"Green electricity finds few customers in Mass." January 28, 2012|By David Abel
Five years after NStar became the first Massachusetts utility to allow customers to buy electricity supplied by a wind farm, its Green program has failed to catch on. Less than 1 percent of the company’s nearly 900,000 customers have enrolled.
It is the same everywhere such programs have been launched, going back 10 years to California.
But why, you say? Why do Massachusetts citizens hate the environment and want to kill our world?
The dismal response resembles lackluster participation in similar renewable energy programs offered by other utilities, worrying state officials as they push toward a goal of generating 20 percent of electricity from renewable energy by 2020.
The NStar program has faltered because of the recession and falling fossil fuel prices, which resulted in a greater surcharge for wind energy.
Oh, IT COSTS MORE!!!
Related: Solar Stimuloot Went to Goldman Sachs
Why is it tax money always seems to make its way to WALL STREET?
Environmental activists are frustrated and question whether utilities have done enough to publicize the programs.
Ed Loechler, an activist from Brookline, knows first-hand the challenge of trying to persuade people to put their money where their environmental ideals might be.
For several years, the Boston University biology professor has been going door to door in his neighborhood to plug the NStar program. When a door opened one night last week, he urged a young man to sign up. “This is the single, simplest way you could cut a lot of carbon dioxide from your household,’’ Loechler said.
I've got a better idea: That breathing you are doing as you hustle house-to-house, you know, that carbon dioxide you are spewing, stop it.
But after he explained that enrolling would add between 15 percent and 30 percent to his neighbor’s electric bill, the 22-year-old thanked him for promoting what sounded like a good idea. “But it’s probably too much,’’ the man said.
I can't afford that, but I know some Wall Street bankers and presidential candidates that probably could.
Related: Wealthy Responsible For Global Warming
Yeah, WE ALL NOW THAT!
It was a response Loechler, who moonlights as coordinator of Climate Action Brookline, has heard over and over again. “I’m sympathetic to people who don’t want to spend money,’’ he said, “but it can be discouraging.’’
Then take my suggestion and stop (although I do know how he feels as I pound this keyboard day after day after day).
When NStar announced the program in 2007, it launched a public relations campaign that included billboards, advertisements on their trucks and website, bill inserts, and significant media attention.
I am sooooooooooooooooo tired of those!
Utility executives explained how their customers would be able to buy half or all their power from wind farms in Maine and upstate New York, for up to 7 percent more than they would pay for regular service that came from such energy sources as coal and natural gas.
Why don't you just take my wallet?
Generating electricity from such fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which scientists say contributes to global warming....
Uh-huh.
Related: NASA Satellite Shows That Global Temperatures Continue Their Plunge Into Record Cold
You smell something, readers?
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You are going to be made to $niff it, Bay-Stater!
"NStar, Northeast Utilities deal would aid consumers, Cape Wind; NStar, Northeast accept Mass. terms for OK of merger; Final approval could assure financing of offshore project" by Erin Ailworth | Globe Staff, February 15, 2012
Massachusetts officials yesterday announced a breakthrough in a nearly yearlong negotiation with NStar and Northeast Utilities, agreeing to let the two utilities merge in exchange for cutting more than $200 million from consumers’ bills and providing critical backing for the offshore Cape Wind project.
I think that SECOND PART had WAY MORE TO DO WITH IT than the CONSUMER COSTS.
And just wait until you read the FINE PRINT!
Under terms of the deal, the newly combined company agreed to freeze electric and gas delivery charges for its Massachusetts customers for four years, saving those ratepayers an estimated $196 million, state officials said, and providing customers with a one-time rebate of $21 million - about $12 to $15 for the average ratepayer.
The deal still needs formal approval from Massachusetts regulators. Connecticut regulators’ approval is also needed.
The deal is a major coup for Governor Deval Patrick, who had insisted the merger should promote cleaner sources of energy, and for Attorney General Martha Coakley, who said it should result in cost savings and efficiencies that would benefit ratepayers.
“What we have here today is a landmark agreement for customers. It will protect ratepayers from rate increases now and into the future, and it passes the savings from the merger directly back to the customer,’’ Patrick said at a news conference yesterday. “It also makes NStar a bigger participant in the Commonwealth’s green energy generation revolution underway right now.’’
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Because those local utilities would be acquired by a new company, the proposed merger requires approval by Massachusetts regulators, giving Patrick tremendous leverage. And from the start the administration used that leverage to pressure the companies to negotiate on their rates, and buy power from Cape Wind, providing a major boost to one of the governor’s top priorities: clean energy.
So HOW MUCH MORE is this going to COST US?
NStar had balked at the high price of Cape Wind’s power, which at 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour in its first year is more than double the price of conventional energy sources. The two sides negotiated for months until the electric companies conceded....
Meanwhile Cape Wind opponents were upset that the utilities gave in to “arm-twisting’’ by the Patrick administration, said Audra Parker, president of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound....
“It’s outrageous that the state has forced NStar to purchase overpriced power from Cape Wind when there is readily available green energy at a fraction of the price,’’ Parker said....
All so a POLITICAL AGENDA (with corresponding tax loot going to favored friends, etc) could be SERVED!
The utilities also promised to ensure that their merger would not affect the quality of service they now provide to customers, and that any cuts to the combined utility’s workforce would not disproportionately affect Massachusetts. Electric workers unions hailed that pledge, but questioned how well the state will be able to enforce it.
Yeah, it's a GREAT DEAL unless you are going to LOSE YOUR JOB!! Pretty hard to PAY the ENERGY BILL then, isn't it? Lucky if you STAY OUT of FRAUDULENT FORECLOSURE as you are SITTING in the DARK!!
The one major sticking point left is the state of Connecticut, which has been conducting its own review of the merger out of concern that any conditions imposed by Massachusetts would adversely affect its consumers....
How ironic that I am begging Connecticut to put a stop this.
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Globe cutting more wind:
"Cape Wind buoyed as SJC allows utility deal" by Carolyn Y. Johnson and John R. Ellement | Globe Staff, December 28, 2011
The state’s highest court gave the green light yesterday to a controversial offshore wind farm’s agreement to sell half its energy to a utility, and the president of the Cape Wind project said he hoped construction could begin in about a year.
“Today is a really big day for Cape Wind, but it’s an even bigger day for clean energy in Massachusetts,’’ said Jim Gordon, whose company plans to build 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound. “This moves the project forward.’’
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision to uphold a power-purchase deal between Cape Wind and National Grid assures a market for Cape Wind’s power for its first 15 years of operation.
Does that sound like the free market capitalism we are told this country is allegedly based upon?
That purchase deal had been approved by the state Department of Public Utilities in November 2010, but was challenged by four groups, including the nonprofit Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. Among the contentions: that the utility improperly had limited its search for renewable energy sources within Massachusetts and that the deal was neither cost-effective nor in the public interest....
That DOESN'T MATTER as long as it $ERVES a CERTAIN AGENDA!!!
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Related: Cape Wind Clean Up
Also see: Cape Wind backers blew right by cost
Related: Energy deal's a coup, but just a step
A coup for who?
NStar deal, rise of Cape Wind will boost state's economy
General rule: if agenda-pushing paper is for it, you best be agin it!
Federal farts are always bigger:
"Vast new wind farm site proposed off Martha’s Vineyard; 14 miles off Martha’s Vineyard; could yield 10 times the power of Cape Wind" by David Abel | Globe Staff, February 03, 2012
Federal officials designated a large swath of ocean about 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard yesterday as the potential site for a massive wind farm that would dwarf Cape Wind, the long-stalled project that is planned for Nantucket Sound.
After two years of meetings with local and state officials, environmental groups, and others, including local tribes, officials at the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said they are launching an environmental assessment of about 1,300 square miles that could give rise to hundreds of soaring wind turbines within several years.
They said the area could produce as much as 4,000 megawatts, 10 times as much electricity as the proposed Cape Wind project, which is slated to sprawl over 25 square miles. That is enough, they said, to power up to 70 percent of homes in Massachusetts.
Well, I know some places where the wind never stops blowing.
Beaudreau said meetings since late 2009 resulted in the agency’s decision to reduce the size of the original proposed area by 50 percent. He said the meetings also helped air concerns about the effects of the turbines on wildlife such as migrating whales and birds, and other factors, such as the routes fishermen use to trawl for scallops and other fish.
“Our efforts to identify promising wind energy areas . . . and address conflicts will pay enormous dividends in the future,’’ he said. “The heavy lifting by the task force to get us to today will minimize the conflicts that can threaten to derail or delay projects like these.’’
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And a gasser from halfway around the planet:
"UN panel urges ‘green’ revolution" January 31, 2012|By John Heilprin
GENEVA - A high-profile UN panel headed by the presidents of Finland and South Africa hopes to spark an “ever-green’’ energy revolution later this year in Brazil using a general roadmap it presented yesterday on how world leaders could wean the world off fossil fuels.
Then why are we fighting wars costing us trillions to control the stuff?
I'm not knocking clean energy, readers. I'm knocking the mouthpiece media that serves the same interests that will benefit from this particular application. I've long ago given up on world leaders and their institutions as problem solvers. I mean, they have done such a great job all these years, right?
Its report links the world body’s goals of reducing poverty and inequality to promoting the use of wind, solar, and other renewable sources of energy to run the economies of nations rich and poor.
To do that, the panel urges that nations fully integrate the social and environmental costs of their commerce into the prices and measures of their economic goods and services.
I'm sorry, readers. I just reached for my wallet.
They also call for the creation of a global education fund, improvements in human rights, and more programs to empower women - all with the aim of overhauling economies.
Ever notice the globalist plan is one long gasser?
The report says governments and international organizations “should work to create a new green revolution - an ‘ever-green revolution’ for the 21st century’’ by spending more on agricultural research, protecting imperiled plant and animal species, conserving land and water, and fighting pollution.
It also encourages the creation of regional oceans and coastal management bodies that protect world fisheries supplying 170 million jobs and daily protein for about one in five people on the planet.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN’s secretary-general, created the high-level, 22-member panel in August 2010 to focus on one of his top priorities by providing the UN Conference on Sustainable Development with a road map for its meeting in June at Rio de Janeiro. The panel is headed by Presidents Tarja Halonen of Finland and Jacob Zuma of South Africa. Other panel members include top officials from the United States, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and some former world leaders.
The conference known as Rio+20 is a follow-up to the landmark 1992 Earth Summit in Rio that galvanized the global environmental movement.
It was at that gathering two decades ago that the world first agreed to accept voluntary controls on greenhouse gases. National leaders signed on to a treaty committing them to work “to protect the climate system for present and future generations.’’
Five years after Rio, negotiators added the Kyoto Protocol to the treaty. The Kyoto pact ordered cuts in emissions of heat-trapping cuts by 37 industrialized nations, but the United States rejected it. Subsequent climate summits have so far failed to craft a successor to Kyoto, which expires at the end of 2012.
Scientists have produced persuasive evidence that the carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases that industry, transport, and farming pour into the atmosphere are trapping heat and raising global temperatures.
Tell it to Europe!
And if the mouthpiece media and its scientists are lying about the weather.... what wouldn't they lie about?!!!!
The panel’s report, presented at an African Union meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is billed as a new blueprint for sustainable development and “low-carbon prosperity,’’ with 56 recommendations to help get those priorities mainstreamed into nations’ economic policies.
