British National Party: It Doesn’t Matter
However you look at it, the British National Party (a.k.a. very right wing, anti-immigration, anti-human rights, anti-equality, anti-environment, pro-W.A.S.P. party) had a good night, last night. In the European Parliamentary Elections they won 2 of a possible 69 seats, which was exactly two more than they previously had. This was accompanied by a swing towards the “centre right” (a.k.a. pro-business, anti-environment, anti-equality, anti-human rights, pro-consumerism) in most of the major European countries, suggesting that the majority of people think the answer to all our woes is to hand control of the world over to the corporations.
Alternatively, it might just mean that a hell of a lot of people have lost faith with the entire electoral system (the turnout was historically low, at 43.1%) and most of these people are to the left of centre. That would make a lot of sense; after all, the so-called democratic systems of government that perpetuate in the industrial West, are little more that a sop to real democracy, masking the real power behind governments: the corporations.
That’s certainly my view. I didn’t vote, not because I don’t think my vote won’t make a difference in the final result; not because I am turning my back on those who fought and died for this right; not because I am apathetic — I didn’t vote because whatever happens to the balance of power in any parliament, the overall plan stays the same. The BNP may have gained a couple of seats, but that says a whole lot more about the people that didn’t vote than it does about those who did vote.
And in a strange way, that makes me happy. It suggests that people are starting to open their eyes and realise that the whole system is terminally corrupt, and destructively unsustainable both in environmental and social terms. In this setup, the best move anyone can make is to reject the entire system — not prop it up by deluding yourself that your vote will change things.
Cape Wind Completes State and Local Permitting, One HUGE Step Closer To Completion
After 7 LOOOOOOOONG years Cape Wind completed its State and Local permitting process today with a unanimous vote of the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board to grant Cape Wind a ‘Certificate of Environmental Impact and Public Interest’ that rolls up all State and Local permits and approvals into one ‘composite certificate’.
Cape Wind President Jim Gordon welcomed the news, “Today’s vote marks not just a successful conclusion to a seven-year state regulatory review of the Cape Wind project but the beginning of a new era of clean energy jobs and renewable power from the endless wind resources off our shore.”
Completion of the Federal Permitting process for Cape Wind is expected soon when U.S. Secretary Ken Salazar issues a Record of Decision on Cape Wind. The Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of Interior issued Cape Wind a favorable Final Environmental Impact Statement in January.
The Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board (Siting Board), was created by the Legislature to ensure the siting of needed and least environmental impact energy facilities and was granted the statutory authority to issue a comprehensive approval to an energy facility it has previously approved, where that facility has been denied a permit by any other state or local agency in the Commonwealth. The Siting Board exercised their statutory authority in their vote today which was necessitated by a procedural denial issued from the Cape Cod Commission in 2007.
In 2005, the Siting Board approved Cape Wind’s electrical interconnection at the conclusion of a 32-month review of unprecedented length that included 2,900 pages of transcripts, 923 exhibits and 50,000 pages of documentary evidence. The Siting Board found that Cape Wind would meet an identified need for electricity and would provide a reliable energy supply for Massachusetts, with a minimum impact on the environment. The Siting Board’s approval of Cape Wind’s electrical interconnection was upheld by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
Two independent public opinion polls have found statewide support for Cape Wind to be 86%.
Cape Wind’s proposal to build America’s first offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal would provide three-quarters of the electricity used on Cape Cod and the Islands from clean, renewable energy - reducing this region’s need to import oil, coal and gas. Cape Wind will create new jobs, help stabilize electric costs, contribute to a healthier environment, increase energy independence and establish Massachusetts as a leader in offshore wind power. For more information visit www.capewind.org.
Green Energy Jobs Come To Kansas
Siemens intends to build a new production facility for wind turbines in the state of Kansas. Initially, 400 new jobs are expected to be created in the new wind turbine production facility in Hutchinson, Kansas. When production begins at this facility, Siemens will be able to even more effectively meet the strong demand for wind turbine equipment in North and South America in the future.
