Sign of the Times

When a famous coal museum wanted to save some money on its electricity bill, it turned to the obvious power source. Yes, Wales’ Big Pit National Coal Mining Museum has installed 200 solar panels on its roof.     Slate

New-style Cobra-headed streetlights now shine in Millers Park. The glaring, buzzing Mercury-vapor lights are gone.

Woo hoo!

The first of dozens of shipments of huge wind turbine parts from the Mart Dock to a wind farm being built in mid-Michigan begins Monday at 9 a.m.

Sand Products Corp. officials said that the first special vehicles carrying wind turbine blades and tower sections will begin to make their way from the downtown Muskegon commercial dock to the Beebe Community Wind Farm near Ithaca between Mount Pleasant and Lansing.     MLive

Can wind farms also be built up north?

The Interior Department granted Shell permission on Thursday to begin preparatory work on its first well in the Arctic Ocean, moving the company a critical step forward on its tortuous quest to drill for oil off the coast of Alaska.

Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, , said that Shell could conduct the initial steps in drilling in the Chukchi Sea, putting down as much as 1,400 feet of well casing to support the required blowout preventer, a device meant to shut down a runaway well.     NYT

Michigan ranked fourth for the number of new clean energy jobs announced during the second quarter, according to Environmental Entrepreneurs, a business group that promotes environmental policy.

Michigan had nine announced projects during the quarter totaling an anticipated 1,319 jobs, trailing only California, New York and Florida for total number of anticipated new clean energy jobs.

“Michigan is becoming an electric vehicles hub, with companies like GE, A123 Systems, and others bringing battery and other electric vehicle component manufacturing to the state,” the report read.

The report covers only job announcements and not actual job creation figures.      The Detroit News

Lands under consideration for oil and gas leasing include acreage in the following counties:

ALLEGAN, ARENAC, BARRY, BAY, EMMET, GRAND TRAVERSE, IONIA, IOSCO, KALKASKA, KENT, LAKE, MANISTEE, MIDLAND, MONTMORENCY, OAKLAND, OGEMAW, OSCODA, OTTAWA, PRESQUE ISLE, SAGINAW, TUSCOLA, AND WEXFORD.

On October 24, 2012, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) will offer, at an oral-bid public auction, approximately 196,000 acres of state-owned oil and gas lease rights in those Michigan counties indicated herein. More detailed information regarding location of the nominated parcels can be found at www.michigan.gov/dnr/1,1607,7-153-10371_14793-30912–,00.html or by calling 517-373-7663.
             michigan.gov

The disagreements over wind turbine farms in Michigan go far beyond aesthetics and have heightened in intensity to go beyond polite conversations. Wind power issues have led to showdowns in elections, public relations battles waged in rural communities and face-offs at local government meetings.      Detroit News

Issues tend to be sight and sound. The giant structures dominate the landscape, and several people object to the noise they make.

Are there Michigan communities that embrace wind power as future clean energy?

Dustin Denkins has fueled his interest in renewable energy into a successful company that makes portable generators. Except he doesn’t use fuel. In 2010, Denkins created Suburb Solar, Inc., which he operates out of his solar-powered, off-the-grid home in Cooks, a small town near Manistique.       MLive

Some questions that touch on issues I often blog about:

• Is this a good example of continuing Michigan design and manufacturing prowess?
• Is this indeed a viable alternative energy application?
• Did the entrepreneur receive any available government funding or is this venture financed completely by private investment?

 Suburb Solar Web Site

This is not a posting about the possible dangers and potential negative consequences of fracking. That story has been in the news a lot, and I’ve posted the major concerns several times.

I’m writing today about an aspect of fracking that is reported much less frequently. The support of the U.S. Department of Energy that helped make fracking possible.

As T. Boone Pickens has pointed out, people have been using pressurized fluid to split open rocks underground since the 1940s. But it wasn’t until very recently that the U.S. natural gas industry, with support from the Energy Department, managed to refine their “fracking” techniques to drill into shale rock and extract natural gas and oil. Lots and lots of natural gas and oil.

In the past few years, the shale gas boom has upended the U.S. energy landscape. With large and small companies drilling wells around the country, cheap natural gas is now displacing coal as the nation’s top source of electricity. That, in turn, has helped contribute to a drop in U.S. carbon-dioxide output: According to the International Energy Agency, the United States has cut its emissions 7.7 percent since 2006, more than any other country or region in the world.       WaPo

My concern with this under reporting is that often government assistance like this is largely unseen and unnoticed by most Americans. Here is an important example of government support of a technology that has actually resulted in lower carbon emissions, less reliance on foreign oil as well as a significant drop in the price of natural gas.

Often credit for these benefits is given solely to private industry, while government is demonized for getting in the way of progress. In fact, it’s often government subsidizes that enable such private investment, especially when the risks are too great for private enterprise to bear.

For me, most of the current debate over private versus public investment misses the point. It’s often a partnership not just a battle. Let’s debate about the proper role of government investment, not try to eliminate it entirely.

In his new book Resilience, Andrew Zolli — the director of the global innovation network PopTech — uses the electrical grid as an example of a system that lacks just that. And in an increasingly interconnected world — financially, ecologically, politically — one in which small errors in one place can cascade into broader system failures, the ability to adapt, accommodate and bounce back is only going to become more important. From climate change to overpopulation to recessions, the threats facing the world are as unpredictable as they are varied — which is why we need to craft systems that are nimble, that can bend under stress rather than break. “If we cannot control the volatile tides of change, we can learn to build better boats,” writes Zolli. “We can design — and redesign — organizations, institutions, and systems to better absorb disruption, operate under a wilder variety of conditions, and shift more fluidly from one circumstance to the next.”         The Economist

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