What to do with tons of chicken feathers. The answer might have been found in the new hydrogen era.
Seems that storing hydrogen in carbon nanotubes works but is extremely expensive. Looking to the natural world, scientist have found an abundant and "cheep" analog in chicken feathers! Read more about this breakthrough here
Wendy will be the keynote speaker on Sunday at the Mid West Renewable Energy Fair in Custer, WI, the Nation's Premier Energy Education Event. Hear Wendy and get your book signed! For more info click here.
October 3, 2008 by Andrea Smith in Tri-Town Observer
A South Coast Wind Power Collaborative meeting held in Marion this week brought everything from frustration to hope as several initiatives were discussed.
Reports on Sodar wind speed testing done at Old Rochester Regional High School and Mattapoisett's landfill brought mixed results. Wind speeds at both locations did not prove sufficient to suggest a feasibility study, but they did bring a suggestion of further study from Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC) representative Nils Bolgen.
Bolgen acknowledged that one of the issues facing those who hope to erect wind turbines is a lack of sufficient wind in the area, except very close to the coast. Still he suggested studies of finance issues and wind data for both sites with the hope that sufficient evidence could be found to move forward with wind power proposals. MTC will fund the suggested studies, which are expected to be completed by February, 2009.
Reports from other towns on wind turbine initiatives brought a range of news, and a lot of suggestions gained through experience.
Jeff Osuch, Fairhaven's executive secretary, announced that his town's wind turbine initiative had stalled due to a lawsuit brought by 11 residents.
"I think (opposition) is a problem in any community," Osuch said.
Osuch warned that the mention of wind turbines often raises concerns among residents about zoning, wetlands, the need for special permits, and issues such as noise, which require studies. He offered a number of suggestions for communities beginning to explore wind turbines. He said public/private partnerships, especially in current economic circumstances, should be considered. Often with only a contribution of land, developers, because of financial incentives, are willing to come in and finance and erect wind turbines.
Osuch also warned that Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for wind turbines require a lot of consideration and advance preparation. Preliminary discussions with selectmen and town officials, collection of wind data, identification of potential sites, access to sites, and what a town specifically wants to gain from a wind turbine all need to be determined.
Ron DePippo said Dartmouth hasn't experienced the opposition reported by Osuch.
"I haven't heard a peep of opposition from anybody," he said.
DePippo attributed the lack of opposition to public education. Eight Dartmouth residents are now in varying stages of wind turbine proposals and construction, and a landscape nursery now has three wind turbines.
The best news of all came from Mass Maritime Academy representative Paul O'Keefe. A wind turbine at the academy is resulting in utility cost savings of approximately $160,000 per year. In addition the academy is profiting approximately $58,000 per year by selling power generated in excess of that which is needed by the academy.
Upper Cape Regional Vocational Technical High School Superintendent Kevin Farr said the school has experienced considerable savings as a result of a wind turbine it has erected and is now seeking, through a collaborative effort with Bourne and Cape Cod Canal officials, permission to erect a second turbine. Farr said the benefits to the school have included opportunities for students to be involved in data collection and to learn wind turbine maintenance skills. One current drawback to wind turbines is that the area lacks people trained in turbine maintenance and has to look to a company in Vermont for service, Farr said.
Despite a lot of good news, the meeting left Mattapoisett resident Frank Haggerty shaking his head. Haggerty told the Observer he can't understand why, if wind power in the area is generally not sufficient to support wind turbines, committees across the region aren't giving more consideration to GeoThermal, Photo Voltaic and Thermal Heat Exchangers.
"Is the reason for the commercial wind turbines that they are 400 feet tall and stand as testimony or a trophy that ‘my town is trying to do something about renewable energy?'" Haggerty asked.
A new report prepared for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority concludes that fossil-fueled electricity generation poses higher risk to wildlife than hydro or wind generation. Read more about this at SNLi
Under the Bush administration, there was talk, talk, talk about developing offshore wind energy, but nothing happened.
Now, several months into President Obama’s term, offshore wind is the Technology that Will Save the World — at least if you take some politicians at their word.
During a recent hearing of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, held on the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez spill (the spill happened March 24, 1989), Democratic congressmen were falling all over themselves to praise “the enormous potential” of the ocean winds.
Republicans — not so much.
Ohio’s John Boehner, the Republican minority leader, said that transporting oil by barge might continue to be a problem “if you have a lot of windmills they might collide with.”
Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young made a cameo appearance, during which he warned young mothers that if they continued their anti-oil tantrums, they would no longer have “Pampers” available to them.
“Think about that!” the famous congressman warned triumphantly.
Anyway, Court Jester Young continued, there’s no point getting all upset about oil spills. After all, “the biggest polluter we have is Mother Nature.”
But enough of the comic attractions of Washington.
