Climate Progress has an article on the transition from coal fired power to solar power in the south west US - Ground Broken At First Utility-Scale Solar Project On Tribal Land

Ground has been broken on the first utility-scale solar-power plant in the country to be built on tribal land. The Moapa Southern Paiute Solar project about 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas will be built by Moapa Southern Paiute Solar, a subsidiary of First Solar Electric. The construction project will employ 400 people and, when completed in 2015, will generate 250 megawatts or enough energy to power 93,000 homes in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) has contracted to buy power from the plant for 25 years. By 2015, LADWP has indicated that it will stop using power from coal entirely, much of which currently comes from the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona. LADWP has a target of supplying its customers with 33 percent renewable energy.

For the tribe, which owns 29,137 hectares in Nevada, the new solar project represents a triumph in a long-fought battle with dirty energy and hope for a cleaner, healthier future. For over half a century, the Reid-Gardner coal-fired power plant just outside of town has been dumping ash laced with mercury, lead, and arsenic into the community, which has been plagued with health problems.

Renewable Energy World has a post on the rapid expansion of renewable energy in the US - Renewables Account for Almost 50% of all New US Energy in 2012.

In 2012 renewable energy — largely wind and solar — accounted for nearly 50 percent of all new electric generation put on the U.S. grid. According to a new Ernst & Young report, United States renewable energy attractiveness indices, 13.1 gigawatts of wind were added to the grid last year, as was 3.3 gigawatts of photovoltaics (PV).

“While overall U.S. investment in clean energy is down, it’s still ahead of annual investment from prior years,” said Michael Bernier, senior manager, National Tax, Ernst & Young. “What’s important to note is that the $44.2 billion invested is not representative of the industry’s true expansion. Solar technology, for example, is increasingly cost effective. As prices fall, the initial investment goes a lot further. $1 billion installs a lot more solar than it did five years ago.” The company also report earlier this year that U.S. is now the most attractive country for renewable energy investments.

The SMH reports that LNG exports from North America are starting to look likely - the gas age is in full swing - US and Canada step on the gas.

JUST hours after the Canadian government approved its third export gas project, another US export gas project, this time in Texas, has moved closer to getting a green light. The approvals come as concern is mounting that a large rise in North American gas reserves on the back of the shale gas boom will undercut much of the optimism of Australia's gas exporters over projects being developed off Western Australia and in Queensland.

Australia is set to be one of the world's largest gas exporters in the next five years, although growth prospects beyond that are being hurt by the increase in export projects vying for approval in North America.

On Tuesday Shell won approval for a project it is promoting in British Columbia, on Canada's west coast, which includes PetroChina, Korean Gas and Mitsubishi Corp as shareholders. Both PetroChina and Mitsubishi are participants in export gas projects in Australia.

As well, the US Department of Energy granted Pangea LNG approval to begin exports from its south Texas project. Pangea has been authorised to export up to 8 million tonnes annually of liquefied natural gas for 25 years.

Shell, also, has joined another consortium planning to export gas from Georgia, in the US south.

The inability of large vessels to use the Panama Canal always meant that gas exports from the US could only be exported to Asia from the west coast and Alaska, but that will change from late 2015 when the canal's capacity rises after a $US5.5 billion ($A5.28 billion) expansion.

The WSJ reports that South African coal to liquids company SASOL is looking to build a GTL (gas to liquids) plant in Louisiana, using the (at least currently) cheap supply of shale gas as feedstock - Gas-to-Liquid Site May Hit $10 Billion.

Sasol Ltd., a chemical company long known for squeezing motor fuel out of coal, is now turning its sights on the glut of natural gas in the U.S.

South Africa-based Sasol on Tuesday announced plans to build a plant in Louisiana, at a cost of up to $10 billion, that would convert natural gas into diesel fuel for trucks and other vehicles.

The company's board last week approved an 18-month feasibility study for the project, which would be constructed on land adjacent to Sasol's existing chemical facility in Calcasieu Parish, La.

If given the final go-ahead, the plant would be the first in the U.S. to use "gas-to-liquids" technology. Once seen as futuristic, the technology has gained traction in recent years as discovery of gas supplies have outpaced that of oil.

"The initial numbers look positive," said Ernst Oberholster, Sasol's managing director of new-business development, who stood alongside Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal at the company's Louisiana complex when the decision was announced.

