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BioFuels and Energy

Ag and Trade | BioFuels and Energy
Ag Advantages to Climate Change Bill
07/23/2009

The liberal-leaning Center for American Progress has published a column titled "Rural America Would Win Big with Senate Climate Action." Jake Caldwell argues that the pending climate change bill could raise farm incomes while doing nothing "places the fate of U.S. agriculture in a byzantine administrative process of federal regulation led by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act." Also, Caldwell writes, there are clear benefits to farmers in the House version of the bill.

Caldwell lists the "gains for rural America secured in the House bill..." There include exemptions for ag and forestry from cap and trade, he writes, and incentives for farmers to use their lands as a "carbon sink," where carbon emissions can be captured. Farmers can "earn real money selling carbon offsets" through tree planting, modest tillage practices and winer cover cropping -- stuff that many farmers already do.

Caldwell also notes that the bills encourage biofuels and wind energy production. He does not address the damage done by the construction of thousands of miles of transmission lines needed to transfer wind power from the farm to the city. Nor does he mention the disadvantage coal-based power plants in the middle of the U.S. will have under the new act. But this is interesting reading at a time when the Senate Ag committee is now taking up the climate change bill.

BioFuels and Energy
Rural Counties Play 'Pass the Trash'
07/22/2009

Asher Price reports today in the Austin (TX) newspaper that landowners across central Texas are "banding together in the face of a state plan to ship wind power" from the breezy Plains to the state's cities. The Lower Colorado River Authority has mapped the general corridor of transmission lines leading from just west of San Angelo down and then up through the Texas Hill Country. (Map above.) The lines needed to carry wind power "will be strung from tower to tower, each tower standing as high as 180 feet tall and about 1,300 feet apart. They will run through a clear-cut easement as much as 160 feet wide."

Ranchers have been less than happy to have 160-foot wide swaths cut through their property and have banded together to oppose the LCRA's plans. This is a story that is replaying across the central part of the country, as new transmission lines are being planned to move power from wind farms to city markets. The LCRA lines are only a $795 million chunk out of a $4.9 billion in new transmission lines planned in Texas alone.

Environmentalists in cities want the new lines because they believe wind power will replace coal. ("We want as much wind brought online as quickly as possible," said the head of Environmental Texas.) Meanwhile, environmentalists in the country object to transmission lines criss-crossing uncluttered land. The result is a giant game of pass the trash, as one group looks to move the lines on to somebody else's land. The county government in Kimble County, for example, passed a resolution asking that the lines scheduled for that county be moved to neighboring Mason County. Lots of comments at the end of this story.

 

BioFuels and Energy | Environment
Is There an Anti-Rural Bias in Climate Bill?
07/17/2009

The House bill reduces advantages now held by midwestern utilities, says a utility executive. And an Iowa utility is running ads saying the climate bill will lead to higher electricity rates.

BioFuels and Energy | Health | Politics and Government
Speak Your Piece: Black Lung Rising
07/16/2009

It can take years for underground coal miners to qualify for black lung benefits. Then they have to do it all over again.

BioFuels and Energy
East-Midwest Conflict Over Power Lines
07/14/2009

This electric transmission line story is heating up. More signs of protest among ranchers. (See story here.) And more opposition from Eastern states to federal support for more transmission line construction.

The New York Times reports that the climate change bill debate now before Congress is exposing a regional rift. Those from the Midwest and Great Plains want encouragement from the federal government for construction of new transmission lines that would connect new wind farms with the Eastern cities. Those in the East would rather have alternative energy projects closer to home — and they don't want to be stuck paying the billions of dollars it will cost to build the new lines. "An influential coalition of East Coast governors and power companies fears that building wind and solar sites in the Midwest would cause their region to miss out on jobs and other economic benefits," writes Matthew Wald. "The coalition is therefore trying to block a mandate for transcontinental lines."

So far, so good for the East. The energy bill that came out of the House didn't have provisions that would allow the federal government to override state decisions on transmission line siting. (West of the Rockies, the House would let the Feds intervene.) Also, Eastern governors argue that a bulked-up grid will actually increase the use of coal-fired plants in the Midwest. Now, power from those plants is blocked by overloaded transmission lines. New lines would have the odd consequence of increasing both renewable power and electricity from coal, Wald explains.

 

BioFuels and Energy
Power Lines Come With Wind Power
07/13/2009

The cost of wind energy from West Texas has risen so much that city residents don't want to buy it, at least in very liberal Austin. The city sells renewable power to residents who want it — electricity from wind farms and, in a future, a solar array. The program has worked so far, but the price of the latest batch of wind power has ended up costing three times what the city charges for conventionally generated electricity. So nobody's buying. Wind power has risen because steel, concrete and labor all cost more, according to the city. And, it costs more to transport power across crowded transmission lines. 

The price of transporting power will continue to rise. The state of Texas is close to approving plans for $6 billion in new transmission lines — lines that will cross farms and ranches for thousands of miles.

New transmission lines are going up everywhere, and everywhere there are fights between landowners and power supply companies. One of the latest is in Wisconsin. “I think wherever the lines are going to go, there’s going to be opposition,” said Jim Danky, director of the citizens group Preserve Our Rural Landscape Ltd., which fought American Transmission Co. LLC’s recently approved transmission line from Rockdale to West Middleton. “What you’re really going to begin to see is a rural and urban split on energy....Green energy is a great idea, but rural residents want to know who’s going to be paying the daily price for it.” Good question....  

 

 

 

BioFuels and Energy
Inside a Nuclear Plant: Skip the Lip Balm
07/13/2009

Cooper hydraulic controlThe power tourist, Julianne Couch, clears security, dons a dosimeter and takes us inside a nuclear plant in far east Nebraska.

BioFuels and Energy | Environment
6,000-Mile Energy Corridor Through the West is Challenged
07/11/2009

Suit alleges 6,000-mile corridor would threaten wildlife and some of the West's most scenic lands, all while ignoring the push for renewable energy in the region.

BioFuels and Energy | Environment
Obama Nominates Mine Safety, Environment Officials
07/07/2009

The White House has named the two men who will be in charge of both the safety of coal miners and the environmental protection of coal mining regions. President Obama has nominated Joseph Main to serve as assistant secretary of labor in charge of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration and Joseph Pizarchik to be director of the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining. (Press releases from the White House and Interior Department are here.) 

Joe Main (above) makes most coal miners, safety advocates and the United Mine Workers of America happy. Main began working in the mines in 1967 in Pennsylvania. He became a mine safety advocate and specialist, eventually heading the UMWA safety office. "It's going to be frustrating having somebody with an agenda that is pro-union," said Bill Caylor, president of the Kentucky Coal Association. "We're not looking forward to it."

Pizarchik is a more neutral choice. The White House passed over those with a history of fighting coal strip mining, such as Kentucky attorney Joey Childers, to pick the director of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Mining and Reclamation. Those fighting mountaintop removal mining "worry that as a career government bureaucrat, Pizarchik might not push for an outright ban on the practice," according to one news report. There was an effort over the weekend by environmental groups to block Pizarchik's nomination. 

BioFuels and Energy | Main Street Economics | Media | Politics and Government
What Happens When You Don't Own the Land
07/03/2009

There have been plenty of theories about the causes of poverty in Appalachia. But too little time has been spent discussing the region's wealth and who owns it.

Daily Yonder | Keep It Rural
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