ThinkLady

Exciting news for harvesting wind and solar

New legislation creates a federal-level tax credit for qualified small wind turbines. According to a press release from Southwest Windpower this is ...

" ... a significant leap for the small wind industry as a whole. This legislation marks the first federal incentive for small wind systems since 1985."

The press release goes on to note:

• The new tax credit reduces the cost of residential scale wind generators making the technology more accessible for consumers. This includes Southwest Windpower’s Skystream 3.7. Launched in late 2006, Skystream is the first fully integrated backyard-sized, grid-connected, wind turbine designed for residential use. Depending on the wind resource, Skystream generates between 30-80 percent of the power required by a typical home. Early adopters have reported a savings of more than 50 percent on their energy bills.
• The broad legislation passed last Friday also extends and expands a similar credit for the solar industry. Residential and commercial solar PV installations can receive a 30 percent credit, for residential applications and uncapped for commercial uses.

Don't know anything about the veracity of Southwest Windpower's claims with regard to their Skystream 3.7 product, and you need at least a 1/2 acre lot to use a residential-scale wind generator. And, there are some other things you need to look at like zoning restrictions and average wind speed for your location.

But on the whole, for both the solar and wind industries, as well as those who are ready to become more self-reliant, save money, and consume less utility generated energy, this looks like good news.

Getting our energy act together

Last week the Energy Bulletin highlighted the executive summary of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Report. The full report will be out this week. The Executive Summary is 13 pages well worth reading, however, the IEA asked the Energy Bulletin to remove the executive summary from its Web site which it did. Hopefully, that summary will be available later somewhere online. 

The IEA is a highly respected and credible energy policy advisor to 28 member countries founded during the energy crisis of the 1970s. The United State is a member of the IEA. The IEA's mandate today is ...

... to incorporate the “Three E’s” of balanced energy policy making: energy security, economic development and environmental protection. Current work focuses on climate change policies, market reform, energy technology collaboration and outreach to the rest of the world, especially major consumers and producers of energy like China, India, Russia and the OPEC countries.

I read some of the summary yesterday, before the Energy Bulletin had to remove it from its Web site. What I found remarkable about the executive summary was its frank, blunt and even dire language. This is another wake up call to the world and especially big energy consumers like the U.S. The situation is not hopeless but we are running out of time. As the assessment makes very clear, the time is now to get up off our collective fossil-fuel powered ass and get our energy act together. Maybe that means using a different source of energy for getting our ass around; bicycling anyone??

The summary makes some great points about conservation and how much money and energy conserving will save us -- a lot -- completely obliterating the notion conservation is a "personal virtue." It can only exist as a personal virtue if one sees oneself as completely autonomous from the rest of the planet, people, species, and economy. I haven't met anyone like that. Have you?

An aside: Using "personal virtue" as an excuse for continuing to guzzle energy sounds like an excuse, code words for continuing selfish behavior. The energy crunch will require unselfish acts on the part of everyone. And yeah, yeah, here we go because we'll have plenty of folk saying we can't regulate personal energy use. I can empathize; I dislike having anyone telling me how to live, what I can do. Preference would be that we don't have to regulate personal behavior, however we do have laws against drunk driving, stealing, murder, etc. This is "regulating personal behavior." And lest we forget human nature, we know, given the recent financial crisis which came about due to deregulation and greed, that some just can't regulate their greed. When that kind of egregious behavior hurts the rest of us, we have to take action.

Okay, so what if we taxed luxury energy use (we'd have to define what that would mean) and used those tax revenues to implement conservation education, home energy conservation measures for low-income levels, R&D for clean, renewable energy systems, and building the infrastructure for wind and solar energy delivery systems, state-of-the-art rail system, etc? Those who can afford the luxury use can continue up to a point, but at greatly increased price. Those of us who can't afford to use above the luxury line, don't. Those who can't use luxury energy, benefit in two ways: 1) by learning how to conserve, and in implementing those steps, we decrease our own energy usage and save money, and 2) funding of the infrastructure from the luxury energy use revenue stream means middle and lower incomes will pay less for these publicly funded services.

Before the Energy Bulletin took the executive summary down, the Energy Bulletin selected some highlights from the executive summary and more of the those highlights are available on their Web site. The summary opens with this …

The world’s energy system is at a crossroads. Current global trends in energy supply

and consumption are patently unsustainable — environmentally, economically,

socially. But that can — and must — be altered; there’s still time to change the

road we’re on.

Closes with this …

The energy future will be very different

For all the uncertainties highlighted in this report, we can be certain that the

energy world will look a lot different in 2030 than it does today. The world energy

system will be transformed, but not necessarily in the way we would like to see. We

can be confident of some of the trends highlighted in this report: the growing weight

of China, India, the Middle East and other non-OECD regions in energy markets and in

CO2 emissions; the rapidly increasing dominance of national oil companies; and the

emergence of low-carbon energy technologies. And while market imbalances could

temporarily cause prices to fall back, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the era

of cheap oil is over. But many of the key policy drivers (not to mention other, external

factors) remain in doubt. It is within the power of all governments, of producing and

consuming countries alike, acting alone or together, to steer the world towards a

cleaner, cleverer and more competitive energy system. Time is running out and the

time to act is now.

More info here ::: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/47128

And the New York Times and Wall Street Journal provide some analysis:

NY Times ::: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/business/07energy.html?em 

WSJ ::: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122600164194705909.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The coming ecological recession

A headline roared at me this morning. The article stated in a very succinct way where we are with regard to the earth's environment and resources, comparing our "reckless consumption of natural capital" to the current financial crisis caused by our over-consumption of living on credit. Highlights, uhh, low-lights from the article:

The planet is headed for an ecological "credit crunch," according to a report issued by conservation groups.The document contends that our demands on natural resources overreach what the Earth can sustain by almost a third.

... more than three quarters of the world's population lives in countries where consumption levels are outstripping environmental renewal. This makes them "ecological debtors," meaning that they are drawing - and often overdrawing - on the agricultural land, forests, seas and resources of other countries to sustain them.

Devastating though the financial credit crunch has been, it's nothing as compared to the ecological recession that we are facing.

This chart in the article shows us which countries are overusing resources at the fastest rate, darker colored countries being the worst offenders.  

More here ::: BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Earth on course for eco 'crunch'

What can we do about it? Obviously complex and comprehensive systemic change is needed, and leaders at every level of government, business, non-profit, and community that will make the concepts of sustainability and regeneration the bedrock of their core values, but we can start by simply using less stuff in our own lives. We can also work with and encourage government, businesses, manufacturers and producers to incorporate these principles into their processes at every level, pointing to examples like Ray Anderson, founder and chairman of Interface, Inc. After reading The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken, he set this as his company's mission:

Mission Zero is the company's promise to eliminate any negative impact it may have on the environment, by the year 2020, through the redesign of processes and products, the pioneering of new technologies, and efforts to reduce or eliminate waste and harmful emissions while increasing the use of renewable materials and sources of energy.

Interface, Inc. is nearly 50 percent of the way toward its goal.

The rest of us can do this too!