What makes the U.S. an attractive location for such a project is the low level of natural-gas prices in the country. Benchmark futures have hovered between $3 and $6 per million British thermal units for two years, well below prices paid by consumers in Europe and Asia.

Sasol would buy the natural gas from suppliers using long-term contracts, convert the gas to liquid fuel and then sell that fuel to blenders, who wouldthen sell it for the open market.

The project is the latest to address what to do with a surplus of natural gas caused by the boom in drilling in shale-rock formations in places like Texas and Pennsylvania. Energy investor T. Boone Pickens and natural-gas producers such as Apache Corp. have promoted the use of natural gas as a road-transportation fuel, one that would be cleaner burning than oil-based alternatives. In addition, some companies have put forward plans to export gas out of the U.S. in cool-liquefied form.

Sasol's idea is one of the most ambitious, because it would essentially put natural gas on par with higher-priced crude oil as a key raw material for transportation fuels. And diesel prices trickle down into the cost of consumer goodseverywhere because the fuel is mainly used in trucking. So far this year, retail diesel prices in the U.S. are up 16%, even as the economy grows more fragile.

Sasol officials estimate that a plant producing 96,000 barrels a day of diesel, and some jet fuel, would cost $10 billion to construct. They say they could opt for a smaller facility, however.

By converting natural gas into a liquid, the fuel could be used without retrofitting vehicles or creating new fueling infrastructure, an issue that would affect motorists using compressed natural gas as Apache and Mr. Pickens have advocated. The proposed site in Louisiana is close to Gulf Coast natural-gas fields and is crisscrossed by pipelines that could be easily linked to a new facility, Mr. Oberholster said.

The Climate Spectator has a roundup of commentary on the bankruptcy of Solyndra and the challenges facing America’s solar power industry - America's solar flame-out.

The news last week of the bankruptcy of US thin-film solar startup Solyndra – a company that was backed by high profile venture capitalists and visited in person by President Barack Obama, who declared it a green jobs powerhouse while his administration directed half a billion dollars in loan guarantees its way – is being taken pretty badly in American cleantech circles. "One heck of a bummer," is how Salon's Andrew Leonard has put it; while Forbes' Todd Woody described it as the country's "biggest green-tech flameout yet."

Solyndra closed for business and dispensed with 1,100 workers on Wednesday, just one year after opening its cutting edge robotic factory that was funded using $US1 billion-plus from investors, and the half billion from government loans. The company now plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy while exploring a sale of the business or licensing its thin-film photovoltaic technology. And while the collapse will no doubt raise questions in the minds of investors and the US government, what this means for the US solar industry as a whole is the really big issue. ...

Solyndra's technology began attracting a lot of attention in 2008, wrote Fehrenbacher in May, when it started making its unusual designs and business plans public. Its solar panels are made up of a series of tubes lined with copper-indium-gallium-selenide solar cells. They have an average efficiency of up to 12.7 per cent, but only when they're rolled flat, says Solyndra’s spokesman Dave Miller, otherwise they have around 10 per cent efficiency – and apparently they also work best on white-coloured roofs. But considering the firm's central innovation was that its panels avoided the use of silicon – something that proved far less important when refined silicon prices collapsed – it's "all too easy to see why Solyndra proved to be a bad bet," say Jesse Jenkins, Devon Swezey, and Alex Trembath in Forbes.

The real take-away from the Solyndra story is this, says Woody: "Can US companies developing advanced solar technology compete against low-cost Chinese manufacturers who benefit from state support and a government policy to create markets at home and abroad for their products? And given the shellacking taken by Solyndra’s investors – who include Richard Branson, the Walton family and Silicon Valley venture capital firms such as CMEA and US Venture Partners – will VCs be willing to place future bets on high-tech renewable energy startups or continue to back companies such as Nanosolar and MiaSolé?"

Woody points out that, since Solyndra’s launch, conventional solar module prices have fallen 70 per cent. "The company simply could not increase production fast enough to lower the higher cost of manufacturing its high-tech modules," he says.

The NYT reports that China is succeeding where the US is failing, dominating solar power production - China Benefits as U.S. Solar Industry Withers.

