad Air on the Texas Prairie | … Continue reading this post

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Cost to add more solar, wind to U.S. West power grid is small – study | Reuters

Cost to add more solar, wind to U.S. West power grid is small – study | Reuters. Study shows the benefits of adding more wind and solar to the U.S. West power grid outweigh the costs of doing so.  Here’s the key quote:  “”Increased cycling to accommodate high levels of wind and solar generation increases operating costs by 2 percent to 5 percent for the average fossil-fueled plant,” Debra Lew, NREL project manager for the study, said in a release.   However, that is well below the estimated $7 billion per year that the increased use of wind and solar … Continue reading this post

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Leaking nuclear sludge could threaten Columbia River

Editor’s Note: Yet another example of the huge externalities we pay for supposedly cheap nuclear power. Just the cost of building the facility to clean up this nuclear waste is $13 Billion!  For one site.  Nevermind the cost of building that facility in the first place!  $13 Billion would pay for the wind energy Production Tax Credit for 10 years!  The energy debate in this country is so freaking stupid!   Fuel Fix » Leaking nuclear sludge could threaten Columbia River. News that a storage tank at a shuttered federal nuclear facility in Washington state is leaking radioactive sludge has … Continue reading this post

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Big Coals Big Problems (Rolling Stone Magazine)

Editor’s Note: While cheap natural gas prices and more stringent regulation of coal emissions has made new coal plants virtually impossible to pencil in the US, existing coal plants are still the main point-source of CO2 pollution domestically.  Further, we are now exporting more coal than ever before to Europe where power prices are much higher than in the US.  We’re not going to see real reductions in global CO2 until we not just stop growing the coal industry, but actually dramatically shrink it. Big Coal’s Big Problems (Rolling Stone Magazine) You wouldn’t have guessed it from all the theatrics of … Continue reading this post

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Climate change and poverty have not gone away | Joseph Stiglitz | Business | guardian.co.uk

Climate change and poverty have not gone away An economic and political system that does not deliver for most citizens is one that is not sustainable in the long run Joseph Stiglitz guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 January 2013 10.19 EST A colony of king penguins and an elephant seal on Possession Island. Because we have been so slow to respond to climate change, achieving the targeted limit of a 2C rise in global temperature will require sharp reductions in emissions in the future. Photograph: Marcel Mochet/AFP/Getty Images In the shadow of the euro crisis and America’s fiscal cliff, it is easy to ignore … Continue reading this post

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The Economic Impact of Wind Energy | Daily Yonder | Keep It Rural

The Economic Impact of Wind Energy | Daily Yonder | Keep It Rural. The Economic Impact of Wind Energy There are 47,000 megawatts of wind energy capacity installed in the U.S. The authors of a new study say that for each megawatt of wind capacity, a county gains half a job and just over $11,000 in total personal income. This is the wind energy farm in Roscoe, Texas, where 627 wind turbines can churn out as much as 781.5 megawatts of power. A new study finds that for every megawatt of wind capacity installed in a county, half a job … Continue reading this post

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Winter Wind Credited With Record Power Generation | NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

(Originally posted at www.mbcdfw.com) Winter Wind Credited With Record Power Generation | NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said winter winds that brought low temperatures also contributed to a wind power generation record. At 3 p.m. Christmas Day, 8,638 megawatts of power was provided by Texas wind farms.  ERCOT said 6,600 mw were created in West Texas windfarms and another 1,600 were created along the Texas coast. “This output represented nearly 26 percent of system load in ERCOT at the time. This new record is 117 MW higher than the previous 8,521 MW record set on … Continue reading this post

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Time for Texas’ leaders to support important wind-power tax credit

Editor’s Note: This article was written by Andy Bowman, the President of my company.   Time for Texas’ leaders to support important wind-power tax credit.    What if our leaders spent $7 billion on a new superhighway that would better connect key parts of Texas to create trade, jobs, investment and tax revenue — but then decided, after all the money was committed and the highway had been built, to take steps to make sure it wouldn’t be used? Most people would say that makes no sense at all.    But that is exactly what is happening with Texas’ new electricity transmission … Continue reading this post

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