There was also serious talk at the committee meeting.
Massachusetts Energy Secretary Ian Bowles warned his Washington audience that if the United States didn’t get moving soon on offshore wind, “we will be regretting it for years to come.”
In other testimony to the committee, Thomas Kitsos, one-time head of the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, suggested that an Ocean Investment Fund be created. Money for the fund would come from lease fees paid to the federal government by the oil and gas industry, as well as by future offshore-wind developments and other renewable technology that might be commercially developed.
Money from the fund, Kitsos said, could be used to help protect the nation’s shorelines and saltwater, which, most scientists agree, are deteriorating at a frightening rate.
Congress apparently intends to back up its Brave New Promises.
The recently passed stimulus bill includes a provision for funding wind projects that harkens back to the early days of wind energy.
When the technology was first being developed, the federal government awarded the industry an investment tax credit. This credit inspired lots of activity — but not necessarily lots of power production. Some of the early investment money was well-used, and some was not.
To correct this problem, in the 1990s, Congress passed legislation that gave wind-energy developments a production tax credit, which allowed write-offs of just under 2 cents a kilowatt-hour for power actually produced.
This cleaned up the problem of bogus investments, but encouraged a different kind of investor — corporations in need of tax write-off to help the bottom line.
Last fall, when the market dropped with plummeting oil prices, so did investment interest from those same corporations. The wind industry suddenly found itself flailing desperately for funds.
The new stimulus legislation lets investors choose. Investors may now opt for a production tax credit, an investment tax credit, or, in some cases, cash in hand, once the project becomes operational.
An analysis by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory suggests that which option investors choose may depend on the projected capacity factor for the overall life of the project. The greater the expected power production, the better the payback if the production tax credit is chosen.
This will certainly help the wind industry during the current economic emergency, but an unexpected consequence of this could be that some projects with marginal wind speeds may end up being financed. The situation will certainly bear watching.
Wendy Williams
President Obama's pick to head the Federal Aviation Administration will remove himself from decisions involving his former consulting firm's clients, who include opponents of the nation's first offshore wind-energy project, off Cape Cod, the White House confirmed Friday. Read the rest of the story Here at the Washington Times.
In today's Providence Journal, investigative columnist Jeff Blanchard reports that Ted Kennedy's family has been granted the special privilege of steering the committee to choose the region's next U. S.attorney in Boston, a very powerful position.
High on the Kennedy list -- a Delahunt clan member.
JEFF BLANCHARD
BREWSTER
WHAT DO THESE four have in common?
Michael Mone (who represented Michael Kennedy when the 39-year-old son of RFK was accused of improper behavior with the family baby-sitter. Kennedy later died in a skiing accident).
Tracy Miner (who represented John Connolly when the former FBI agent was accused of working with the Whitey Bulger side of the Boston mob at the height of its murderous reign. Connolly is in prison).
Kathy Weinman (who is married to Cameron Kerry, political strategist for and brother of Sen. John Kerry, as well as President Obama’s pick to be general counsel to the Commerce Department).
Robert Toone (who was counsel for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee before joining the Boston law firm of Foley Hoag as a specialist for the client Pfizer).
Answer: They have a lot in common. They give generously to political campaigns, especially Democrats’. They are smart, well-educated and highly decorated with the symbols of their profession, i.e., industry awards and top appointments to bar associations both local and national, lofty positions on prestigious panels, partnerships in well-heeled firms, trustees of big-name charities, etc.
More to the point, these four and eight others make up the search committee to which the selection of the next U.S. attorney in the District of Massachusetts has been entrusted, a group formed by Senator Kennedy to winnow the field of candidates to recommend for appointment by President Obama.
As U.S. attorney, you are the region’s top cop. And this is a major intersection of justice and politics.
Committee members include men and women of color, Harvard, white-shoe law firms and even Greater Boston Legal Services. As Kennedy said at the outset of the process, they “represent a broad range of professional experiences from across the Commonwealth.”
At heart, the committee represents the interests of Senator Kennedy, which is how it goes with this sort of thing, both in fact and by tradition — irrespective of the furor that surrounded the last administration, which set about to make controversial changes in the country’s stable of 93 U.S. attorneys.
It is done this way in every state and after every election of a new president, varying only when one party holds the White House and the other party holds both Senate seats. Then the governor gets a say, and so on down the line.
Boston’s next U.S. attorney will succeed Michael Sullivan, who comes from the George Bush/Andy Card side of the American political family tree. Make no mistake, however, there may be sides, but there is only one tree, and for a nominee to survive the vetting process, he or she had better have friends whose reach extends around the whole tree.
