Exxon Stops Drilling

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Bill Georgevich reporting

After posting the largest corporate profit in the recorded history of mankind, Exxon has decided to halt drilling and development of existing oil leases - despite Sarah Palin's campaign to the contrary. In a move to make the perfect storm for another oil crisis, this decision to use profits to buy back Exxon stock, rather than "Drill Baby Drill", proves that the world’s largest corporation is continuing to control the world’s economy to suit themselves.

Some folks may think that high oil and gas prices will hasten the renewable green economy. And to some extent that is true. But why not have both during this time of world recession?

Lower gas prices translate into a savings of about $200/month for the average American family of 4. That's essentially a $2400/year cash injection stimulus check!

Why not embrace the Obama and Gore green initiatives and require the oil companies to keep prices down by keeping supply up? The oil lobby begged Bush for more areas to drill in 2008 during the oil crisis they completely made up, and now they aren't drilling on the leases they already have?

This ranks along with AIG as one of the greatest scandals of the 21st century. We need low fuel prices to sustain a recovery and buy us the time to convert our energy economy to a renewable world.

General Motors Kills 2 Electric Cars

Bill Georgevich reporting

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Electric car killer General Motors, after showcasing their new electric car, the Chevy Volt, shut down the plant producing it in January 09, despite showcasing the hybrid with much fanfare at the Detroit Auto Show after receiving billions from taxpayers. The car company that sued California rather than produce a zero-emission vehicle now find itself in the cross-hairs of President Obama and just 60 days from bankruptcy.

We thought that flying to Washington in separate corporate jets asking for bailout money was the height of chutzpah and hubris. But this takes the cake: after finally receiving their federal billions, they shut down production of the only 100 mpg vehicle they had in development -- 4 days after showcasing the car with a flurry of press and ballyhoo at the January 09 Detroit Auto show.

Experts agree that the high cost of petrol in the summer of 08 caught the Big 3 by surprise when consumers were looking for gas sippers. Yet the next big closure GM announced in January was their Saturn plant, the one that makes small GM cars with mpg's of more than 30. Both The Volt and the Saturn plants closed because management deemed them "unprofitable". Tell that to Toyota, who makes the Prius Hybrid.

Out of the Red and Into the Green

Melanie Pahlmann reporting

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Last September, as our banks were failing, the always brilliant Thomas Friedman suggested that "we don't just need a bailout, we need a build up." Specifically, a build up of energy technology, taken on with the same brazen urgency as NASA's Apollo mission. President Obama seems to agree. His ambitious stimulus plan seeks to double our renewable energy output over the next few years. Friedman has been on the talk circuit for months now, recommending no less than "an overwhelming force" to green the economy: an energy tech revolution that will not only green our grids but grow our shriveled manufacturing base, which means new jobs.

In his Sept 28 2008 column, Friedman wrote:

[W]e don’t just need a bailout. We need a buildup. We need to get back to making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial engineering. We need to get back to a world where people are able to realize the American Dream — a house with a yard — because they have built something with their hands, not because they got a “liar loan” from an underregulated bank with no money down and nothing to pay for two years. The American Dream is an aspiration, not an entitlement….

Indeed, when this bailout is over, we need the next president — this one is wasted — to launch an E.T., energy technology, revolution with the same urgency as this bailout. Otherwise, all we will have done is bought ourselves a respite, but not a future. The exciting thing about the energy technology revolution is that it spans the whole economy — from green-collar construction jobs to high-tech solar panel designing jobs. It could lift so many boats.

In a green economy, we would rely less on credit from foreigners “and more on creativity from Americans,” argued Van Jones, president of Green for All, and author of the forthcoming “The Green Collar Economy.” “It’s time to stop borrowing and start building. America’s No. 1 resource is not oil or mortgages. Our No. 1 resource is our people. Let’s put people back to work — retrofitting and repowering America. ... You can’t base a national economy on credit cards. But you can base it on solar panels, wind turbines, smart biofuels and a massive program to weatherize every building and home in America.”

The Bush team says that if this bailout is done right, it should make the government money. Great. Let’s hope so, and let’s commit right now that any bailout profits will be invested in infrastructure — smart transmission grids or mass transit — for a green revolution. Let’s “green the bailout,” as Jones says, and help ensure that the American Dream doesn’t ever shrink back to just that — a dream.

Friedman is one of the freshest pragmatic visionaries to emerge from punditry in a long dry time. If I could whisper in the President's ear, I'd say three words: Friedman, Energy Czar. Check out his new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How it Can Renew America.

Here he speaks with Fareed Zakaria:



On Feb 5 2009, President Obama made these remarks during a visit to the Department of Energy:

After decades of dragging our feet, this plan will finally spark the creation of a clean energy industry that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next few years, manufacturing wind turbines and solar cells for example, and millions more after that. These jobs and these investments will double our capacity to generate renewable energy over the next few years.