The bankruptcies of three American solar power companies in the last month, including Solyndra of California on Wednesday, have left China’s industry with a dominant sales position — almost three-fifths of the world’s production capacity — and rapidly declining costs.

Some American, Japanese and European solar companies still have a technological edge over Chinese rivals, but seldom a cost advantage, according to industry analysts. Loans at very low rates from state-owned banks in Beijing, cheap or free land from local and provincial governments across China, huge economies of scale and other cost advantages have transformed China from a minor player in the solar power industry just a few years ago into the main producer of an increasingly competitive source of electricity. …

Besides Solyndra, the other two American manufacturers that filed for bankruptcy in August were Evergreen Solar, of Massachusetts, and SpectraWatt, a New York company. Another company, BP Solar, halted manufacturing at its complex in Frederick, Md., last spring.
Those bankruptcies and closings represent almost one-fifth of the solar panel manufacturing capacity in the United States, according to GTM Research. ...

Solyndra and Evergreen in particular suffered because they pursued unusual technologies whose competitiveness depended on their using less polysilicon, the main material for solar panels. That has become less important because polysilicon prices have tumbled more than 80 percent in the last three years as output has caught up with demand.

Analysts say that two American companies remain strongly placed. One is First Solar, the largest American manufacturer, which uses a different technology but has its biggest factory in Malaysia. The other, SunPower, is much smaller but is an industry leader in the efficiency with which its panels convert sunlight into electricity, so that they sell at a premium to Chinese panels. ...

Solyndra and Evergreen in particular suffered because they pursued unusual technologies whose competitiveness depended on their using less polysilicon, the main material for solar panels. That has become less important because polysilicon prices have tumbled more than 80 percent in the last three years as output has caught up with demand.

Analysts say that two American companies remain strongly placed. One is First Solar, the largest American manufacturer, which uses a different technology but has its biggest factory in Malaysia. The other, SunPower, is much smaller but is an industry leader in the efficiency with which its panels convert sunlight into electricity, so that they sell at a premium to Chinese panels.

Bloomberg reports that German solar companies are struggling against Chinese competition as well - Solar Purge Drives Weakest Into Buyouts, to Spur More Deals.

The solar-equipment industry has begun its biggest consolidation in at least two years as photovoltaic systems plunge in price, forcing weaker companies to team with competitors or close shop.

Mergers and acquisitions announced so far total $3.3 billion, up 33 percent from the $2.47 billion in all of last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Evergreen Solar Inc. (ESLR) today set a Sept. 20 meeting in a Delaware court for creditors owed $456 million. German solar-panel maker Q-Cells SE (QCE), which has convertible bonds trading at a 64 percent discount to face value, has said it’s open to takeover bids.

Tumbling solar-cell prices are provoking deals. Their 42 percent drop in 2011, stemming from tougher Chinese competition and declining solar-energy incentives in Europe, contributed to California’s Sunpower Corp. (SPWRA) and Roth & Rau AG (R8R) of Germany agreeing to takeovers. Ascent Solar Inc. took a Chinese partner.

“Weaker companies who did not get their product costs down to competitive levels are going to disappear," said Christopher Blansett, an analyst for JP Morgan Securities LLC. “They’ll be bought up. They’ll go away. There is significantly more supply of solar modules than demand."

A sell-off in solar stocks has made acquisitions cheaper. The Bloomberg Industries Global Large Solar Index dropped 36 percent this year through yesterday, compared with a 3.8 percent decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in that period. ...

Other German solar companies are struggling. Solon SE (SOO1) said on Aug. 16 that it will cut 15 percent of its jobs after inventory rose 45 percent in the first quarter to 160 million euros ($230 million) from a year earlier.

Solar Millennium AG (S2M), a German developer of solar-thermal power plants, said today it’s seeking a strategic investor to buy as much as 25 percent of the company, and it’s talking to banks about arranging bridge financing.

Roth & Rau, the German maker of solar-cell manufacturing equipment, agreed in April to a takeover by Swiss competitor Meyer Burger Technology AG, after first-quarter inventory more than tripled to 97 million euros.

Reuters reports that manufacturing silicon still seems to be economic in the US however - U.S. solar company plans $600 mln Mississippi plant.