“I am very pleased that each of these distinguished lawyers has agreed to help identify candidates for U.S. Attorney and U.S. Marshal,” Kennedy’s press statement said. “These two positions are enormously important to the proper functioning of our federal courts. I am confident that this committee will identify people with the integrity, independence and sound judgment to make certain that our system of justice works for all of the people of Massachusetts.”
That Kathy Weinman is married to a Kerry doesn’t hurt. And note that her Web site at the Boston law firm of Dwyer & Collora says that “her practice focuses on complex white-collar crime and other government investigations. She has defended individuals and corporations under investigation for such things as health-care fraud, bank and public-finance fraud, securities-law violations, and defense-procurement fraud.”
Michael Mone litigated the success of Congressman William Delahunt in his cliff-hanging-chad primary-election victory over Philip Johnston in 1996. And search committee Chairman Mone’s bio says he was “appointed by Governor Dukakis in 1987 to serve on the Judicial Nominating Committee.”
“The Supreme Judicial Court appointed him to act as Special Counsel to the Commission on Judicial Conduct to investigate a judge, and he has represented judges before the CJC and the Supreme Judicial Court. He was recently selected by the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly as one of its Lawyers of the Year and cited by the legal magazine, Law Dragon, as one of the 500 leading lawyers in America,” the bio continues.
Of all the jobs in Boston, the U.S. attorney is about as inside politics as it gets. From there a lawyer can become governor (William Weld) or head of the FBI (Robert Mueller) or chucked out onto a bench. (Consider U.S. District Judge Edward F. Harrington, whose most recent public appearance came as a defense witness for the Bulgered-up special agent Connolly.)
Thus, among the names being bandied about in the orchestra section of the media these days:
Robert Delahunt, the congressman’s cousin.
Ben Clements, Governor Patrick’s lawyer.
David Meier, former Suffolk County prosecutor.
Gerry Leone, Middlesex district attorney.
William Welch, a former federal prosecutor in Springfield.
And Scott Harshbarger, former state attorney general, and founder and longtime chairman of the Justice Resource Institute, a leading vendor in the state’s “corrections” industry.
Harshbarger is said to be the only one of the bunch who is campaigning for the job, but that can hardly be considered a reliable assertion, inasmuch as they are all political animals and every breath they take brings them one puckered lip closer to the golden ring of power.
Jeff Blanchard, an occasional contributor, is a Cape Cod-based journalist.
Read Wendy's column from Sunday's Providence Journal on the effect of oil and other fossil fuels on salt water ecology:
Brian Burroughs’s The Big Rich is the best energy trade book to come along in years. Its Texas-style story-telling is a pleasure to read, and the tale of the takeover of Texas government by its oil men after they discovered a jillion bazillion dollars worth of oil is riveting.
But The Big Rich is less about oil itself than about the oil culture, with oil barons like H.L. Hunt making statements such as “In an ideal society, the more taxes you pay, the more votes you get.”
With statements like that, an Enron-style disaster comes to seem inevitable. The early-20th Century wildcats who struck it Big Rich in the Lone Star State were not shy or retiring. They happily shipped off grocery-sized paper bags full of cash to Washington, and, well, we all know the rest of the story . . . politically speaking, that is.
We’re only now learning about some of the other ramifications. At the end of January in Nice, France, 150 scientists from 26 countries met to discuss the deterioration of the oceans. Red-tide outbreaks are on the rise. Fish stocks worldwide are in decline. And, the scientists pointed out, coral reefs around the world are dying.
The scientists gathered in Nice predicted that the world’s reefs could collapse within the next several decades. “The questions are now how bad it will be and how soon it will happen,” said James Orr, one of the conference’s leaders and the man who spearheaded what has come to be known as the “Monaco Declaration.” (Monaco is right next to Nice.)
The declaration blamed the situation on oil and coal. In particular, the pollutants from burning oil in gasoline-powered engines and from burning coal in power plants causes “ocean acidification.”
The ocean absorbs a third to half of the world’s carbon-dioxide emissions. Only a decade ago, some scientists said the ocean would be a “buffer” that could continue to absorb the world’s CO{-2} output and thus slow the onset of climate change. But then researchers investigating the accelerating decay of coral reefs began reporting that the dying resulted, in part, from the very emissions the ocean absorbs.
CO{-2} reacts with sea water to create an overabundance of hydrogen, which lowers the delicate pH balance. The CO{-2} injected into soda forms carbonic acid, which we find pleasant to drink. But too much of that carbonic acid plays havoc with ocean life.
The long-term results of this acidification process have only begun to be understood. Recently researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reported that New England’s bays and estuaries are seeing a decrease in fish spawning because of acidification.
“The chemistry [of the oceans] is so fundamental and the changes so rapid and severe that impacts on organisms appear unavoidable,” Orr said, speaking for the rest of the signers of the Declaration. The scientists called for an immediate decrease in burning fossil fuels. If nothing is done, they warned, one of the most important sources of food will no longer be a well-functioning ecosystem.
