John Hanger's Facts of The Day

WSJ Reports 258 Natural Gas Plants Being Built: Grid Reliability Is Assured

2012-03-16T11:11:00.003-04:00

Today's front page Wall Street Journal Story reports that 258 natural gas power plants were under construction as of December 2010 and states the rise of gas unplugged another wave of new nuclear plants. True enough.

The article, however, does not say it, but the 258 new gas plants that will come on line around the country from 2011 to 2015 are another huge reason why the EPA Air Toxic Rule and Cross State Air Pollution Rule do not pose a broad threat to grid reliability. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2859713/posts.

The Republican Congressional attacks on both rules focus on the plants that will retire from 2011 to 2015 but consistently ignore the new plants that are under construction that will substantially take the place of those plants that are retiring. These attacks have gone so far to say the lights will go out. Take a look at page 10 of the WSJ and the map there, detailing the location of the 258 gas plants under construction to see why the charge that the lights will go out is demonstrably false.

The nation is retiring plants that are more than 40 years old and pollute heavily, with modern, new plants that often are fueled by gas and that pollute often 95% less. The lights will stay on and the air will be cleaner as a result.

Updated: WSJ Story Indicates that Georgia And South Carolina Nuclear Reactors May Already Have $400 Million Overrun

2012-03-16T10:57:00.003-04:00

Buried in a great story today on the front page of the Wall Street Journal by Rebecca Smith entitled, "Cheap Natural Gas Unplugs U.S. Nuclear-Power Revival," is the following about 2 nuclear reactors being built in Georgia: "Nagging cost worries, however, are creating friction on both projects. Shaw Group, a Baton Rouge-based construction company hired by both Southern and Scana to build their reactors, recently notified the two utilities it had unanticipated costs, which may exceed $400 million for the two companies, and wants to discuss who should absorb them."

History truly does repeat itself in the new nuclear construction world. Just this cost over-run of $400 million that will be the first of many could build a 450 megawatt natural gas plant.

And I bet that I know who will likely absorb this first $400 million increased cost: the monopoly, captured electricity ratepayers in Georgia and South Carolina. In the case of the Georgia ratepayers, they have been and already are paying each month a nuclear construction surcharge for plants that may operate in 2016 or 2017.

Note: This story was updated based on communications from Mark Williams at Georgia Power. The original version indicated incorrectly that the $400 million overrun was for costs at just the Georgia plants. The story indicates that the $400 million of unanticipated costs are for both the South Carolina and Georgia plants, without any detail about the specific amounts for each.

Pickens Plan Defeated By 47 Senators, Even As War With Iran Looms

2012-03-16T06:39:00.003-04:00

The real prospect of a war with Iran is not enough. Gasoline prices averaging nationally more than $3.80 and over $4 in four states is not enough. Despite these threats to our national and economic security, forty-seven senators were enough to defeat the Pickens Plan or the Natural Gas Act on tuesday in the US Senate.

The Pickens plan was defeated, even though 51 senators voted for it, since majority rule in the Senate ended once and for all, when Senator McConnell of Kentucky at the start of the Obama presidency routinely invoked Senate rules (filibusters) that require 60 votes to end debate or to pass the vast majority of important legislation. The defeat of the Pickens Plan by 47 senators proves once more that the US Senate is totally dysfunctional.

While the Pickens plan is co-sponsored by Democratic senators Menendez of New Jersey and Reid of Nevada, and Republican senator Burr of North Carolina, the Republican senate caucus is responsible for its defeat. Forty-four Democratic senators but only 7 Republicans voted to pass the Natural Gas Act. Thirty-eight Republicans and 9 Democrats voted against it. The defeat of the Pickens Plan largely was the result of conservative ideology, as exemplified by the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, that opposes any effort to accelerate the substitution of oil with natural gas.

In Pennsylvania, right-winger Senator Toomey voted against the Pickens Plan but Senator Casey voted for it.

Though the Republican senate caucus overwhelmingly voted against the Pickens Plan, many of those members are loudly attacking President Obama for high gasoline prices. Here was a concrete opportunity to fight high gasoline prices and the anti-natural gas 47 senators vote no. Those 47 members really think the American people are fools.

The defeat of the Pickens plan is a blow to the natural gas industry at a time when gas prices are at rock bottom. But more important 47 senators voted to keep America importing huge amounts of foreign oil. Forty-seven senators voted to keep fighting wars for oil. Forty-seven senators voted against the national security and economic interests of America.

This is a big, bad vote. Voters should remember it. For a complete roll call of votes, please see:
www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=2&vote=0041. You will have to go to roll call votes on March 13th. Then look for the vote on Amendment 1782 offered by Senator Robert Menendez.

EPA Tests Show Water Is Safe In 11 Dimock, PA Homes

2012-03-16T06:39:00.001-04:00

The EPA water test results for the first group of 11 homes tested in Dimock, Pennsylvania, show the water is safe to drink. While traces of arsenic was found in two homes and of sodium, methane, chromium, or bacteria were found in samples from 6 homes, no concentration above the safe level for any contaminant was found.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/03/15/epas-test-results-show-safe-drinking-water-in-dimock/#more-7925. Included in the 11 homes with results showing that the water is safe are 3 homes where the EPA is delivering water. EPA also states that it will take another sample and test once more.

Testing by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in 2009 and 2010 documented two things in 18 water wells in Dimock, Pennsylvania:

First, methane had migrated from gas wells and contaminated 18 water wells. Testing of the gas in the gas wells confirmed that the gas was not pre-existing or natural occurring gas but had come from nearby gas wells. Other evidence, such as high pressure readings in some gas wells and gas bubbling in the cellar of a gas well, also indicated that shallow gas had not been fully isolated.

Second, DEP testing found no frack fluids, chemicals, or other contaminants associated with hydrualic fracturing or drilling had contaminated any water well.

Starting in 2009 and continuing into 2010, the Pennsylvania DEP ordered remedies, including plugging gas wells, repairing gas wells, and installing methane treatment systems, to address the methane contamination of the 18 water wells. By the end of 2010, methane levels had been reduced to safe levels in at least 13 of the 18 water wells, according to testing done at that time. The water was safe to drink at that time in those homes.

The EPA 2012 test results appear to be similar to the December 2010 DEP test results.

EPA Posts Hydraulic Fracturing Study Slides & Answers

2012-03-15T15:34:00.001-04:00

The EPA has posted answers to questions and its slides from the webinar briefing it conducted in February on the Congressionally-mandated study of "hydraulic fracturing and potential impact on drinking water resources." www.epa.gov/hfstudy.

The EPA provides answers to 33 questions that are grouped in 6 categories and also 32 slides that it used to conduct its briefing on the progress of the study.

Senator Inhofe Moves To Repeal Air Toxics Rule: Gas Politics 101

2012-03-15T10:59:00.000-04:00

The battle is heating up still more over the EPA Air Toxics rule that favors natural gas, since all natural gas plants meet its requirements. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma got yesterday the needed 30th co-sponsor to force a vote to halt the regulation under the Congressional Review Act. A simple majority (or not the now normal 60 votes) is needed to pass Inhofe's bill to kill the EPA Air Toxics rule.

The rule has drawn fierce opposition from some in the coal industry, as it requires installation of mercury controls by January 2015 at coal-fired power plants. Many coal-plants may not make the required investment but instead retire or switch to gas.

Not surprisingly coal state senators like Mitch McConnell have led attacks, but James Inhofe comes from the big gas producing state of Oklahoma. Repealing the Air Toxics rule would benefit coal but penalize gas, at a time when gas prices are rock bottom, since gas demand cannot keep pace with supply.

No matter gas production is big business in Oklahoma, James Inhofe is on the war path to overturn the EPA Air Toxics Rule. The roll call on Inhofe's effort will be interesting to read.

After Surging In 2011, New Solar May Surpass New Coal Plants In 2012

2012-03-15T10:19:00.000-04:00

Less than 5 years ago, rolling eyes or possibly laughter would have followed anyone who would have said that the USA would install 1,855 megawatts of solar generation in 2012. But that's the amount installed in Uncle Sam's land during 2011, according to a report from GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association. www.seia.org/cs/news_detail?pressrelease.id=2006.

Other highlights of the report include:

1. On site solar installations led the way, with 800 megawatts built at commercial locations and 297 megawatts at homes. Assuming 5 kilowatts per home installed, approximately 59,400 homes installed solar last year.

2. Large, utility scale solar projects feeding power into the grid accounted for 758 megawatts of the solar build.

3. The US was the fourth largest solar market in the world, with more than $8 billion of revenue in 2011. Germany, Italy, and China were 1 through 3.

4. The US 2011 total of 1,855 megawatts more than doubled the 2010 installation amount. An incredible 766 megawatts was installed in the fourth quarter alone and that surpassed the prior quarterly record amount of 473 megawatts built in the third quarter.

5. For all projects through the entire year, the average installed solar cost in the US during 2011 was $4.08 per watt.

6. But the price declined through the year significantly. By the fourth quarter for large projects, the price fell to $3.20 per watt.

Last but not least, the report projects that 2,500 to 2,800 megawatts of solar capacity will be installed in the USA during 2012. If so, it is possible that new solar capacity will exceed new coal capacity built during 2012 in the USA. This blog will be tracking the 2012 new solar and coal capacity numbers.

Gas Jobs Alone Are Not Enough: PA Jobs Performance Poor In January & 2011

2012-03-15T06:13:00.000-04:00

The January 2012 jobs report for Pennsylvania is a stinker and documents that the Pennsylvania economy comparatively performed weakly in 2011, losing ground to most other states and the nation. Pennsylvania lost 9,000 jobs in January, while 37 other states added jobs, and the nation grew jobs by over 200,000. The report underlines that the gas boom is creating desperately needed jobs, but that Pennsylvania's economic development strategy must be broad, diverse, and go well beyond natural gas extraction.

Digging into the Bureau of Labor Statistics data unearths more troubling facts. For example, the nation and 22 other states reduced their unemployment rates by twice as much as Pennsylvania did during 2011. Unemployment was down by 0.8% or more in America and 22 states, while it declined just 0.4% in Pennsylvania. Indeed, 38 states were able to reduce unemployment more than the Commonwealth did in 2011. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.toc.htm.

Among the 22 states that cut their unemployment rate twice as much as Pennsylvania or by 0.8% or more are Ohio where the unemployment rate fell by 1.3%; Maryland by 0.8%; Vermont by 1.0%; Connecticut by 1.3%; Wisconsin by 0.8%; South Dakota by 0.8%; Minnesota by 1.2%; and Colorado by 1.0%.

Pennsylvania's reduction in unemployment of just 0.4% trailed states, whether they started 2011 with a higher or lower level of unemployment than the Commonwealth. California reduced its unemployment rate by 1.2% and Michigan cut its unemployment rate by 1.9%, as the auto industry roared. But South Dakota cut its unemployment rate from 5% to 4.2% and Vermont reduced its 6.0% rate to 5%.

Pennsylvania's 2011 jobs performance is especially disappointing because it is a stark reversal from the period of 2010 into the first quarter of 2011, when Pennsylvania was among the top 5 states in creating jobs. The 9,000 jobs lost in January are a horrendous way to begin 2012.

Job creation requires world class education, skilled, healthy people, world class infrastructure, innovation, and effective public-private partnerships to compete in the modern world. While the gas industry has created low unemployment rates in Bradford, Tioga and other counties, the economic boost provided by gas can never be enough to bring prosperity to more than 12 million Pennsylvanians. We must not fall into the trap of relying exclusively on the gas industry to lift all boats.

Hopefully, 2012 will be a better jobs year than 2011 was for Pennsylvania, but the January jobs report is far from comforting.

Wind Energy Jumps 27% and Pressures Downward Power Prices

2012-03-15T06:08:00.002-04:00

Wind Energy had a banner 2011, with production jumping another 27%, and wind now provides about 3% of America's electricity, 20% in Iowa and South Dakota, 7% in Texas, and 5% in California. www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=5350. All that new wind power is good news for consumers, because it is real electricity supply that puts downward pressure on market prices in competitive, "deregulated" wholesale markets that set electricity prices based on supply and demand. In those competitive markets, more electricity supply from any and all sources of generation or less demand leads to lower prices for consumers.

In fact wind power has characteristics--very low production costs--that especially puts downward pressure on competitive market clearing prices to the benefit of consumers. Here is why and how wind benefits consumers in competitive markets, where every generator bids a price to provide service and no generator dispatches power to the grid, unless the generator's bid is accepted by the grid operator.

The grid operator selects or dispatches the generators based on the price they bid to operate, but importantly the generators do not normally get paid the price that they bid to operate. The grid operator puts the bids in order of lowest to highest, then selects the lowest bids first, and continues accepting bids, until he reaches the amount of supply needed to match demand.

There is always a last bid accepted from a generator who provides the last increment of supply needed to meet demand. The price bid by the last generator needed to meet demand is the market clearing price, and this price is paid to all generators selected, no matter that they bid less than the last bid accepted that becomes the market clearing price. That generator's price is typically not the highest of all bids received, but it is always the highest bid that is accepted by the grid operator.

Since the price bid by the last generator accepted by the grid operator to meet demand sets the entire market price, consumers want the last bid accepted by grid operators to be as low as possible. Two general means exist to lowering the price of the last bid accepted--increasing supply from low production cost generators or decreasing demand to move down the list of bids submitted to reach a lower last accepted bid.

Generation plants with very low production costs or costs to operate, such as wind, most renewables, and nuclear plants, typically bid zero into competitive markets to insure that they will be accepted or dispatched by the grid operator. Wind farms are complete price takers. They do not set the market price, except in the rare circumstance, when they and other generation plants that bid zero provide enough power to meet demand. In that circumstance, the market price actually clears at zero or can clear at negative levels, if generators bid money to dispatch.

Fossil fuel plants typically bid enough to cover the costs of at least their fuel--coal, gas, or oil--when operating or they would be losing money when running.

Here is a golden rule for consumers of electricity from competitive markets. More wind or renewables in a competitive market produces more zero bids into the market. More wind or renewables in a competitive market means that the last accepted bid, the market clearing price bid, will be lower than if the wind or renewables did not exist.

In this fashion wind or renewables lower the price of every single kilowatt-hour paid by every consumer, below what it would have been, had the wind and renewable power not been generated. A great deal for consumers and the environment, since wind power emits zero air and water pollution.

If you want to buy wind power for your home or business, go to www.choosepawind.org.

Gas To Take 14% of Coal's Market Share In 2012

2012-03-14T06:58:00.000-04:00

An analysis by Barclays Capital of the power markets projects that gas will capture another 14% of coal's generation market share in 2012--an extraordinary number. A Barclay analyst described US coal-fired generators as "frightened" by low natural gas prices and hammered home the point that natural gas is shifting US power production much more strongly from coal than the two EPA air rule packages, one of which has been enjoined by a federal court. http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Coal/6014364.

Barclays notes that gas displaced little coal in 2008, when gas prices were high, and before shale gas production boomed. But as shale gas boomed and gas prices began their steep decline, "...gas took 9% of coal's market share in 2009, 8% in 2010, 12% in 2011..."

If gas does indeed take another 14% of coal's 2011 market share in 2012, by my calculation, coal's 2012 market share could decline to 36%, an unimaginable number as recently as 2008.

The scale and pace of change in how America is producing electricity is one of this nation's most important unfolding events that this blog will be following daily.

Hail To Rick Santorum & His Delegate Path To The Nomination

2012-03-14T06:35:00.002-04:00

Hail to Rick Santorum, the winner of Kansas, Mississippi, and Alabama in the last 4 days, to go with his prior victories in Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and North Dakota. Santorum's total is 10 states and counting. Meanwhile last night Mitt Romney came in third in Alabama and Mississippi but won in Hawaii and American Samoa, to go with his prior island wins in Guam and US Virgin Islands. Quite a contrast exists between the winning geography for Romney and Santorum, but that difference reminds that this contest is all about capturing delegates to the Republican convention.

Prior to last night, Mitt Romney needed to win 47% of the remaining delegates to go to Tampa with a majority of delegates, while Santorum needed to win 63% of the remaining delegates. After last night, and capturing much less than 50% of the delegates available, Romney will need to capture even more than 47% of the remaining delegates. Mathematically last night raised slightly the prospect that no candidate will have a majority of delegates when the convention opens, in which case the odds of Mitt Romney being the nominee drop considerably.

How does the continued presence of Paul and Gingrich affect the race for delegates and the nomination? Gingrich is siphoning popular votes from Santorum, who has won the primary to be the champion of conservatives, and is helpful to Romney, since delegates are often awarded by Congressional districts. Gingrich may be reducing the Santorum vote in some Congressional districts to allow Romney to claim delegates from them, while only winning 40% or less of the vote in a district.

In the battle for delegates, key remaining states will be Texas, California, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Indiana, but every single delegate is going to be valuable.

The delegate bottom line is that Mitt Romney must win about 50% of the remaining delegates, and he will have to claw for every remaining delegate to overcome the opposition of the dominant Republican conservatives who do not want to nominate him. This morning Rick Santorum is hearing more loudly than ever Hail To The Chief, and he is far from crazy to do so.

The Youngstown Earthquake, Hydraulic Fracturing, & Pennsylvania

2012-03-13T11:46:00.002-04:00

Two things can now be said with certainty about the Youngstown Earthquake near an EPA Class II deep well injection site.

First, the earthquake and seismic activity was caused by the injection of liquids--in this case drilling wastewater--deep underground for the purpose of disposing them.

Second, hydraulic fracturing to break open shale rock to release gas had nothing to do with the earthquakes.

In this sense "fracking" did not cause the earthquake. But disposal of drilling wastewater at the Youngstown deep well injection site did, though the earthquake would like have happened, even if the material being disposed at this site came from a non-gas industry source.

EPA has permitted 144,000 class II deep well injection sites around the country, where 2 billion gallons per day of liquid are disposed. The sites have been operating for many decades. This extensive experience shows both that the overwhelming majority of these sites operate without triggering seismic activity and that the injection underground of liquids can cause seismic activity in rare cases.

Ohio state government has reacted to the Youngstown earthquake by closing one deep well injection site and promulgating new regulations, governing the siting and operation of future sites. The goal is to reduce the risk of seismic activity further by more stringent siting and operation criteria.

To date, Ohio has appropriately tightened deep well regulations to protect public safety. In Pennsylvania, less than 10 deep well injection sites operate, out of the national total of 144,000, and the EPA has full responsibility for their operation.

Manhattan Institute Frames Renewable Standards For Non-Existent "Soaring" Electricity Prices

2012-03-13T06:40:00.002-04:00

In a recent study trying to blame renewable energy for supposedly "soaring" electricity prices, Robert Bryce for the Manhattan Institute is like a rogue homicide detective who is determined to frame an unfortunate citizen by investigating just one out of many suspects, while not even realizing that there is no crime, because the "victim" is not dead, but very much alive. In this vein, Bryce insists renewable energy is the cause of a faux energy crisis, saying that "residential electricity rates are soaring, and they are doing so at the worst possible time." www.manhattan-institute.org/html/eper_10.htm.

The first and fatal flaw with the Bryce paper is that electricity prices are not soaring. There is no crime for which to frame renewable energy.

The Energy Information Administration reports: "Average U.S. residential electricity prices are forecast to rise by 0.4 percent in 2012, and then fall by 0.9 percent in 2013. These growth rates compare with an average annual increase of 2.6 percent during the past five years." www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf.

In fact, in many areas of the country like Pennsylvania electricity rates will likely fall in 2012, as a result of low-natural gas prices, stable or even declining demand, and increased supply substantially from new renewable energy generators in regional power pools around the country.

Since electricity prices are not soaring, Bryce's paper trying to blame renewable energy is a desperate, ideologically-driven effort by the conservative Manhattan Institute to blame renewable energy, a new scapegoat for the right, for a non-existent problem.

Never realizing that electricity prices are not soaring, and there is no victim, Bryce concocts a theory that focuses only on renewable energy as the cause of soaring electricity prices. Forget other upward pressures on electricity rates like steadily rising coal costs; state deregulation of retail rates in certain states; nuclear energy charges in Georgia to build two incredibly expensive nuclear plants there; but instead frame renewable energy for the non-existent crime of "soaring" residential electricity rates.

Bryce's method for framing renewable energy features comparing two groups of 7 states--coal dependent states with no renewable energy portfolio requirement and coal dependent states with a renewable energy requirement.

He curiously selects Wyoming, North Dakota, Utah, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and South Dakota for his non-RPS group. This curious selection raises questions such as, why these 7 states? Why not Kentucky, West Virginia, and Nebraska for example which are also coal dependent states without an RPS and which are listed by Bryce among states with the lowest rates? What results would Bryce had if he substituted Kentucky, West Virginia, and Nebraska for South Dakota, North Dakota, and Arkansas?

For the coal dependent RPS states, Bryce picks Ohio, Michigan, Colorado, Wisconsin, Delaware, Minnesota and Maryland.

