The Global Warming Statistics » Susan Kraemer

One Good Thing About the Spill Bill

Susan Kraemer — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:54:36 +0000

It gets mom and pop out of the oil drilling business, and that is a good thing.

While undeveloped countries might have kids slaving over the kitchen fire melting electronics to mine them for lead – in a supposedly developed nation like this, competence should be a sine qua non in the drilling business, for all of our sakes. It is amazing that just about anyone is allowed to drill – even if they have absolutely no way to clean up a mess like just happened in the Gulf.

While it is no climate – clean energy bill as hoped, the spill bill is not bad for a straight environmental pollution prevention bill that cracks down on the lax oil and gas drilling practices that led to the catastrophic spill in the Gulf, and ongoing drilling disasters on land. (more…)

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Why You Should Get a Solar Estimate Every Six Months

Susan Kraemer — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:31:38 +0000

Even if you have previously had a solar estimate, and did not act because it was just not penciling out for you, you should get a new estimate, if it was six months ago or more. At that time, given those variables, that was the situation. But things are very fluid in the solar world. Some prices are dramatically lower now. So many things are changing. You should not assume that the price you got six months ago holds true today.

Some companies now have access to solar panels that have had very steep price cuts.

You should get an estimate from a different company too, for another reason if your first didn’t pencil out back then. Sales people are human. Some may have made a snap judgment rather than spend a lot of time on an estimate because your needs are too low, simply because the cost-benefit for the sales person didn’t pencil out when there were so many large systems they could sign up instead in the same time.

Some solar companies compensate their sales force in such a way as to discourage them from encouraging too many small systems. It is less profitable getting guys up on a tiny or shaded roof to put in a small system. It is opportunity lost for bigger sales for them, while they are arguing at city hall for your measly permit.

But many solar sales-people have mined the “low-hanging fruit” of larger systems (that are most profitable to them) and are now more willing to look seriously at small systems, since the math has changed.
(more…)

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More Investments in Renewables in China Than in US and Europe Combined

Susan Kraemer — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:48:38 +0000

China attracted more asset financing in clean-energy technology in the second quarter than Europe and the U.S. combined, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. A clever piece of legislation created the renewable energy bonanza.

Six months ago, China made it the law that all utilities have to buy any renewable power put on the grid or they get fined. Since then private investment in renewable sources in the country has surged past US and EU levels. Investors are betting on China.

In the second quarter, outside financing of wind turbines, solar panels and low-carbon technology in China soared 72% to $11.5 billion.

China’s renewable sector accounted for one third of renewable investment for the period for the entire world, which totaled $33.9 billion, including all share sales, venture capital, private equity and asset finance.

Of this amount, private investment in clean energy in the US rose to $4.9 billion for the quarter while in Europe it fell to $4.5 billion for the same time period. (more…)

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ARPA-E backs a “Smart Metal” to Cool Future Climate Hell

Susan Kraemer — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:22:19 +0000

As part of the new ARPA-E program designed to bring “game-changing” technologies to market, one of the 43 breakthroughs the Department of Energy has funded is the invention of a breakthrough metal alloy to build air conditioners with that replaces the need for coolants, that could cool the homes of our hellish future.

The completely new thermally elastic metal alloy makes possible a fundamental technological advance in cooling technology. Used in refrigeration and air conditioning systems instead of liquid coolant, it would increase cooling efficiency 175%, and cut climate-changing CO2 emissions to practically nothing.

Researchers at the University of Maryland are about to begin testing this prototype, built of the “smart metal” alloy with funding of $500,000 from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus). (more…)

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California’s 2nd Chance – Giant 3 GW Wind Farm Gets $1.2 Billion

Susan Kraemer — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:50:54 +0000

Terra-Gen Power has just received the financing needed to build the largest wind energy project on US soil. The company can now build the gigantic 3,000 MW Alta Wind Energy Center, in the same energy-rich Tehachapi region of California where former Governor Jerry Brown jump-started the US wind industry back in the early ’80s with 55% tax credits. Back then, because of those policies, California led the nation in wind and solar.

Since those far-sighted and visionary days (Governor Brown was called Governor Moonbeam for crazy ideas like that) California has long since ceded its wind energy leadership to Texas.

But California’s next Governor could be the same man who started the US wind industry, that 30 years later has led to this wind farm in California, along with energy-efficient fridges, energy-efficient windows, 55% solar tax credits and California’s Title 24 energy-efficiency building standards that has kept Californian carbon footprints down to European levels ever since.