We’ll fund a better, smarter electricity grid and train workers to build it – a grid that will help us ship wind and solar power from one end of this country to another. Think about it. The grid that powers the tools of modern life – computers, appliances, even blackberries - looks largely the same as it did half a century ago. Just these first steps toward modernizing the way we distribute electricity could reduce consumption by 2 to 4 percent.

We’ll also lead a revolution in energy efficiency, modernizing more than 75 percent of federal buildings and improving the efficiency of more than 2 million American homes. This will not only create jobs, it will cut the federal energy bill by a third and save taxpayers $2 billion each year and save Americans billions of dollars more on their utility bills.

In fact, as part of this effort, today I've signed a presidential memorandum requesting that the Department of Energy set new efficiency standards for common household appliances. This will save consumers money. This will spur innovation. And this will conserve tremendous amounts energy. We’ll save through these simple steps over the next thirty years the amount of energy produced over a two-year period by all the coal-fired power plants in America.

And through investments in our mass transit systems to boost capacity, in our roads to reduce congestion, and in technologies that will accelerate the development of innovations like plug-in hybrid vehicles, we’ll be making a significant down payment on a cleaner and more independent energy future.

Going net-zero in Santa Fe

Melanie Pahlmann reporting

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Homebuilders across the country will soon be looking to Santa Fe, NM as a guide and inspiration for new levels of excellence in green and low-enviro-impact building. Santa Fe is emerging as the national leader in green building standards, in large part with the help of Santa Fe homebuilder Faren Dancer.

Dancer and the Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association (SFAHBA) are raising the bar on green building standards. They were instrumental in the city's adoption of green building codes that are based on a challenge to build only carbon-neutral homes by the year 2030. The SFAHBA has 800 members throughout Northern New Mexico.

Earlier this year Dancer broke ground on a net-zero home that will achieve the highest designations awarded for green home design and performance. The Emerald Home, as it is called, is a pilot project that will embody the highest level of the new Santa Fe building codes.

Dancer's design and construction blends the best of new technology and traditional conservation building principles in a high-end custom home. (See artist's rendering.)

Here are but a few design features of The Emerald Home:

• All cabinets, wood flooring, tiles and interior doors are supplied from salvaged materials.
  
  
• Tiles are made of 100% recycled glass.
  
  
• Windows are triple glazed heat mirror windows with insulated frames.
  
  
• The home's heat is provided by a geo-thermal (ground source) heating system.
  
  
• The home features an impressive photovoltaic (PV) solar electric system including a PV tracker that follows the sun's trajectory.
  
  
• Skylights are constructed with a solar and gel technology that will increase the insulating from the typical R2 rating to R20.
  
  
• Cellulose wall insulation, made from recycled newspaper, will be used throughout the home.
  
  
• In construction, Dancer will only use framing studs made from recycled scrapwood.
  
  
• The interior walls will themselves be compressed earth blocks using dirt that is excavated and manufactured on-site.
  
  
• Wood beams and vigas (often fashioned from newly cut Canadian timber) will be made from salvaged, hand-hewn beams from Minnesota.
  
  
• Cisterns for water catchment will deliver water by a gravity-feed method, augmented by solar pumps.
  
  
• Bathrooms will be furnished with dual-flush toilettes, which offer the choice of a lighter or heavier flush.
  
  
• A hybrid evaporative cooling system will use 1/2 the water of an ordinary system and divert its back-flush water for outdoor irrigation.
  
  
• Absolutely no use of toxic or outgassing materials. That includes paint, caulks, sealants, finishes, adhesives and carpet.
  
  
• A filtered air exchange system will continuously bring in fresh air without compromising interior temperatures.

Santa Fe is the birthplace of the Architecture 2030 Challenge, which encourages builders nation-wide and globally to achieve 100% carbon-neutral construction of homes and buildings by the year 2030.

The City of Santa Fe and The Santa Fe Home Builders Association are the first in the country to adopt the 2030 challenge and are seeking to mandate it through policy and codes.

The new Santa Fe building codes establish minimal and optimal standards in 6 categories:

Site Impact, which reflects the degree of disturbance to the land where the home is built. This also includes how much the site is renewed after construction.

Energy Efficiency, which factors the net energy use of the house (how much produced minus how much used). A net-zero house produces all its own energy. A higher performing house will produce an abundance of electricity, which can be sold back to the gird. Energy efficiency is improved by insulation, energy-efficient appliances, energy-saving lighting, passive heating and cooling, renewable energy sources (geothermal, wind, solar), and various energy conservation techniques.

Resource Efficiency refers to the amount of energy used to build the house. This can be ameliorated by using recycled and salvaged materials, purchasing materials locally (reducing transportation fuel usage), and using construction methods that minimize energy use and environmental impact.

Water Efficiency, which can be improved with water catchment systems, low-flow faucets and shower heads, low-flow or dual-flush toilettes, drought-resistant landscaping, and low-water use evaporative cooling systems.

