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About H.R. 969:

Introduced February 8, 2007. Amends the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to prescribe requirements for a Federal Renewable Portfolio Standard for calendar years 2010 through 2039.

Specifies a schedule of graduated annual percentages of a supplier’s base amount that shall be generated from renewable energy resources, from 1% in 2010 up to 20 % in 2020 and thereafter.

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Authorizes a retail electric supplier to satisfy such requirements through submission of renewable energy credits to the Secretary of Energy.

Provides for energy credit trading or borrowing among suppliers.

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Directs the Secretary to:

(1) encourage federally-owned utilities, municipally-owned utilities, and rural electric cooperatives that sell electric energy to electric consumers for purposes other than resale to participate in the renewable portfolio standard program; and

(2) establish by December 31, 2009, a state renewable energy account program.

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According to Jesse Ausubel, a researcher at the Rockefeller University in New York, commenting on a recent study they completed: “We looked at the different major alternatives for renewable energies and we measured output for each of them and how much land it will rape.” Since July 24 when Live Science reported on this study and interviewed Ausubel, this story has been seized by those who are invested in maintaining the status quo and increasing investment in nuclear power.

We tend to agree with Gregory A. Keoleian, co-Director for the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan. He thinks more in-depth analyses are needed before dismissing renewables and considering nuclear power as a viable option.

I think the characterizations made that ‘renewables are not green’ and ‘nuclear is green’ sound provocative, but they do not accurately represent these technologies with respect to a comprehensive set of sustainability criteria and analysis,” Keoleian told LiveScience. “The treatment of renewable technologies [in this study] is shallow and the coverage of the nuclear fuel cycle is incomplete.

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While this “study” is at best a specious attack piece for special interests, it does bring to the forefront of the renewable energy discussion a few key topics that we would all do well to remember:

• No single renewable technology will solve the problems we face
• Conservation and efficiency efforts need to increase in scale
• Not all renewable resources have the same impacts/footprints, there are tradeoffs with each harvest technology
• The power of heat stored in the crust and kinetic and thermal energy in the oceans are not central in these discussions – a miss as they are huge power sources
• When talking renewable energy, people continue to confuse electricity generation and transportation
• Nuclear power has some benefits if intelligent ways to manage spent fuel can be created
• Coal fired electricity amounts to nearly 50% of US electricity production, it’s not going away. Cleaner coal technologies can only help. But, new coal fired plants should not be constructed – that investment should be directed toward a portfolio of renewable generation technologies
• Education is important, until/unless people understand the impact of their personal choices, it will be difficult to transform from where we are to where we need to go.

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Honda has announced plans to release a diesel version of the Accord in the US by 2010. This vehicle is targeted to get nearly 63 miles per gallon (~26 kilometers per liter.) This is better performance than the standard issue Prius and when combined with biodiesel makes an interesting story.

From CNET

Feast your eyes on this, car technology and high-mileage nuts. It’s a Honda Accord that runs on diesel.

Honda expects to bring the clean-diesel car to the U.S. by 2010. It gets 62.8 miles a gallon on the highway, but otherwise looks and feels like a regular Accord. At that mileage level, the car is about as “clean” as a new Toyota Prius. But if you run it on biodiesel, a form of diesel made from vegetable oil or animal fat, it would be even cleaner than a Prius (Priuses get 60 in the city).

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Glitnir Bank and Geysir Green Energy have jointly invested $18M through a combination shares and warrants. Western Geothermal has been working to raise funds to build its 25MW plant on the site of old PG&E Unit 15 at the Geysers and further develop its Canadian project at South Meager. The $90M price tag on the Geysers project means there is still a significant sum of money to be raised, likely through debt financing like Nevada Geopower arranged with Morgan Stanley.

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Morgan Stanley extended a $100M loan to Nevada Geothermal to construct the Faulkner I project at Blue Mountain, Nevada. This comes on the heels of a 20 year duration power purchase agreement that Nevada Geothermal entered into with Nevada Power. In addition to building the plant infrastructure and more drilling, a 20 mile transmission line will need to be completed to bring the power to the grid. Nevada Geothermal projects the plant to be online in 2009.

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