He concludes that the 7 states with the RPS had average rate increase from 2001 to 2010 of 54%, while the non-RPS states rose 24%.

Beyond the fatal flaw that electricity rates are not soaring and so renewable energy or nothing else caused the non-existent problem, here are 6 more problems with Bryce's analysis:

1. Bryce cooked the statistical books in his selection of states. His group of 7 coal dependent states without an RPS leaves out Kentucky, West Virginia, and Nebraska and it is clear why. Kentucky's rates have increased from January 2001 to 2010 by 72 % and 82% through 2011; West Virginia up by 49% through 2010 and 59% through 2011; and Nebraska up by 61 % through 2010 and 68% through 2011.

Had Kentucky, West Virginia, and Nebraska been substituted for South Dakota, North Dakota, and Arkansas in Bryce's group of 7 coal dependent states without an RPS, Bryce would have found a very small difference between his two groups of states. The rate increase in the non-RPS states would have been 43% on average versus 54% in the RPS states.

2. The difference in rate increases between the two groups of states would essentially vanish if Bryce used 2011 data, instead of stopping his analysis in 2010. For example, Georgia, which is in Bryce's group of 7 coal dependent states without an RPS, had a 10% increase in 2011, probably mainly the result of rate increases already charged to build two nuclear plants that supposedly will begin operating in 2017. Simply put, Bryce's data is dated.

3. In fact, all 7 states in Bryce's group of 7 states without an RPS saw rates increase in 2011, while 2 of the 7 states in Bryce's group with an RPS had rates decrease in 2011. In short, rates went up more in the coal dependent states without an RPS in 2011 than was the case in the states with an RPS.

4. Bryce fails to consider at all the role of sharply increasing coal prices over the last 11 years in the price of electricity. Indeed, coal prices have been increasing about 6% per year for the last 11 years or nearing 100% over the period. Rising coal prices have pushed up electricity prices much more than any renewable energy requirement.

5. Bryce fails to understand the role of deregulation in price increases. Four of the 7 states in Bryce's RPS group deregulated retail rates during 2001 to 2010. Those four are Delaware, Ohio, Maryland, and Michigan, and rate increases in Maryland and Delaware are almost completely the result of how the states deregulated. None of the states in Bryce's non-RPS states went through the deregulation of retail rates.

6. Bryce includes in his non-RPS group several states--North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah-- that have large amounts of electricity provided by non-profit rural electric cooperatives that have lower costs of capital and other financial advantages compared to for-profit investor owned utilities that dominate the states in the RPS category. I doubt Bryce wants to make a case for public power or non-profit coops, but his analysis would support such ownership more than it does his attack on renewable requirements.

To conclude, Bryce has it wrong. Electricity rates are not soaring. There is no culprit to be found for a non-existent problem. Renewable energy standards and increasing renewable energy had little effect on the price of electricity. Indeed studies by the Energy Information Administration and others have reached this conclusion.

Much bigger influences on electricity power rates are the price of fossil fuels, especially coal and gas, that fuel a combined 65% of all electricity generated, the cost of capital, and increasingly simple supply and demand for power in competitive or "deregulated" markets that price electricity.

By creating more supply for electricity, often by leveraging substantial private investment that largely is not directly recovered in an electricity rate base or rate, renewable energy standards can cause the market clearing price for electricity in competitive, wholesale power markets to be lower than if the new renewable supply did not exist. More supply or less demand lowers price all other factors being equal. The nation got 3% of its electricity from wind power in 2011, and Texas got 7% of its total electricity from wind.

If wind had not operated at all, electricity prices paid by consumers in America and Texas would have been higher in 2011, because wind power in competitive markets bids zero and takes whatever price at which the market clears. By doing so, wind and other renewables prevent more expensive units from being dispatched and setting the entire market price at a higher level.

Indeed, among the 10 states with America's lowest electricity rates, three states--Washington, Idaho, and Oregon--have the highest amount of power coming from hydro systems, America's biggest renewable energy power source. Renewable energy is good for the environment, public health, our economy, and consumers.

Polling Thrills For Republicans: Obama Approval Hits Record Low In CBS Poll

2012-03-13T06:35:00.003-04:00

With Alabama and Mississippi voting tonight, the CBS poll released last night should encourage Republicans and be a cold shower for Democrats who increasingly need one.

CBS has the President's approval at 41%, down from 50% last month. www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57395703-503544/poll-obamas-approval-rating-sinks-to-new-low/?tag=cbsContent;cbsCarousel. The 41% approval is a record low in the CBS poll. The poll had a 47% disapproval number for the President..

While I do think the recent increase in gas prices probably has hurt the President a bit, I have my doubts that the President's numbers fell 9 points in one month.

I suspect the President's approval is somewhere between 44% and 48%. Gallup in fact yesterday had Obama's approval rating rising to 49%. www.gallup.com/poll/153194/Obama-Job-Approval-Rating-Reaches-Weekend.aspx.

The Republican nomination, nonetheless, remains valuable, as long as the President's approval rating is below 50%, and it seems to be so this morning, no matter what poll one reads.

Santorum Must Hammer Romney's Failed Jobs Governorship

2012-03-12T10:30:00.001-04:00

After winning Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Dakota, and Kansas on saturday, Rick Santorum won the religious right-wing of the Republican party, but his victory came at the price of becoming nationally unpopular (44.5% disapproval and 33% approval of Santorum) and allowing Mitt Romney to squeak out wins in Michigan and Ohio. Just enough Republican voters have been buying Mitt Romney's claim that he can reinvigorate the US economy to edge him toward the nomination, no matter how successful Santorum is with thrilling social conservatives. To win the nomination, Santorum must hammer into public consciousness that Mitt Romney failed miserably to create jobs as Governor of Massachusetts.

Massachusetts under Romney ranked 47th in job creation; by 2006 Massachusetts had 16,000 less jobs than in 2002. Job growth in New York was three times faster; in California jobs growth was 5 times faster; and jobs growth in North Carolina was 8 times faster than in Massachusetts during Romney's tenure. See Wall Street journal article at: http://articles.marketwatch.com/2010-02-23/commentary/30748666_1_mitt_romney_jobs_growth_massachusetts.

The people of Massachusetts hired Mitt Romney to do for them what Romney now says he will do for the America--create jobs and economic growth. Romney failed and would have been fired by the voters had he run for re-election.

Yet fixated on ideology and so misses Romney's jugular, Newt Gingrich calls Romney a "moderate" or "liberal" Governor of Massachusetts and heads off on one more riff about Romneycare. A better adjective is "failed," and it still is the jobs issue that will decide the nomination and the general election.

If Republican voters become aware of Romney's lousy jobs record as Governor of Massachusetts, Romney's last claim to the nomination will meltdown.

Gas Shoves Coal Generation Market Share To Lowest Level in 34 Years!

2012-03-12T06:10:00.001-04:00

The collapse in coal's market share for electricity generation accelerated enormously in November and December 2011, as cheap gas shoved coal's market share to 39%, the lowest level in 34 years. www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=5331. "The last time coal's share of total generation was below 40% for a monthly total was March, 1978," states EIA.

From December 2010 to December 2011, coal generation was down an incredible 21%, while total generation declined 7%. Coal declining 21% is one more example of how fast and strongly markets can produce huge change.

More change came in the form or rising natural gas generation as coal declined. Natural gas generation increased 12% from December 2010 to December 2011. Gas generation provided 26% of all electricity, up from 22% in December 2010.

Once upon a time or back in 2000, coal did provide 52% of US electricity generation. Words like "most," "a majority," "dominant power source" were regularly used to describe coal's role in producing electricity for America. Failing to keep current with a fast changing power generation market, many commentators still describe coal generation, as though it did provide most or a majority of our power.

Coal was at 39% market share in November and December but its slide will likely continue through 2012, according to the EIA. EIA is projecting another 5% decrease during 2012 in coal-fired generation. If that decrease occurs, coal-fired generation could fall to a 37% market share for 2012, a truly historic number.

There is one overwhelming reason why coal's market share collapsed from 52% in 2000 and 48% as recently as 2008. Low-priced natural gas is capturing market share, and gas is low-priced for one reason--shale gas production now provides approximately 30% of all natural gas and has created a glut of supply that has caused a natural gas price crash.

Too many environmentalists have been running from a fact of energy markets and energy choices: stopping gas or raising natural gas prices substantially will increase coal generation almost immediately in the power markets.

Stunning Fact: Fukushima Closes One-Eighth Of World's Nukes

2012-03-12T06:02:00.000-04:00

While a lot of Fukushima anniversary commentary about nuclear power's prospects around the world focused on new nuclear plants under construction in China, Russia, and India, one stunning fact got little attention that makes clear that the last year has been the worst for nuclear power in its history. The world's third and fourth largest economies--Japan and Germany--closed at least temporarily 60 nuclear reactors or 1 out of 8 in the world, in the year after Fukushima. Germany shutdown 8 nuclear reactors permanently in 2011, and, today in Japan, 52 out of 54 nuclear plants are off-line, with their future uncertain. Germany will also close all of its remaining 13 nuclear plants by 2022.

Prior to the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan generated one-third of its electricity from nuclear power. Japan closing 52 of 54 nuclear reactors or one-third of its power in a year is the equivalent of the USA closing nearly all of its coal-fired power plants. Given how much of its power came from nuclear reactors, it boggles my mind to think Japan has done a "nuclear cold turkey."
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46676913/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/#.T1noiONSSEY.

What has Japan done to replace nearly all its considerable nuclear power? Super aggressive conservation practices have been the most important means to replace the lost power. Well before the Fukushima disaster, Japan was a world leader in energy efficiency so all the low-hanging efficiency fruit was picked long ago in Japan. After Fukushima, wringing more energy savings out of Japanese homes and businesses has required changes in lifestyles or sacrifices to use another word.

In addition to cutting electricity consumption, Japan boosted the use of gas and coal to make electricity, increasing carbon emissions in the process. For the long-term, the Japanese have also embraced policies to increase sharply renewable energy, as Germany has done too, in reaction to the Fukushima disaster.

Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson Fires Missiles At Obama Administration While Natural Gas Prices Head To $1.50

2012-03-09T08:36:00.002-05:00

While Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson filed missiles yesterday at the Obama Administration for supposedly inhibiting the production of natural gas (see page 3 of today's Section C of the Wall Street Journal), the Henry Hub price closed yesterday at $2.18. Some of the smartest people in the energy business with whom I was this week at an International Energy Agency workshop in Warsaw, Poland are predicting a $1.50 price this spring.

Here are obsrvations I would make about claims that the Obama Administration is inhibiting gas production.

First, the Obama Administration is doing a lousy job of slowing down gas production if that were its goal, given 2011 was an all-time record production year.

Second, the Obama Administration is responding, as it must, to massive public concern about fracking. Yes, a lot of that concern is based on misinformation or outright propaganda but there are also real issues. And the level of public concern is real and large. Just ask Governor Christie, Mitt Romney's national co-chair, who implemented a one-year ban on fracking in New Jersey, what the public mood about "fracking" is in the Northeast.

Third, what is the biggest problem facing the gas industry today? Too little demand? Or too little production? $1.50 gas as a real possibility this spring answers those questions.

Fourth, the Obama Administration has done more to promote natural gas demand than any Administration in US history. Take a look at the EPA Air Toxic Rule as just one example. There are many more. And the Obama Administration has taken immense heat for these rules and other initiatives that promote natural gas demand.

PA Gas Royalty Checks Exceed $5 Billion

2012-03-09T06:23:00.001-05:00

Royalty payments to mineral owners probably have exceeded the $5 billion mark, according to estimates done by the good folks at www.marcellusgas.org/graphs/PA#royal_current. Nearly 50% of the total payments have flowed into Washington and Greene counties. Both are located in Southwest Pennsylvania, where Marcellus gas wells not only have been drilled in large numbers but also have been connected to pipelines and are delivering gas to consumers.

The Marcellusgas.org folks also have interesting data on how much counties will collect in impact fees. They project that Bradford, Tioga, Washington, Lycoming, Susquehanna, and Greene are projected as the top 6 counties for impact fees.

The impact fees are based on wells drilled or developed, while royalty payments are based on gas volumes flowing into pipelines. Currently a lot of wells drilled are not connected to pipelines in Pennsylvania.

Eagles Make Major Off-Season Acquisition: Wind and Solar

2012-03-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

Last year's heralded crop of free agent signings led to an 8-8 season and no play-off spot, so the Eagles are re-powering for a Super Bowl. Yesterday, the Eagles announced that they had formed a new partnership with NRG that would install a 3 megawatt solar system and 14 micro wind turbines at Lincoln Financial Field.http://mobile.philly.com/sports/eagles/?wss=philly/sports/eagles&id=141085513. The Eagles remain the leading sports franchise dedicated to reducing environmental impacts through recycling, composting, and clean energy practices.

The wind and solar systems are scheduled to be operating by December 2012, when the Eagles should have clinched a playoff spot and be Super Bowl bound. Skeptical? Hope springs eternal for NFL fans in March of every year.

Booming US Car Sales, CAFE Standards, & Detroit At Half-time

2012-03-09T05:51:00.002-05:00

Historically skyrocketing gas prices meant a loss of market share for the Big Three Detroit automakers to Japanese and other companies. Why? The Big Three simply did not make attractive, competitive fuel efficient cars so they lost market share when consumer preferences shifted to gas sippers and away from gas guzzlers.

In another sign that US carmakers are more competitive, despite the current jump of gas prices to a national average of $3.74, Detroit sold more cars in February than anytime since the collapse of the car market, following the 2008 economic meltdown.

Chrysler issued a statement: "Our product portfolio now contains some of the most fuel efficient vehicles in our company's history. A few years ago, higher fuel prices were a major threat to our total vehicle sales, whereas today, those higher prices have become far less of an issue."

Chrysler's February 2012 sales were 40% greater than in February 2011. While the companies themselves are responsible for building attractive cars that are selling well, raising the fuel efficiency standard for cars in 2009 helped to change how Detroit looked at the fuel efficient car segment of the
market and to prepare them for the era of high cost gasoline.

The February 2012 sales reached an annual rate of 15 million vehicles if sustained over a full year. After the US auto market collapsed from 16 million vehicles to an annual sales rate of 9 million vehicles after the economic collapse of 2008, it may be even past half-time in Detroit.

DOW 6547 On March 9, 2009: Lest We Forget

2012-03-08T00:36:00.001-05:00

Three years ago tomorrow, on March 9, 2009, the Dow Jones Index hit bottom at a sickeningly low 6547 or 57% below its October 2007 high. From that high, as the recession began in the 4th quarter of 2007, stocks moved lower.

Then shear fear and panic ruled the markets after September 15, 2008, following the Lehmann Brothers bankruptcy. Read the CNN report after the market close on March 9, 2009.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/09/markets/markets_newyork/index.htm.

After March 9, 2009, stocks began their historic bull run, as the markets judged the federal government's actions had stopped another Great Depression.

I am harshly critical of what led to the Lehmann Brother's bankruptcy--allowing too-big-to-fail financial institutions to form, compounding that error by the failure to regulate debt leveraging and high risk practices at too-big-to-fail institutions so that Lehmann was leveraged more than 30 to 1 when it failed, the failure to regulate sub-prime lending, the failure to regulate the credit rating agencies, reckless deficits when the economy was growing from 2001 to 2007, and the list goes on.

But once Lehmann Brothers went bankrupt on September 15, 2008, and a financial meltdown began, as surely as an operating nuclear reactor melts without cooling water, both the out-going Bush Administration and the incoming-Obama Administration got more right than wrong. Mistakes were made after Lehmann, but more tough calls made at that time look good rather than bad with the passage of time.

And so yesterday the Dow closed at 12,837 or up about 96% since March 9, 2009, an historic bull run. Lest we forget.

The Movie Should Have Been "Oilland" Not Gasland

2012-03-08T00:36:00.000-05:00

Today 70% of "fracking" is being done at oil wells and just 30% at gas wells. This fact alone suggests the movie should have been "Oilland," not "Gasland."

Though hydraulic fracturing or fracking has been used for decades, environmental concern, nonetheless, about "fracking" has been voiced almost exclusively around shale gas production, something that really began in large volumes only in 2008.

The damage done to water resources by the production, transportation and combustion of oil far exceeds anything caused by shale or conventional natural gas. Oil in the wrong place like the Gulf of Mexico or your backyard does huge environmental damage. And most importantly the environmental damage done by both oil and gas production has virtually nothing directly to do with actual hydraulic fracturing that normally takes place deep underground and, the the possible exception of Pavillion, Wyoming has not contaminated any aquifer's with fracking fluids returning to depth.

Despite these facts, media and public concerns about shale gas production are orders of magnitude greater than any other type of energy production, and the movie is called Gasland. If the goal is to educate the public about which energy choices have the most environmental and health impacts, the disproportionate focus on gas makes no sense.

Stunning Fact: Local Ordinances Ban Fracking In 27% of New York Marcellus Play

2012-03-07T09:43:00.000-05:00

While the New York State government continues its process of promulgating rules to allow shale gas development, local ordinances in New York may have banned fracking in 27% of the New York area in the Marcellus. I heard that number today at an International Energy Agency conference that I am attending and will be looking to confirm it.

Feds MOVE To Accelerate CNG Vehicle Adoption

2012-03-07T01:39:00.002-05:00

Last week the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) held a massive conference in Oxton Hill, Maryland to which President Clinton, Secretary Chu and even I spoke. More than 2500 people attended this premier event that marshals thought and action for energy technology breakthroughs.

My pick for the most important highlight of the conference was the new Methane Opportunities for Vehicular Energy, a $30 million initiative, designed to hasten commercialization high energy density tanks for CNG and low-cost home refueling stations. http://www.ngvglobal.com/ and see the February 24th postings.

With gasoline at $3.74, while natural gas fueling is at $1.50, and war with Iran a real possibility, accelerating the move from oil to gas and other substitutes for transportation should be the nation's most important energy task. The MOVE initiative seeks to do exactly that by finding energy storgage and fueling technology breakthroughs that lower the cost of CNG vehicles.

As of 2010, the US had just 112,000 CNG vehicles on the road. Using federal research dollars to tackle two of the biggest technology weaknesses in the CNG market is a smart use of funds that can play a role in putting millions of natural gas powered vehicles on our roads. MOVE plus passing the Natural Gas Act that is dying a long, slow death in the United States House of Representatives would really make the US serious about gas transportation.

More PA Gas To Stay Local & Less For NY

2012-03-07T01:28:00.000-05:00

Most PA gas leaves Pennsylvania and goes to New York City and other Northeast markets, meaning that the impact of gas drilling stays local, while the gas itself goes to the region. A new $1 billion pipeline, proposed by UGI and its partners, could keep more gas local, by delivering another approximately 300 billion cubic feet per year or 25% of Pennsylvania's 2011 gas production to Pennsylvania"s homes and businesses. http://articles.philly.com/2012-03-02/news/31117210_1_pipeline-route-natural-gas-ugi

New York has been doing two things: buy shale gas drilled in Pennsylvania to save money and to stay warm, while stopping shale gas drilling in New York.

Of course, Pennsylvania has had the lease income, the royalty checks that have changed lives, the direct jobs, the indirect jobs, the much lower gas and electricity bills--lots of benefits from drilling that plenty of New Yorkers want as well. But dealing with the impacts caused by industrial gas drilling and then sending the gas to NY has left a bad taste in the mouths of more than a few Pennsylvanians.

Gas drilled in Pennsylvania should stay in Pennsylvania if possible.

Cornell Profs Smackdown Howarth For Second Time

2012-03-06T07:00:00.000-05:00

The Cornell research team led by Professor Cathles just took Professor Howarth to the academic woodshed for a second time. The most recent debunking of Howarth is full of data, and reading it is mandatory.

http://www.geo.cornell.edu/eas/PeoplePlaces/Faculty/cathles/Natural%20Gas/Response%20to%20Howarth's%20Reply%20Distributed%20Feb%2030,%202012.pdf.

For me the single most important point in Cathles piece is the new data about leakage rates and specifically venting at 1578 unconventional gas wells. Contrary to Howarth's assumption that venting during well completion takes place at 100% of uncoventional wells, the 1578 well data set showed 3% of wells were vented.

Cathles' latest paper further isolates Howarth who stands alone in the science literature. Beyond the leakage rates that Howarth manufactures with wild assumptions and extrapolations, Howarth alone believes using a 20-year global warming potential factor when performing a coal and gas life cycle analysis is appropriate.

Howarth alone believes it is appropriate to end the life cycle analysis before coal and gas is combusted at an electricity plant. Virtually all coal is used to make electricity. It is impossible to calculate fairly the "life cycle" emissions of coal without including the emissions of when coal is actually burnt and that takes place nearly always at a power plant.

But Howarth alone stops his analysis before coal is burnt. This point alone is enough to discredit entirely Howarth's analysis.

