2011 | ModeShift

New Wind and Solar Sectors Wonâ€™t Solve Chinaâ€™s Water Scarcity

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 22, 20110

JIUQUAN, China-Business for wind and solar energy components has been so brisk in Gansu Province-a bone-bleaching sweep of gusty desert and sun-washed mountains in China’s northern region-that the New Energy Equipment Manufacturing Industry base, which employs 20,000 people, is a 24/7 operation. Just two years old, the expansive industrial manufacturing zone-located outside this ancient Silk Road city of 1 million-turns out turbines, blades, towers, controllers, software, and dozens of other components for a provincial wind …

Choke Point: China

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 21, 20111

Circle of Blue, the Traverse City-based global news and science organization, where I serve as senior editor, last week opened a compelling new series on the commanding threat to China’s modernization posed by water scarcity. Choke Point: China is the product of more than a month of reporting by four teams of writers and photographers that spent most of December 2010 in China. The first article prompted a nice flurry of good responses including a …

More Fear Sown By Opponents to Clean Energy

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 9, 2011June 18, 20140

About a year ago, while consulting with Traverse City Light and Power on the utility’s plan to generate 30 percent of its energy from renewable resources, I recognized the surprising and damaging trend developing within grassroots environmental groups to sow fear and block clean and renewable energy projects. That trend is growing bigger. Opponents to a big Duke Energy proposal to build the 112-turbine Gail Windpower installation in Benzie and Manistee counties here, many of …

“We’re From America” — Chrysler’s Superbowl Ad

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 7, 2011February 10, 20116

Residents of this beautiful and beleaguered state weren’t the only Americans electrified last night by Chrysler’s Superbowl ad starring Eminem and Detroit. My father-in-law and I watched the commercial at his home in Brethren, where he raises beef and pork on a 40-acre farm. He’s Manistee County born and raised. He also can fix anything that needs fixing and spent a good bit of his work life as a prison guard. I’m a New York-born …

About The Gail Wind Farm: Two Perspectives

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 6, 2011February 7, 20112

Duke Energy, which last month merged with Progress Energy to become the nation’s largest electric utility, proposes to build a 112-turbine, $360 million wind farm in four rural townships in Benzie and Manistee counties. The company, in its public statements, says it hopes to begin construction in the spring of 2012. Duke also says it has reached binding leasing agreements with landowners who own 10,000 to 11,000 acres of the 16,000 acres in Duke’s wind …

The Unsound Science of Infrasound “Threat”

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 3, 2011February 3, 20113

The Michigan Land Use Institute this week posted a strong report, and a rich archive of supporting material, that raises important questions about the credibility of assertions that “infrasound” generated by utility-scale wind turbines produces dangerous health consequences. The article, by MLUI managing editor Jim Dulzo, a former colleague and a journalist who knows his way around complex issues, notes that opponents of big wind farms, including the 112-turbine, $360 million project proposed for Benzie …

Afraid of the Wind

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 28, 2011March 3, 20111

Earlier this month, on a snowy afternoon, the newly renovated Garden Theater held the largest crowd I’ve ever seen indoors in the small Lake Michigan coastal town of Frankfort, with the exception of girls and boys basketball games. On tap that day was a polemical documentary film, “Windfall.” Two groups of citizen activists held the screening to build civic momentum in opposition to a good-sized utility-scale windfarm proposed for Benzie and Manistee counties. Afterwards the …

Obama’s 80 Percent Clean Energy Goal: Who’s He Kidding?

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 26, 2011January 27, 20110

Arguably the central provision of President Obama’s State of the Union address last night was the proposal to generate 80 percent of the nation’s electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 — including nuclear energy and CCS coal technology. Getting there will take a miracle, the same sort of pie in the sky thinking that allowed our president to also present the daft notion ofÂ giving 80 percent of Americans access to high speed rail …

Memo to Hu and Obama: Water and Energy Choke Points Merit Time at the China-U.S. Summit

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 18, 2011January 26, 20110

Washingtonâ€™s foreign policy community is all aflutter anticipating the meaning and outcome of Chinese President Hu Jintaoâ€™s three-day summit with U.S. President Barack Obama, which starts today. But while the two heads of state focus on resolving what pries them apart, both nations share a dangerous confrontation within their borders over energy demand and water supplyâ€”offering a matchless opportunity for new kinds of cooperation on policy, technology, business, and trade. The collision between rising energy …