That same Governor, Jerry Brown is running for Governor, again. California is getting a second chance. In the same way, with this project built, California will once again have the largest wind energy project in America, overtaking the largest wind farm in Texas.
(more…)

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California’s 2nd Chance – Giant 3 GW Wind Farm Gets $1.2 Billion

Susan Kraemer — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:50:54 +0000

Since those far-sighted and visionary days (Governor Brown was called Governor Moonbeam for crazy ideas like that) California has long since ceded its wind energy leadership to Texas.

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China Even Beats US to Cap and Trade, Due to Republican Opposition to Climate Legislation

Susan Kraemer — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:01:20 +0000

The same day that the US Senate gave up on cap and trade climate legislation that would make polluters pay for the switch to clean energy, because not even one Republican will vote for it, news comes that China has just beaten us to implementing their own cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gases.

The decision came on Wednesday, at a meeting attended - not by industry lobbyists as here in this unfortunate plutocracy – but as China Daily reports, by climate policy think tanks, government officials, and environmental organizations.

China’s enormous stimulus spending on green energy has already resulted in more green tech investment coming to the nation than in the US and Europe combined, but now the communist nation has also beaten us at our own game: capitalism. (more…)

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Cheaper Option for Coal Country with 1BOG Solar

Susan Kraemer — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:13:29 +0000

Virtually every state has rising energy costs. California, for example, has seen a 7% per year average hike ever since the ’70s. But in Pennsylvania; caps on rate hikes expire next year, and there will certainly be at least a 10% rise, and there could even be as much as a 30% jump in electricity rates.

Pennsylvania has been a leading coal-producing state for the last hundred years or more, and gets half its energy from coal. So not only will electricity bills there be up to 30% higher next year, they will be 30% higher for dirty energy. The prospect of paying a lot more next year to use dirty AND expensive energy makes this year a great year to go solar in Pennsylvania.

And even more so, because our own 1BOG has just launched a Philadelphia solar campaign to help ease both the cost barrier and the education barrier to going solar. 1BOG campaigns typically negotiate a discount of 15% off retail. Combined with state and other incentives (like SRECs), and solar financing, solar is a financial no-brainer. (more…)

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Obama Brings Cheap Electric Vehicles to USA

Susan Kraemer — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:26:15 +0000

In just five years of the Recovery Act stimulus, by 2015, we are now on track to produce fully 40% of the world’s batteries for electric vehicles. Currently, we make only 2%.

Before The Recovery Act passage, the US was hardly a world leader in advanced electric vehicles, or in any aspect of the advanced battery technologies that power them. We made only 2 out of every 100 batteries used in them.

Among many other examples we’ve covered here of the green economy stimulus, the American Recovery Act (ARRA) - passed in March the next year to right Main Street after the November Wall Street bailout - included a battery technology stimulus that funded advanced R&D of every aspect of electric vehicle development. Some results?

Nine completely new electric vehicle battery factories will have broken ground by the end of 2010, and 21 more will now make battery or electric vehicle components. (more…)

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8 Brave Republicans Who Did Vote for Cap and Trade Climate Bill Still Have Safe Seats

Susan Kraemer — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:34:00 +0000

The prospects of the eight Republicans who crossed the aisle for landmark climate legislation passed last summer in the House are looking very good for re-election, according to the NRDC.

These were the House Republicans who voted to support Waxman-Markey’s ACES, a climate bill that has been years in the making, to cap pollution levels from fossil fuels, and then ratchet them down each year, to prevent catastrophic climate destabilization.

Despite the vote, Mary Bono-Mack (CA-45), Mike Castle (DE-AL), John McHugh (NY-23), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2), Leonard Lance (NJ-7), Mark Kirk (IL-10), Dave Reichert (WA-8), and Christopher Smith (NJ-4) were all easily able to hold onto their seats in the House.

Not a single one of these was successfully primaried out of office by the fossil-funded Tea Party to their right, despite the fact that cap-and-trade helps build clean energy by hurting dirty energy. (more…)

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Rocket Science to Cut Smokestack CO2 for 13 Cents per KWH Coal

Susan Kraemer — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:57:41 +0000

A technology described as “radically different” by ARPA-E’s director Arun Majumdar has just received $1 million in research funding by the Advanced Research Projects Agency’s energy division to deliver us from airborne smokestack carbon emissions.

An academic energy consulting organization, ACENT Laboratories of New York, and aerospace giant ATK, which builds the space shuttles’ booster rockets, are collaborating on the research.