“The United States already is and will continue to be one of the world’s fastest growing wind energy markets. We are thus intensifying our commitment to this green technology to further expand our leading global position in this field,” stated Peter Löscher, CEO of Siemens AG. “We are already the leading green infrastructure giant. And by making these investments, we will become even greener.” With revenues totaling EUR19 billion in fiscal year 2008, Siemens now has the world’s largest portfolio of environmental technologies.
Construction of the 300,000-square-foot nacelle production facility is scheduled to begin in August 2009. A nacelle is mounted on top of the tower and supports the rotor. It houses a wind turbine’s major components for electric power generation, including the gearbox, the drive train and the control electronics.
The nacelles to be produced in Kansas will weigh 90 tons and the first nacelle is expected to be shipped in December 2010. All nacelles produced in Hutchinson will be used in the company’s 2.3-MW wind turbine product family. Initially, the factory’s planned annual output is approximately 650 nacelles – or 1,500 megawatts (MW).
“Just two years ago we opened a rotor blade manufacturing facility in Fort Madison, Iowa. By expanding our investment in Kansas, we are strengthening our presence in the U.S. and, at the same time, we are increasing the proximity to our U.S. customers. This new location will enable us to serve them more rapidly and cost-effectively,” said René Umlauft, CEO of Siemens Energy’s Renewable Energy Division.
Hutchinson is near the geographic center of the continental United States and offers a viable workforce and excellent transportation logistics. The factory will include direct loading onto rail, which will provide easy access to project locations throughout the Unites States and Canada. Shipments can also be made utilizing the barge facilities at the port of Catoosa, located 250 miles from the plant. Kansas also has excellent wind conditions. In terms of wind energy potential, this centrally located state ranks third in the U.S.
Wind power is an important feature of Siemens’ environmental portfolio. In 2008, revenue from the products and solutions of Siemens’ environmental portfolio was nearly EUR19 billion, which is equivalent to around a quarter of Siemens’ total revenue.
Obama Bringing Science Back
After what seemed like 8 years of fundy creationism ruling this country Obama is bringing sexy science back. During a speech at the National Academy of Sciences on April 27, 2009, President Obama announced a National Science Foundation/Department of Energy collaboration that addresses the need to “spark a sense of wonder and excitement” in the nation’s young people to pursue careers in science and engineering.
As part of President Obama’s “New Energy for America” plan, the Administration will provide the opportunity for thousands of American students to pursue careers in science, engineering, and entrepreneurship related to clean energy. These young men and women will invent and help commercialize advanced energy technologies such as efficient and cost effective methods for converting sunlight to electricity and fuel, carbon capture and sequestration, stationary and portable advanced batteries for plug-in electric cars, advanced energy storage concepts that will enable sustained energy supply from solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources, high-efficiency deployment of power across the so-called “smart grid” and carbon neutral commercial and residential buildings.
The National Science Foundation is joining the Department of Energy and other government agencies to educate students at all levels in fields contributing to fundamental understanding of energy science and engineering systems, while educating the public about energy choices and challenging our educational institutions to develop innovative ways to enhance science and technology instruction and learning. NSF is uniquely poised to spearhead part of this multi-faceted collaboration via its portfolio of programs.
Individual Fellowships to Graduate Students involved in Clean Energy Research: Building upon one of NSF’s oldest and most successful programs, the Graduate Research Fellowship Program, established in 1952, will provide highly flexible three-year fellowships for American graduate students pursuing the Ph.D. degree in topics related to clean energy research and development. These fellowships provide an annual stipend for room, board, and living expenses with a cost-of-education allowance to the Fellow’s institution of choice for partial tuition and fees.