The deception in the Howarth analysis is not restricted to its failure to include emissions after coal and gas are used to make power. Take a look at Cathles ending segment entitled, "Setting The Record Straight."

Strong language will be found there like: "Their distortion of this statement is, once again, simply misleading and disingenuous." That sentence is a good summary of Howarth's study.

President Obama Passes Political Beer Drinking Test

2012-03-06T06:54:00.000-05:00

Its Super Tuesday and time to ask, with whom would you want to have a beer? President Obama, Speaker Gingrich, Governor Romney, Senator Santorum, or Congressman Paul?

In the February 27th, 2012 Politico Battleground poll, President Obama's job approval stood at 53% and 74% of voters approved of the President personally. In other words 74% liked him, even though about a third of those who liked him did not approve of his job performance.

Personal popularity is everything when running for the president of a fraternity or a high school class, but it should not be discounted as a factor in Presidential politics.

At the Presidential level, the question becomes, with which candidate would you prefer to have a beer? That is a question that President Obama welcomes, whether the Republican nominee is Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, or Paul.

How important is the Presidential beer drinking contest to deciding the winner? While the economy and the question, "are you better off than 4 years ago?", remain the most important factor in deciding elections, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush all won the beer drinking contest against George H. Bush, Dole, Kerry, Gore and the Presidency. One might have to go back to Richard Nixon to find a candidate who became President without winning being liked.

Being liked matters in contests for the Presidency, probably even more than specific policy positions. Personal popularity involves personality, appearance, voice, all ingredients of leadership, whether one likes it or not.

Obama's 74% personal favoribility rating is teflon that deflects political attacks, and, while it won't win the President a second term by itself, his re-election campaign stands on the strong foundation that large numbers of Americans like Barack Obama.

McKibben Gets Fracking Facts Wrong In New York Review Of Books

2012-03-05T05:32:00.001-05:00

It is not just Rolling Stones Magazine currently providing a buffet of misinformation about "fracking."

For the New York Review of Books, Bill McKibben writes about "fracking," while reviewing the excellent End of Country by Seamus McGraw (buy it and read it), another book, and Gasland. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/08/why-not-frack/. Since McKibben substantially takes his facts from Gasland and the NYT Drilling Down Series that the NYT Public Editor twice rebuked as misleading and inaccurate, he makes big mistakes that inevitably distort his understanding of "fracking" and our energy choices.

For example, McKibben repeats the NYT claim that Pennsylvania's waters were contaminated with radionuclides. Possibly because he is unaware of it, McKibben does not discuss the massive testing for radionuclides, done by both the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and 15 drinking water suppliers, that have all proven that Pennsylvania's streams and drinking water have no radionuclide contamination. None. Zero.

If those test results are news to McKibben, he can thank the NYT that has avoided any significant reporting on the radiation test results that inconveniently refute its sensational original February 27th, 2011 story. If he wants a taste of real information, McKibben should go to www.pgh20.com, where he will see the monthly results of radionuclide testing done by the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority since March 2011. Again the PWSA testing is only a small part of the total testing done and all have the same results: no radionuclide contamination of in-stream or tap water. None. Zero.

McKibben also mistakenly asserts that the terrible Dunkard Creek fish kill in 2009 was the result of gas drilling discharges. That after all was what Gasland told McKibben and other viewers. Yet, the EPA, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection all concluded that a coal mining discharge created the water conditions that allowed an algae to bloom that devastated fish populations. Indeed, following the fish kill, the EPA entered into a consent agreement with a coal mining company to build a $70 million plant to treat a mining discharge a few miles upstream from the fish kill so that it would not be repeated.

Similarly distorted is McKibben's discussion of "lax Pennsylvania regulation" that he agains takes almost verbatim from the NYT Drilling Down Series.

Given his reliance on the NYT for facts, McKibben almost certainly is unaware that Pennsylvania issued the most violations--by a lot--to the gas industry (a total of 1200 in 2010 and 1100 in 2011) of any state in the country, as documented by the February 2012 University of Texas study that reviewed enforcement in 15 states.

He may be unaware that Pennsylvania more than doubled its oil and gas staff, hiring in 2009 and twice in 2010, boosting employee totals from 88 to 202, and opening new regulatory offices in Williamsport and Scranton in 2010. No other state comes close to the hiring by Pennsylvania to oversee shale gas production, though still more is needed to keep pace with the industry expansion and record keeping needs.

McKibben may also be unaware that Pennsylvania passed 5 regulatory packages from 2008 to 2011 that modernized and strengthened regulations governing gas drilling. Those packages are:

1. A water plan requirement governing water withdrawals enacted in 2008 to insure that water withdrawals do not damage streams;

2. A drilling wastewater disposal requirement enacted in August 2010 insuring that TDS levels in watersheds do not exceed 75% of the Safe Drinking Water Act TDS level and that required full TDS treatment at the pipe of any new or expanded drilling wastewater discharges. At this point nearly all shale drilling wastewater is recycled or deep well injected, and none of it is being discharged to rivers.

3. A 150 feet buffer rule enacted in November 2010 that protects Pennsylvania's high quality streams that total 22,000 stream miles from all development.

4. A complete rewrite and strengthening of all gas well drilling rules, including design of the gas wells, materials used, and mandatory disclosure of chemicals.

5. Raising the fee as of 2009 charged drillers to apply for a permit from a ridiculous $100 to as much as $10,000 per application. The fee raised more than $10 million per year and all funds were used to more than double the gas drilling staff at the Department of Environmental Protection.

Despite key errors, McKibben is not wrong about everything. McKibben is right that the regulatory model of the regulator as a "partner" with industry is inconsistent with oversight. Instead regulators must be professional and independent. They must be neither friend nor foe to those that they regulate.

McKibben is also right that the gas industry must reduce methane leakage to limit greenhouse gas pollution, even though the science literature overwhelming concludes that coal emits twice the heat trapping pollution as gas does when used to make electricity, and nearly all coal is used to make electricity. Though McKibben does not mention them, the EPA's July 2011 proposed regulations of gas drilling air emissions are crucial bit of 2012 regulatory business.

But gas drilling causes much less impact on water resources than coal mining, oil production, run-off from agriculture, sewage discharges, hydro dams, corn ethanol, antibiotic pollution, and many other things that damage water resources. The most significant impact on water from shale drilling has been cases of gas migrating to private water wells, as a result of poor drilling (gas migration is not a result of hydraulic fracturing). The Duke study that McKibben mentions found gas in water at high rates, but also found that frack fluids were not contaminating the same water wells, something that McKibben does not know or did not state in his piece.

The gas migration problem is real, and it is true that too many companies in the gas industry lawyer-up, when confronted with these cases, instead of fixing the problem, and focusing on reducing the risk. The McKibben piece is another example to the industry of the damage being done by the current handling of this important issue.

McKibben is right that the federal government and states must strongly regulate gas drilling and reasonably tax it. But McKibben must get the full facts about fracking, and he won't find them in the NYT, Gasland, or Rolling Stones Magazine.

Important to McKibben's mission of stabilizing concentrations of heat trapping pollution, the full facts include the role of low-priced gas, made possible by the shale gas boom, in preventing another wave of 150 new US coal plants that had been proposed as of 2005, and in the announcement of the retirment of 331 coal units since January 2010. Moreover, so far, the boom in shale gas coincides with a boom in wind and solar in the USA, showing that gas and renewables need not be mutually exclusive.

McKibben's review proves that he needs to get beyond Gasland and the NYT Drilling Down Series. I would be glad to discuss this vital issue with him if he would like.

Oceans Are 30% More Acidic Due To Carbon Dioxide Loading

2012-03-05T05:25:00.004-05:00

A study published in the prestigious journal Science finds that oceans are already 30% more acidic than they were at the start of the industrial revolution and are growing more acidic. Why?

Massive amounts of carbon dioxide are being released into the environment from the burning of fossil fuels and the oceans have absorbed about 67% of the released carbon dioxide, making them more acidic. The pace of acidification is greater than anytime in planetary history and could lead to the oceans being 150% more acidic by the end of this century.

Why should we care? The growing acidification of the ocean makes it harder for corals, shellfish, and plankton to build shells, and the loss of those marine organisms could disrupt entire marine ecosystems and fish populations.

The study can be found at: http://m.sciencemag.org/content/335/6072/1058.abstract. Also see:
http://mobile.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-01/oceans-acidifying-fastest-in-300-million-years.

This study confirms once more that denying global warming and the changes that it has already caused to the environment is deeply irresponsible.

Rolling Stone Magazine Sadly Regurgitates NY Times Greatest Gas "Hits"

2012-03-02T07:26:00.001-05:00

Jeff Goodell, the author of "The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind the Gas Boom," should split his pay with the NYT gas reporter, because Goodell regurgitates all the NYT's greatest gas hits, including ones that the NYT Public Editor found to be misleading or false. Goodell even uses many of the NYT reporter's characters--Art Berman, Deborah Rogers, and Anthony Ingrafea--to voice his narrative.

So the reader of Goodell's piece in the March 15, 2012 Rolling Stone is treated once more to the narrative that shale gas drilling is a "ponzi scheme" that has inflated a "bubble" that will crash but, before it does, "fracking" is polluting Pennsylvania's water with radionuclides, where there is little regulation.

Of course, Goodell does not tell his readers about radionuclide test results or that Pennsylvania issued 1200 violations to the industry in 2010 and 1100 in 2011, many more than any other state in the country, according to the recent study by the University of Texas.

The only new twist in the Goodell piece is that he tells readers that Chesapeake Energy and its Chief Executive, Aubrey Mclendon, "dominates America's supply of natural gas" the same way the Tea Party financing Koch brothers dominate pipelines and refineries.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-big-fracking-bubble-the-scam-behind-the-gas-boom-20120301.

Normally a company that dominates a market manages to avoid a price collapse of its product. Chesapeake Energy strangely has used its supposed dominance of America's supply of natural gas to drive the price of natural gas down from $13 to $2.50 for a thousand cubic feet. In Pennsylvania alone, more than 60 companies are producing gas so perhaps Goodell means that Chesapeake Energy dominates the politics of shale gas.

Indeed, by using right from the start the words "dominate" and "right wing billionaire," comparing McClendon to the Koch Brothers, invoking Tea Party as well as the notorious Swift Boat attacks on Senator Kerry's Vietnam military service, Goodell begins with a political horror show for Blue America. He is telling his Blue America readers that Red America is controlling natural gas and to be on guard or, better still, very scared. The piece is more a political scream than a serious energy article, but it will be lapped up by many.

After his political warning to the Northeast and, as the nutty, dangerous Arizona Sheriff Arpaio and Rick Perry endorser would say, to the followers of the Kenyan, Muslim, Socialist occupying the presidency, Goodell is back to the NYT's greatest gas and fracking hits. Ponzi scheme?

America produced a record amount of natural gas in 2011 and, thanks to shale gas, is the biggest natural gas producer in the world. Shale gas production has now been booming for 5 years and provides 30% of America's world-leading natural gas suply. The truly enormous actual production numbers and the collapsed price of gas, despite rising demand for gas, destroy the credibility of the ponzi scheme smear, even without diving into the reserve numbers.

Not satisfied with the ponzi scheme lie, Goodell hurls another rhetorical bomb by charging the industry is a "bubble." Of course after the "internet bubble" and then the "housing bubble" that nearly created a depression,"bubble" is an explosive, fearful word. It is also a strange one to use here, because the price of gas is not inflating but has been driven down by huge new production. Consumers have saved about $1,000 per year in lower heating bills and electricity bills. These savings are great for all consumers but protect the health and safety of about 25% of Americans, who have difficulty affording heat for their homes, as they have incomes that don't allow purchases of Rolling Stones Magazine.

After a dose of ponzi and bubble, we got to have some radiation to scare us all. While raising one more time the Pennsylvania drinking water radiation scare, Goodell of course does not report the results of massive testing for radionuclides done by drinking water suppliers of both water in streams and water coming out of taps. The results are incovenient to the drama.

There is no radionuclide pollution of drinking water in Pennsylvania. Zero. None. See the tests results that have been documented in numerous posts in this blog. But that truth will never catch up to the lie cleverly spread and repeated.

Just about the only part of the Goodell piece that has some redeeming quality is when it highlights methane migration from poor drilling as a real problem. It is, and too many companies in the industry lawyer-up and fight victims of gas migration, as opposed to fixing the problem and working to reduce the incidence. But even here Goodell is manipulative.

Gas migration results from mistakes in gas drilling and not in the hydraulic fracturing or fracking phase. With the important possible exception of Pavillion Wyoming, there is not one case of fracking fluids, when sent down the well, returning from depth to contaminate an aquifer.

The Duke University study of water wells in Pennsylvania that Goodell cites in fact found no fracking fluids had contaminated the water wells tested but methane had. It made two basic findings: frack fluids are not contaminating water wells but methane was found at high rates.

Goodell, however, repeats the methane contamination finding of the Duke study, without telling his readers that Duke found no frack fluids in the water wells.

Goodell ends the piece by saying, without any basis, that using less gas does not mean using more coal. This assertion is false. Counting corn ethanol and big hydro, renewable energy provides about 11% of America's total energy, more than nuclear power. Wind and solar are growing fast and costs are declining, but they provide less than 2% of our total energy.

Approximately 80% of our total energy comes from oil, natural gas, and coal. There is no way that renewables can replace that 80% tomorrow or in the next 10 years. The most aggressive renewable energy state is California, and it will get 33% of its electricity (not total energy) from renewables by 2020, with about 50% of its electricity coming from natural gas at that point.

When big coal plants close, as they are doing in record numbers, they are being replaced substantially by gas, with renewables also playing a role. Yet, until energy storage breakthroughs occur, intermittent wind and solar can make important contributions but cannot replace by themselves baseload coal plants. Only gas or nuclear plants can take the place of coal plants that now run night and day.

In 2005, prior to the shale gas boom, America stood ready to build 150 new coal plants. Most of those proposed new coal plants have not been built and now old coal plants are closing. Low-priced natural gas, more than anything else, stopped another wave of big coal plants and is now making old, inefficient coal plants close. Pretending otherwise may comfort Goodell but is not real.

Stunning Fact: 331 Coal Units Announced Closing Since January 2010

2012-03-02T06:55:00.001-05:00

Keeping track of the number of coal plants and coal units that are closing is not easy. This blog published in 2011 the Edison Electric Institute's list of coal plant closings at that time. Yesterday, Stephen Lacey wrote that the owners of 106 coal plants, with 331 coal units at them, had announced that they would retire or have retired since January 2010. The plants represent 42,895 megawatts or 13% of the coal fleet.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/29/435012/dirty-aging-coal-plants-set-to-close/?mobile=wp.

Other data in the post includes that the retiring plants on average are 55 years old and that they represent 8% of the electricity produced by coal plants or considerably less than the 13% capacity share of the retiring coal plants. The 8% of the electricity produced by coal plants that is retiring represents about 3.3% of all electricity generated from all sources. The retiring plants also account for 9% of the carbon dioxide coming from all coal plants.

It should also be noted that America builds typically 15,000 to 20,000 megawatts of new generation every year. The closings do not pose any threat to grid reliability.

This data also confirms that the plants retiring are the ones already not operating much, because they are unable to compete for dispatch in competitive markets, during periods of low and moderate demand, which is most of the time.

Lacey's post is based on information from Bruce Niles who is the director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign.

9 More Coal Plants Closing: "Gas Plants Displacing Coal Plants In Record Numbers"

2012-03-01T04:50:00.003-05:00

The truly historic decline in coal generation and rise of natural gas power picked up speed yesterday when two companies announced the retirement of 9 coal plants in 4 states from 2012 to 2015.

Reuters wrote: "Gas fired plants displacing coal in record numbers."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/29/utilities-genon-coal-idUSL2E8DT88V20120229.

GenOn announced it would retire 7 coal plants and one old gas plant that total 3,140 megawatts of capacity. The linked to Reuters story lists the plants of which 5 are located in Pennsylvania, 2 in Ohio, and 1 in New Jersey. Two will close in 2012 and five in 2015.

Why are these plants closing? Reuters reports that the retirements are due to "more stringent environmental regulations, weak power market conditions, and record switching from coal to natural gas-fired generators as gas prices hold near 10-year lows."

In addition to the GenOn announcement yesterday, Midwest Generation announced it would retire 2 coal plants located in Chicago that began operating in 1958 and 1968. Those retirements will be in 2012 and 2014.

All the plants that are closing are owned by competitive generation companies and are not part of a utility monopoly rate base. As a consequence, the plants are subject to competitive economic pressures and are unable to compete successfully in the competitive PJM wholesale market where they are all located. Power prices within PJM have collapsed since 2008, as the price of gas has fallen and driven down wholesale electricity prices from over 10 cents per kilowatt-hour to about 5 cents per kilowatt-hour recently.

The market share of coal has declined from 52% of all electricity in 2000 to 42.5% in 2011, while gas's share has risen from 16% in 2000 to 25% in 2011. Coal's loss is being matched almost completely by gas's gain.

Belief In Global Warming Rises & Warms With Weather

2012-03-01T04:39:00.001-05:00

Belief of global warming is warming again, after a substantial decline from 2009 to 2010,
according to polling by the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College. The poll found that 62% of the public believed in the reality of global warming, a rebound from 58% in the fall of 2010.
Public belief in global warming had been declining, falling substantially from 72% in the fall of 2008 to 58% in the fall of 2010. See www.ns.umich.edu/new/releases/20247-poll-belief-in-global-warming-rebounds-after-period-of-decline and http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2012/02_climate_change_rabe_borick.aspx.

The pollsters conclude that the personal observations of Americans about the weather is a key factor influencing opinions about the reality of global warming. Of those believing in global warming 24% pointed to warmer temperatures that they have observed and another 24% mentioned weather changes that they have experienced. Only 9% mentioned science research as the main basis.

Political registration partially predicts ones belief in global warming. Among Democrats, 75% accept the reality of global warming, while 47% of Republicans do. Many more rank and file Republicans accept global warming than do elected Republicans and Republican Presidential candidates. Global warming may be example of how the Republican party has been yanked to an extreme by its activists, while many rank and file Republicans don't agree with the new party orthodoxy.

The poll was conducted in the fall of 2011, obviously before what has been a very warm winter, and so expect to see a further increase in the public acceptance of global warming in the 2012. Indeed, this winter has been so warm that it almost met the global warming test of a central Pennsylvania Republican friend.

In his words, "I will believe in global warming when I don't shovel snow anymore."

My friend, we are getting there.

Dow 13,005: Happy Stock Days Are Here Again

2012-02-29T10:10:00.000-05:00

The Dow Jones Industrial average yesterday ended at 13,005, reaching its highest level since May 19 2008. US stocks are up about 100% since the Dow ended its frightening collapse that gathered speed throughout 2008 and then hit a sickening bottom in March 2009 well below 7,000.

Indeed, the period from March 2009 to today has been one of the best periods in the history of the stock market. Stock market gains also have been important to reviving growth of the US economy that now has grown every quarter since July 1, 2009.

In the world of stocks, happy days are here again.

Top Five Facts Why High Gasoline Prices Today Do Less Damage Than In 2008

2012-02-29T07:44:00.000-05:00

Gasoline prices are up 40 cents per gallon since January, now average $3.70 per gallon, and may reach the record of $4.11 set in July 2008. At that time, high gasoline costs were part of a perfect economic storm that nearly pushed the US already in a recession that started in 2007 into a depression.

Here are the top 5 facts why the economic impact this time of $4 gasoline will be much less, though still painful, as a 50 cent per gallon increase sustained for a year costs families $250 if they use 500 gallons annually or $500 more for 1,000 gallons.

5. New cars being sold today are more fuel efficient than in 2008. In fact today's vehicles are 14% more fuel efficient than in 2008, and more than 30 million new cars have been sold since 2008. The gasoline price rising from $3.50 to $4 rise 14% and is offset almost completely by greater fuel efficiency that also averages 14% in new cars sold. Of course, most motorists have not bought a new car since 2008, but they often do have two cars and start driving more frequently the higher mileage option. Car pooling rates and public transit use also rises when gasoline reaches $4 as people find other strategies to save gasoline money.

4. The USA has cut substantially its oil usage through efficiency and using substitutes for oil in vehicles, homes, and factories. Ethanol and biodiesel consumption are up. Oil power plants such as those in Florida operated by FPL are converting to gas. Tens of thousands of homes across the Northeast are switching to natural gas from oil. As a result, oil consumption is back to May, 1999 levels and gasoline back to September 2001 levels. The decreased oil consumption means that higher oil and gas prices in 2012 do less damage to the economy than in 2002.

