At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
Carl Ganter, the director of Circle of Blue and a colleague, was in China this week attending a World Economic Forum conference. He ran into New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, and talked about the new details Circle of Blue was uncovering about the tightening contest between rising energy demand and diminishing supplies of fresh water. Carl sent a message last night that Tom seemed interested and asked me to prepare a short summary of …
Over at Circle of Blue, where I serve as senior editor, we’ve been working on Choke Point: U.S., a series of original articles about the tightening contest between rising energy demand and diminishing supplies of fresh water. In our latest chapter, we explored the big boom in oil and gas production on the northern Great Plains, where energy companies are tapping the “unconventional” Bakken Shale. Two miles beneath North Dakota, and below parts of Montana …
Kate Gailbraith, a reporter for the very accomplished non-profit and online Texas Tribune, has a report from the Lone Star state about grassroots opposition to a new $5 billion transmission line to carry power from all those windmills down there. Texas is the largest wind generating state in the country, with a capacity of nearly 9,500 megawatts at the end of 2009, or roughly equal to 10 big coal-fired plants. Opposition to new transmission lines, …
The Illinois River Energy biofuels plant in Rochelle releases plumes of steam at sunrise. The ethanol plant processes over 40 million bushels of corn into 115 million gallons of fuel grade ethanol annually. Earlier this summer my colleagues and I began probing the tightening environmental and economic choke points around the United States caused by rising energy production and diminishing quantities of fresh water. This week we broke a new chapter in the story that …
In the troubled climate action summer of 2010 it’s at least a little relief to know that some progress is occurring. The Department of Energy, in its latest assessment released this month of the American wind energy sector, reports that Texas is generating 2.29 gigawatts of energy from wind – equivalent to four good-sized coal plants. Four other states are generating more than 10 percent of their electricity from wind. They are Iowa (20%), South …
This morning I received an email message from Tom Mair, a Green Party candidate for the Grand Traverse (Michigan) Board of Commissioners, who wanted to know what I thought about the decision in June by Traverse City Light and Power to abandon its proposal to build a wood biomass plant. I served as communications and engagement consultant on the public hearings the utility held this winter. Tom’s message and my response follow: good afternoon Keith, …
Late last month more than 1 million gallons of crude oil leaked into the Kalamazoo River in southern Michigan, the biggest oil accident in the Midwest ever. This has been the year of understanding the oil/water nexus, even if it’s seawater. This week the U.S. estimated that the BP Gulf blowout poured 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf. Even with the 800,000 barrels that BP said it collected and skimmed, the disaster is, …
Given the dearth of new economic strategies that make sense and actually work, it’s appropriate to again take note of what’s happening here in my home state of Michigan around clean energy development. The more you think about it, the clearer the significance of what Governor Jennifer Granholm (with the president in pix above at July 15 groundbreaking of a new lithium-ion battery plant in West Michigan) has accomplished becomes clearer and clearer. In short, …
Gabrielle Gurley, a writer for Commonwealth, the magazine of the think tank MassINC, has a rigorously balanced assessment in the most recent issue of the simmering dispute in American environmentalism about big clean energy projects. All across the country, including Massachusetts, where Gurley bases her reporting, grassroots environmentalists are fighting to block clean energy installations. In the battle between principle and pragmatism, the efforts by older green activists is producing a generational schism in the …
HOLLAND, Mich. — In February 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which among other things provided $2.4 billion to encourage development of a domestic industry to make lighter, more energy-dense lithium-ion batteries to power electric vehicles. Two weeks ago, on July 15, the president flew to this small city on the shore of Lake Michigan to attend the groundbreaking for a $303 million, 650,000 square-foot battery plant operated by Compact Power, …