Delaware: First to sign and the first to spin?

The little state of Delaware’s primary claim to fame for the last 222 years has been that it was the first of the original 13 states to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Today it wants to make history again by becoming the first state to get some of its electric energy from offshore wind turbines.

Delaware’s chances of pulling off that modern-day coup improved with Monday’s announcement that Princeton, NJ-based NRG Energy has acquired Bluewater Wind, the wind energy development company that plans to construct a wind farm of 60 or more turbines some 13 miles off the coast of Rehoboth Beach.

NRG Energy brings a new source of critically needed financial backing to the project which has been underfunded since Bluewater’s original owner, Babcock and Brown, ran into financial difficulty. See: Will NRG save Bluewater’s wind projects?

The project is estimated to cost about $1.2 billion with the first turbines possibly erected around 2014.

NRG says current Bluewater president Peter Mandelstam will continue to lead the company and work would continue on designing other projects along the coast, including one envisioned off the coast of Atlantic City, NJ. All of Bluewater’s existing development team will become NRG employees, working out of Bluewater’s office in Hoboken, NJ.

Bluewater said the next step for the Rehoboth project is to install a meteorological tower off the coast to collect data needed for further design. Installation will likely take place during the summer of 2010.

A new, tri-state wind-energy partnership

Yesterday, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, who is eager to claim bragging rights as the first state in the nation to develop an offshore wind farm, joined with Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland and Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia in announcing a tri-state partnership for the deployment of off shore wind energy in the Mid-Atlantic coastal region.

The three states signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) creating “a formal partnership that will build on the region’s significant offshore wind resources to generate clean, renewable energy and a sustainable market that will bring new economic opportunities.”

A press release announcing the MOU says that immediate tasks are ” to identify common transmission strategies for offshore wind energy deployment in the region, discuss ways to encourage sustainable market demand for this renewable resource and work collaboratively in pursuing federal energy policies which help advance offshore wind in the Mid-Atlantic area.”

The MOU also calls for “examination of ways to coordinate regional supply chain facilities to secure supply, deployment, and operations and maintenance functions to support offshore wind energy facilities.”

Collaboration on strategies to utilize academic institutions to create standards and opportunities for training and workforce development will also be developed, as will a joint lobbying approach with such federal entities such as the Minerals Management Service, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the Department of Defense.

Related:
NRG purchases Bluewater Wind
Bluewater Wind is now an NRG company
Rehoboth Wind Farm on Track Despite New Owner
Wind energy out to hook fishing industry support
Will TX beat NJ and NY to offshore wind energy?

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Radioactive news on Marcellus Shale water

“As New York gears up for a massive expansion of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, state officials have made a potentially troubling discovery about the wastewater created by the process: It’s radioactive. And they have yet to say how they’ll deal with it.”

So reports Pro Publica, the investigative journalism organization that, in a series of reports, has raised questions about the environmental impacts of the use of hydraulic fracturing to release and capture natural gas deposits in the Marcellus Shale.

The latest news comes from New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, “which analyzed 13 samples of wastewater brought thousands of feet to the surface from drilling
and found that they contain levels of radium-226, a derivative of uranium, as high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the environment and thousands of times the limit safe for people to drink.”

The findings could have a significant effect on the cost of drilling operations, which have been on hold in New York as the state develops specific regulations to address natural gas drilling.

If the findings are backed up with additional tests, Pro Publica predicts:

“The energy industry would likely face stiffer regulations and expenses, and have more trouble finding treatment plants to accept its waste — if any would at all. Companies would need to license their waste handlers and test their workers for radioactive exposure, and possibly ship waste across the country. And the state would have to sort out how its laws for radioactive waste might apply to drilling and how the waste could impact water supplies and the environment.”

In Pennsylvania, where no similar regulatory review has been imposed by state government, drilling operations are moving ahead in high gear.

“Susquehanna County is inundated with drilling, fracking, water trucks, residual waste trucks and more companies coming in,” County Commissioner MaryAnn Warren told the Centre Daily Times. “People are going to get rich, but I am worried about our natural resources.”