Healthy Indoor Air Quality, which is influenced by the toxicity of building materials used within the house (carpets outgas chemical fumes and cabinets often contain formaldehyde). Long-term, an air filtration system will ensure that the air inside a well-insulated house will not get stale.

Homeowner Education is the final category of building standards and quite essential. As Dancer says, "You can build a zero-energy home, but if the homeowner doesn't understand it, they will quickly lose the benefits." Homebuilders are required to provide specific instructions to homeowners so that they can understand and properly maintain the home's design features, and most importantly, incorporate conservation techniques into their lifestyle.

The construction of Dancer's Emerald Home is being videotaped as part of an online zero energy building course made possible by a United States Green Building Council (USGBC) educational grant. This course will be offered by the Santa Fe Community College in 2009. The city of Santa Fe will also incorporate the video in an educational program to teach builders about green building techniques.

Learn more about The Emerald Home at http://www.theemeraldhomesantafe.com/

Clean Coal Stays in Obama's Stimulus Package

Bill Georgevich reporting

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Obama talked about it along with John McCain in the presidential campaign. And despite environmentally-friendly cabinet members, clean coal got 3.4 billion dollars in the US 2009 stimulus bill under the line item - Fossil Energy and Carbon Capture. All that money despite the fact that there is no electricity made through clean coal technology and right now that technology doesn't even exist.

A lot of people don't realize that clean coal is a concept not a fact. The sequestration or hiding of carbon in abandoned oil wells is a great idea to relax folks worried about the single greatest producer of greenhouses gases in industrial countries. But the one zero-emission coal test facility operated by the DOE was abandoned after many years for lack of productivity after over 1 billion dollars were spent.

The clean coal concept is very important to the coal industry but it is also very important to countries like the US and China that have very high energy needs and lots of cheap coal. If you could set up a smoke screen that clean coal is coming, you could justify building more coal plants now and promise to retrofit them later when the technology for clean coal is invented and tested. This gives first world nations decades to continue to pollute, something climate change envrionmentalists say we don't have.

Some of this research money in the stimulus bill will go into coal gassification, a method of producing gasoline developed by the Nazis during World War II when they were converting coal into much needed gasoline for their war effort. Billions of gallons of gasoline could be produced from US coal reserves, a process seriously considered during the first oil crisis of the mid 1970's. There are still 2 remaining problems with that technology. It is an extremely inefficient way of making gasoline therefore it would make it very expensive and this technology is a terrible greenhouse gas polluter.

All this points away from coal and towards the refinement of all renewables. Why was the 3 billion+ placed in the new stimulus budget? Obviously the new administration doesn't think this country's energy policy can survive without coal.

Oil Prices Down, Gas Prices Up

Bill Georgevich reporting

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Last year on The Renewable Minute we asked, How can oil prices plummet after being so high? The answer: SPECULATION, and the speculators were fleeing the market. Now gas prices are creeping up, even as oil prices continue to fall. How? Oil refineries are reducing the supply to increase demand and pump up the price. Guess Exxon-Mobile doesn’t want a world recession to interfere with windfall profits for 2009.

And speaking of deja vu from late 2008: Have you noticed those Exxon ads are starting to show up everywhere as they did when gas was $4 a gallon? About 2 weeks before gas prices started creeping up again, Exxon was back in my Yahoo inbox, this time with a kinder, gentler message about renewable energy research, a politically more correct position in line with the Obama-Chu-Al Gore cultural creatives who currently rule the roost.

Our next program will be dedicated to the unveiling of the renewable energy provisions Obama's Stimulus Package. We’ll be visiting the new government website Recovery.gov, which promises total transparency, to look into a curious 3+ billion dollar line item for "fossil fuel renewable energy research." Join us next time to find out what that means.

Chinese Electrics Beat the U.S.

Bill Georgevich reporting

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With Chevrolet’s decision to power their hybrid electric car with batteries made in China, the globe’s greatest polluter may also become the world leader in zero-emission cars. At the 2009 Detroit car expo China shocked the auto industry presenting 3 different working models of electric cars that use the same battery as the Chevy Volt, which doesn’t arrive until 2010 or later.

We are not kidding. Not only does China have 3 working models that will be sold in the mainland this year, but their batteries really are going to be used by GM despite the fact that Detroit vowed that they were going to invent their own battery,

The story gets even stranger when you look at why China is building electrics. Not to save the environment and not to fight pollution although these cars will help with both. China simply has too much coal and imports most of it’s oil. So they can make a lot cheap electricity building more and more dirty coal-fired plants and feed their new middle class, hungry for transportation, by selling them electric cars.

Add that to the fact that the Chinese, as a culture, famous for their low standards of safety, will build those electrics to crash safety standards far below those established for the US. Which is why in the short term we will not see the Chinese electric cars in the US even though they will be available far ahead anything GM, Chrysler or Ford can actually put on a car lot for sale.