3. Today electricity prices in many parts of the country like Pennsylvania are much lower than in 2008, and consumer savings in the electric bill approaching $500 per year for customers using 10,000 kilowatt-hours offset the household budget impact of $4 gasoline. It should be remembered that electricity prices during the second quarter of 2008 in America's largest wholesale electricity market (the PJM power pool) reached the equivalent of 13 cents per kilowatt-hour just for generation. High electric prices resulted from skyrocketing natural gas prices that were $13 for a thousand cubic feet in July 2008.

2. Today natural gas prices are $2.50 for a thousand cubic feet. For the 51% of America's homes that heat with natural gas, the savings on the natural gas bill can be easily $400 to $1,000 and more than offset the price increases in gasoline. Again low natural gas prices have also shaved hundreds of dollars off annual electricity bills in many parts of America. Combined natural gas and electricity bill savings of about $1,000 for many families exceed the $250 or $500 in new gasoline savings. The key to the gas and electricity savings is the record gas production in 2011, driven substantially by shale gas wells.

1. The number one fact why $4 gasoline will do much less damage is that today our economy is growing and creating jobs and is not in a frightening fall, as it was in 2008. High oil prices shoved down an economy already plummeting. Remember that in 2008 our economy was already well into a recession that began in 2007; the stock market was falling; and the global financial system froze on September 15, 2008, when the federal government did not prevent the economic collapse that followed the disastrous Lehmann Brothers bankruptcy. In the fall of 2008, monthly job loss immediately skyrocketed to 500,000 to 750,000. Truly scary.

In February 2012, our GDP has been growing every quarter since July 1, 2009. Jobs have been added for 23 months. And the stock market has roared back to 13,000 from below 7,000 in March 2009.

More fuel efficiency, less oil dependency, lower electricity bills, much lower natural gas prices, and a growing economy in 2012 all mean that America is today much better prepared to withstand $4 gasoline. Yet, to protect further our economic security, America needs to do even more to lessen its use of globally priced oil that is likely to go even higher in the coming years.

More natural gas, more biofuels, more electricity, and more energy efficiency is a recipe that works to innoculate Uncle Sam against high oil price illness.

PA DEP Must Remove Cloud Over Its Drinking Water Tests Are Sound

2012-02-29T06:55:00.000-05:00

An Associated Press story about possible impacts of gas drilling on ten water wells in Butler county, Pennsylvania that ran in papers around the country on Friday, February 24, including in the Washington Post, creates a cloud over the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's water testing. The cloud must be removed, because doubt about the quality of DEP water testing would make impossible the already difficult task of handling water contamination complaints.

The AP story states: "DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday said on Friday that the low chemical concentrations were not a health risk, and he suggested that the contamination may have come from the agency's laboratory or from abandoned vehicles on or near the property. But Sunday didn't answer why the DEP failed to do follow-up tests if it suspected its own testing process was contaminated." See the following link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/w-pa-tests-show-possible-gas-drilling-chemicals-in-water-dep-refused-follow-up-tests/2012/02/24/gIQAXL2uXR_print.html.

The foregoing, quoted two sentences and specifically the statement that the DEP laboratory might have caused water contamination that have now appeared around Pennsylvania and the nation must be addressed by DEP. Perhaps the story misrepresents what the DEP spokesperson said or the DEP spokesperson misspoke, an easy thing to do. Or the AP story could accurately convey what Mr. Sunday said and he meant what he said.

In either case, to remove the doubt sowed about the quality of its vital water testing process, DEP should do another round of testing at the water wells in Butler county and address directly the Friday February 24 comments made about the quality of its earlier water tests and its laboratory's procedures. Does DEP have reasons to think that its test was compromised? What were those reasons if they do? Or were the comments inadvertent and mistaken?

At this point, to restore and protect public confidence, those questions need to be answered and combined with another round of DEP water testing at the Butler county sites that are now the focus of a major public controversy. See following link for another story about the case:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrip/news/regional/s_783304.html.

Whenever a water contamination complaint is received DEP is on the regulatory hot spot. The Butler county case is certainly an example of the difficult issues that DEP must resolve. Its ability to credibly address these complaints is vital to public confidence, and that indispensable credibility rests on the quality of its water testing processes and DEP transparency.

Michigan On Track To Meet 10% Renewable Energy Standard

2012-02-28T14:09:00.000-05:00

As America watches Michigan vote today in the GOP primary, now is a good time to bring attention to the latest report of the Michigan Public Service Commission, documenting that Michigan will have10% of its electricity coming from renewable energy sources by 2015. See details at:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mpsc/implementation_PA295_renewable_energy2-15-2012_376924_7.pdf.

Michigan got 3.8% of its energy from renewables in 2011, but renewable energy will increase to 5% in 2012, and 8.4% by 2013 and 10% by 2015. Michigan is on track to meet its statutorily set Renewable Portfolio Standard on time and at bargain prices.

New construction or purchase of renewable generation by the state's two biggest electric utilities--Consumer Energy and Detroit Edison--is crucial to achieving the state requirement. Consumer Energy will bring on line 397 megawatts of new renewables by 2012 and 547 megawatts by 2014.

Detroit Edison will build even more--327 megawatts by 2012, 571 megawatts by 2013, and 841 megawatts by 2014.

The Michigan Public Service Commission notes that the costs of renewable energy is much lower than expected, is declining, and costs less than a new coal plant.

Michigan's success of meeting its 10% by 2015 RPS underlines again how modest the Pennsylvania 8% by 2021 renewable energy standard in fact is. Not surprisingly, Pennsylvania is on schedule or ahead of schedule to meet its requirement.

Rick Santorum's Michigan Triumph

2012-02-28T07:05:00.000-05:00

Win or lose tonight in Michigan, and late polling suggests a narrow Santorum win, Rick Santorum has already triumphed. With the President and Governor Romney, Senator Santorum is today one of three people who could be the next President of the United States. Like no Pennsylvanian in living memory, Santorum has scaled the heights of national politics, as he plays David against Goliath, in the form of the "inevitable," well-financed Mitt Romney.

Perpetually underestimated, Santorum throughout his career superbly senses political opportunity and vulnerability, excepting his peculiar failure in 2006, when he should have not sought re-election. Santorum displayed his normally sharp political instinct most recently by engineering his shocking triumphs in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, which he won, while Romney and Gingrich focused exclusively on Florida.

Santorum, however, first demonstrated his political genius nearly 25 years ago, by ousting a veteran Democratic congressman, and then again by jumping into a weak primary field to take on Senator Wofford, in what proved to be a great year for GOP insurgents--1994. As the race for President formed in 2011, Santorum again saw opportunity created by a weak Republican field and at the time a weakened President.

In politics, Santorum makes his own good luck by being dogged and a political master. His success rests on real fire in the belly fueled by a personal fanaticism that is both a huge strength and weakness. Santorum starts political campaigns when few would, continues long after most would have given up, and gathers admirers and real enemies as he goes. But the secret to Santorum's success is not his hard work and right wing boldness or, many would say, extremism.

Instead, Santorum's political genius reflects his superior understanding--better than all his GOP Presidential competitors--of what drives and motivates Republican rank and file voters. He has his finger on the pulse of what Santorum calls the Cracker Barrel Republican that says is the heart of the modern GOP. Santorum knows how to rile up this constituency and Santorum's personality works best when the Republican base is angry, as it was in1994, when he won the senate seat, and is today. Santorum is not a man for all seasons but angry times.

Santorum's arrival at this moment, when he stands on the cusp of defeating Governor Romney in his home state, is a uniquely personal triumph for Rick Santorum. It is hard to think anyone else could have done it and of course nobody else did.

Win or lose tonight, Santorum has made himself a force in Republican national politics in 2012 and beyond. If he actually wins Michigan tonight, Santorum becomes the favorite for the Republican nomination.

Also, if Santorum ultimately defeats the Republican Goliath named Romney, smart Democrats will not underestimate him in the fall. To do so could be fatal. These are angry times, fueled by 8.3% unemployment and $3.70 gasoline, when Santorum excels and knows how to beat political giants like President Obama.

Interesting Fracking Fact: 70% of Fracking Done at Oil Wells

2012-02-28T06:31:00.000-05:00

Hydraulic fracturing has been used for decades, but virtually nobody outside the oil and gas business ever heard of "fracking" until 2010. After fracking had hid in plain view for decades, why has nearly everyone said fracking in everyday conversation over the last two years, and the word is now firmly part of our vocabulary? Shale gas drilling reached the Northeast of the United States and a tsunami of media and public attention resulted.

As a result, fracking and gas drilling are tied together in the public mind.

Yet, the EPA stated during its webinar yesterday on hydraulic fracturing that 70% of hydraulic fracturing is currently at oil wells and just 30% at gas wells, reflecting a shift of rigs from gas drilling to oil drilling, as the price of oil jumps again, while the price of gas is at bargain levels. Much of the public, however, would be surprised to learn that fracking is being used right now much more to produce oil than gas.

Key Facts From Today's EPA Hydraulic Fracturing Webinar

2012-02-27T16:48:00.000-05:00

The Marcellus and Pennsylvania is in a starring role in the congressionally mandated study of potential impacts on drinking water from hydraulic fracturing. The slides from the webinar will be available at www.epa.gov/hfstudy. Here are the factual highlights of today's EPA webinar about the study's status and scope:

1. The study is looking at potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water from water acquisition, to chemical mixing, to injection of fluids, to handling of flowback and produced water at surface, and to the treatment and disposal of drilling wastewater.

2. EPA randomly selected 9 drilling companies and asked for data from 394 gas wells drilled by the 9 companies from 2009 to 2010. The 9 companies cumulatively drilled 25,000 wells in 590 counties across America.

3. There are 5 retrospective case studies looking at claims of water contamination. Those studies are in North Dakota at a shale oil site; Texas in the Barnett Shale; Colorado at a coalbed methane field; Washington County, Pennsylvania; and Tioga & Susquehanna counties in Pennsylvania.

4. Water sampling was conducted from July to November 2011 at the above locations and will be repeated again from March to July 2012.

5. The EPA both through modeling and through actual data is looking at potential of discharges of drilling wastewater to streams from treatment plants to impact drinking water. The EPA stated it was using data supplied by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Region 3 to perform this analysis. EPA further stated that this analysis could focus on the Mon and Susquehanna rivers in Pennsylvania.

6. The next update will be in May-June.

7. The first report of the study's results will be sent to the EPA Science Advisory Board in December 2012 for peer review and for public comments.

New Coal Plants Now More Expensive Than New Renewables

2012-02-27T05:56:00.002-05:00

For years renewable energy has been more expensive than coal. Not anymore.

New renewable energy--wind, biomass, landfill gas, digesters, hydro--now costs less than a new coal plant. Don't believe it? That is the finding of the Michigan Public Service Commission that quietly released on February 15th its statutorily required report to the Michigan legislature about the cost of meeting Michigan's 10% Renewable Standard. See the details at:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mpsc/implementation_PA295_renewable_energy2-15-2012_376924_7.pdf.

Looking at the actual prices bid to build new renewable energy plants, especially for its two biggest electricity utilities (Consumer Energy and Detroit Edison), the Michigan regulators found:

1. new wind plants from 2008-2011 on average cost 8.76 cents per kilowatt-hour;
2. new biomass cost 9.89 cents per kilowatt-hour;
3. new landfill gas cost 9.81 cents per kilowatt-hour;
4. new digester power cost 12.2 cents per kilowatt-hour.

The average renewable energy cost was 9.19 cents per kilowatt-hour for the entire 3 year period and would be even lower if only 2012 prices were included.

By comparison, the cost of new advanced-supercritical coal-fired plant for a life cycle of 40 years is 13.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to the Michigan PSC.

And where are renewable energy prices headed? The Michigan PSC states "...that the average levelized costs of the [renewable energy] contract continue to decline" and that "contract prices have been much lower than expected." Indeed, the renewable energy prices are lower in 2012 than in 2011, 2010, 2009, or 2008. Consequently, the prices expressed in the Michigan PSC report overstate the price of renewable energy in 2012.

Gas is certainly remaking the energy marketplace, but it is not alone in doing so. Renewable energy and its sharp price drop is an equally profound change, making both gas and renewable energy the dominant fuel sources for the next 20 years.

Global Solar Installations Set New Record Amid Creative Destruction

2012-02-27T05:49:00.001-05:00

Torrents of media accounts about solar bankruptcies or declining solar subsidies suggest the solar industry is collapsing. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal editorial page has run columns for years predicting the industry's demise and is still doing so in 2012. As with the end of times, the end of the solar industry is often predicted.

But 2011 was another bad year for earthly and solar doomsayers. World solar installations boomed once again, reaching an impressive 27,700 megawatts, up from 16,600 megawatts in 2010, according to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association's 2011 Market Report. See http://www.epia.org/.

To understand how big the world annual solar build is, consider that the US typically builds 10,000 to 20,000 megawatts of new power plants of all types in a year. In short, the global solar market is approaching twice the size of the total US new power plant market.

So what about the stories about solar company bankruptcies and declining solar subsidies in some European countries? Both are real, but their real meaning is misunderstood.

The solar bankruptcies and declining solar subsidies are both parts of the enormous global solar growth. As solar installations soar and prices of solar power plummet, not too surprisingly some European countries are decreasing solar feed in rates. Why? Solar projects simply require less subsidy, because their costs are declining sharply and are already at grid parity in some utility service territories in the USA and around the world.

The competition to supply and build solar projects is intense, and there are losers in the intensely competitive solar market. But the intense competition, at the very same time as it destroys some companies, expands the solar market, by creating declining solar prices that makes more private capital move into solar power. What is going on in the solar industry is capitalism's process of creative destruction, with the twist that capitalism as practiced in most of the world features public-private partnerships.

The global capacity to produce solar modules has increased 12 times in 5 years and stands at approximately 38,000 megawatts per year. Consequently, companies that cumulatively can manufacture 38,000 megawatts of solar power per year are chasing orders that are rising sharply but reached 27,700 megawatts in 2011.

The intensely competitive solar manufacturing market will be a fact of life for years to come and that means both solar manufacturing bankruptcies and still lower solar panel prices ahead.

EPA Administrator Jackson Supports Hydraulic Fracturing

2012-02-24T07:17:00.003-05:00

Lisa Jackson waded further into the gas wars in an appearance in New Jersey, where she both supported state regulation of hydraulic fracturing and said: "I believe fracking as a technology is perfectly capable of being clean. But it requires people who are doing it and the innovators who create technology to make sure it be done right." www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2012/02/epa_chief_says_fracking_regula.html. Her words stirred critical comments at the paper and challenge those who wish to ban the practice or federalize regulation.

Meanwhile, in Houston at the Winter NAPE conference, various speakers in the oil and gas industry turned the conference into a session of bashing President Obama. fuelfix.com/blog/2012/02/22/nape-conferences-focuses-criticism-on-obama/.

Perhaps someone at NAPE thanked Lisa Jackson for her support of hydraulic fracturing, when it is the object of concerted attack. Or perhaps someone at NAPE thanked Lisa Jackson and the President for their support for both the Cross State Air Pollution and the Air Toxic Rule that will increase natural gas demand more than any other policy decision and that have been attacked rabidly by Congressional Republicans.

Right now, the biggest problem facing the gas industry is not production but demand for gas. It is too low, given the huge supplies. President Obama has done more to support using more gas than any other President ever.

While the President's administration is being attacked from both the Ban Fracking and Drill Baby Drill camps, even though US gas production is at record levels and oil production is rising, the President's poll ratings today are strong and getting stronger. Possibly most Americans are in the middle of the road--not comfortable with loud extremes.

EPA Hosts Upcoming Webinar on Hydraulic Fracturing Study

2012-02-24T06:44:00.001-05:00

The EPA will host on monday, February 27th from 3:00-4:00 a webinar on the progress of its Congressionally mandated hydraulic fracturing study. The EPA investigation at Pavillion, Wyoming is not part of this study, but the EPA hydraulic fracturing study remains the most important, single piece of on-going science work involving gas production.

If you are interested in the webinar and want to register, go to: www.epa.gov/hfstudy/hfstudyupdate.html.

Coal Is King In China: Provides 70% Of Total Energy

2012-02-24T06:39:00.002-05:00

Looking at the role of coal in China and the USA underlines how coal's position in national economies varies considerably around the world.

Once but no more king in the USA, coal reigns in China, where it provides 70% of China's total energy. Uncle Sam gets 21% of his energy from coal and nearly all coal is burnt to make electricity. Both oil and natural gas provide more of the USA's total energy, or coal is the USA's third biggest fuel. Renewable energy in all forms, including large hydro and corn ethanol, ranks fourth an nuclear energy fifth in America.

Already high in China, coal demand is still rocketing up in China, jumping another 9.7% in 2011, while oil demand rose 2.7%, natural gas 12%, and electricity consumption 11.7%. See http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-22/china-energy-consumption-rises-at-fastest-pace-in-four-years.html. China must import coal from around the world to meet its demand, including from the USA. US coal exports rose 31% in 2011 to reach 100 million tons.

With its nearly unquenchable thirst for energy, China consumed 20.3% of the world's energy in 2010, making it the world's biggest energy consumer. The US ranked second at 19%.

Despite the USA and China consuming similar amounts of the world's energy, China emits more approximately 50% more carbon pollution than the USA because China is much more dependent on carbon-intensive coal than the USA is.

Shale Gas Cuts Again Electric Rates At Big PA Electric Utility

2012-02-23T10:48:00.001-05:00

While 586,000 customers have switched to competitive electricity suppliers and have saved even more money by doing so, my home town electricity utility--PPL Electric Utilities--is dropping its electricity generation rate yet again that it charges to customers who have not shopped for electricity. Why? It is passing through to customers lower wholesale electricity prices produced by low natural gas prices and the shale gas boom.
www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/02/power_price_to_drop_march_1_fo.html.

As of March 1, 2011, residential customers buying electricity from PPL will see their electricity rate fall from the current 7.769 cents per kilowatt-hour to 6.935 cents. The reduction will save a typical customer $8.30 per month.

This PPL generation rate decrease is just the latest of many. As of January 1, 2010, residential customers buying electric generation from PPL (again those customers who had not shopped or switched to a competitive electricity generation supplier) were paying 10.4 cents per kilowatt-hour. Just since January 2010, the PPL electric generation rate has fallen 3.465 cents per kilowatt-hour. Annual savings for a consumer using 10,000 kilowatt-hours per year are $346. Not bad at all.

Customers that have shopped have received even higher savings or have purchased products that meet their needs or preferences like green power. I have switched to a company that provides 100% wind power. Take a look at http://www.choosepawind.com/.

Study Finds Drilling Boom Does Not Increase Crime In Communities

2012-02-23T06:45:00.002-05:00

Does a gas drilling boom in a community mean higher crime rates, as some have claimed? No, at least not so far, according to a study done by the Justice Center for Research at Penn State University. See the details at:
http://www.justicecenter.psu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Marcellus-Shale-Drilling-and-Crime-Trends-in-Pennsylvania.pdf.

The study states: "...there were no consistent increases in Pennsylvania State Police incidents/calls for service or Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) arrest statistics in the top Marcellus-active counties." The study looked at crime rates in the 7 counties where drilling is most active: Bradford, Fayette, Greene, Lycoming, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Washington. It compares data for the pre-drilling period of 2006-2007 to 2008-2010 when drilling boomed.

The researchers note that the study period is short and should be extended in order to make firmer conclusions about trends. They also report that crime rates decreased in rural communities with no gas drilling in the study periods. Additionally 75% of the municipalities in the drilling areas of the study do not have their own police forces and rely on the Pennsylvania State Police for coverage.

Gas drilling brings economic growth to communities, and all the benefits and costs associated with a boom. It means jobs for young people and others who need them. It lowers unemployment rates and few things make communities stronger than jobs and lower unemployment rates. It means higher rents that benefit those who have properties to rent and hurts those who must rent. It means more people in restaurants, hotels, and in towns. More people causes more money circulating, more activities, and more services needed. It brings more vehicles to roads, road damage, and road repairs that have built better roads than ever in some places.

There are both opportunities and challenges caused by gas-drilling fueled economic growth for communities. It is not all good or all bad. Yet some descriptions of community impacts of gas drilling are only negative. Perhaps we should all ask the mayors of Reading, Pennsylvania or the Mon Valley whether they would prefer to be dealing with the challenges of economic growth or economic decline.

California Crosses 5% Wind Power Threshold: Renewables & Gas Powering Golden State

2012-02-23T06:44:00.001-05:00

While California trails Iowa and South Dakota that generate 20% of their electricity from wind, and Texas where wind generates about 8% of its electricity, California crossed the 5% wind power threshold in 2011. See www.calwea.org/pdfs/2012/5_percent_CA_wind_final_rel013112.pdf. California now has 3,927 megawatts of wind operating, ranking it third in total wind capacity.

California and Texas, the nation's two most populated states, are striking examples of the growth of wind energy. But the on-going debate about extending the wind production tax credit is already reducing new wind construction in 2013 and putting thousands of jobs at risk.