Stephen Rhoads, president of the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Association, said Wednesday that the Marcellus “play” in Pennsylvania is still in its infancy. He said the limited permitting and drilling statistics compiled to date are not sufficient to show a trend, although he expected to see an increase in the number of permits and the number of wells drilled.

Have an opinion you’d like to share on this topic? Use the opinion box below. If one isn’t open, click on the tiny ‘comments’ line below to activate it. You can remain anonymous, if you’d like, but signed comments are appreciated.

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Enviros (and business) split over climate bill



Both the environmental and business communities are undergoing internal disputes over climate-change legislation.

Washington Post environmental writer David A. Fahrenthold

reports today that a ” curious debate has broken out among American environmental groups, as the Senate balkily starts

to focus on the threat of climate change.”

Some groups like the Environmental Defense Fund, he says, are no loner using scare tactics in their ads. Instead, they’re trying to win votes for the legislation by talking about how it would create “green jobs” and lessen the need for oil imports.

This approach isn’t sitting well with other, smaller environmental groups, he says. They fear that the new approach “might send the signal that a weaker bill is acceptable.”

Meanwhile, monolithic business opposition to climate change legislation continues to crumble.

A new group of businesses – including retail giant Gap Inc. and several large utility companies – joined the lobbying fray over climate change on Wednesday, arguing that Congress must pass legislation to limit greenhouse gases as soon as possible.The San Francisco Chronicle reports that “American Businesses for Clean Energy will push for passage at the same time that other business groups, most notably the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, try to block or change global warming bills wending their way through Congress.

“We’re way behind in taking action, and we need to go now,” said Tom King, president of National Grid U.S., a utility serving parts of New England and New York.”In the latest change of lobbying tactics, if not intent, the Chamber of Commerce, which has suffered the defections of several large members who object to the group’s opposition to climate change legislation, apparently now is modifying its position.Have an opinion you’d like to share on the climate change bill or the lobbying positions or tactics of the environmental or business communities? Use the opinion box below. If one isn’t open, click on the tiny ‘comments’ line below to activate it. You can remain anonymous, if you’d like, but signed comments are appreciated.



Related:

Democrats move on climate bill

Senate panel approves climate change bill despite GOP boycott

Republicans Boycott Climate Bill Debate

Will the GOP win or lose on opposing climate bill?

Chamber pushes ‘bipartisan’ climate bill

US puts climate debate on hold for five weeks despite plea by Merkel

Our latest posts:

Politics by the pound in New Jersey

NY/NJ Port shippers see wolf in ‘green’ costume

Forbes takes a look at burying carbon at sea

Will NRG save Bluewater’s wind projects?

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Politics by the pound in New Jersey

David Gewirtz weighed in as a guest contributor to Anderson Cooper’s blog today with the following observations on the just-concluded New Jersey governor’s race:

Jon Corzine lost by 4.4 percent to Chris Christie, a man who is by any measure big-boned. Corzine lost to Christie by just about 101,659 votes. In other words, he lost by the population of a mid-sized New Jersey town.

Corzine has made something of a campaign issue over Christie’s weight, even to the point of running a campaign commercial accusing the heavier candidate of “throwing his weight around”.

The dig was lost on nobody and was a matter of heavy press coverage for quite some time during the election process.

The thing is, we New Jersey folk don’t take being insulted lightly. I’m a big guy and so are a lot of New Jersey citizens. Sure, there’s some svelt former bankers running around the Garden State, eating up all those yummy Jersey-grown organic veggies, but New Jersey also has its fair share of rotund (and proud of it, you gonna make something of it?) citizens.

So here you have a fat cat picking on a fat dude. Out of the 2.2 million or so New Jersey residents, could there possibly have been 100,000 or so who didn’t vote on issues and didn’t vote on party, but voted because they were simply pissed off about the fat ads?

New Jerseyians who vote because they’re pissed off? If New Jerseyians do one thing really well (and we do a lot really well), we do “pissed off” with panache. Give us something to get righteously indignant about and we’re happier than a pig in a poke.

