In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama requested that Congress pass legislation mandating a national clean energy standard (CES). A CES targets the CO2 emissions from the electric power industry by setting minimum percentages of total power (electricity) generation that must come from sources that emit no CO2. (It should be noted that CO2 is colorless, odorless, and non-toxic. Therefore, it is a misnomer to call CO2 dirty.) Though this sounds less threatening than cap-and-trade legislation, it can end up being pretty much the same thing. …
Speaking before a new Congress in his State of the Union address, President Obama gave an alternative suggestion for Congress now that cap and trade is out of the picture. He pitched an aggressive clean energy standard, saying he wants 80 percent of our electricity to come from carbon-free sources of energy by 2035. For reference, the Energy Information Administration shows that carbon-free sources generated 31 percent of our total electricity in 2009 (20 percent nuclear, 7 percent hydroelectric, and 4 percent other renewables). As Kim Strassel points out in …
A little over a month into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the American public wants answers– from the Obama administration, from Congress and from BP. While there are still many more questions than currently available answers, President Obama answered a few and dodged others in his speech today. He made a resounding push for clean energy legislation and referenced the House cap and trade bill passed last year and the one recently introduced in the Senate. He also suspended or canceled a number of lease sales off the coasts …
One of the common arguments made against wind power is that without government subsidies, mandates or tax credits, wind turbines would not be built. But even when companies do receive preferential treatment to build windmills, just because they’re built doesn’t mean they’re going to work. For that, there needs to be (drum roll, please)…wind! A report from Britain says: “The analysis of power output found that more than 20 wind farms are operating at less than one-fifth of their full capacity. Experts say many turbines are going up on sites …
President Obama declared in the State of the Union address that the United States must be a leader in clean energy production. Why? “Because I’m convinced that the country that leads in clean energy is also going to be the country that leads in the global economy,” the president reiterated today in a speech at Savannah Technical College. That’s a good reason if it were guaranteed to be true, but doesn’t it depend on the cost? If a manufacturer in another country can produce these technologies more cheaply than a …
The cold weather is creating a number of unintended consequences for new energy designs. First, snow accumulating on LED traffic light bulbs wouldn’t melt because the lights failed to heat up resulting in car accidents, and in some instances, death. In Minnesota, the weather resulted in wind turbines freezing and thus not turning even if it is windy. This local news story has the details: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk8rsFk9i_w[/youtube] But that’s not the only problem with wind power. It’s not the economic savior the government thought it would be. The stimulus money is …
President Obama gave his first State of the Union speech last night and while his delivery reminded many Americans of the man they saw on the campaign trail, his rhetoric was much of the same. Although the president did call for offshore drilling and an expansion of nuclear, his focus was clean energy jobs. He declared, But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means …
On the campaign trail Barack Obama promised if he were elected president, he would create 5 million “green collar” jobs. Today President Obama announced $2.3 billion in tax credits for a clean energy economy will ostensibly create 17,000 jobs. “Building a robust clean energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future,” he said in a speech this afternoon. Make no mistake; this government-run plan will kill more jobs than it aims to create. There are a number of serious problems with the goal to create green …
Green energy investments are coming from every direction. Whether it is the stimulus package or the cap and trade bills proposed in Congress, the government is eager to invest taxpayer dollars in renewable energy technology. As Americans become desensitized to the copious amounts of money the government is spending, clean energy investments are growing from millions to billions. And companies are chomping at the bit: Last month, for example, President Barack Obama announced $3.4 billion in government-stimulus grants for power-grid projects. About one-third of the recipients are GE customers. GE …
As Americans travel to and from work out of Union Station in Washington DC, they are bombarded with dozens of posters created by Clean Energy Works, an organization that promotes legislation for the expansion of clean energy jobs. The posters lay out what would happen if Congress passes climate change legislation in a very telling way. They communicate short phrases such as: “Our farmers can grow energy in their fields” “Our electricians can install solar panels.”