The idea is to use high speed aerodynamic force, rather than chemicals, to separate out carbon dioxide from a power plant’s smokestack, by turning it from a gas into a frozen form; dry ice. (more…)

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Google Eaarth Shows Our Hellish 4C Future if Republicans Filibuster 2010 Climate Bill

Susan Kraemer — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:39:15 +0000

If the Republican party does succeed in filibustering landmark climate legislation that Majority Leader Senator Reid brings to a vote this month, we will end the world as we have known it. This Earth will become what Bill McKibben calls Eaarth, a unknown new planet, with temperature and other changes never before experienced by humans. The last time the planet was that warm was millions of years before humans evolved.

What will that new world look like? Where will it be safer to pass down property to your grandchildren? Which regions will still have water? Google Earth has just come out with this new overlay to show how different regions will fare under the “business as usual” scenario.

The KML layer launched today by Climate change minister Greg Barker. The impact of a global temperature rise of 4C shows the effects of a 4 C rise (about 7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century.

The 4C scenario will be the result with no action by the US (Senate switchboard: (202) 224 3121) because this November in Cancun, the rest of the the world will respond to that inaction. (more…)

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New, Split-up Corruption-Proofed MMS Gets Application for Off-Shore Wind

Susan Kraemer — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:42:14 +0000

The breakup of the Minerals Management Service into three separated parts after the drilling disaster exposed the depths of the corruption of the old MMS, has also yielded a new focus on clean energy from the ocean, and a 700 MW off-shore wind project off of Long Island may be the first test of corruption-free permitting.

A consortium of New York utilities has just applied for a permit to start feasibility studies required to build a 700 MW off-shore wind farm that would be sited off the coast of Long Island.

At 14 miles out to sea, the turbines would be scarcely visible from land. The New York Power Authority, which gets 75% of its power from hydro, had originally tried for a much smaller 150 MW farm there in 2003, but the project had been shelved in 2006, due to escalating cost estimates at that time from developer NextEra. The new consortium comprises New York utility ConEd, the Long Island Power Authority, and the NYPA itself, which is the largest state-owned utility in the US.

The application goes to the Obama administration’s newly formed Bureau of Ocean Energy (BOE) which will focus more developing on renewable energy rather than primarily fossil energy as MMS did. But, unlike the MMS that it replaces: to prevent corruption, it will neither grant the permits nor collect the royalties.
(more…)

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Stealthy Combo Tesla + Toyota Sneak Out a Surprise: the RAV4 EV!

Susan Kraemer — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:55:59 +0000

I once hosted a booth at an eco festival – just like this one – flanked by one of the original RAV4 electric vehicles, Plug-in America’s Marc Geller’s.

All day I was besieged by throngs of moms trailing sandy-footed children dripping icecream, urgently asking “Ooooh!!! Can we get the RAV4 EV again?” “Is the EV version for SALE again??? It’s perfect for me!” “I need this EV!” “What ever possessed Toyota to stop making the electric version?”

I had never experienced a consumer frenzy like it. Now admittedly, this was an eco fair, and this was an electric vehicle: but none of the other eco products generated this response.

Surely Toyota is aware of this fan base, so I have never understood why Toyota abandoned it. California’s mandates in the 90’s forced it to reluctantly give birth to the electric RAV4, and now, according to Electrovelocity it is California that has just delivered it back to Toyota again.

To the great astonishment of everyone in the EV world, Elon Musk of Tesla just delivered a new RAV4 electric vehicle prototype to Toyota on Friday. (more…)

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Pythagoras Makes Skylights that Also Make Solar Power

Susan Kraemer — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:25:29 +0000

The unusual (philosophy M.A.) founder of Pythagoras Solar, Gonen Fink will be among the speakers at Intersolar 2010 in San Francisco this week. His start-up has designed a nearly transparent, yet fully solar glass using patent-pending optics, for use as an energy efficient skylight (and starting next year, a window wall) that also produces electricity.

Just the thermal efficiency alone would make it a good day-lighting option, blocking all direct solar radiation, to reduce building heating and cooling costs.

It is ideal for use as a skylight because it also provides better day-lighting compared to other building-integrated PV (being essentially transparent), limiting lighting costs by replacing fluorescent lighting while looking like a regular skylight that provides real natural daylight.

But the real clincher is that it produces solar power more like that of regular solar panels, at 13 watts a square foot, than the usual building-integrated PV (BIPV). (more…)

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