And that’s what I think happened to Jon Corzine. I don’t think it was a resurgence of the GOP’s reach and influence. I just can’t see the helicopter-hunting Sarah Palin
carrying New Jersey in any way, shape, or form.

I just think some New Jersey residents remembered how much they hated bankers like Goldman Sachs and remembered that Corzine was the banker at Goldman Sachs. And I think some other New Jersey residents simply voted an “Oh, no, he didn’t” about the weight thing.

I’m telling you. Don’t piss off New Jersey. You’ll regret it.

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NY/NJ Port shippers see wolf in ‘green’ costume

A broad group of retailers and other shippers are calling on the mayors of New York and Newark to withdraw their support for changes in federal law that they say would allow local regulators to bar independent owner-operators from harbor trucking.

The Journal of Commerce reported yesterday that “The 29 organizations, including the National Retail Federation and the National Industrial Transportation League, said they had “grave disappointment” with support the mayors announced Oct. 19 for the effort led by the Port of Los Angeles, which has targeted independent operators as part of its effort to limit truck pollution at the port. “

In a letter to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, the organizations say they “fully support efforts by the ports, including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, to improve their air quality.”

The organizations argue that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (and the NRDC) have been claiming that port trucking services should be exempted from federal preemption in order to improve air quality but that the union’s real goal is “to eliminate competition from small independent businesses in favor of companies that the Teamsters believe could be more easily organized.”

Among the organizations signing the letter were the New Jersey Motor Truck Association, the New Jersey Retail Merchants Association, the New York State Motor Truck Association, and the New York Shipping Association.

Related:
Clean Trucks Settlement a Boon for Clean Air
CRT Sets the Record Straight on Port Air Quality
LA Ports Meet Clean Air Goals Years Ahead of Schedule

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Offshore Rhode Island wind power at a dead calm

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Forbes takes a look at burying carbon at sea



Forbes has found a place capacious enough to store several hundred billion tons of CO2, enough to take on all the power plants within 155 miles of the coast from Maryland to Massachusetts for the next 100 years. Can you guess where it is?

Both Pennsylvania and New Jersey have participated in national surveys to locate potential underground locations for the disposal of carbon dioxide emissions produced in the generation of electricity from coal-burning power plants.





New Jersey is even reviewing plans for a new coal-burning power plant in the city of Linden. The plan calls for the burial of the plant’s CO2 byproduct beneath the ocean floor off the state’s coast.

And the federal government is throwing a lot of money into research to test whether so the so-called ‘carbon capture and sequestration’ technology, which has been successful in small scale projects can be ramped up for industrial-sized applications.



In a new article on the subject, appearing yesterday in Forbes, writer Bruce Upbin tells us that:

“Geologic cavities in the U.S. alone could hold between 2,020 and 14,220 billion tons of CO2, enough to soak up three to 36 months of national output. Doing so would cost $200 or so per ton of carbon. It would require permits from local, state and federal agencies and would generate a good deal of anxiety for those living above the gas. In 1986, a volcano crater in Cameroon released a CO2 bubble large enough to kill 1,800

people while they slept.”

But what, he asks, “If you could put the carbon where nobody lives?”

Guess where that turns out to be?

“There is a perfect place 70 miles off the eastern U.S. seaboard and two miles below the ocean floor. It’s a porous sandstone formation, trapped under a mile of hard shale, that stretches from New Jersey to Georgia. The section off the Jersey shore alone is capacious enough to store several hundred billion tons of CO2, enough to take on all the power plants within 155 miles of the coast from Maryland to Massachusetts for the next 100 years.”



If you get the feeling that this topic isn’t going away anytime soon, you’re right. So we suggest that you might want to read the entire Forbes piece, which you’ll find here.

Related:

British emissary says carbon capture is crucial

Prioritise project diversity says carbon capture institute

Carbon capture shows major potential in China

Is carbon capture the political key to climate bill?

Feds’ $2.4B to ‘stimulate’ carbon capture projects

For carbon sequestration, it’s test time



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