By Chris Bolgiano (originally distributed by: Bay Journal News Service at http://bayjournalnewsservice.com/Power.html.)
It's a gorgeous day full of singing birds and sunlight. Beautiful, streaming sunlight. Soon the photovoltaic system that added some aggression to my passive solar house in the mountains of western Virginia will be one year old, the time of reckoning.
Getting off the grid has always been Nirvana for 1970s Back-to-the-Landers like me. With net-metering - a 21st century update of the dream - I am still connected, selling excess electricity in summer when the sun is high, and buying electricity at night and in winter. The grid has become my battery, although my home system includes batteries for three or four sunless days of essential services if the grid is knocked out: water pump, stove, freezer, and playing old movies through the storm. In rural Appalachia, self-sufficiency is the traditional way of doing things.
Electricity has become a beacon of hope in the smog of our energy crisis. With President Obama's promise to get plug-in cars on the market by 2015, homegrown electricity could help wean Americans from foreign oil, which is largely used for transportation.
But our largest source of electricity is coal, which is also the largest culprit in environmental damage of all kinds, from mountain top removal mining to acid rain to carbon caused climate change.
Nuclear plants have waste issues, huge costs overruns and terrorism target potential. Natural gas plants are better but not by much. Even renewable sources can have unacceptable impacts: Industrial wind plants in the East destroy forests, while industrial solar arrays in the West destroy deserts. Even when well-sited, the thousands of miles of new transmission lines needed to transport power from green sources destroy everything in their path. What can a compassionate conservationist support?
Distributed generation, that's what.
On-site production of electricity (called distributed generation, or DG for short) is the cheapest, quickest, fairest way out of the energy conundrum. Site specific generation from small-scale solar, wind, geothermal, and biofuels installations, combined with the new administration's energy conservation/efficiency programs, offers virtually unlimited resources for stimulating local jobs aimed at literally empowering local communities. From the widespread interest expressed in my own solar system, it seems that there is enormous pent-up consumer demand.
The paradigm of centralized power plants has been rendered obsolete by technology and terrorism. Consider how much stronger our nation would be against disasters both natural and criminal if schools, hospitals, community centers, businesses, nursing homes, farms, mobile homes, houses and apartment buildings across the country made enough electricity to, at the least, pump drinking water and refrigerate food.
Americans haven't enjoyed that kind of independence since they drank from dippers and packed pond ice in sawdust for the summer icebox. Decentralization of electricity brings a new perspective to the old rallying cry of democracy, "Power to the People!"
It will mean redesigning distribution lines and decoupling fixed costs from electricity rates to entice utility companies, traditionally hostile to DG. It will take new tax incentives, interconnection standards, building codes, and educational programs for electricians, builders, businesses and homeowners. It will take fleets of people at town, county, state, and federal levels all conspiring to allow consumers to take control of power sources. All home grown workers.
What better use of stimulus money could there be?
Maybe I'm not the one to be talking about economics, which is based on the idea that people always act in their own best interests. My solar system contradicts that basic principle. At current electric rates, it will take me 45 years to pay it off. My own personal back to the land trip will likely be well over by then. Rates will undoubtedly go up, but buying this system was economically unsound and I'm proud of it, because I love to confound economists. And you've got to spend your money somewhere unless you're planning on dying with it.
Taking responsibility for one's own environmental impact is what much of the talk about "greening" is really about. Studies show that when people see direct consequences of their actions -say, turning off a computer for the night -- they change their behavior and use significantly less energy.
It happened to me. After my new system was installed I checked the meter often for the fun of watching it run backward. And it did, through spring and summer. Now, it's showing 820 kilowatt hours used from the grid in eleven months -- roughly what an average American household uses in one month. At the end of a year, my utility company will pay me for any excess production. I don't really care about that, but I do want the meter to reach zero by next month to give me 100 percent solar electricity for the year, so - I'm powering off, goodbye!
Chris Bolgiano is the author or editor of five books. Chris Bolgiano, Mildly Amusing Nature Writer: www.chrisbolgiano.com
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Why Shout At the News Paper?
I believe that I have finally broken my habit of writing letters to the editor of our local news paper, The Daily News Record. Sometimes the simplest opinion will elicit a most vociferous response. For example, we all know that the Solstices and Equinoxes move about in the calendar due to the asymmetry of the earth's orbit. Since the velocity of earth increases as it approaches perigee, the rate of the change in day length due to the angle of the sun also increases (plus we all remember that 12:00 noon moves back 14 minutes and forward 16 minutes within the "clock day" between February 10 and November 5...). This causes the ANALEMMA, the figure eight produced by the shadow of the sun at precisely 12:00 noon (CLOCK NOON), to be asymmetrical as well. The earliest sunset was way back on the 7th of December, the latest sunrise isn't until January 6th.
And this all proves that rationalists and evolutionists are the Devil as was pointed out to me recently in a letter to the editor of our local news paper.
