NewsTrust - Wind Power - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

BP Oil Spill and the Way to a Green Energy Future

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Monique Harden, Michael Brune Amory Lovins - Jun. 16 (Interview) - AMORY LOVINS: the President made two very interesting shifts in language in his speech. One is from just oil to talking about ending the addiction to fossil fuels, so that refers also to coal and ultimately, indeed, to natural gas. And second, he started a very interesting exercise in consensus building, because he pointed out that this has cost—our dependence on fossil fuel has cost not only to our economy but also to our national security and our environment. And I think that starts a new conversation of a new kind in energy policy, because we’ve always supposed people had to want the same things we wanted in energy for the same reasons. So if you had different priorities than somebody else, you couldn’t agree on the outcome. What the President started to do here is to say, let’s focus on outcomes, not motives, and then we can build a strong consensus.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Will Gusher Trauma Lead Us to National Energy Goals?

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New Energy News - By Anne B. Butterfield - Jun. 14 (Opinion) - As the gusher in the Gulf continues to traumatize the nation, the 20,000 attendees at this year's largest wind energy conference called WINDPOWER just held in Dallas, felt anguish about the need for national renewable energy standard (RES).

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Wind-power design is innovative, but will it work?

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Nashua Telegraph - By David Brooks - Jun. 14 (Opinion) - All Americans love hearing about the lone inventor who succeeds where others fail, and all newspapers love writing about a local person who does something uniquely unexpected. Today’s column was supposed to satisfy both those cravings by highlighting

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Goodbye, bullet trains and windmills

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Michael Lind - Jun. 09 (Opinion) - Concrete’s liberal pedigree is as impeccable as asphalt’s. Along with their nostalgic fixation on rail, the obsession of many progressives with non-hydroelectric renewable energy sources like solar and wind power is a relatively recent deviation from the more sensible New Deal liberal tradition. In the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt presided over the most massive hydroelectric power dam construction projects in the world at the time. At Roosevelt’s instigation the U.S. government literally invented nuclear power with the Manhattan Project. It was only in the 1970s, when romantic environmentalists rooted in the older liberal Republican subculture gained influence in the Democratic Party, that Democrats began to demonize the energy sources and transportation modes favored by New Deal liberalism: dams, nuclear power plants, highways and aviation.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 8 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Energy Transitions Past and Future

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Oil Drum - By Cutler Cleveland - Jun. 07 (Opinion) - In the coming decades, world oil production will peak and then begin to decline, followed by natural gas and eventually coal production. There is considerable debate about when these peaks will occur because such information would greatly aid energy companies, policy makers, and the general public. But at another level, the timing of peak fossil fuel production doesn't really matter. A more fundamental issue is the magnitude and nature of the energy transition that will eventually occur.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Leading the World's Green Industrial Revolution

Sun, 30 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Tom Weis - May. 30 (Opinion) - A gaping gulf exists today between America's economic collapse, our melting globe, and the lackluster response of top leaders in the U.S. wind, solar and geothermal industries. You wouldn't know it, but these three industries, along with the energy efficiency sector, hold the key to ushering in a green industrial revolution for America, and the world.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Why VCs Are Circling Wind Power for Once

Mon, 24 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

greentechmedia.com - By Michael Kanellos - May. 24 (Opinion) - ... alternatives to megawatt-sized turbines -- small, household turbines, vertical turbines, atmospheric dirigibles, Archimedean wind screws -- have been beset by long development cycles, technical snags, regulatory skittishness and lack of interest among consumers.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Climate Change Recalculated

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Long Now Foundation - By Stewart Brand, Saul Griffith - Jan. 16 (Speech) - Engineer Griffith said he was going to make the connection between personal actions and global climate change. To do that he’s been analyzing his own life in extreme detail to figure out exactly how much energy he uses and what changes might reduce the load. In 2007, when he started, he was consuming about 18,000 watts, like most Americans. The energy budget of the average person in the world is about 2,200 watts. Some 90 percent of the carbon dioxide overload in the atmosphere was put there by the US, USSR (of old), China, Germany, Japan, and Britain. The rich countries have the most work to do. What would it take to level off the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million (ppm)? That level supposedly would keep global warming just barely manageable at an increase of 2 degrees Celsius. There still would be massive loss of species, 100 million climate refugees, and other major stresses. The carbon dioxide level right now is 385 ppm, rising fast. Before industrialization it was 296 ppm. America’s leading climatologist, James Hanson, says we must lower the carbon dioxide level to 350 ppm if we want to keep the world we evolved in. The world currently runs on about 16 terawatts (trillion watts) of energy, most of it burning fossil fuels. To level off at 450 ppm of carbon dioxide, we will have to reduce the fossil fuel burning to 3 terawatts and produce all the rest with renewable energy, and we have to do it in 25 years or it’s too late. Currently about half a terrawatt comes from clean hydropower and one terrawatt from clean nuclear. That leaves 11.5 terawatts to generate from new clean sources.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

House Bill Threatens Wind Power - Green Options

Wed, 30 May 2007 09:32:31 -0700

Green Options - By Maria Surma Manka - May. 30 (Opinion) - ast week, the U.S. House of Representatives' Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on H.R. 2337, The Energy Policy Reform and Revitalization Act. The bill, according to the nonprofit Alliance to Save Energy, promotes alternative energy and efficiency, including a green building program that would require all major new facility construction projects funded in whole or in part through the Department of the Interior, National Ocean Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, or the Forest Service to meet or exceed silver level LEED standards. But a provision in the bill has other clean energy supporters up in arms. Subtitle D, called the Global Warming Wildlife Survival Act, would require new hoops and hurdles for wind power production. The American Wind Energy Association says the law would "effectively shut down the wind energy production industry in the United States," and House members of both political parties questioned why the wind industry should face new requirements that have never applied to other energy sectors. Some of those requirements include:

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer