Oregon town uses Geothermal Energy to stay warm
By Jeff Barnard
AP
Mar 20, 2010
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. – When snow falls on this downtown of brick buildings and glass storefronts in southern Oregon, it piles up everywhere but the sidewalks. It's the first sign that this timber and ranching town is like few others.
A combination of hot rocks and water like those that created Yellowstone's geysers have been tapped by the city to keep the sidewalks toasty since the early 1990s. They also heat downtown buildings, kettles at a brewhouse, and greenhouses and keep the lights on at a college campus.
Geothermal wells in this town of 20,000 mark one of the nation's most ambitious uses of a green energy resource with a tiny carbon footprint, and could serve as a model for a still-fledgling industry that is gaining steam with $338 million in stimulus funds and more than 100 projects nationwide.
"We didn't know it was green. It just made sense," said City Manager Jeff Ball.
Geothermal energy is unknown in much of the country but accounts for 0.5 percent of the nation's energy production.
It can be seen on a snowy day in a handful of Western towns like Klamath Falls. That's because hot rock is closer to the surface here, and comes with the water needed to bring the energy to the surface. Northern California is home to the world's largest geothermal power complex. The Geysers, 75 miles north of San Francisco, produces enough electricity for 750,000 homes.
With more than 600 geothermal wells heating houses, schools and a hospital as well as turning the turbine on a small power plant, Klamath Falls shows what everyday life could be if stimulus grants and venture capitalists turn geothermal energy from a Western curiosity to a game-changing energy resource.
Until now, geothermal energy has been limited by having to find the three essentials ingredients occurring together in one place naturally: hot rock relatively close to the surface, water, and cracks in the rock that serve as a reservoir.
Those limitations go away if engineers can tame a technology known as EGS, for Enhanced Geothermal Systems.
A 2007 Massachusetts Institute of Technology report estimates that EGS, with support, could be producing 100 gigawatts of electricity — equivalent to 1,000 coal-fired or nuclear power plants — by 2050, and has the potential to generate a large fraction of the nation's energy needs for centuries to come.
"If we are going to try to achieve a transformational change in this country, geothermal should be part of that recipe," said Jefferson Tester, chairman of the committee that produced the report and professor of sustainable energy at Cornell University. "It's not treated that way. It's typically forgotten."
One form of EGS involves drilling thousands of feet down to reach hot rock, pumping water down to fracture the rock to create reservoirs, then sending down water that will come back up another well as hot water or steam that can spin a turbine to generate electricity.
The system can be dropped in practically anywhere that hot rocks are close enough to the surface to make drilling economical.
The major problem with EGS is the potential to create earthquakes.
Pumping water into the ground to open numerous tiny fractures in the rock for a reservoir makes the earth move — what scientists call induced seismicity. Earthquakes stopped an EGS project in the middle of Basel, Switzerland, last year, and an international protocol has been developed for monitoring and mitigating earthquake problems.
As long as the wells are not close to major earthquake faults, "it is not damaging, but very upsetting to the community that lives literally on top of it," said Ernie Majer, a seismologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, and lead author on the protocol.
Federal funding for geothermal started during the 1970s Arab oil embargo, waned when oil prices subsided, and essentially stopped when Texas oilman George W. Bush entered the White House, Majer said.
With interest growing in energy with a tiny carbon footprint, the Obama administration revived support for geothermal energy. Besides handing out more than $40 million a year from the Department of Energy, it is funding 123 demonstration projects in 38 states with stimulus funds. Projects include home heat pumps, power plants, drilling, rock fracturing, exploration and underground mapping.
"The goal of the department is to try to validate that a source of energy could be produced at an adequate price," said Jacques Beaudry-Losique, deputy assistant secretary for renewable energy. He expects results in two to three years.
The centerpiece is $25 million to AltaRock Energy, Inc., of Seattle and Sausalito, Calif., to demonstrate EGS can produce electricity economically and without producing earthquakes just outside the Newberry Craters National Monument in central Oregon. Investors, Google among them, put in $60 million.
Earthquake concerns were mounting around AltaRock's EGS work at The Geysers when they shut it down over drilling problems, before getting to the point of trying to fracture rocks, AltaRock CEO Don O'Shei said. They are developing a system to monitor quakes at Newberry.