Jim Leape, director-general of Swiss-based WWF International, one of the world’s largest conservation groups, said the recommendations are “the highest-level political signal yet of greater readiness’’ by world leaders to transition away from fossil fuels.
But in a statement the group also criticized the UN report because it “fails to suggest any concrete, time-bound commitments for progress, leaving policies open to governments to implement as they saw fit.’’
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Related: Power plants are main global warming culprits, EPA says
Yeah, that worldwide war machine of the empire is exempt.
Air pollution tied to stroke risk
Much more of a risk then "global warming."
"Severe frost paralyzes Danube shipping" by Associated Press | February 09, 2012
SOFIA, Bulgaria - At least four Balkan nations suspended shipping on the Danube River because of severe frost and the vast amount of ice blocking the heavily traveled waterway.
Related: Snowbound in Serbia
Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, and Serbia made the decision because up to 90 percent of the river’s surface is covered with floating ice, authorities said yesterday.
The conditions are making it extremely difficult to traverse Europe’s main commercial waterway, which winds 1,777 miles from Germany and serves as the natural border between Bulgaria and Romania.
Serbian emergency officials have said the country’s army will use explosives to break up ice on the Danube and Ibar rivers to try to prevent flooding.
The Sava and the Danube are partially frozen, with large chunks of ice floating down the two rivers.
In some parts, ice on the Danube is nearly 6 inches thick, but so far it has not jeopardized the work of Serbia’s biggest Djerdap hydropower plant, near the Romanian border, officials said.
Serbia also banned any shipping along the Sava and Tisa rivers. An official, Milos Milovanovic, said “the entire Sava river is blocked with ice, even around Belgrade.
“We will make maximum effort in the next 10 days or so to break the ice,’’ he said.
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"Girl rescued from avalanche that killed 9 relatives" Associated Press, February 13, 2012
RESTELICA, Kosovo - Rescuers pulled a 5-year-old girl alive from the rubble of a house flattened by a massive avalanche that killed both her parents and at least seven of her relatives in a remote mountain village in southern Kosovo....
Rescuers cheered and pumped their fists in the air late Saturday as the girl was pulled out. A video on Klan Kosova TV showed rescuers covering the girl with blankets, before she was taken to a hospital....
Amid subfreezing temperatures yesterday, local villagers used shovels to dig deep into the snow-covered rubble...
The cold snap in Europe, which began late January, has killed hundreds of people - most of them homeless. Heavy snow has been blanketing the Balkans for more than two weeks....
In neighboring Montenegro, where the government introduced a state of emergency because of the deep freeze, special police forces yesterday managed to reach about 50 train passengers stranded for two days after tracks were blocked by avalanches....
Police in Bosnia said the roof of a sports center in downtown Sarajevo used for ice skating events in the 1984 Winter Olympics collapsed under the weight of snow....
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"Deep freeze toll at 650 in Eastern Europe" by Associated Press | February 16, 2012
BUCHAREST, Romania - More than 650 people have died during a record-breaking cold snap in Eastern Europe, authorities said yesterday, as officials in the Czech Republic attributed two massive car crashes to blinding snow.
Since the end of January, the region has been pummeled by the deep freeze, which has brought the heaviest blizzards in recent memory. Thousands have been trapped in freezing homes and in villages by walls of snow and unpassable roads, and officials have struggled to reach out to the vulnerable with emergency food airlifts.
Authorities in Russia and Ukraine alone reported yesterday that more than 300 people have died in the bitter cold. In Poland, 107 have died.
Seven people have died in Romania in the past 24 hours, bringing the total there to 86 deaths. In Lithuania, there have been 23 deaths.
Romanian farmers - faced with up to 15 feet of snow - are concerned about their sheep, goats, horses, and cows. One farmer said he dug his pigs out of the snow and brought them into his home.
The animals are always forgotten during natural disasters -- except by the people that have them.
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Also see: Serbia warns of power system failure
Emergency food sent to Balkans