Apart from wind, California generates 42% of its electricty from natural gas, with large hydro and nuclear power significant sources too. California is also home to some of the nation's largest geothermal power plants. Two of California's largest electricity utilities now get 20% of their electricity from renewable energy resources.

How about solar? As of 2010, solar produced 0.3% of the Golden state's power. Massive solar farms that are under construction will boost significantly solar's California market share over the next 3 years.

PA Joins 1 Trillion Cubic Feet Club

2012-02-22T06:58:00.002-05:00

In 2011, Pennsylvania produces 1.042 trillion cubic feet of gas, making the Commonwealth one of the nation's biggest and most important gas producing states. Pennsylvania gas production has increased more than five-fold since 2006.

In the last 6 months of 2011, Pennsylvania produced 607 billion cubic feet of gas, a significant increase over the 435 billion cubic feet of gas produced in the first 6 months of 2011.

Production in 2012 will likely increase again, despite a slow down in drilling of new wells in dry gas areas, because more wells already drilled will be connected to pipelines and more gas will flow to market. But the reduction of gas rigs in Pennsylvania by companies like Chesapeake Energy and Talisman will have an impact this year. The 2012 production will be lower than it would have been had gas prices remained at $4 or higher for a thousand cubic feet.

How long can gas prices remain below $4? Since few people even 12 months ago forecast gas prices falling to $2.50, answering that question requires humility and heads into the unknown. External factors like weather and possible shocks to the US economy from a war with Iran or a deep European recession impact gas prices. I would only say prices are going to rise and not in the distant future.
More clear is that Pennsylvania production gains are a major reason that gas prices have crashed, and why gas and electricity consumers around the country have seen substantial savings in the last 24 months.

Past Time To Regulate Water Well Construction In PA

2012-02-22T06:43:00.000-05:00

Only Alaska and Pennsylvania do not regulate the design, materials, equipment, and construction of a water well. In Pennsylvania, the result of no regulation or a "buyer beware" approach has been hundreds of thousands of poorly constructed water wells with substantial water pollution problems.

Across the Commonwealth, approximately 3.5 million people drink water from more than 1 million water wells and about 20,000 new wells are drilled each year. As many as one-quarter of those wells has one or more contaminants that endanger health.

It is time to regulate water well construction in Pennsylvania. This is not a situation of fixing a problem that is not broken. We have hundreds of thousands of water wells that are broken, that threaten the health of those who drink from them.

Legislation to regulate water well construction has been introduced by Rep. Ron Miller. See www.goerie.com/article/20120220/NEWS02/302209970/Water-well-regulations-could-reduce-contamination-increase-costs.

Marcellus drilling is shining a light on water wells and water quality. Passing regulation of water well construction would be a great benefit, derived from the public attention created by gas drilling. Pass it!

Yellow Flags On NOAA/Colorado Methane Leakage Paper

2012-02-22T06:37:00.002-05:00

Michael Levi's blog post about the details of the methane leakage data gathered by NOAA scientists in Colorado is interesting. Levi gets into the weeds of some of the calculations used in the paper. See

http://blogs.cfr.org/levi/2012/02/13/yellow-flags-on-a-new-methane-study/?utm_spirce=feedburmer&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mlevi+%28Michael+Levi%3A+Energy%2C+Security%2C+and+Climate%29.

No matter the details, my bottom line remains that methane leakage rates can and should be cut. Doing so is crucial to maximizing the benefits of natural gas and protecting the natural gas "brand." Both industry and environmentalists should have common purpose on cutting methane leakage. The EPA July 2011 proposed rule that is now expected to be made final in April will be a major milestone on this important issue.

CBS News Releases 5 Minutes Of My Dimock Interview

2012-02-21T04:31:00.002-05:00

CBS released a 5 minute excerpt of my 30 plus minute Dimock interview. See http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7396738n&tag=mncol;lst;2

This interview is certainly better than the 5 seconds or less that appeared in the original CBS story about Dimock. It, of course, is still highly edited and so only begins to address the basic point that pollution at Dimock was methane migrating but was not fracking fluids returning from depth. CBS includes a portion where I emphasize that drilling and hydraulic fracking are separate phases of developing a well and where I say the problem involved gas migrating.

This posting does not have me saying, as I did, that the pollution at Dimock was not frack fluids returning from depth. That would have contradicted the original story's narrative.

AP Reports: No Radiation In Pennsylvania Drinking Water

2012-02-21T04:26:00.002-05:00

As the first anniversary approaches of the NYT Sunday, February 27, 2011 front page article warning that Pennsylvania's drinking waters were being contaminated by radiation from drilling wastewater, the Associated Press reported that Pennsylvania's drinking waters are not glowing.

The AP writes: "Additional water testing over the last year also appears to have put to rest concerns that radioactivity from the drilling waste could contaminate drinking water...States said his agency [Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority] 'looked real hard' at the radioactivity issue, but didn't find a problem in western Pennsylvania rivers...Sunday, the DEP spokesman, said the state's water quality monitoring network shows normal, background levels of radioactivity. 'Monitoring at the public water supply intakes across the state showed non-detectable levels of radiation; in the two cases that detected any level, the levels were at background', he added." fuelfix.com/blog/2012/02/20/marcellus-shale-gas-drillers-recycling-more-waste/.

The NYT story was dramatic and false. The AP story is factual and true. Which one will have the bigger impact?

Must Read AP Story About Drilling Wastewater Disposal

2012-02-20T11:20:00.001-05:00

The volumes of drilling wastewater from shale wells nearly quadrupled in the first 6 months of 2011, when compared to the first 6 months of 2010. Of the 10.1 million barrels of wastewater produced in the first 6 months of 2011, about 97% was recycled or deep well injected, according to the Associated Press. See
fuelfix.com/blog/2012/02/20/marcellus-shale-gas-drillers-recycling-more-waste/. It's not clear what happened to the remaining 3%. In the first 6 moths of 2010, Pennsylvania's Marcellus wells generated 2.8 million barrels of wastewater or about a quarter of the 2011 amount for the same period.

The AP also finds that the traditional shallow gas wells--non-Marcellus wells--are still taking their drilling wastewater to plants that may be discharging to rivers, without full treatment for Total Dissolved Solids. The AP calculates that 1.86 million barrels from these wells were produced in the first half of 2011.

Pennsylvania's regulations include a watershed requirement that TDS levels be kept below 75% of the Safe Drinking Water Act level. Monitoring of bromide levels are continued to be monitored and sources of bromide other than drilling wastewater are being examined.

Comparing UT Report & NYT Article On PA Gas Oversight

2012-02-20T07:24:00.002-05:00

The New York Times February 27th, 2011 article created a false narrative that Pennsylvania was an "extreme case" of "lax regulation" and "lax oversight" where "gas producers are generally left to police themselves," with the result that its rivers that supplied drinking waters were being heavily polluted by radiation pollution that threatened human health.

Massive testing of drinking water at the tap and in stream totally debunk the main radiation narrative of the New York Times article, with one example being the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority that is still doing monthly test and posting the results on its website www.pgh2o.com. Pennsylvania American Water Company also tested drinking water at 5 of its treatment plants. Fourteen other drinking water suppliers did the same. All tests prove the drinking water drawn from rivers and streams for public water systems has radiation at natural or background levels, is safe to drink, and has not been at risk.

Of course, the NYT has refused to inform accurately or fully its readers about the results of these tests, since they destroy the article's fundamental narrative.

The paper can be counted on to also not report that the University of Texas, after reviewing enforcement of oil and gas laws in 15 states, concluded that Pennsylvania had issued the largest number of violations of any state. See www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4664957094233317169#editor/target=post;postID=1360814019445320030

Pennsylvania issued 1200 violations to the industry in 2010 and 1100 in 2011. When it completes its work, UT may document that Pennsylvania issued approximately two times the number of violations compared to the second ranking state and that the number of violations issued in Pennsylvania was typically 5 to 10 times greater than in most other states. Still other reporting found that Pennsylvania leads the nation in imposing fines and sanctions for violations of oil and gas laws.

Don't expect to see any of those facts in the NYT, because they destroy the other major narrative of the article that Pennsylvania was an extreme case of lax oversight and lax regulation. The Public Editor of the New York Times that has twice spanked the gas reporter and editors that have fed cleverly constructed misleading and false accounts on the papers' readers should consider a third public spanking.

Iowa Poll Chills Obama & Finds Paul Is Strongest Opponent

2012-02-20T06:25:00.001-05:00

Driven to irrational exuberance by good political news in the last 2 months, giddy Democrats need a cold shower, and yesterday's Des Moines Register poll is just that. It finds that Paul, Santorum, and Romney all lead President Obama in Iowa, with Paul up 49-42; Santorum 48-44; and Romney 48-46. The President only beats Speaker Gingrich, whipping him 51-37, confirming the enormous damage done by millions of dollars of negative adds, fired at Newt, in Iowa by Team Romney and Congressman Paul.
www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120218/NEWS09/120218015/Obama-trails-three-four-Republican-candidates-latest-Iowa-Poll?odyssey.

Ron Paul is the President's toughest Republican opponent, beating him by 7 points. Paul is the most electable in the general election but remains certain not to be the nominee. Yet, at least in Iowa, Santorum and Romney also narrowly lead the President in February 2012.

President Obama carried Iowa by 10 points in 2008, and Iowa's unemployment rate is substantially below the national average, as the Iowa farm economy has done comparatively well. But by 46 to 48, the poll found that Iowans disapproved of the President's job performance.

The poll confirms that the President remains vulnerable whenever his approval rating falls below 50%. The poll challenges the conventional wisdom that the Republican primaries have become necessarily bad for the Republicans' general election prospects. Most of the many months of the Iowa caucus featured all Republican candidates attacking the President, with negative attacks directed at Gingrich in only December 2011. Finally the poll is a reminder that the 2012 election could still be close, a cold shower for giddy Democrats.

UT Study Of Shale Gas Impacts Is Objective & A Must Read

2012-02-17T12:28:00.001-05:00

"Separating Fact From Fiction In Shale Gas Development" is the title of the University of Texas Energy Institute Study. See http://energy.utexas.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=151&Itemid=160.

My initial review finds that the study is objective, useful, but necessarily limited. The whole study and the White Papers are substantial and a must read. The UT team states that more will be forthcoming that will add to this first stage of the study.

Some highlights of the report are that it finds no documented cases of hydraulic fracturing fluids returning from depth to contaminate aquifers; it confirms that spills and leaks at the surface are a more substantial threat to groundwater; it finds that gas migration from gas wells to properties has taken place, though pre-existing or biogenic gas is a more prevalent explanation for gas in water wells.

On gas migration, the study says: "Other cases of methane explosions in homes and wellhouses have been investigated in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Texas. In some of these cases, the explosions were found caused by gas migration from hydraulically fractured wells. In general, if natural gas migrates away from a shale gas or conventional gas well, it is because well integrity has been compromised such as through failure of the surface casing or cement."

The study finds that enforcement at the state level varies. The initial study results on enforcement do not include Pennsylvania, because the volume of violations is so large that the study team requires more time to review them.

About Pennsylvania, the enforcement white paper to the study says: "Although we have not conducted a comprehensive analysis of violations in Pennsylvania, this state has produced the largest number of violations of state environmental and oil and gas laws at shale gas sites..." Remember the NYT gas reporter described Pennsylvania as the state with uniquely lax oversight.

The UT study of 15 major gas producing states confirms that Pennsylvania, that issued 1200 violations to the gas industry in 2010 and 1100 in 2011, has uniquely stringent oversight.

The UT study also finds that the media coverage of the shale gas issue has been overwhelmingly negative. About 64% of stories were negative; 25% neutral; and 12% positive. Media coverage also hardly ever compares shale gas impacts to coal or oil or other energy industry impacts. As a result many in the public have a thoroughly false understanding of America's energy choices and their environmental impacts.

Gas drilling and shale gas development are industrial activity with impacts. Mistakes also are made. The contents of rules matter. Enforcement of rules is vital and variable. The culture of companies about safety shapes environmental outcomes. But the dominant narrative of this issue is too often fictional. The UT team can provide a real public service by fully separating fact from fiction.

Texas Coal Gassification & Carbon Capture Plant At Crucial Juncture

2012-02-17T06:37:00.002-05:00

The global rise in carbon pollution seems near unstoppable. If not unstoppable, it will be very difficult to stablize global concentrations of carbon pollution below 450 or even 500 parts per million, levels that will insure significant temperature increases, but prevent the most dangerous possible outcomes.

Given the enormous carbon pollution from China and soon India, a key to stabilizing carbon concentration levels could be carbon capture and storage technology that turns coal and natural gas plants into zero carbon polluters. The technology exists to do so, but the costs are high and must come down for widespread adoption.

The United States Department of Energy's Clean Coal Power Initiative is attempting to partner with private industry to develop a commercial power plant that would demonstrate the technology and begin a process of lowering its costs. As a result, DOE has provided $450 million to Summit Power Group in Texas is attempting to develop a 400 megawatt plant that will gassify coal at a cost of $2 billion or a capital cost of $5 per watt plus fuel and other production costs. See http://www.texascleanenergyproject.com/news-room. The plant would capture 2.5 million tons of carbon per year and sell the gas for enhanced oil recovery, an important piece of the plant's business plan.

Summit Power Group announced this week that it had entered into $2 billion of engineering, procurement, and construction projects that are conditioned on a successful financial closing. The economics of this plant have been challenged by the decline in gas prices, but its location in Texas, where power prices have actually gone up, as a result of a generation capacity shortage that has caused blackouts, means that this plant just might get the needed private financing. See http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120214005291/en/Summit%E2%80%99s-Texas-Clean-Energy-Project-Reaches-Major.

Stay tuned for more on the fate of this plant.

Study Of Coal Plant Closures Identifies Gas As Major Driver

2012-02-17T06:33:00.003-05:00

"In the past year, coal plants have been facing a perfect storm of falling natural gas prices, a continued trend of high coal prices, and weak demand for electricity," so-concluded Dr. Susan Tierney of the Analysis Group. http://www.analysisgroup.com/article.aspx?id=13178. The study details how crashing gas prices have been the key reason why electricity prices have fallen and why old coal plants have been running a lot less, even before any formal closure decision. Tierney notes that rising coal prices, driven up in part by coal exports jumping 31% in 2011, also add to the pressures on old, inefficient coal plants.

Low gas prices, high coal prices, low-demand for electricity all mean that wholesale power prices are low and operating revenues may not match production costs at the most inefficient, most-expensive to run plants.

What is the role of the EPA Air Toxic rule in closing plants right now? None. The rule does not take effect until January 2015 and might not even then.

Yesterday, at least the first 3 lawsuits challenging the EPA Air Toxic Rule were filed, and nobody ought to bet their house that the EPA rule will withstand legal challenges. Going back to the administration of George W. Bush, the federal courts have not been reticent about overturning EPA rulemakings.

US Carbon Emissions From Fossil Fuels Drop 1.2% in 2011

2012-02-16T11:51:00.004-05:00

US carbon emissions from fossil fuels dropped 1.2% in 2011, continuing the trend toward falling US carbon emissions from fossil fuel consumption that account for more than 80% of total US carbon emissions. Seewww.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf.

Natural gas displacing coal in electric generation; rising renewable energy power production; declining oil and gasoline consumption for transportation; declining oil consumption to heat homes and buildings; and increasing energy efficiency all are contributing to falling carbon pollution.

Carbon emissions from fossil fuel consumption are now back to 1998 levels. This decline is especially noteworthy, since the US population has increased by more than 35 million people since 1998, and our economy is considerably bigger today than it was then.

Southern Company Spends $14 Billion On Two New Nukes Without Carbon Price

2012-02-16T06:55:00.000-05:00

How does it make economic sense to spend at least $14 billion to build 2 nuclear reactors, without a substantial price on carbon pollution? New nuclear plants emit no heat trapping pollution but make no economic sense in the USA, if the external costs of dumping heat trapping pollution into the atmosphere are not included in the price of energy. Yet, Southern Company has generally opposed significant carbon regulation but just got licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build two nuclear reactors that are projected to cost $14 billion by the time that they are scheduled to begin operation in 2016 and 2017.

Monopoly power over generation sources in Georgia and lobbying success in Washington DC to obtain $8 billion plus of federal loan guarantees that move risk from Southern's shareholders to taxpayers answer the question, how does it makes sense to spend $14 billion to build 2 nuclear plants and oppose significant carbon regulation?

Having successfully kept its retail generation monopoly and fended off proponents of electricity competition, Southern is principally using its captured, monopoly electricity customers and federal taxpayers to finance the needed $14 billion, including federal loan guarantees to Southern that are about 15 times greater than the size of the Solyndra loan guarantee. In fact, current customers of Southern are already paying for the nuclear reactors in their electricity bills, even though they are not getting any service from them and won't for another 5-years. A monopoly has its benefits.

In the absence of a substantial price on carbon, no company without a monopoly that can "rate base" nuclear investments and massive federal support would consider spending $14 billion to build 2,200 megawatts of electricity generation capacity. Such massive costs are not supportable in the competitive electricity generation marketplace, where the same amount of natural gas electricity capacity could be built for approximately $1.6 billion, or at least 85% less than the nuclear capacity.

With ratepayers already paying to finance the plants and the federal loan guarantees banked, building the 2 nuclear power plants makes sense for Southern and its shareholders who will receive substantial returns, with little risk. But the impacts on consumers of Southern will be much less happy. Even if the 2 nuclear plants are built successfully on time and on budget, a shaky assumption indeed, the high costs of these nuclear power plants will make Georgia less competitive for business and industry.

While likely bad for consumers who pay electricity bills in the Southern territory, the nuclear plants will avoid large amounts of carbon pollution, but that is worth absolutely nothing in today's energy marketplace, and so the nuclear plants are being built on the strength of monopoly power or the absence of a competitive generation market in Georgia and lobbying strength for subsidies.

And here is more of the story. House Republicans in Washington DC support federal taxpayers underwriting 100 more new nuclear plants at a cost of $1 trillion and also totally oppose a carbon price and often deny global warming exists. Well, no one can say that they don't have an energy policy.

Honda Civic CNG Dethroned As Greenest Car

2012-02-16T06:37:00.002-05:00

For 8 years, the Honda Civic CNG has topped ACEEE's rankings of the greenest vehicles. See http://aceee.org/press/2012/02/electric-car-tops-greenest-vehicle-l. But this year it fell to a tie for second with the Nissan Leaf in ACEEE's 14th annual rankings. After a long reign, the Honda Civic CNG is no longer the greenest car, but it remains incredibly clean, when compared to all alternatives. It also costs about $2 less per gallon to operate than the gasoline Honda Civic, since CNG is typically selling for between $1.25 and $2.00 per gallon.

What did ACEEE rank as the greenest car? The Mistubishi i-MIEV battery electric vehicle. The Toyota Prius, Honda Insight, and the Smart ForTwo were 4th, 5th, and 6th in the rankings.

To be ranked, a car must have more than 1,000 sales. As with all rankings, criteria and assumptions play a role. The Chevy Volt was hurt by an assumption that it was driven 65% of miles traveled on electricity, with the remainder on gasoline. A further assumption for electric cars was that electricity was generated by a national average mix of power plant resources.

NOAA Data Underline Need To Cut Methane Leakage

2012-02-15T05:02:00.001-05:00

A team of NOAA scientists measuring air quality in a portion of Colorado estimates that 4% of the produced gas at a gas field is leaking into the atmosphere. See http://www.nature.com/news/air-sampling-reveals-high-emissions-from-gas-field-1.9982. That leakage rate is high and would be about 43% greater than current EPA national estimates.

Yet still other data about the leakage rate being developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology indicate that the leakage rate is below the current EPA estimate, according to Sergey Paltsev of MIT.

No matter which estimate is right, the leakage rate of methane can be cut and must be cut. Indeed, the EPA proposed July 2011 rules would do the job, even according to Professor Howarth.

Professor Howarth said of the rules in his most recent paper: "Can shale-gas methane emissions be reduced. Clearly yes, and proposed EPA regulations to require capture of gas at the time of well completions are an important step."

The gas industry should for its own good take methane leakage seriously, as nothing more fundamentally risks damaging the brand of gas as a cleaner burning fuel than this issue. Unfortunately, global warming science can lead to major arguments with some in gas industry circles, and not all companies are members of the EPA Gas Star program. As a result, not all are genuinely committed to excellent practices for limiting methane leakage.

Even if the methane leakage rate was 4%, and again MIT thinks it is not, coal would emit substantially more carbon than gas when coal is used for electricity, and nearly all coal is used for that purpose in the USA. But there is no need for the methane leakage rate to be 4%. Cutting methane leakage rates should be something that unites and not divides.