"If EGS becomes economical, it will really be a game-changer," O'Shei said. "Even though it is relatively high risk in terms of the money to develop that kind of technology under the ground ($6 million to $20 million for a well that could prove worthless), it is very important."
People in Klamath Falls don't have to be convinced.
IFA Nurseries, Inc., wouldn't have come to Klamath Falls if there wasn't geothermal energy. The geothermal heat cut greenhouse heating costs by a third compared to natural gas, said Jacqueline Friedman, nursery manager for IFA Nurseries.
The city is stepping beyond heat to electricity, building a geothermal generator like the one at Oregon Institute of Technology with the help of an $816,000 stimulus grant.
Stepping gingerly from the icy street to the dry sidewalk on his way to a bakery for a cinnamon roll, Klamath County Museum Manager said visitors are often curious about the geothermal energy in town, which also heats the museum.
"I've always said the city should adopt a slogan, `City of Warm Sidewalks,'" he joked. "But I've been told we'll get every hobo in America who will be drifting into town."
Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100320/ap_on_bi_ge/us_geothermal_town
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Monday, March 22, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Sham Recovery
by Robert Reich
Former Secretary of Labor
Professor at Berkeley
Huffington Post
March 12, 2010
Are we finally in a recovery? Who's "we," kemosabe? Big global companies, Wall Street, and high-income Americans who hold their savings in financial instruments are clearly doing better. As to the rest of us -- small businesses along Main Streets, and middle and lower-income Americans -- forget it.
Business cheerleaders naturally want to emphasize the positive. They assume the economy runs on optimism and that if average consumers think the economy is getting better, they'll empty their wallets more readily and -- presto! -- the economy will get better. The cheerleaders fail to understand that regardless of how people feel, they won't spend if they don't have the money.
The US economy grew at a 5.9 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2009. That sounds good until you realize GDP figures are badly distorted by structural changes in the economy. For example, part of the increase is due to rising health care costs. When WellPoint ratchets up premiums, that enlarges the GDP. But you'd have to be out of your mind to consider this evidence of a recovery.
Part of the perceived growth in GDP is due to rising government expenditures. But this is smoke and mirrors. The stimulus is reaching its peak and will be smaller in months to come. And a bigger federal debt eventually has to be repaid.
So when you hear some economists say the current recovery is following the traditional path, don't believe a word. The path itself is being used to construct the GDP data.
Look more closely and the only ones doing better are the people and private-sector institutions at the top. Many of America's biggest companies are sitting on huge amounts of cash right now, but that says nothing about the health of the U.S. economy. Companies in the Standard&Poor 500 stock index had sales of $2.18 trillion in the fourth quarter, up from $2.02 trillion last year, and their earnings tripled. Why? Mainly because they're global, and selling into fast-growing markets in places like India, China, and Brazil.
America's biggest companies are also showing fat profits and productivity gains because they continue to slash payrolls and cut expenditures. Alcoa, for example, had $1.5 billion in cash at the end of last year, double what it had on hand at the end of 2008. Sounds terrific until you realize how it did it. By cutting 28,000 jobs -- 32 percent of workforce -- and slashed capital expenditures 43 percent.
Firms in S&P 500 are now holding a whopping $932 billion in cash and short-term investments. And they can borrow money cheaply. Corporate bond sales are brisk. So far in 2010, big U.S. corporations have issued $195.2 billion of debt, excluding government-guaranteed bonds. Does this spell a recovery? It all depends on what the big companies are doing with all this cash. In fact, they're doing two things that don't help at all.
First, they're buying other companies. (Walgreen last month spent $618 million for New York drugstore chain Duane Reade; Bank of New York Mellon, $2.3 billion for PNC Financial Services; Monster, $225 million for jobs.com; Diamond Foods, $615 million for Kettle Foods.) This buying doesn't create new jobs. One of the first things companies do when they buy other companies is fire lots of people who are considered "redundant." That's where the so-called merger efficiencies and synergies come from, after all.
The second thing big companies are doing with all their cash is buying back their own stock, in order to boost their share prices. There were 62 such share buy-backs in February, valued at $40.1 billion. We're witnessing the biggest share buyback spree since Sept 2008. The major beneficiaries are current shareholders, including top executives, whose pay is linked to share prices. The buy-backs do absolutely nothing for most Americans.
