(01-08-2016, 04:43 PM)tvguy Wrote: (01-08-2016, 04:09 PM)tornado Wrote: (01-08-2016, 01:56 PM)tvguy Wrote: (01-07-2016, 08:17 PM)tornado Wrote: Thank God for sustainable idiocy. Not! As for me, I want my hydro power. Damn the dam deniers. Green power sucks, money from your wallet.
http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20160.../160109733
- Oregon treasurer: Suspend Energy Department's lending program; might need bailout
- PORTLAND — State Treasurer Ted Wheeler has asked for a suspension of lending through the Oregon Energy Department's Small Scale Energy Loan Program.The fund faces a $20 million deficit after making bad loans on energy projects. In a letter sent Thursday to Gov. Kate Brown, Wheeler said the program is supposed to be self-sustaining. Instead, it's "in trouble."The program began in 1981 and is designed to promote conservation by providing low-interest loans for renewable-energy projects.Wheeler, a Democrat who's running for mayor of Portland, said a bailout might be necessary, and that would take money from schools, police and other programs. He wants the lending suspension to last until the program is vetted and its long-term viability assured."Public debt is a powerful took to benefit our state, but it must be utilized wisely and with restraint," he wrote.Wheeler's letter referenced one of the more notorious failures, an $18 million loan to a Clatskanie ethanol plant that went bankrupt in 2009. Wheeler said that failure and several delinquent loans led him in 2012 to recommend augmenting the program's depleted loan-loss reserve. His request went unheeded."Since that time, other large loans have also gone into default and have been written off as non-collectible, which has further deteriorated SELP's balance sheet and reserve balances," he wrote.Wheeler plans to formally recommend the suspension at the Jan. 19 meeting of the State Debt Policy Advisory Committee.Wheeler's request is the latest blow for the state Energy Department, which has come under persistent scrutiny for its handling of green energy tax credits.Gov. Kate Brown's office recently announced a comprehensive review of its management and performance. The Legislature has established a special committee to review the agency.
What? What does this have to do with hydro power?
I'm just pointing out, unsuccessfully, what a waste of money these green energy projects have been. Hydraulic power created by dams is the most reliable power we have. But, as you may know, wind and solar projects aren't sustainable energy, aren't reliable, and must be subsidized in order to exist. Did you know there is an active movement to remove all dams, including Lost Creek?
Yes "these" green projects that borrowed money failed.
But, as you may know, wind and solar projects aren't sustainable energy, aren't reliable, and must be subsidized in order to exist.
I'm not sure what you mean. You don't think ANY actually pay for themselves? Where did you get that info?
What dams are you concerned about that have been removed or are going to be removed.
Perhaps you can link me to an article showing wind and solar power aren't subsidized.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?a...id=2101448
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/orego...182210.xml
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2...power-scam
Are Green Power Programs a Scam?
Are you paying for renewable energy, or just a bunch of hot air?
—By
Laura McCandlish
|
![[Image: Windmills_300x200.jpg]](http://www.motherjones.com/files/imagecache/master-image-main/Windmills_300x200.jpg)
Illustration: Joshua Gorchov
THE TWISTING TURBINES on the Columbia River Gorge ridges were one of the first things my husband and I noticed en route from Baltimore to our new house in Oregon. So a few weeks later, when a hawker at the farmers market urged me—with a $5 token for free veggies and a postcard with pictures of children lounging in front of local windmills—to sign up for a
renewable energy program called
Blue Sky, I didn't hesitate. For less than an extra $10 a month, my utility,
Pacific Power, would supply our home with electricity from wind turbines instead of coal.
But it turns out ditching dirty energy is more complicated than that hawker would have me believe. From the windmill postcard, you'd think my premium would go straight to local projects. Not quite: True, Pacific Power operates one
wind farm in Oregon, but that's largely because the state mandates that utilities get 25 percent of their power from renewables by 2025. My well-meaning purchase has little to do with those windmills. Instead, Pacific Power hands my Blue Sky money over to companies that buy
renewable energy certificates (RECs) from wind farms, mostly in other states, and other renewable projects like methane-burning landfills. Consumers need to understand that the electricity "is not going from the windmill on the ridge to your toaster," says Pacific Power spokesman Tom Gauntt. Michael Gillenwater, a Princeton researcher who codeveloped the EPA's carbon emissions tracking system, says it's more like donating to a cause. "What you are doing is subsidizing the market for renewable energy."
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Pacific Power says our premium "avoided the release of 897 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions into the air...equivalent to not driving 909 miles." But it's hard to verify those numbers, says Stanford professor Michael Wara, who studies
carbon markets. "You don't have an overseeing regulator ensuring that the claims made are backed up."
Green-e, a third-party certification program, ensures that my RECs come from relatively new projects and aren't double-counted to meet state mandates. But Gillenwater says its "additionality" test isn't thorough enough to prove I paid for an emission reduction that wouldn't have happened anyway.
Experts say that RECs like mine can make renewable projects more profitable, but they play a much smaller role than government subsidies. (Disclosure: My father recently invested in a wood-chip-fueled electricity plant in Florida, and he said RECs sweetened that deal.) Gillenwater says most projects would have produced the energy regardless of whether consumers like me pitched in—in 2008, for example, Pacific Power bought a third of my RECs from two Puget Sound Energy wind farms built in 2005. (A spokesman says the projects' planners didn't count on revenue from residential RECs in their budget.) The remaining two-thirds were purchased from other projects, including a landfill-gas plant in Utah. Only 1 percent came from solar.