Low-gas Price Triggers Price War For Electricity Customers: Great Time To Buy Longterm & Green

2012-02-15T04:56:00.001-05:00

The close relationship between the price of natural gas and the amount of your electricity bill is on display once more. This time in the form of a price war for electricity customers that has been triggered by the low-price of gas. See the Andy Maykuth piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer at http://articles.philly.com/2012-02-12/business/31052351_1_conedison-solutions-competitive-suppliers-gas-prices.

I would urge electricity consumers to consider doing two things at this point, the best time to shop for electricity in the last 12 years. Look for longterm contracts and buy some green power.

You can get information about how to purchase local wind power at http://www.choosepawind.com/. Any purchase of Pennsylvania wind will help to build more wind farms in Pennsylvania that produce zero air and water pollution, that employ Pennsylvanians, and that produce electricity that helps to keep power prices reasonable.

No matter what electricity you buy, this is a great time to lock in favorable pricing. You can save more right now by sticking with short duration contracts, but prices are likely to rise from these levels sooner rather than later. My advice would be to think multi-year or longterm contract.

US Ranks Second in Big World Wind Market

2012-02-14T11:21:00.000-05:00

An incredible 41,000 megawatts of wind was installed around the world last year. China led the world by installing 18,000 megawatts of wind, a mind-blowing number for one year. The US ranked second and installed 6,800 megawatts, while India came in third with 3,000 megawatts deployed. Other highlights include a record year in Canada for wind development--1,500 megawatts in 2011 in Maple Leaf country--and the Brazilian market jumping 50%. See http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-07/wind-power-market-rose-6-percent-to-41-gigawatts-led-by-china.html.

Let's put in perspective the 41,000 megawatts of wind energy built around the globe in 2011. The world now has 238,000 megawatts of wind capacity or the 2011 wind installations increased the total by more than 20%.

The US has a total of 47,000 megawatts and is a world leader in total wind power installation so as much wind was built around the world in one-year as nearly has been installed ever in the US. Last year's global wind power deployment is more than twice the new generation capacity built in the US from all technologies.

Assuming that each megawatt of wind is equal to about $2 million of investment, the wind industry was about an $82 billion global market in 2011. It is big business.

And 2011 was not a fluke. The 41,000 megawatts installed in 2011 was a 6% increase over the 2010 wind installation total.

Gas Has Bridged The USA to Declining Coal Generation & A Cleaner Environment

2012-02-14T05:11:00.003-05:00

It is fashionable in some circles to describe natural gas as a "Bridge to Nowhere" for America's energy and environmental future. In environmental terms, it is an amazing phrase, since gas is orders of magnitude cleaner than coal and oil on pollutants like soot, mercury, lead, arsenic, sulfur dioxides, nitrogen dioxides, so much cleaner in fact that, if China ran on natural gas alone, its air would be safe to breathe. The Bridge To Nowhere phrase is designed to forget all that, in addition to all the economic, national security, and consumer benefits (including for poor families who cannot pay high heating bills) of natural gas to focus on the real and growing problem of carbon dioxide pollution, a topic for tomorrow's postings.

Today, instead of speculating once again about where gas may take America in the next 10, 20 or 50 years, let's look at where gas has brought the country's electricity generation mix and environmental profile in the last 20 years. Drawn from Energy Information Administration reports, including the EIA's most recent Short Term Energy Outlook, the numbers are startling. www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf.

Gas has seen the portion of America's electricity that it provides increase nearly year after year for more than 20 years. In 1990, gas accounted for 12% of all electricity. By 2000, America got 16% of its electricity from gas.

By 2010, gas generated 24% of the nation's power. And by 2011, natural gas produced 26% of our electricity.

The rise of gas has coincided with almost an equal decline in coal's share of power production. Burning coal provided 52% of America's power or "most" of it in 2000. By 2010, coal's share declined to 44.8%. And last year the decline accelerated, with coal falling to 42.5% of our electricity.

Since 2000, gas's market share has risen 10 percentage points from 16% to 26%, while coal's market share has declined 9.5 percentage points from 52% to 42.5%. That is a bridge to somewhere. Just look at the blog postings about First Energy closing 9 coal plants in the last two weeks and the FPL replacement of dirty oil plants with gas generation to see specific actions that bring to life these statistics.

Gas has already bridged the United States from a past, when most of the United States' electricity came from coal, to the present when most of America's electricity comes from generation sources other than coal and when the decline in coal's electricity market share even accelerates.

The advent of shale gas and its crushing of the natural gas price has caused gas increasingly to replace coal since 2008. Just since 2008, coal has seen its market share plummet from 48% to 42.5%, while gas's share rises quickly.

And as gas has replaced coal, though not only because gas has displaced substantial amounts of coal, America's carbon emissions from fossil fuels have fallen back to 1998 levels, with another 1.2% decline in 2011, according to the EIA. It needs to be said once more that the reduction of other pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, lead, arsenic, soot over the last 20 years has been even much more dramatic than the recent declines in carbon emissions. Gas too has played a meaningful role in cutting by 50% or more these pollutants that sicken and kill people.

Though some insist that gas will kill renewable energy, even as renewable energy booms in the US and around the world, the rise of gas over the last 20 years has not meant the death of renewable energy. In fact, during this 20-year period, the wind industry and the solar industry were birthed in practical terms. Wind and solar for example have boomed, especially in the last 5 years, and now provide about 3% of America's electricity.

From 2008 to 2011, US wind capacity has increased from 25,000 megawatts to 47,000 megawatts and solar capacity has skyrocketed from 500 to 4,000 megawatts. Iowa and South Dakota got in 2011 20% of their electricity from wind. Texas produced approximately 8% from wind. Our biggest state, California, is on course to get 55% of its generation from gas and 33% from renewable energy by 2020.

Indeed wind, solar and gas need each other. When wind and solar reach market shares of 5%, 10%, 20%, they need gas turbines that can produce power very quickly to allow grid operators to keep power supplies firm and reliable.

To date the gas bridge has been great for America's air quality, helpful in reducing carbon pollution, good for its economy, and a blessing for consumers, especially low-income families. Where the bridge takes America in the future is uncertain, but it can continue to better America, given just a bit of wise policy and a renewed focus on reducing methane leakage. More tomorrow on that important point.

2012 Vehicles 13% More Fuel Efficient Than 2008 Models

2012-02-14T04:45:00.002-05:00

Why are US fossil fuel carbon emissions falling? Why are US oil imports falling? Why is US gasoline demand back to September 2001 and oil consumption at May 1999 levels? Rapidly rising fuel efficiency in new vehicles is one major reason for all the foregoing. Consider these numbers from a University of Michigan study:

New light duty vechicles (cars, pickup trucks, minivans, vans, and SUVs) on sale in 2012 average 21.5 mpg, compared to 21.2 mpg in 2011; 20.7 mpg in 2010; and 19 mpg in 2009. In short the fuel efficiency of vehicles on sale has improved by about 13% since 2008. http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/20197-fuel-economy-of-new-vehicles-continues-to-rise-feb2012.

The vehicles actually bought by consumers were more fuel efficient than the average vehicle available for sale in every year since 2008, as consumers bought more higher fuel efficient vehicles. For example, vehicles bought in 2011 averaged 22.5 mpg; 22.1 in 2010; and 21.3 mpg in 2009; and 20.8 mpg in 2008.

Rising fuel efficiency in vehicles is cutting gasoline demand, pollution, and imports of foreign oil. It is one reason that even US carbon emissions have been declining.

The increasing fuel efficieny will certainly continue as federal law requires a fleet average of 34.1 mpg by 2016 and a proposed regulation would raise that further to 54.5 mpg by 2025.

Fuel efficiency and rising production of domestic oil and oil substitutes like biofuels, natural gas, and electricity are moving Uncle Sam to energy independence.

First Energy Closes Coal Plants, Blaming EPA: Truth Or Politics?

2012-02-13T10:30:00.000-05:00

Who done it? The EPA? Low-priced natural gas? Competitive electricity markets?

The announcement last week by First Energy that it will close 3 West Virginia coal plants that date back to the Truman administration and that are without pollution controls by September 1, 2012 was the latest example of power plant politics. www.crainscleveland.com/article/20120208/FREE/120209845. First Energy blamed the closures on the EPA Air Toxic Rule, as First Energy did, when announcing in late January the closures of 6 other plants in Ohio, Maryland, and Pennsylvania (see January 27 posting at johnhanger.blogspot.com/2012/01/first-energy-closing-6-coal-plants-by.html).

Interestingly, but I am sure coincidentally, the timing of these announcements coincided with hearings led by Republicans in the US House of Representatives to attack the EPA for the Air Toxic Rule. Republicans used First Energy's statement that the closures were caused by the EPA rules to bombard Gina McCarthy (Lisa Jackson's right hand woman) with claims that closing 50, 60 year old power plants that emit pollution that sickens and kills people is a terrible idea. First Energy does note that the closure of the 9 coal plants cleans its generation fleet and that it has cut since 1990 its sulfur dioxide pollution by 86%; its nitrogen dioxide emissions by 76%; and its mercury pollution 56%.

Several key facts make not credible First Energy's assertion that the EPA Air Toxic Rule caused the plants to close by September 2012. First, the Air Toxic Rule does not take effect until January 2015 so the plants legally could have operated for another 28 months. If the plants were profitable for shareholders, closing them 28 months before the law required a mercury clean up would be a decision not in the interest of the company's shareholders.

Other facts suggest that the plants had already become marginal or perhaps even unprofitable. The three plants in West Virginia total 660 megawatts or about 3% of First Energy's 23,000 megawatts but produced less than 1% of First Energy's electricity over the last 3 years.

In short, the plants for the last three years had been partially closed by economic forces. They ran infrequently, because they were not competitive with other baseload generation in the wholesale electricity marketplace. The operating costs of the plants were high, both because they were inefficient and the price of coal rose more than twice the rate of inflation over the last 10 years.

While these plants production costs were high and probably increasing, the crash in gas prices and the drop in electricity demand meant that the competition with gas plants and other forms of generation got much tougher.

The First Energy coal plant closings in 2012 have nothing to do with the Air Toxic rule that takes effect in January 2015, but had everything to do with the wholesale electricity marketplace and how especially falling gas and rising coal prices have reshaped it. No doubt First Energy would have run these plants for another 28 months as the law allows were they profitable to do so. Also no doubt investing substantial funds to clean up these small power plants so that they would operate after 2015 could not be justified, given the large amounts of natural gas that meet the Air Toxic rule.

Yet, blaming the EPA for a decision to close 28 months earlier than required by law 9 coal plants that had their operations already cut substantially by low gas prices and other factors scapegoats the EPA. It is an example of power plant politics that put a smile on Republican faces and caused some donkeys to remember like an elephant.

Coal's 2011 Electricity Market Share Plunges, As Gas Rises

2012-02-13T06:00:00.002-05:00

America's electricity generation is now rapidly moving from coal to gas. Consider these facts.

Since 2000, when coal provided 52% of America's electricity, coal has been slowly losing electricity generation market share, falling to 48.2% in 2008. But the shale gas boom that ushered in much lower natural gas prices has turned a slow decline in coal's market share into a rapid fall..

In 2009, when shale gas began producing large volumes of gas that broke the link between oil and gas pricing, coal saw its market share sharply fall from 48.2% to 44.4% or an 8% loss of market share. This one-year decline in 2009 was essentially equal to coal's market share loss from 2000 to 2008.

2011 brought another big decline in coal's electricity generation market share, as gas prices were consistently in the $4 or below range. Last year, coal's market share fell to 42.5% of America's electricity, down from 44.8% in 2010.

Coal's 2011 market share drop was 2.3 percentage points or another 5% of its total. See
www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf. Coal consumption for electricity, therefore, declined by 40 million tons or by 4% during 2011.

Coal's loss has been gas's gain. While coal's market share fell from 52% in 2000 to 42.5% in 2011, natural gas's share rose from 16% to 24.6% in the same period. Over the 11-year period, coal's market share is down 9.5 percentage points (or about 22%) and natural gas's market share is up 8.6% percentage points or about 54%. Gas is replacing coal, with coal's market share going down and gas's going up almost by equal amounts.

EIA projects that coal's market share will drop again in 2012 to 41.7% and to 41.2% in 2013, when gas is projected to provide 26.2% of electricity supply.

So when will gas provide more electricity than coal in the US? The EIA 2012 Annual Energy Outlook in its reference case projects that it will not. It forecasts that coal will provide 39% of America's electric generation in 2035.

But last year EIA forecasted that coal would still provide 43% of America's electricity in 2035. Oops, since coal's actual share fell to 42.5% in 2011, a full 24 years earlier than EIA forecasted.

Plainly the EIA forecasts of coal's market share in 2035 are seriously off. Look for natural gas to provide more electricity than coal by 2035 and possibly by 2025.

In the meantime, commentators who are used to saying that coal provides "half" or "most" of America's electricity must break the habit. Most of America's power as of 2011 already comes from sources other than coal, and that fact is only going to get bigger in the next 10 years.

Meet The Most Electable Republican: Congressman Ron Paul

2012-02-13T05:37:00.000-05:00

While some Ron Paul supporters always have said that their man is the most electable Republican, virtually nobody else thought so, including me. But as Romney struggles, Gingrich falls again, and Santorum surges to a 38% to 23% national lead in the latest Public Policy Polling poll, Ron Paul is the most electable Republican. He also is the most intriguing figure in politics.

A national poll taken from February 1-3 finds both that Ron Paul is the most electable Republican, trailing the President 44 to 40 and that 20% of Republicans are leaning toward re-electing the President. http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/20-of-republicans-leaning-to-obama/print/. By contrast to the close race with Congressman Paul, President Obama leads Governor Romney 48-41 and crushes Senator Santorum 49-34 in the World Net Daily/Wenzell Poll.

Still another poll--the Fox News poll published on February 10th also--finds that Paul runs better against Obama than either Gingrich or Santorum, though not as well as Romney.

According to the Wenzell poll, part of Congressman Paul's strength is that he loses just 19% of Republican voters, while the other candidates lose 20% or more, numbers that are a huge warning to the GOP.

The vitriolic attacks by Gingrich and Romney on each other and soon by Romney on Santorum are mutually assured political destruction (MAD). The attacks by each on the other are making toxic the reputations of all engaged in MAD, even to the 20% of Republican voters who are considering voting for the President or possibly not voting at all.

The sustained, intensifying negative Republican attacks on each other and the strengthening economy add up to continued good news for President Obama, who in the Rasmussen February 10th poll opened a 10- point lead on Romney and whose approval rating hit 51%. The only recent bad news for the President is that the election was not last week but is still more than 8 months away, an eternity in even a normal political year.

Much can yet change between now and election day. The improving economy could stall. War with Iran is possible. The only certainty is that certainly the President's rising political prospects of the last 2 months could reverse and still fall enough for him to lose the election. Yet, the President's good news includes that the Republicans remain certain not to nominate the man who has amazingly become their most electable candidate--Ron Paul.

Paul's status as the most electable Republican reflects the growing weaknesses of the other Republican candidates, as well as Paul's uniquely authentic profile and his issue mix that constitutes a political wild card, in a year when a standard Republican campaign may be doomed by an improving economy.

Paul would attack the President from both the left and right simultaneously, with his strong opposition to a war with Iran and the bailout of Wall Street and with his support for drug legalization, a massive government downsizing, abolishing the Federal Reserve and basing the dollar on gold. This issue mix and his record of attacking both parties enables Paul to rally supporters of theTea Party and Occupy Wall Street.

Paul actually does something very difficult to do to any political opponent. He eats into a portion of his opponent's base or in the case of President Obama--college educated, mainly white voters under 35. Paul joins in this respect President Reagan, the last Republican who had the ability to peel away a significant portion of the Democratic base, the famous Reagan Democrats.

Paul also so far has been bruised but not destroyed by the MAD nature of the Republican primary. Most of the tens of millions of dollars of negative attacks have been fired at someone other than Paul so he may be able to hold as much or more of the Republican base as Romney, Gingrich, or Santorum, while peeling off some Obama voters.

All that adds up to Ron Paul being the most electable Republican candidate, even though he has no chance of being elected, since he will not be the GOP nominee. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.

Thank You!

2012-02-12T14:38:00.001-05:00

Thank you to all of the many people who have sent condolences and supportive messages. I appreciate it very much.

I wish I could pretend otherwise, but this time is difficult. My mind at times thinks that the last two weeks are not real, but they are. The loss of Matthew is searing, and made more so, because my love for him cannot bring him back to this world.

The path forward is not always easy for any of us. But we do move forward, a step at a time.

Thank you again for helping me to do so. Tomorrow I will resume posting, and I look forward to our continuing dialogue.

In Loving Memory Of Matthew Sean Hanger, My Son

2012-02-05T05:20:00.002-05:00

Luanne and I have lost our son, Matthew Sean Hanger. He was a business analyst for Capital One Financial in Richmond, Virginia, his first position, after graduating with honors from Duke University in 2011. Matthew earned a major in economics and psychology.

Matthew loved Hershey, Pennsylvania, his home, and where he graduated from Hershey High School. He loved and excelled at tennis, playing the number 1 court for the Varsity team from his freshman to senior year, when he was the team's captain. As a youth player, he also was ranked in the top 25 by the United States Tennis Association for the Middle States Region and top 500 nationally.

Matthew was a master of trivia who used his storehouse of knowledge to captain the Hershey High School Quiz Bowl team that qualified in 2005 and 2006 for the National Academic Championships, the first times in team's history. He was also a member of the Mathematics team.

Matthew gave Luanne and me great joy and taught us so much. For example, he had a great way with children. We are thankful for and proud of him.

Nothing is more precious to parents than their children. We love Matthew beyond what words can convey and are devastated by his loss.

We are having a family only funeral service, followed by a memorial service for Matthew that is open to friends. The memorial service will be February 18th at 11:00am at the First United Methodist Church in Hershey. For those who may wish to send flowers, please instead make a donation to the Trojan Foundation that supports the Hershey public schools. Its address is PO Box 898, Hershey PA 17033.

I am suspending further posting to the blog until February 13, 2012.

EPA to Promote Efficiency, Gas to Reduce GHGs

2012-02-03T07:20:00.001-05:00

EPA is soon planning to release its draft rule requiring greenhouse gas reductions from newly built or modified power plants, and they are expected to promote efficiency, natural gas and carbon capture and storage as ways to comply with the rule.

EPA has already finalized rules requiring large GHG emitters to annually report their emissions and under another rule (PSD tailoring rule) is on the books requiring some large polluters, independent of their industry, to reduce emissions.

This new proposed rule under the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) program would be specific to new or modified power plants and would require modern technologies to be employed to limit emissions. The rule is expected to promote energy efficiency, natural gas and carbon capture and sequestration as fuel-neutral technology options for achieving required emissions standards. It is not clear whether co-firing with biomass will be a recommended technology option.

EPA’s NSPS rules for GHG are the result of a court order. On a related note, EPA is also required by the courts to issue GHG limits for refineries.

Biodiesel Breaks One Billion Gallons

2012-02-03T07:20:00.000-05:00

EPA data indicates that the U.S. biodiesel industry produced more than one billion gallons of fuel in 2011.

Total production of 1.1 billion gallons, made mostly from soybean oil, recycled cooking oil and animal fats, far exceeds the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) 2011 requirement of 800 million gallons and also dwarfs the previous record of 690 million gallons produced in 2008. The biodiesel industry credits the success to a combination of a 1-year reauthorization (through 2011) of the biodiesel tax credit and the RFS requirements.

The biodiesel tax credit mentioned above expired at the end of 2011. In addition, EPA is considering lowering the 2013 RFS biodiesel requirement from 1.28 billion gallons to 1 billion gallons, a move that the biodiesel industry believes will devastate the industry.

Large 80-Year Old Coal Plant Closes

2012-02-02T09:14:00.003-05:00

This week, Dominionannounced plans to close its 80-year old, 515 MW coal plant in Hammond,Indiana, the State Line Energy Station.

Low electricity price forecasts, primarily driven by the lowcost of natural gas, made the prospect of updating the plant’s 50-to-60 yearold technology with modern pollution control equipment uneconomic. Dominion expected to retire the plant in2014, but now expects the plant could close before March 31 of this year.

The plant has been in operation since the 1920’s, but itsoriginal units were replaced in the 1960’s.

Historians of the electric power industry would note thatthis plant was build under the orders of Samuel Insull. At the time of its constructionin 1929, it was the largest generating unit ever built, operating a 208 MWturbine generator built by General Electric. It was originally planned to be the nation’s first one gigawattfacility, but financing issues prevented these expansion plans.

Despite its historic significance, the old coal giant is rankedas one of the dirtiest power plants in the state and can’t compete in today’selectric power market place.

American Municipal Power Goes Hydro

2012-02-02T07:15:00.000-05:00

American Municipal Power (AMP), an Ohio-based wholesale supplier of power to municipal electric systems loves hydropower and a Pennsylvania company is reaping some of the benefits.