(None of this, by the way, is stopping supply-side fanatics from arguing government needs to cut taxes on big corporations in order to spur the recovery. Their argument is absurd on its face. Big companies don't know what to do with all their cash they have as it is. They aren't investing it in new plant and equipment and new jobs. So why should the government cut their taxes and enlarge their cash hoards even more?)
The picture on Main Street is quite the opposite. Small businesses aren't selling much because they have to rely on American -- rather than foreign -- consumers, and Americans still aren't buying much.
Small businesses are also finding it difficult to get credit. In the credit survey conducted in February by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, only 34 percent of small businesses reported normal and adequate access to credit. Not incidentally, the NFIB's "Small Business Optimism Index" fell 1.3 points last month, just about where it's been since April.
That's a problem for most Americans. Small businesses are where the jobs are. In fact, small businesses are responsible for almost all job growth in a typical recovery. So if small businesses are hurting, we're not going to see much job growth any time soon.
The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that American consumers are shedding their debts like mad. Total US household debt, including mortgages and credit card balances, fell 1.7 percent last year - the first drop since the government began recording consumer debt in 1945. Much of the debt-shedding has been through default -- consumers simply not repaying and walking away from homes and big-ticket purchases.
This is hardly good news. But here's the Wall Street Journal's take on it: "the defaults are leaving many people with more cash to spend and save, jump-starting the financial rehabilitiation" of the economy.
Baloney. As of end of 2009, debt averaged $43, 874 per American, or about 122 percent of annual disposable income. Most economic analysts think a sustainable debt load is around 100 percent of disposable income -- assuming a normal level of employment and normal access to credit. But unemployment is still sky-high and it's becoming harder for most people to get new mortgages and credit cards. And with housing prices still in the doldrums, they can't refinance their homes or take out new loans on them. The days of homes as ATMs are over.
Some cheerleaders say rising stock prices make consumers feel wealthier and therefore readier to spend. But to the extent most Americans have any assets at all their net worth is mostly in their homes, and those homes are still worth less than they were in 2007. The "wealth effect" is relevant mainly to the richest 10 percent of Americans, most of whose net worth is in stocks and bonds. The top 10 percent accounted for about half of total national income in 2007. But they were only about 40 percent of total spending, and a sustainable recovery can't be based on the top ten percent.
Add to all this the joblessness or fear of it that continues to haunt a large portion of the American population. Add in the trauma of what most of us have been through over the past year and a half. Consider also the extra need to save as tens of millions of boomers see retirement on the horizon. Bottom line: Thrifty consumers are doing the right and sensible thing by holding back from the malls.
They saved a little over 4 percent of their disposable income in fourth quarter of 2009. In the months or years ahead they may save more.
Right and sensible for each household but a disaster for the economy as a whole.
American consumers accounted for 70 percent of the total demand for goods and services in the American economy before the Great Recession, and a sizable chunk of world demand.
So what happens when the stimulus is over and the Fed begins to tighten again? Where will demand come from to get Main Street back, create jobs, raise middle class wages? Not from big businesses. Certainly not from Wall Street. Not from exports. Not from government.
So, where? That question is the big unknown hanging over the U.S. economy. Until there's an answer, an economic "recovery" for anyone other than big corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy is a mirage.
Cross-posted from RobertReich.org
Source:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-sham-recovery_b_497439.html
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Saturday, March 13, 2010
We're All in This Together
by Tony Schwartz
President of The Energy Project
Huffington Post
March 12, 2010
Is it just me, or are you feeling more anxious and unnerved than usual?
I can't remember living through a period of such uncertainty in my lifetime. I'm not talking so much about the uncertainties in my own life -- there are always plenty of those -- but about everything that's going on in the world around us.
I've been around a long time now, so I've lived through the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, assassinations, gas shortages, riots, multiple recessions, George W. Bush, 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This moment in history feels different.
Obviously, the economy has a lot to do with it. Unemployment is nearly 10 percent. Even people who have jobs are worried about what the future looks like. So are people like me, who run small businesses. I don't know anyone who hasn't felt the effects of the recession we're struggling through. I don't know anyone who feels any sense of confidence about when it's going to turn around.
The financial prognosticator I've followed most closely for the past several years is Harry Dent Jr. I met him in October, 2007 when we were both giving keynotes at the same conference, and we ended up having dinner. I was already worrying about the economy, which was flying at the time.
