Keith Schneider | ModeShift

Bohai Sea Pipeline Could Open Chinaâ€™s Northern Coal Fields

by Keith SchneiderApril 5, 20110

XIâ€™AN, Chinaâ€”Last November, as government leaders considered energy goals for Chinaâ€™s upcoming 12th Five-Year Planâ€”which was adopted last monthâ€”60-year-old geographer Huo Youguang took the podium at an academic meeting about water scarcity and coal production in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, one of the driest inhabited areas on the planet. Over the next half-hour or so, Huo described a first-of-its-kind transcontinental pipeline that he believed could be a breakthrough in developing more fossil energy from Xinjiang …

Burst of New Dams in Southwest China Produces Power and Public Ire

by Keith SchneiderMarch 23, 20110

CHENGDU, China- Even in China, where power plants, coal mines, water-transport networks, and other big tools of industrialization are built at astonishing scale and with surprising speed, the hydropower dam construction program in Sichuan, Yunnan, Tibet, and other southwest provinces has no equal in China, or anywhere else for that matter. Israeli journalist Rachel Beitarie reports on China’s mammoth dam-building program for Circle of Blue, the sixth chapter in the Choke Point: China series that …

If President Calls It Safe, Watch Out

by Keith SchneiderMarch 17, 2011March 17, 20110

President Barack Obama is a good fellow at work in a difficult era, to say the least. So this post is not intended to be a slam on the president. Still, it is a good idea for Obama to be much more cautious when he draws from conventional wisdom, and the word of aides, to publicly express his view that a big energy sector is safe. You’ll recall that on March 31, 2010, President Obama …

In U.S. Big Ideas Prompt Big “No!” In China, It’s The Opposite

by Keith SchneiderMarch 16, 2011June 18, 20140

In an era of economic turmoil that has produced massive unemployment, accelerated industrial decline, and sowed fear and doubt across much of North America and Europe, China last week offered a much different lesson on growth and development. In the latest draft of its new 12th Five-Year Plan to manage the world’s fastest growing industrial economy, China’s leadership called for restraining the runaway growth that is raising the incomes of more than 400 million people, …

Grassroots Opposition To Wind Energy Receives Scholarly Assessment

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 27, 2011March 17, 20110

Roopali Phadke was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government from 2003 to 2005 when an intensifying civic struggle over a developer’s proposal to build the nation’s first offshore wind farm in Cape Cod caught her attention. The battle line between supporters and opponents was readily apparent. But the soldiers filling out the ranks of the opposition leadership were especially confounding. They included Senator Ted Kennedy, one of the nation’s most influential liberal …

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 …