AMP is building four hydropower projects on the Ohio River, totaling 300 MW of installed capacity, that it plans to sell to customers in seven different states. Although hydro’s share of the U.S. power market has been in general decline, AMP likes hydro because of its output reliability with capacity factors of 55-60%.

In 1997, conventional hydropower provided about 10% of net U.S. electricity generation. By the end of 2011, the percentage of hydro dropped to under 8% of net generation, as total net generation rose by 7%. In Pennsylvania, conventional hydropower generation increased by about 29% between 2010 and 2011, owing perhaps to last year’s record rainfalls in parts of the state.

Environmental impacts of these projects have been minimized because they will be cited on existing Army Corps of Engineers dams, avoiding the need to build new dams that can wreak havoc on local marine and land ecosystems.

AMP signed a $300 million contract with the York, PA based Voith Hydro to manufacturer the turbines and generators for the four projects.

The four projects, which have been in the works since 2006, are expected to be complete between 2014 and 2015:

Cannelton (84 MW) near Hawesville, KY
Meldahl (105 MW) near Foster, KY
Smithland (72 MW) near Smithland, KY
Willow Island (35 MW) near Pleasants County W. Va

More Than Just Marcellus

2012-02-01T11:21:00.000-05:00

The Alternative Energy Investment Act of 2008 just madepossible significantinvestments into six new clean energy initiatives across Pennsylvania.

The Act established programs and appropriated funding to theCommonwealth Financing Authority (CFA), $13.8 million of which was recentlyinvested into projects in Adams, Allegheny, Bucks, Chester, Franklin andSomerset counties. These stateinvestments will leverage more than $238.8 million in private sector funding,will install 141 megawatts of capacity and will generate enough electricity topower more than 44,000 homes.

Some of these initiatives include:

Ground-mounted solar for Liberty InteractiveCorp (QVC studios) in Chester
Outdoor solar inverter research and developmentin Allegheny
Solar thermal for Chambersburg YMCA in Franklin
Everpower’s Twin Ridges wind farm in Somerset
High performance building project at the Boroughof Chalfont in Bucks
Renewable Energy Division (RED) expansion forMcClarin Plastics in Adams

Currently boasting 912 MW of wind capacity, 730 MW of hydrocapacity, 123 MW of solar capacity and 207 MW of landfill gas to electricitycapacity, Pennsylvania is more than just Marcellus.

Homeowners betting on natural gas

2012-02-01T07:20:00.000-05:00

Homeowners are increasingly betting on low priced natural gas for the long term.

On Sunday, the Patriot News reported a steady trend of local homeowners increasingly switching from oil-based heat to natural gas heat. They cite many factors for this switch, but most important is the expectation that local supplies of Marcellus Shale natural gas will continue to deliver low-cost natural gas over the lifetime of their new heating system investment (typical cost is $3,500 to $9,000).

UGI claims that the average family can save 50-55% or $1,000 to $1,500 per year by switching from oil to gas. UGI saw record residential switching from oil to gas conversion in 2011 and is expecting to surpass those records in 2012. Demand is so high that customers wanting to convert are experiencing longer than usual waiting periods for UGI to perform the work.

Cheap, plentiful supplies of natural gas are looking even more attractive than oil as Iran scoffs at EU sanctions and repeats threats to block the Straits of Hormuz, a major oil chokepoint that ushers about 17 million barrels per day of oil through its waters.

Representative Vitali May Challenge PA Congressional Redistricting

2012-01-31T08:18:00.000-05:00

Inspired by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court throwing out the gerrymandering of Pennsylvania's state legislative districts, State Representative Greg Vitali is seeking an attorney to challenge Pennsylvania's Congressional lines. Vitali has been exploring challenging Congressman Patrick Meehan who is the beneficiary of the most gerrymandered district in the nation, and that really is saying something.

The Pennsylvania gerrymandering of the district lines for Congress is enormous, probably the worse in the nation, though again the competition is tough. But most challenges under federal law fail. It will be an uphill climb to reverse what really is a travesty to democracy and competitive elections.

In Pennsylvania, the Republican party had complete control of the redistricting process and have picked the voters that they want for each district. Pennsylvania joins Illinois, where the Democratic Party controlled redistricting, as classic examples of the old saying that partisan redistricting allows politicians to pick voters and prevents voters from picking politicians.

Florida's Biggest Electric Utility Switching Oil To Gas, Saving $460 Million In 2012 Fuel Costs

2012-01-31T07:08:00.000-05:00

Gas has been mainly displacing coal in electricity generation and not much oil for the simple reason that oil provides about 1% of America's electricity and that number is declining. There is not a lot of oil to displace in the electricity industry, but FPL, Florida's biggest electric utility, is an exception.

Oil accounts for 15% of FPL's generation capacity and 4% of its electric generation, but FPL is aggressively switching its oil generation to gas, as a result of low gas prices, to the considerable benefit of the environment and consumers. FPL still has a monopoly on electricity generation so it collects from its customers every single dollar it spends on fuel to generate electricity. Low natural gas prices will cut by an incredible $460 million the fuel costs collected from consumers just in 2012.
www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/20/idUS94603+20-jan-2012+MW20120120.

Instead of paying for fuel, that is $460 million of stimulus to the Florida economy that is freed for investing in clothes, food, school books, efficient lighting--all manner of things. A typical FPL customer will save $4.53 per month as a result of the fuel cost reductions.

Low natural gas prices are also good news for the environment and our oil import imbalance, because FPL is in the process of replacing dirty, old big oil-fired power plants with modern, efficient clean natural gas generation. It has already demolished 2 big oil burners, is building two 1250 MW new gas plants that will begin operations in 2013 and 2014, and might do the same at a third facility. The switch will slash air emissions, including carbon pollution.

Switching from oil to gas has also the important benefit of reducing oil imports, as still about 50% of all oil consumed is imported. The US does not fight wars for natural gas or ethanol or biodiesel, but expends as much as one-third of its military budget to protect oil shipments from the Middle East.

Next Era is the parent company of FPL and is one of the nation's biggest renewable energy companies, with massive investments in wind and solar power. Next Era understands that the next era in power generation will be led by gas and renewable energy.

No European Solar Crisis; Solar Booms in Europe; Nears Grid Parity

2012-01-31T06:39:00.000-05:00

An incredible 7,040 megawatts of solar was installed in Europe during just the 4th quarter of 2011, according to www.solarbuzz.com. By contrast Asia installed 6,000 megawatts and the USA built about 2,000 megawatts in the entire 2011. Europe, the largest solar market in the world, installed 18% more solar in 2011 than in the previous record year of 2010.

Some folks for a couple years have pointed to declining subsidies in Germany or elsewhere and predicted the collapse of Europe's solar market. Sharply falling solar prices have proved such predictions wrong, since the price reductions have typically exceeded any cuts in subsidies. For example, module prices dropped 40% in Europe during 2011 alone.

Solarbuzz writes: "As incentive tariffs follow prices downward, less public funding is needed to build significant country markets. In additions, as PV becomes more competitive with retail electricity prices, investors become less dependent on public funding schemes for viable economics. As a result, new markets are emerging, particularly in East and Southeast Europe."

The Ukraine built two 100 MW solar plants in 2011, while Serbia is building two 150 MW plants and a 1,000 MW monster. European solar used to be just Spain and Germany and it used to be totally dependent on large subsidies.

Today solar is booming all across Europe and needs little or no subsidy in some countries. While Europe has been in economic crisis for nearly 4 years, as austerity economics worsens its problems, the European solar market is booming, basking in sunshine.

Romney Outspends Gingrich By $12 Million In Florida To Win Primary

2012-01-30T10:36:00.001-05:00

How do you turnaround a big loss in South Carolina, stop major momentum for your opponent, and win Florida when your opponent leads in national polls? You spend $12 million dollars more on mostly negative ads, ripping apart your opponent.That is what Mitt Romney is doing in Florida to Newt Gingrich, according to Alexander Burn in www.politico.com. Romney has spent $15.3 million to Gingrich's $3.3 million in Florida, outspending him 5 to 1. No candidate can win being outspent that badly.Romney is up about 10 points in the latest polling in Florida, though he trails Gingrich in national polls through Friday. Look for the Governor to win tomorrow both the Florida primary and a lifetime political enemy in Gingrich.

CBS News Botches Dimock Story, Despite My Effort!

2012-01-30T06:10:00.000-05:00

CBS News botched its Saturday January 28th story on Dimock and hydraulic fracturing (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7396742n&tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea). Most unfortunately the story got critical facts totally wrong; more than a couple million people saw it; and I was in it!

On Friday January 20th, CBS News asked to do an interview with me about Dimock. I traveled to the CBS Harrisburg affiliate and answered from 7:30pm to 8:15pm on camera via satellite numerous questions from a CBS News producer in New York about Dimock.

We spoke about what happened in Dimock and, just as importantly, what did not happen there. Simply put, I said that gas had migrated from poor drilling to 18 water wells, but no fluids from hydraulic fracturing had returned from depth.

I walked CBS News through the testing and investigation done to conclude that gas had migrated to 18 wells, but fracking fluids had not. I stressed that Duke University's testing of the same wells also had found no fracking fluids but high methane levels.

I noted that, since the driller (Cabot) had not done pre-drill water tests in 2008, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's investigation of the water well contamination was more difficult. I explained the various tests and steps completed that supported a finding that gas had migrated but that frack fluids had not returned from depth to contaminate water wells. I told CBS about the recent Lenox Township case involving Cabot where a pre-drilling water test had been done. In that case, there was very low methane levels prior to drilling and very high levels after drilling.

I hit hard that the problem was gas migrating and not frack fluids returning from depth. After seeing the CBS story, I might as well as have spat in a hurricane.

The CBS story starts with the exploding water tap scene from Gasland and flatly says that the Dimock wells were contaminated by fracking fluids and that the EPA has concluded so. It includes a diagram to show fracking and fluids entering the aquifer.

What about the 45 minute interview that I gave? CBS takes less than 5 seconds from it and has me saying only that "Poor drilling contaminated 18 wells."

The piece contains nothing from me saying that the problem was gas migrating and not frack fluids. Nothing from me saying that the frack fluids had not returned from depth. Nothing from me saying that hydraulic fracuring had nothing to do with the problem. Nothing from me explaining the difference between the drilling and hydraulic fracturing phases of well development. Nothing from anyone that contradicted the narrative of the story that fracking had caused contamination with chemicals and fluids of the water wells.

Instead 5 seconds of my interview are edited brutally and misleadingly to build the narrative that fracking fluids contaminated water in Dimock. As I left the affiliate's station, the cameraman for the interview asked, how I thought the interview had gone? I replied that editing would provide the answer.

While Pennsylvania's reporters like Don Gililland, Andrew Maykuth, Laura Legere, and Don Hopey often write factually accurate stories, the CBS story is an example of the national reporting about natural gas that misinforms, misleads, and misguides the public.

New Wind Up 31% In 2011 & Key Wind Facts

2012-01-30T06:07:00.000-05:00

The American wind industry had another strong year in 2011. It installed 6,810 megawatts of new capacity, a 31% increase over 2010. The 4th quarter of 2011 saw 3,444 MW installed. See http://www.awea.org/newsroom/pressreleases/Q4_making_inroads.cfm and http://www.awea.org/learnabout/publications/reports/upload/4Q-2011-AWEA-Public-Market-Report-2.pdf. Wind power is likely to have provided about a third of all new capacity built in the USA during 2011.

The 2011 completed projects increased America's total wind capacity to 46,919 MW, up 17% over the 2010 total. America operates about 20% of the world's wind capacity. Another 8,300 MW is now under construction in 31 states, as many companies are rushing to complete projects before December 31st, 2012, when the current production tax credit is scheduled to expire.

In 2011, California, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Oklahoma were the top 5 states in building new wind capacity. California alone installed 921.3 MW.

Eight states now have installed more than 2,000 MW. They are Texas (10,377 MW), Iowa (4,322 MW), California (3,927 MW), Illinois (2,743 MW), Minnesota (2,733 MW), Washington (2,573), Oregon (2,513 MW), and Oklahoma (2,007 MW).

Pennsylvania ranked 15th in wind capacity at the end of 2011 with 789 megawatts installed. Pennsylvania may nearly double its wind capacity in 2012 as numerous projects are now under construction.

The American wind industry directly employs about 75,000 people, but about 50% of those jobs are at risk because the production tax credit has not been extended. While strong bi-partisan support exists for extending the production tax credit, rising Republican opposition could be enough to block its extension, making mass layoffs this year throughout the supply chain of the wind industry a possibility.

Obama and Republican Circular Firing Squad Are Nailing Down President's Victory

2012-01-27T07:41:00.003-05:00

January is not yet over, but it has been a very good month for President Obama's political prospects. It began with the meteoric rise of Senator Santorum and Governor Romney struggling in the Iowa caucus on January 3rd. Few things lift Democratic hearts more than the sight of Republicans falling in love with Senator Santorum who brands the Republican party in a uniquely unattractive manner.

Then came January 6th and the news that the nation added another 200,000 jobs in December 2011, as the American economy grows. America's growth stands in strong contrast to the United Kingdom, where austerity economics that is championed by the President's opponents pushes the UK into a deepening recession, with its GDP actually declining once again. Five to 6 more jobs reports like that of December 2011 would nail down the election for President Obama.

But even if he does not get good jobs reports going forward, President Obama has the gift that keeps on giving: The Republican Circular Firing Squad. Republicans are in the process of spending probably $20 million or more on savaging each other in Florida. Romney alone is reportedly unloading $13 million of negatives on Newt in the Sunshine state.

That sunny binge of mutually assured destruction follows $10 million or more flung destructively by Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul at each other in South Carolina.

Between South Carolina and Florida, the American people are learning that Romney had a notorious Swiss Bank account, as well as bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda and pays 13.9% in taxes, despite annual income over $20 million. They are hearing endless stories about Romney buying companies and loading them with debt to leverage big returns for himself and his investors, while many jobs were lost. They are being told that Gingrich was sanctioned for ethics violations in the house, run out of the Speaker's chair, and that he is a mentally-unbalanced influence peddler. That is not counting what his second wife has to say, and what she has to say will not help him in the general election with women.

The result of all this is that the favorability ratings of Romney and Gingrich have collapsed. By about 2-1, the American people disapprove of both of them. Each of their disapproval ratings are above 50% and have spiked since December 2011. Mutually Assured Destruction at work.

Meanwhile more and more data show Obama gaining strength. He has slightly positive approval rating--48 to 46-- in this week's Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. Yesterday, Terry Madonna's poll had the President beating Romney by 11 points in Pennsylvania, a growing margin from the October 2011 poll.

If President Obama's spring is like his January, the election will be over before Labor Day. Of course, perhaps events will turn, and the spring will be cruel to the President. But right now the trends and odds are mounting in his favor.

First Energy Closing 6 Coal Plants By September

2012-01-27T06:41:00.000-05:00

First Energy announces that it will close by September 1, 2012 six coal plants, with a total of 2,689 megawatts of capacity. See www.calgaryherald.com/business/FirstEnergy+retire+plants/6059845/story.html. First Energy has a total of about 23,000 megawatts of generation.

First Energy states the cost of cleaning the plants to comply with the Air Toxic Rule was too great to justify continued operations. Reasons for the decision must include the sharply lower price of wholesale electricity, the rising price of coal over the last 10 years, lower electricity demand than had been expected, and low natural gas prices.

The price of wholesale electricity has fallen by more than 50% since 2008, mainly as a result of sharply lower natural gas prices. Competing natural gas plants had already cut the number of hours the 6 plants were dispatched so that they were operating during higher demand periods. Rising energy efficiency has also softened electric demand and that further squeezed the plants.

Four of the six plants are located in Ohio, 1 in Pennsylvania, and 1 in Maryland. The First Energy announcement grealy increases the amount of coal plants that are expected to retire in 2012 to 4,200 megawatts or about 1.4% of the nation's coal generation. It is possible that more plants will retire in 2012 but if so announcements would be expected shortly.

Asia Installing Big Solar Numbers Is A Big Deal

2012-01-27T05:59:00.000-05:00

The amount of solar installed in Asia skyrocketed 165% to 6,000 megawatts, according to data now on the Solarbuzz website. See www.solarbuzz.com.

China alone installed 2,900 megawatts of solar in 2011, with 1,700 megawatts in just the 4th quarter. The USA too had a record solar year in 2011 and installed 1,700 to 2,000 megawatts, but China installed about 50% more solar than in the USA In 2011 China went from mostly manufacturing panels and exporting to installing large amounts of solar.

The global solar market is now a three-legged continental stool: Europe, Asia, North America in that order of importance Big American companies like GE, PPG, Air Products are part of the global solar supply chain and competing to sell their products around the world.

The boom in Chinese and Asian solar installation in 2011 insures further solar price declines and diversifies and grows global solar markets. It is a big deal and the Solarbuzz data are worth reviewing.

Dimock Water Testing Triple Header On Tap: Shale Wars Continue

2012-01-26T10:52:00.000-05:00

Since no one trusts anyone in the Dimock case, just about everyone wants to do their own testing of well water, and some families are just saying no to water testing, according to Laura Legere of the Scranton Times. See http://independentweekender.com/index.php/2012/01/25/5979/.

The EPA, DEP, Cabot Oil and Gas all seem to be taking samples and doing there own testing. It is a water testing triple header.

Perhaps this is a good thing in these polarized times. Possibly the industry will believe the Cabot results, and the anti-drilling groups will believe the EPA results. Others may believe the DEP results. That may add up to everyone accepting the test results.

Of course, if not already a three ring circus, this multiple testing at the same time will be a circus, if the results differ.

Not surprisingly to me, Legere reports that a "significant" number of the 61 families that EPA had identified for further testing are refusing the offer. The community in Dimock area is divided, with bitter opponents of drilling and many families supportive of gas drilling, though those families do not get much media coverage.

Of course a huge amount of water testing and action is water under the bridge in the Dimock case. Here is a brief recap.

DEP has done an extensive investigation that included significant gas testing. DEP found that at 18 water wells had been impacted by gas migrating as a result of poor gas drilling. DEP also found that there was no contamination of the aquifer or water wells by hydraulic fracturing. A subsequent Duke University study confirmed this point.

Based on its findings, DEP issued Cabot cumulative fines in excess of $1.3 million. DEP required the plugging of several gas wells and the repair of other gas wells to remove gas from water wells. The plugging and repair of gas wells cost Cabot tens of millions of dollars of direct expense and lost revenues.

DEP required Cabot to establish individual escrow accounts totaling $4.1 million and that averaged more than $200,000 each for the 18 families where DEP found gas migration had polluted their water wells. Seven of the 18 families reportedly took the escrow account payments, while 11 have not.

By December 2010, gas had been reduced to safe levels in as many as 14 of the water wells. But more testing was needed to confirm the improvement in those wells.

We are certainly going to get more testing.

"A Nation of Wusses": Governor Rendell's Must Read Book

2012-01-26T07:02:00.000-05:00

Titled "A Nation of Wusses," Governor Rendell's book is finished and will be published around Memorial Day. This is one book of which I will buy several copies on its first day and read as rapidly as possible.

No matter your views, I promise you Governor Rendell will say something that makes you cheer and scream. Fun, Fun, Fun.

The book will also have sharp insights about leadership, politics, economy, and probably our culture. It will be a great read!

After I have read it, I will decide to whom I send a copy.

Statement: Is Natural Gas A Bridge To Nowhere, As Joe Romm Says?

2012-01-26T06:48:00.003-05:00

Joe Romm who does important work about climate change and who runs climateprogress.org recently posted that natural gas is a bridge to nowhere. See http://www.thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/24/407765/natural-gas-is-a-bridge-to-nowhere-price-for-global-warming-pollution.

Let's be clear that Romm's beef with natural gas concerns carbon emissions. Romm likely would agree that, if the world switched completely from coal to gas and from oil to gas, that global mercury, lead, arsenic, smog-causing pollution, acid rain, and deadly soot all would be slashed. This hypothetical complete transition to gas would literally save every year hundreds of thousands of lives and possibly millions.

Even the air in Beijing would be safe to breathe, if China ran on gas. Fish would not be contaminated with mercury around the world, if the world ran on gas.  The one-in-six women in the USA that do have elevated levels of mercury in their blood, as a result of global coal burning, would be free of mercury, if the world ran on gas.

Gas emits zero or close to zero of major pollutants that cause havoc to the world's environment and public health. It causes minor damage to water compared to the massive harm done by oil leaks and spills and coal mining. Gas is orders of magnitude less dirty than coal or oil.

But gas is not perfectly clean. It does emit carbon emissions when combusted.  And Romm's beef with natural gas is about carbon emissions.

Yet, carbon emissions from coal are twice those of gas, according to a slew of studies, including the Sierra Club financed Carnegie Mellon University, Worldwatch Institute, National Energy Technology Laboratory reports as well as others. Thankfully, in his post, Romm does not cite the Howarth lifecycle gas study that has been debunked by as many as 6 other studies, including another group of Cornell University professors, all of which confirm that coal emits two times more carbon than gas on a life cycle basis.