H. L. Hunt, who died in 1974, liked fishing, but it seems unlikely that, in the “ideal society” he wished to create, the Monaco Declaration scientists would have been allowed the vote.
Note: Senior editor and seasoned business journalist Jim Kinsella will be following the Cape Wind story closely from here on in, as I become more involved in my new book. Jim will soon have his own website, but for the time being he will post on the Cape Wind book blog.
Please: anyone writing about Cape Wind who uses information from this story should cite Kinsella as the reporter who did the leg work.
By JAMES KINSELLA
In a friendly game of poker, a trump card is good to hold.
In the high-stakes game of Cape Wind - pitting a proposed $1 billion-plus offshore wind farm versus the regulatory authority of Cape Cod towns and the Cape Cod Commission - a trump card is really good to hold.
At a hearing Thursday afternoon in Barnstable Superior Court, Judge Robert C. Rufo listened to lawyers from Cape Wind and the attorney general's office square off against lawyers for the Town of Barnstable and the Cape Commission.
At the heart of the matter: who holds the trump card on approval of the Cape Wind project as a development of regional impact - the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board, or the Cape Cod Commission?
Judge Rufo took the matter under advisement.
Thursday's hearing was a legal skirmish in a battle that undoubtedly is headed to the Supreme Judicial Court for resolution.
The immediate question is whether the dispute tarries in Barnstable Superior Court, or goes straight to the SJC, the highest court in Massachusetts.
The Town of Barnstable, which previously had filed suit against the project, was joined in its legal opposition by the Cape Cod Commission, which decided against approving the wind farm as a development of regional impact.
The wind farm, proposed by Cape Wind Associates LLC of Boston, would consist of 130 turbines on Horseshoe Shoal about five miles south of Cape Cod. Backers say the 468-megawatt project could meet 75 percent of the electricity demand on the Cape, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
Although the project would be built in federal waters, the power lines would cross inshore waters owned by the Town of Barnstable as well as land on Cape Cod - hence the jurisdiction of the town and the commission, among other local and state agencies.
Confronted with the DRI denial, Cape Wind took the matter to the state Energy Facilities Siting Board, which has the power to issue a "superceding certificate" that would override local opposition to proposed energy facilities.
Among the nine permits sought as part of the certificate from the siting board by Cape Wind: the DRI permit from the Cape Cod Commission.
In a separate action, Cape Wind also moved to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the town and the Cape commission.
On Thursday, Judge Rufo heard that motion.
Coincidentally, the siting board last Thursday approved a superceding certificate.
As part of that approval, the board directed Cape Wind to work with the towns of Barnstable and Yarmouth to work out agreements concerning the buried power cables. Should the parties fail to do so, the siting board will step in. A final certificate would be issued within 60 days.
In a separate action, the commission has appealed the decision.
But what if the siting board doesn't hold the final say on state and local permits?
That was the argument mounted at Thursday's hearing by attorneys Charles McLaughlin, representing the Town of Barnstable, and Eric Wodlinger, representing the Cape Cod Commission.
They said the Cape Cod Commission Act, passed in 1989, is special legislation that effectively gives the Cape the power to trump decisions by the energy siting board.
Arguing against them was assistant attorney general Ken Salinger and David Rosenzweig, a lawyer representing Cape Wind, who said it didn't.
Salinger and Rosenzweig said the town and commission could appeal the siting board's final decision to the SJC. The board's decision, they said, rendered action in the superior court moot.
Wodlinger, however, said the Cape Cod Commission Act specified that appeals of commission decisions would be heard in superior or land court.
McLaughlin said that even if the case were appealed to the SJC, those justices would welcome an opinion from a superior court judge (ie., Rufo) on the case.
Cape Wind needs the superceding certificate, which effectively would include a DRI approval, as a crucial part of its legal foundation to build and operate the wind farm.
No DRI approval translates into no wind farm.
So the question of who holds the trump card - the siting board or the Cape Cod Commission - will help determine whether the Cape Wind project is built, or not.
The head of the Cape Cod Commission should be ashamed of himself for spending so much money so frivolously on Cape Wind opposition -- when there are so many more pressing needs at this time.
The Commission is funded by homeowner's taxes. When I as a homeowner agreed to that, I did not intend that my money should be used for this kind of political manipulation.
Of course, it doesn't come as a surprise to me, since Paul Niedzwiecki is not a bit interested in preserving Cape Cod. He was formerly the assistant town manager in Barnstable, and is very much beholden to the people who are funding the anti-Cape Wind effort.
I, for one, think that it's time to abolish the Cape Cod Commission.
I would prefer that my tax dollars be spent on school teachers so kids can learn to read. Commission members could all go out and find regular jobs.