RECs, mandates, additionality—my head was spinning like those windmills, which were seeming further away. To make matters worse, in 2008, only 67 percent of my Blue Sky bucks purchased RECs; the remaining 33 percent was spent on staff and publicity. On average, 19 percent of green programs' revenues go to marketing, but at small utilities that percentage is far greater.
Utilities insist that the promotion is necessary, since voluntary green power programs work better when lots of people participate. Nationwide, only about a million customers shell out for green power—with corporations, governments, and universities buying the bulk of it. In 2008, residential customers made up only one-quarter of green power purchases.
So what's a consumer to do? Even with their problems, RECs are "one of the simplest and most direct ways to support renewable technologies," says Jeff Deyette, a senior analyst with the
Union of Concerned Scientists. Premiums can provide that extra profit margin to make renewable projects competitive with fossil fuels. And some utilities are experimenting with other models. If I had enrolled in Pacific Power's Blue Sky Block program, for twice what I pay now, 41 percent of my money would have funded local solar arrays and a geothermal test project—and only 25 percent would have gone to overhead. Or instead, I could spend my premium on efficiency upgrades in my new home: sealing leaks, insulating, and replacing drafty windows. It would just take more time and elbow grease than checking a box.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/201...d-leaders/
Germany's Green Energy Disaster: A Cautionary Tale For World Leaders
![[Image: 300px-Pretty_flamingos_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_578705.jpg]](http://blogs-images.forbes.com/realspin/files/2013/03/300px-Pretty_flamingos_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_578705.jpg)
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Howard Rich
There’s nothing wrong with expanding renewable energy sources. The more choices available in this (or any) marketplace the better consumers will be served – both from a price and a quality standpoint. However serious problems are caused when government starts using taxpayer resources to subsidize or incentivize these expansions. Things get even worse when centralized planners start manipulating market choices or trying to manage the marketplace itself by controlling the generation of power.
This is precisely what is happening in Germany – where command economists have failed spectacularly in their bid to force a national transition to renewable energy.
In 2000 Germany passed a major green initiative which forced providers to purchase renewable energy at exorbitant fixed prices and feed that power through their grids for a period of twenty years. Promulgated by a Socialist-Green coalition government – this initiative has since been embraced by Germany’s Conservative-Liberal majority, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel. In fact Merkel has doubled down on Germany’s renewable energy push in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan – ramping up government’s plan to phase in renewables while taking the country’s nuclear power industry offline.
Merkel’s government shut down eight reactors in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima disaster (which was caused by a tsunami – a threat Germany isn’t exposed to) and has vowed to shut down all remaining nuclear facilities by 2022. The problem? Despite heavy government subsidization, renewable energies simply aren’t filling the void.
“After deciding to exit nuclear energy, it seems as if Ms. Merkel’s coalition stopped its work,” a former German environmental minister
told The New York Times last year. “There is great danger that this project will fail, with devastating economic and social consequences.”
A year later the project
is failing – resulting in what one German industry expert
termed a “chaotic standstill.”
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Merkel’s energy plan called for the addition of 25,000 megawatts of sea-based wind turbine power by 2030. However through the first six months of 2012 only 45 megawatts had been added to Germany’s existing 200-megawatt supply, according to an industry analyst
quoted by Reuters. And despite massive subsidies funded by a household energy surcharge (which currently comprises
14 percent of German power bills), major wind projects in the North Sea are being delayed or canceled due to skittish investors.
The basic problem? Wind farms are notoriously unreliable as a power source. Not only that, they take up vast amounts of space and kill tens of thousands of birds annually.
“Generating energy with wind involves extreme fluctuations because it depends on the weather and includes periods without any recognizable capacity for days, or suddenly occurring supply peaks that push the grid to its limits,” a
2012 report from Germany energy expert Dr. Guenter Keil notes. “There is a threat of power outages over large areas, mainly in wintertime when the demand is high and less (power) gets delivered from abroad.”
A typical 20-turbine wind farm occupies an area of 250 acres. So in order for Merkel to achieve her objective, she would have to cover an area six times the size of New York City with turbines. Not surprisingly the erection of all those turbines – along with the infrastructure needed to route their inconsistent power supply back to the German heartland – would be astronomical.
“The costs of our energy reform and restructuring of energy provision could amount to around one trillion euros by the end of the 2030s,” Germany’s environmental minister
announced last month.
That sum could rise even higher, as last month a Harvard University study revealed the extent to which the power generating potential of wind farms has been “overestimated.”
“The generating capacity of very large wind power installations may peak at between 0.5 and 1 watts per square meter,” the study
concluded. “Previous estimates, which ignored the turbines’ slowing effect on the wind, had put that figure at between 2 and 7 watts per square meter.”
Such are the shifting sands upon which Merkel has staked her country’s energy future.
Because renewable power sources have been so unreliable, Germany has been forced to construct numerous new coal plants in an effort to replace the nuclear energy it has taken offline. In fact the country will build more coal-fired facilities this year than at any time in the past two decades – bringing an estimated
5,300 megawatts of new capacity online. Most of these facilities will burn lignite, too, which is strip-mined and emits nearly 30 percent more carbon dioxide than hard coal.
In other words Germany is dirtying the planet in the name of clean energy – and sticking its citizens with an ever-escalating tab so it can subsidize an energy source which will never generate sufficient power.
This is the cautionary tale of command energy economics – one other nations would be wise to heed.