And this all proves that rationalists and evolutionists are the Devil as was pointed out to me recently in a letter to the editor of our local news paper.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
FRACK YOU Isn't just for science fiction anymore.
FRACKING: A NEW "F" WORD ENTERS THE LANGUAGE (OED are you listening?)
I didn't write this one, it's by Chris Bolgiano; (I did add a few parenthetical observations). This version includes the last sentence that was cut from the column as published by Bay Journal News Service http://bayjournalnewsservice.com/ to avoid offending too many newspaper editors. They didn't see the joke, and they don't watch Caprica either.
A new “f” word has entered our language that has nothing to do with sex but everything to do with exploitation. From New York to Tennessee, above the gassy geological formation called Marcellus shale, people are debating the practice of fracking.
Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from shale. It involves drilling a hole a mile down, then thousands of feet horizontally, and pumping down millions of gallons of water laced with sand, salt and chemicals to crack the shale. Gas is forced up, along with roughly 25 percent of the contaminated wastewater, often hot with radioactivity.
Shale gas fields are called ‘plays’ but developing them is serious business. Since 2005, when Congress approved the so-called Halliburton Loophole to exempt fracking from federal standards for clean water, companies from Oklahoma to Japan have spent millions of dollars to frack rural communities innocent of any knowledge about the practice.
By some estimates, fracking Marcellus and other shales across North America could satisfy our desire for gas for the next 45 years
Fracking is ongoing in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. Now Texas-based Carrizo Company wants to frack Bergton, Va., long famous as one of the most idyllic pastoral communities in the Shenandoah Valley, where I live.
At first the attraction between gas companies and communities is mutual: landowners, often poor, gain income from leases, stores gain business, counties gain tax base. The industry courts communities with assurances that the chemicals used compose only one part per hundred of the fracking fluid, are environmentally friendly, and will be treated at the local sewage plant. (One part per hundred is 10,000 parts per million, the standard used by EPA and the FDA when measuring toxic chemicals).
For global warming worriers, the sexiest aspect is the reduction in greenhouse gases emitted by burning natural gas compared to oil; for others, it’s the fact that gas is domestic, reducing our bondage to hostile foreign countries.
For many, the romance quickly pales. Fracking chemicals include formaldehyde, benzene, and others known to be carcinogenic at [proprietary and unknown levels]. Municipal plants can’t handle fracking wastewater, and it’s stored in open pits until trucked elsewhere. If enough fresh water can’t be sucked from streams on site, trucks haul it in.
Eighteen-wheelers rolling 24/7 pulverize country roads and cause accidents, like the one that spilled 8,000 gallons of toxic materials into a Pennsylvania creek last year. And they emit enough carbon to seriously shrink the greenhouse gas advantage of fracked gas.
Explosions are occurring from causes similar to BP’s Gulf debacle. In early June, a blowout at one of the thousand-plus fracking wells in Pennsylvania spewed flammable gas and polluted water 75-feet high for sixteen hours. One of our most recent local headlines reads, “W.Va. Gas Well Blast Injures 7; Flames Now 40 Feet.”
Fracking’s impact on surface and groundwater outlasts any explosion. People from New York to Texas complain that their wells deteriorated after fracking started nearby. Pennsylvania officials ordered Cabot Gas Corporation to pay fines, plug wells, and install treatment systems in 14 houses where methane contaminated drinking water. [The companies all imply that they're working "way down there" thousands of feet below your wells and springs - no problem! The BP well was MILES down there and all that fluid wants to come up here due to billions of pounds of rock sitting on it.]
New York state officials see fracking as so risky that they imposed far stricter environmental regulations within watersheds that supply ten million people with drinking water. They feared an outright ban would provoke lawsuits from landowners eager to sign leases.
Landowner rights are sacred in Appalachia, but the recent request by a company that transports gas in Pennsylvania to be declared a “utility,” which would give it the power to condemn property for pipelines, puts a new twist on the issue. And what about my right to continue drinking clean water from my well on my property?
The likelihood of leaks of toxic materials into waters is enhanced when drilling occurs in the 100- year flood plain, as is proposed in Bergton. In 40 years here I’ve seen many disastrous floods, and the mountainous Bergton area is always among the hardest hit. A flood would sweep a well pad with containers of chemicals, fuels, and open wastewater pits into the headwaters of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, and ultimately into the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay.
Given the risks, fracking seems to me merely to prolong our addiction to fossil fuel, when renewable energy is within reach: solar panel costs have fallen by half (cheap enough even for me), and offshore wind turbines offer huge energy efficiencies.
But history insists on repeating itself. For centuries, Appalachia has been raped by outside interests wresting iron, timber, and coal from these mountains. Once again, people from elsewhere are taking huge profits and leaving a pittance and a lot of ugly pits behind, while politicians stall efforts to repair the regulatory loophole. They are risking through accident or carelessness the poisoning of water for millions of people, generations into the future. I SAY FRACK'EM.