Dent told me it was all going to collapse in the next year. His reasoning made sense to me. I went home and sold all my stocks.
Everything he said came true. Now he says that we're about to enter a second and much more severe downturn -- a true depression -- that will begin by this fall. The Dow, he says, will collapse.
Housing prices will continue to drop, and it will be ugly for a long time. Several of the smartest people I know agree with him.
I dearly hope he's wrong. I fear he's not.
It saddens me that we seem to have learned so little from the financial meltdown. It astonishes me that CEOs and senior executives of large companies don't see that paying themselves millions of dollars while laying off thousands of employees isn't just wrong, it's also tone-deaf.
But herein lies the opportunity. Change doesn't occur in the absence of pain. It's in times of uncertainty and despair that real transformation tends to occur.
I'm looking for the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company who steps up and says, "I'm going to take a bonus-free salary this year of $200,000 or $300,000 or even $500,000, and use the extra $5 million or $10 million I'd otherwise be paid to save 100 to 200 jobs in this company."
I'm hoping for a dawning awareness that we can't survive in a world any longer where the primary preoccupation of the best people in business -- and especially in banks -- is how to enrich themselves.
As the brilliant Michael Lewis has written: "It's more than a little nuts for a man who has a billion dollars to devote his life to making another billion, but that's what some of our most exalted citizens do, over and over again."
The time has come for the next evolutionary leap. It depends on the recognition -- beginning with a courageous few at the top of the food chain -- that we're all in this together.
Source:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-schwartz/were-all-in-this-together_b_496908.html
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Monday, March 08, 2010
World's Largest Dead Zone Suffocating Sea
Though a natural phenomenon at a smaller scale, these blooms have recently mushroomed at an alarming rate, fed by nutrients such as phosphorous and nitrogen from agricultural fertilizers and sewage. When it rains, farm fertilizers are washed into the sea. Sewage-treatment facilities also discharge waste into the Baltic ecosystem.
Overfishing Adding to Algal Blooms
Overfishing of Baltic cod has greatly intensified the problem, Westman said. Cod eat sprats, a small, herring-like species that eat microscopic marine creatures called zooplankton that in turn eat the algae.
This vicious cycle gets worse as the spreading dead zones engulf the cod’s deep-water breeding grounds, he added.
The algal blooms, which can be toxic to animals and human swimmers, leave behind an ugly layer of green scum that fouls tourist beaches and starves seaweeds of light.
"Other species have taken the place [of seaweed], which don’t provide as good habitats for fish," especially juveniles, Westman said. "In the past couple of years common fishes like pike and perch have had virtually no reproduction in the inner part of the archipelago."
This vicious circle gets worse as the spreading dead zones engulf the cod’s breeding grounds.
Too Late to Save the Baltic Sea?
While the speakers all agree "it’s time for action," they don’t sound optimistic.
"Experience tells us such a system is almost impossible to predict," Nielsen said.
"Sea of Laws"
For his part, WWF’s Westman hopes the new EU strategy will at least turn the Baltic into "a kind of test area for enforcing and implementing the directives." For instance, the plan calls for phasing out phosphates in laundry and kitchen detergents, and putting in place more sustainable fishing regulations.
Even so, "There are no quick fixes, unfortunately," Westman concludes, reaching for his binoculars.
Seems it’s back to the eagles for now.
Source:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100305-baltic-sea-algae-dead-zones-water/
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Thursday, March 04, 2010
Winter in America: Democracy Gone Rogue
by: Henry A. Giroux,
t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
March 4, 2010
The absolute ... spells doom to everyone when it is introduced into the political realm.- Hannah Arendt [1]
Democracy in the United States is experiencing both a crisis of meaning and a legitimation crisis. As the promise of an aspiring democracy is sacrificed more and more to corporate and military interests, democratic spheres have largely been commercialized and democratic practices have been reduced to market relations, stripped of their worth and subject to the narrow logics of commodification and profit making. Empowerment has little to do with providing people with the knowledge, skills, and power to shape the forces and institutions that bear down on their lives and is now largely defined as under the rubric of being a savvy consumer. When not equated with the free market capitalism, democracy is reduced to the empty rituals of elections largely shaped by corporate money and indifferent to relations of power that make a mockery out of equality, democratic participation and collective deliberation.