In his Bridge To Nowhere post, Romm appropriately notes that the methane leakage rate of the natural gas industry impacts what role gas can play in solving climate change. He, in fact, says that gas could play a significant, positive role if the methane leakage rate of the gas industry was below 2% but expresses skepticism that the rate is at level.

Some research underway may shed light on whether the gas industry is or is not already at the 2% level. But if the industry is not, it can clearly get there and must. Indeed, even Professor Howarth concedes so. Howarth says in his January 2012 paper: "Can shale-gas methane emissions be reduced? Clearly yes, and proposed EPA regulations to require capture of gas at the time of well completions are an important step." Those are the words of the most extreme, anti-gas academic and his position on the current status of gas's carbon footprint is overwhelmingly rejected by an avalanche of expert studies.

The United Nations and the world's climate experts state that the world must reduce carbon emissions 50% by 2050 to stabilize heat trapping pollution at levels that would avoid truly dangerous change and risks. To achieve such reductions in effectively 39 years, all tools that can reduce emissions must be deployed and as early as possible. There is no time left to wait for a magical energy breakthrough.

Gas is ready now. It is a low-cost way to cut carbon emissions 50% today every time it displaces a kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by coal. In the US, gas is displacing coal. Coal's share of the electricity market has fallen from 52% in 2000 to 43% in 2011 and will likely be 41% by 2013. Gas's share has risen from 16% in 2000 to 25% now.

And as gas displaces coal, where are the US's fossil fuel carbon emissions? They are back to below 2000 levels, even though America today has 30 million more people and that our GDP is considerably bigger.

To be clear once more, the progress that America is making on carbon is not just because of gas. Energy efficiency as well as the boom in renewable fuels are central too.

No one tool or even three or four tools will get done the daunting job of reducing global emissions 50%. Yet the "perfectionist caucus" often stands in the way of each and every possible action in the real world of project development, for its true that some find offshore and onshore wind ugly, that wind does kill birds and bats, that six nuclear reactors have melted down in the last 35 years, that burning wood emits soot and carbon, and that gas is not perfect. No matter the inevitable attacks on anything and everything, energy efficiency, nuclear, renewables, carbon capture storage, electric vehicles, gas displacing coal and oil and much more will be needed.

Moreover, even if it were possible, switching the entire world to gas would not achieve by itself the 50% carbon reduction needed by 2050, since gas does emit carbon. But that does not mean gas has no role to play in solving the climate problem, even without carbon capture and storage technology.

Gas can cut 50% of the carbon emissions of coal and do so cheaply, lowering hugely the cost of carbon reductions, thereby making more and earlier carbon reductions economically and politically possible.

Romm himself does state that replacing existing coal generation with gas is a good thing for the climate. It literally cuts by 50% the carbon emissions from the plant. It does so today, right now, and produces electricity at a lower price than coal in the US. That is consistent with the goal of a 50% reduction of carbon by 2050.

For these reasons, it is hyperbolic to say gas is a bridge to nowhere. Nobody that I know, and I certainly am not saying that gas alone solves the climate problem. It does not. But just as clearly gas can help cool our planet.

What about the Wigley study that Romm and others cite? The study uses modeling based upon a number of assumptions and scenarios to look at climate impacts this century or the short term in climatic terms at this point. It points out that gas replacing coal reduces sulfate aerosols--a cooling forcing--and thereby perversely marginally raises temperatures for short periods.  Renewables or nuclear energy replacing coal would also reduce the sulfates--the cooling forcing--and have the same effect as gas doing so.

The Wigley study assumes that gas replaces just 50% of coal. Since this is a modeling exercise, why not assume gas replaces 100% of coal? Not enough renewable energy also will do little to change global temperatures over the next 90 years. Indeed, the climate has already changed, and many scientists say a lot more warming is already baked into the climate system, even at current levels of global warming pollution.

The Wigley study assumes that 83% of the sulfur dioxide from coal is eliminated over 50 years. The reductions may well be much quicker and will be in the USA. The study's results change for the better if the reductions happen much sooner.

But most importantly the Wigley study itself, despite removing the cooling forcing of sulfate aerosols, finds in 3 of 4 scenarios that gas makes a positive contribution this century and a substantial contribution if the methane leakage rate is 2% or less. Many believe the leakage rate at least in the US is there now, and more data is on the way.

Whether the leakage rate is at 2% or not, it can and must go lower from current levels. Importantly and perhaps encouragingly, there is broad agreement that the July 2011 EPA proposed rule would reduce further methane leakage rates. The rule is vital for air quality and our climate.

Gas alone cannot solve the climate problem. That is true. Yet, the climate will not be stabilized, without gas playing a major role right now in lowering carbon pollution, until perhaps someday the world captures carbon or transitions from carbon to hydrogen.

PR Firm Fuels Howarth Misinformation: Secret To Howarth's Media Mastery Revealed

2012-01-25T10:33:00.000-05:00

Exactly how Prof. Howarth became the King of Media is now revealed. Bought and paid for by Park Foundation funds, a PR firm--the Hastings Group--was retained to publicize Howarth's original study and his response to the 6 studies debunking Howarth. See http://t.co/bjAcHmH6.

Money spent on the Hastings Group has been exceptionally productive for Professor Howarth. The Hastings group won a tsunami of press coverage, while most of the media ignored the avalanche of studies debunking Howarth.

Clearly the Sierra Club financed Carnegie Mellon University study that found coal emits twice the carbon as gas had no aggressive PR firm spoon feeding the study to media around the country. It attracted little coverage, despite its high quality. The same fate happened to the Worldwatch Institute study and the other reports that reached flatly contradictory results to Howarth.

The huge imbalance in coverage has meant that the public has been badly misinformed about the carbon footprint of gas and coal. The truth has suffered.

PA Wind Industry Launches Buy PA Wind Campaign

2012-01-25T06:51:00.000-05:00

Featuring an internet one-stop shopping and information site, billboards, and other education efforts, the Pennsylvania wind industry launched yesterday a major campaign to encourage big and small electricity consumers to buy wind power from Pennsylvania wind farms.

The heart of the Choose PA wind campaign is www.choosepawind.com. The site provides information and enables consumers to buy Pennsylvania wind power from companies ready to sell.

The campaign seeks to persuade two groups of consumers to buy wind power generated in the Commonwealth. The first group is made of consumers who have bought green electricity but from green generators outside of Pennsylvania, perhaps even from wind farms in Texas. The second group are consumers who have yet to switch their electricity supply to renewable energy.

Buying locally generated wind in Pennsylvania insures that the purchase reduces air pollution from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. It cuts sickness and premature deaths caused by air pollution. It slashes the personal carbon footprint, since the electricity powering a typical home causes twice the pollution as a family car.

Buying locally generated wind in Pennsylvania also means more wind farms will be built in Pennsylvania, protecting the thousands of existing wind industry jobs here and creating thousands more.

Supporters of the campaign include the American Lung Association, Sierra Club, PennFuture, Clean Air Council. Among the many wind companies leading the Choose PA Wind campaign are Everpower, Gamesa, Own Energy. I am assisting the campaign and also buy 100% locally produced wind energy for my home.

Check out www.choosepawind.com.

Mercury, Mercury Everywhere: Birds, Bats Contaminated With Mercury

2012-01-25T06:27:00.000-05:00

We have long known that mercury from coal-fired power plants around the world have contaminated fish and that one-in-six women in America have elevated levels of mercury that can damage fetal development. Now a study by the Biodiversity Research Institute finds elevated levels of mercury in species of songbirds and bats. See www.briloon.org/hiddenrisk and a New York Times article about the study at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/science/study-finds-mercury-in-more-northeastern-bird-species.html?_r=1&ref=science.

The study finds that rising levels of mercury in birds reduce from 10% to 30% the rate at which eggs hatch and that "bats also build up significant body burdens of mercury" that effect their neurochemistry. According to the study, "birds found in habitats with pronounced wet-dry cycles, such as bogs, beaver bonds, and estuaries have the highest blood mercury concentrations. Interestingly, we also found elevated blood levels in birds found in upland areas such as deciduous and high elevation forests."

This study drives home that mercury is everywhere. It makes plain that the impacts of the wind industry on wildlife are small compared to mercury and carbon pollution, of which wind power emits none.

Any good news in this report? It does document that US total mercury emissions have declined from 250 tons per year to 100 tons from 1990 to 2005. The study also notes that the recently finalized EPA air toxic rule will slash further US emissions of mercury. Replacing old-coal fired power plants with gas or wind for example that emits no mercury also decreases sharply mercury emissions.

Asian 2011 Solar Installation Jumps To 6 Gigawatts

2012-01-24T10:26:00.002-05:00

Prior to 2011, large scale solar deployment had been largely confined to two continents: Europe and North America. The world market had reached about 20,000 megawatts per year by 2010 but nearly all of that was in Germany, Italy, Spain, and the US.

While countries in Asia made solar panels, they built very little solar capacity at home through 2010. That may well have changed in a big way in 2011.

Though not publicly available today on its website, a report that yesterday briefly appeared on the Solarbuzz website (http://www.solarbuzz.com/) stated that Asia's solar installations reached 6,000 megawatts or 6 gigawatts in 2011. China installed 1,700 megawatts or about what the US installed in 2011. Japan had a big increase to 1,300 megawatts. India too was stated to be building substantial amounts of new solar.

Expanding solar deployment at large scale to Asia is big energy development that impacts favorably North America and Europe. Asian deployment of solar both diversifies and enlarges the global solar market at a key time, given current European economic peril. The already big and fast growing Asian solar market lessens the dependence of the global solar industry on deployment in Europe or North America and goes a long way to insuring that solar will continue to thrive.

The opening of the Asian market also fuels further solar cost reductions made possible by economies of scale. Solar is a global business and what happens in Asia impacts solar's competitiveness around the world.

Solar was not going to be an industry that reshaped how energy is made in the 21st century until it was built in Asia. Now that is happening and growing in a big way.

EIA Cuts Marcellus Gas Estimate But Production Lasts 50 Years

2012-01-24T07:35:00.000-05:00

Since the first days of the Marcellus gas rush in 2007, nearly everyone has asked: when will the gas rush end? Answering that question requires a simple calculation of dividing the amount of gas that can be produced by the rate at which gas will be produced. So what's the answer?

Using a production rate of three trillion cubic feet per year and the new EIA estimate of 142 trillion cubic feet of Marcellus gas available for production, Marcellus gas production will last at least 50 years. But here are the caveats on the calculation.

Right now Marcellus gas production is ramping up rapidly, but it just crossed daily production numbers that amount to 1 trillion cubic feet per year in 2011. If Marcellus production stayed at that rate, the Marcellus would produce gas for 142 years, given the new EIA reserves number of 142 trillion cubic feet.

If Marcellus gas production reaches the equivalent of 2 trillion cubic feet per year, a highly likely outcome, then Marcellus gas production would last 70 years, if one again uses the new EIA reserves number.

I have assumed that Marcellus gas production will reach 3 trillion cubic feet per year, an extraordinary number. At 3 trillion cubic feet per year, the Marcellus would be providing about 12% of total US gas, but natural gas production would last 50 years at that rate, given a 142 trillion reserve estimate.

Remember we have already completed 5 years of the Marcellus gas rush, if one assumes that it began in 2007. In fact the first Marcellus test well was drilled in 2005.

How certain are these estimates? Reasonably. Today's rate of gas production is known, but it is changing rapidly, going up from 1 trillion cubic feet per year to the next milestone of 2 trillion cubic feet per year. Gas pricing, however, can slow or speed up gas production. Today's pricing were it to continue would slow the rate at which gas is produced and possibly prevent the Marcellus from reaching the 3 trillion cubic feet per year production level.

What about the reserve number of 142 trillion cubic feet published yesterday by EIA in what it calls its reference case for its 2012 Energy Outlook--its annual crystal ball exercise, where the EIA projects our energy future through 2035 by modeling. www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/? The EIA reference case is built on numerous data assumptions that often change significantly year to year.

One such assumption concerns the amount of natural gas available for production across the country and within regions, and the EIA estimates of these numbers have varied substantially for the last 5 to 10 years. Until this year, the EIA gas reserve estimates used in its annual Energy Outlook modeling had gone up, up, up.

But in its 2012 Energy Outlook EIA projects that the Marcellus gas reserve has 142 trillion cubic feet, down 66% from last year's estimate of 410 trillion cubic feet. This sharp change in the EIA number underlines that the gas reserve estimates are a moving target.

But what difference does the moving target really make? Not much in the real world of gas production and pricing.

Even the much lower new EIA Marcellus reserve number of 142 trillion cubic feet is an enormous number that would take about 142 years to produce at 2011 production rates and will take 50 years to produce if Marcellus gas production reaches an humongous 3 trillion cubic feet per year.

The new EIA estimate confirms that no doubt exists that there are huge amounts of gas in the US and Pennsylvania, while the precise amount will remain mysterious forever. The gas in Pennsylvania goes well beyond the Marcellus for example and includes other formations like the Devonian and Utica.

Pennsylvania has been producing gas for more than 120 years, is now a top 5 gas producing state, and it will be producing large amounts of gas 50 years from today.

EV Battery Price Plummeting: The Shock EVs Need

2012-01-24T06:04:00.000-05:00

For electric vehicles to go mainstream, the price of their car batteries must plummet. The good news for EV enthusiasts is that they are.

Battery prices have already sharply declined from up to $1,200 per watt in 2008 to $600 now, according to Secretary Chu in comments he made at the Detroit Auto Show. Chu predicted further big declines ahead. See http://www.green.autoblog.com/.

An electric car battery cost about $12,000 in 2008. But a battery that can power a car on electricity for 40 miles is expected to be $3,600 in 2015 and $1,500 in 2020. Those cost reductions would shave $8,400 to $10,500 off the price of an electric car and would make electric cars cost competitive with gasoline vehicles.

No doubt sales of electric vehicles will depend substantially on whether the battery costs do fall to $3,600 by 2015 and whether gasoline costs go above $4 per gallon. Pike Research predicts annual sales of electric vehicles, including plug-in hybrids of 300,000 in 2015, while Michigan's Center for Automotive Research (MCAR) is more bearish, projecting sales of 140,00 in 2015. Pike's sales numbers amount to about 2% of all cars sold and MCAR's to about 1%.

The possible range of outcomes for electric vehicle sales is wide and uncertain. Yet, certainly prices of batteries and gasoline will tell the tale.

New Coal Plants Exceed Coal Retirements in 2011 But Coal Generation Falls

2012-01-23T08:09:00.000-05:00

While coal-fired generation continues to decline, with October 2011 coal generation 4.1% lower than in October 2010, new coal plants exceeded coal plant retirements through November 2011.

Through November 2011, America added 16,093 megawatts of new generation from all sources to the national grid. Of the new plants, 6 were coal plants with 3,062 megawatts of capacity. See www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/index.cfm.

The new coal plants were constructed in 6 states: Missouri, Texas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Wisconsin, and Kentucky. The new coal represents about 0.3% of all US generation. The new coal plants must have modern pollution controls and will likely be more efficient, requiring marginally less coal to produce electricity than older coal plants.

On the retirement side of the ledger, through October 2011, 16 coal units had retired that total 976 megawatts. The coal retirements represent a bit less than 0.1% of all US generation.

The single biggest coal retirement was the Eddystone 279 megawatt unit in Pennsylvania. Most of the retiring coal units were below 100 megawatts of capacity.

As of November 2011, America had a total of 1,052,633 megawatts of capacity from all generation sources.

Why is the amount of coal-fired generation falling, when the amount of coal-fired capacity actually increased slightly? Low-priced gas means that existing natural gas plants are running more and coal plants less. Conversely, high natural gas prices mean coal plants run more and gas plants less.

Since the shale gas boom crashed the price of natural gas in 2009, gas plants have been displacing more coal generation. That is a fact with which some in the environmental community have a hard time accepting.

The 6 Keys To Gingrich's South Carolina Triumph & What They Portend

2012-01-23T07:21:00.001-05:00

Newt Gingrich just pulled off something that had been thought impossible. Never before had a candidate been clobbered in both Iowa and New Hampshire and then won South Carolina. Let's remember Gingrich finished 4th in Iowa, 5th in New Hampshire, and then won a landslide in South Carolina, winning 40-28. How on earth did that happen?

The 6 keys to Gingrich's South Carolina triumph are:

1. Gingrich's debating ability to say compelling things to Republican primary voters that literally cause standing ovations in the debate hall is an unprecedented weapon in politics. Normally a candidate is pleased to have gotten off one memorable attack line that gets repeated after a debate by pundits. Not Newt. Gingrich has reached new levels of debate performance and success that can devastate opponents.

2. The high number of nationally televised debates has not meant that each debate has become less important but instead more important. The sheer number of debates makes debates an opportunity to speak repeatedly to millions of voters, and each debate then triggers at least a day or two of commentary that reaches many more voters.

3. The Citizens United decision that allowed one friend of Newt Gingrich to write a $5 million check to his Super Pac, just as Gingrich was getting crushed in New Hampshire and finishing 5th there. Prior to Citizens United, the combination of a 4th and 5th place finish in Iowa and New Hampshire would have meant that Gingrich had no money for South Carolina. Instead Gingrich had a powerful paid media television campaign in South Carolina that went after Romney and his weaknesses with hard hitting negative ads. Negative ads worked once again.

4. The power of regionalism in American politics remains dominant, with Romney who has a home in the Granite state winning New Hampshire and Gingrich from neighboring Georgia taking South Carolina. After competing in New Hampshire with the ball and chain of being from below the Mason Dixon line, Newt Gingrich found himself in South Carolina against two rivals--Romney and Santorum--who are Yankees. In South Carolina, history is never dead or even over, with big parts of the Republican party of South Carolina deeply rooted in events going back to the firing on Fort Sumter. History is not dead or over, but it can be ironic.

5. Gingrich successfully used Romney's refusal to release his tax returns, his Cayman Islands offshore bank accounts, and his Bain record of acquiring companies by loading them with debt (leveraged buyout) to maximize investor gains to turn Romney's wealth and business history against him. Romney only won voters with incomes above $200,000. Gingrich destroyed Romney among voters with incomes less than $100,000

6. Gingrich is blessed by Romney's weakness that begins with his endless pandering, social awkwardness, and falsity. The latest Romney flip flop is that he will now release some of his tax returns. Mitt Romney is no John McCain who won New Hampshire and then nailed down the nomination by winning South Carolina.

What does all this mean going forward? First this primary season is going to be hotly contested into at least March. Second, Newt Gingrich will do very well in Southern states where he is on the ballot (Virginia incompetence of Gingrich hurts him), but remember that Florida is no longer politically a Southern state, as a result of the massive immigration to it.

Lastly, if Newt Gingrich gets another huge dose of money--either another big check from his Casino mogul patron or an internet money bomb--and if Gingrich keeps getting national debate platforms and he excels, Gingrich will win the nomination.

Gingrich Rises From Political Death Bed: Up 40-26 In Last Night's Polling

2012-01-21T08:12:00.001-05:00

Ahead 40-26 in South Carolina on the last night of polling by Public Policy Polling (www.publicpolicypolling.com), Speaker Gingrich is on the verge of a genuinely stunning second comeback from the political death bed in which he has spent much of the last 7 months.

PPP has a tracking poll of South Carolina that consists of a rolling three day poll. The January 20 sample has Gingrich leading Romney 40-26, while the full 3-day poll has Gingrich ahead 37-28.

Mitt Romney has gone from leading by 10 to 15 points to losing by 10 or more points in about 10 days. Amazing.

Newt Gingrich's compelling debate performances this week--on monday and thursday-explain mainly his rise. Beyond Newt's gift of gap that Democrats had better not underestimate, sustained political nuclear attacks on Romney are causing a Romney collapse.

Gingrich and his super pac, Paul, Santorum, Perry all have nailed Romney for running to the left of Ted Kennedy, loading companies with debt to leverage large returns for his investors at Bain, having a terrible job creation record as Governor, not releasing his tax returns, having bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, and being an Olympic champion of pandering and flip flopping. Those attacks are working, because they are true.

A big Gingrich win in South Carolina will catapult him to a national polling lead that he will need in Florida and its primary that is 10 days ahead.

Romney has spent more than 3 million dollars advertising in Florida, with no other candidate contesting the airwaves. Romney will flood Florida with even more cash, with the goal of ripping to shreds Gingrich once again and putting him back into his political death bed.

To keep Gingrich there, Romney may also refuse to do any more national debates and yesterday was saying he may back out of a previously scheduled debate on Monday night. Without debates, Gingrich will need a huge money bomb after South Carolina to allow him to compete in Florida.

At this point, remarkably the Republican nomination is not the coronation of Mitt Romney. It is still a contest between Romney and Gingrich that may make Ron Paul a kingmaker.