Integrative Graduate Training Programs involving Clean Energy: NSF will invest in new flagship projects proposed by universities that work across academic disciplines to provide highly structured training for American graduate students pursuing their Ph.D. These new interdisciplinary programs will consider energy topics from a high-level systems perspective, including science, engineering, design, environmental impact, economics, social aspects of adoption and use, and public policy. Traineeships include internships in industry, government, and international research centers. This will produce young investigators fully prepared to become leaders in clean energy science and policy, and will also spark new and sustained collaborations between university departments and research centers.
Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Energy: to provide new courses and research opportunities for undergraduate students to learn about clean energy and gain experience in active research projects. Funding would be available for universities, labs, and industry to develop curriculum and Research Experience for Undergraduate sites, with supplements provided to existing research awards to provide stipends for college students to participate directly in a research experience.
Technician Education: to improve education for young Americans who will become technicians in clean energy fields, focusing on two- and four-year college programs. These projects will study aspects of technician education, concentrating on curriculum development, teacher and faculty training, partnering relationships with industry and regional alliances, and fostering career pathways from secondary schools into community colleges. This program will also involve students preparing to become teachers focusing on math, science and technical education in primary and secondary schools, and facilitate partnerships between certificate programs and potential employers of energy-focused technicians and instructors.
Focused Research in K-12 Science Education Strategies and Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers: will address how students learn about science and technology, evaluating immediate challenges in primary and secondary schools and envisioning science education as it could be in future decades. It will assess what works and why, enable enhanced learning in the K-12 setting on topics relating to clean energy, and consider new and innovative ways to communicate the challenges and promise of clean energy; for example, incorporating currently popular ubiquitous social communication platforms. This will include projects to design and evaluate educational strategies and assess how to scale them up to reach large numbers of students. This will also include innovative technology experiences for students and their teachers that address how to effectively interest and prepare students to participate in the clean energy workforce of the future.
Public Awareness and Action: will engage and inform the public about how science and technology are addressing the nation’s energy challenge and transforming our energy future. A broadly-designed outreach program, highly leveraged through media providers, and using innovative and popular cyberlearning technologies, IMAX©films, television and radio programs, as well as local science museums and youth and community education programs. This project will raise public awareness about our need to meet the clean energy challenge and related environmental mitigation benefits, understand the implications of our energy choices, and adopt clean energy lifestyles. It will also capture young people’s interest in “green technology” and inspire them to pursue careers that find solutions to our future energy needs.
Graduate Post Doctorate Education: energy research to educate graduate students and postdocs on frontier energy research that has high transformative potential. These students and postdocs will become the future academic leaders and industrial innovators to advance the creation and adoption of advanced clean energy technologies.
Specialized Energy Centers: small number of new forward-looking centers located at America’s colleges and universities. These specialized centers will focus the regional and institutional strengths of science and engineering schools around aspects of clean energy research while building partnerships with their state governments, regional industries, and local school districts to infuse expertise into the communities in which they are based. In addition to center-specific projects, Centers will include many aspects of the program elements described above, tailored to their regional or specialty (e.g. solar conversion; materials research; wind engineering) context. These centers will initially build upon existing NSF funded centers devoted to energy research; however, in future budget years, specialized energy centers will be separately designed and solicited.
Education in Complex Interrelationships: to enable education in computationally-enabled modeling of complex interrelationships among energy systems, environmental and economic impacts, and human factors.These group-funded efforts will be co-located at university high-end computational facilities to foster cyber-enabled learning skills for conducting complex modeling and analysis.
Obama On Earth Day
Sounds like he has been reading this blog. Not a bad plan really. I really think that the car companies should take the 80% of factories they don’t need and re-tool them to produce wind/solar/geothermal/etc infrastructure. You can easily train people already skilled at operating complex manufacturing machinery to work other kinds of complex manufacturing machinery, it revitalizes the economy is based on actual work (not whatever mortgage backed securities were based on), and ohh yea it saves the human race from destruction. Not a bad deal.
Transcript below.
Read the rest of Obama On Earth Day
RSS XML Feed