Chris Bolgiano is the author or editor of five books. This commentary is distributed by Bay Journal News Service
I didn't write this one, it's by Chris Bolgiano; (I did add a few parenthetical observations). This version includes the last sentence that was cut from the column as published by Bay Journal News Service http://bayjournalnewsservice.com/ to avoid offending too many newspaper editors. They didn't see the joke, and they don't watch Caprica either.
A new “f” word has entered our language that has nothing to do with sex but everything to do with exploitation. From New York to Tennessee, above the gassy geological formation called Marcellus shale, people are debating the practice of fracking.
Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from shale. It involves drilling a hole a mile down, then thousands of feet horizontally, and pumping down millions of gallons of water laced with sand, salt and chemicals to crack the shale. Gas is forced up, along with roughly 25 percent of the contaminated wastewater, often hot with radioactivity.
Shale gas fields are called ‘plays’ but developing them is serious business. Since 2005, when Congress approved the so-called Halliburton Loophole to exempt fracking from federal standards for clean water, companies from Oklahoma to Japan have spent millions of dollars to frack rural communities innocent of any knowledge about the practice.
By some estimates, fracking Marcellus and other shales across North America could satisfy our desire for gas for the next 45 years
Fracking is ongoing in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. Now Texas-based Carrizo Company wants to frack Bergton, Va., long famous as one of the most idyllic pastoral communities in the Shenandoah Valley, where I live.
At first the attraction between gas companies and communities is mutual: landowners, often poor, gain income from leases, stores gain business, counties gain tax base. The industry courts communities with assurances that the chemicals used compose only one part per hundred of the fracking fluid, are environmentally friendly, and will be treated at the local sewage plant. (One part per hundred is 10,000 parts per million, the standard used by EPA and the FDA when measuring toxic chemicals).
For global warming worriers, the sexiest aspect is the reduction in greenhouse gases emitted by burning natural gas compared to oil; for others, it’s the fact that gas is domestic, reducing our bondage to hostile foreign countries.
For many, the romance quickly pales. Fracking chemicals include formaldehyde, benzene, and others known to be carcinogenic at [proprietary and unknown levels]. Municipal plants can’t handle fracking wastewater, and it’s stored in open pits until trucked elsewhere. If enough fresh water can’t be sucked from streams on site, trucks haul it in.
Eighteen-wheelers rolling 24/7 pulverize country roads and cause accidents, like the one that spilled 8,000 gallons of toxic materials into a Pennsylvania creek last year. And they emit enough carbon to seriously shrink the greenhouse gas advantage of fracked gas.
Explosions are occurring from causes similar to BP’s Gulf debacle. In early June, a blowout at one of the thousand-plus fracking wells in Pennsylvania spewed flammable gas and polluted water 75-feet high for sixteen hours. One of our most recent local headlines reads, “W.Va. Gas Well Blast Injures 7; Flames Now 40 Feet.”
Fracking’s impact on surface and groundwater outlasts any explosion. People from New York to Texas complain that their wells deteriorated after fracking started nearby. Pennsylvania officials ordered Cabot Gas Corporation to pay fines, plug wells, and install treatment systems in 14 houses where methane contaminated drinking water. [The companies all imply that they're working "way down there" thousands of feet below your wells and springs - no problem! The BP well was MILES down there and all that fluid wants to come up here due to billions of pounds of rock sitting on it.]
New York state officials see fracking as so risky that they imposed far stricter environmental regulations within watersheds that supply ten million people with drinking water. They feared an outright ban would provoke lawsuits from landowners eager to sign leases.
Landowner rights are sacred in Appalachia, but the recent request by a company that transports gas in Pennsylvania to be declared a “utility,” which would give it the power to condemn property for pipelines, puts a new twist on the issue. And what about my right to continue drinking clean water from my well on my property?
The likelihood of leaks of toxic materials into waters is enhanced when drilling occurs in the 100- year flood plain, as is proposed in Bergton. In 40 years here I’ve seen many disastrous floods, and the mountainous Bergton area is always among the hardest hit. A flood would sweep a well pad with containers of chemicals, fuels, and open wastewater pits into the headwaters of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, and ultimately into the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay.
Given the risks, fracking seems to me merely to prolong our addiction to fossil fuel, when renewable energy is within reach: solar panel costs have fallen by half (cheap enough even for me), and offshore wind turbines offer huge energy efficiencies.
But history insists on repeating itself. For centuries, Appalachia has been raped by outside interests wresting iron, timber, and coal from these mountains. Once again, people from elsewhere are taking huge profits and leaving a pittance and a lot of ugly pits behind, while politicians stall efforts to repair the regulatory loophole. They are risking through accident or carelessness the poisoning of water for millions of people, generations into the future. I SAY FRACK'EM.
Chris Bolgiano is the author or editor of five books. This commentary is distributed by Bay Journal News Service
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