A California solar company said on Friday it plans to build a $600 million silicon factory in Mississippi that will be backed by $75 million in incentives from the state. Calisolar will produce 16,000 metric tons of silicon at a factory in Columbus, Mississippi. The silicon will be sold to customers in the solar industry around the world, the company said in a statement. …

The United States is a net exporter of silicon for the solar industry, exporting $2.5 billion of the industry's raw material last year.

The NYT has a skeptical look at the shale gas boom in the US, which may not augur well for later stage investors like BHP and the Chinese who have paid large sums of cash for their stakes - Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush.

Natural gas companies have been placing enormous bets on the wells they are drilling, saying they will deliver big profits and provide a vast new source of energy for the United States.

But the gas may not be as easy and cheap to extract from shale formations deep underground as the companies are saying, according to hundreds of industry e-mails and internal documents and an analysis of data from thousands of wells.

In the e-mails, energy executives, industry lawyers, state geologists and market analysts voice skepticism about lofty forecasts and question whether companies are intentionally, and even illegally, overstating the productivity of their wells and the size of their reserves. Many of these e-mails also suggest a view that is in stark contrast to more bullish public comments made by the industry, in much the same way that insiders have raised doubts about previous financial bubbles.

“Money is pouring in” from investors even though shale gas is “inherently unprofitable,” an analyst from PNC Wealth Management, an investment company, wrote to a contractor in a February e-mail. “Reminds you of dot-coms.”

“The word in the world of independents is that the shale plays are just giant Ponzi schemes and the economics just do not work,” an analyst from IHS Drilling Data, an energy research company, wrote in an e-mail on Aug. 28, 2009.

Company data for more than 10,000 wells in three major shale gas formations raise further questions about the industry’s prospects. There is undoubtedly a vast amount of gas in the formations. The question remains how affordably it can be extracted.

The data show that while there are some very active wells, they are often surrounded by vast zones of less-productive wells that in some cases cost more to drill and operate than the gas they produce is worth. Also, the amount of gas produced by many of the successful wells is falling much faster than initially predicted by energy companies, making it more difficult for them to turn a profit over the long run.

If the industry does not live up to expectations, the impact will be felt widely. Federal and state lawmakers are considering drastically increasing subsidies for the natural gas business in the hope that it will provide low-cost energy for decades to come.

But if natural gas ultimately proves more expensive to extract from the ground than has been predicted, landowners, investors and lenders could see their investments falter, while consumers will pay a price in higher electricity and home heating bills.

There are implications for the environment, too. The technology used to get gas flowing out of the ground — called hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — can require over a million gallons of water per well, and some of that water must be disposed of because it becomes contaminated by the process. If shale gas wells fade faster than expected, energy companies will have to drill more wells or hydrofrack them more often, resulting in more toxic waste.

The e-mails were obtained through open-records requests or provided to The New York Times by industry consultants and analysts who say they believe that the public perception of shale gas does not match reality; names and identifying information were redacted to protect these people, who were not authorized to communicate publicly. In the e-mails, some people within the industry voice grave concerns.

“And now these corporate giants are having an Enron moment,” a retired geologist from a major oil and gas company wrote in a February e-mail about other companies invested in shale gas. “They want to bend light to hide the truth.”

The AP has a long (and interesting) piece on nuclear reactor safety in the US - US nuke regulators weaken safety rules.

Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.

Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews.

The result? Rising fears that these accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety — and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize the future of nuclear power in the United States.

Examples abound. When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed — up to 20 times the original limit. When rampant cracking caused radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an easier test of the tubes was devised, so plants could meet standards.

Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes — all of these and thousands of other problems linked to aging were uncovered in the AP's yearlong investigation. And all of them could escalate dangers in the event of an accident.

Yet despite the many problems linked to aging, not a single official body in government or industry has studied the overall frequency and potential impact on safety of such breakdowns in recent years, even as the NRC has extended the licenses of dozens of reactors.

Industry and government officials defend their actions, and insist that no chances are being taken. But the AP investigation found that with billions of dollars and 19 percent of America's electricity supply at stake, a cozy relationship prevails between the industry and its regulator, the NRC.

Records show a recurring pattern: Reactor parts or systems fall out of compliance with the rules. Studies are conducted by the industry and government, and all agree that existing standards are "unnecessarily conservative."

Regulations are loosened, and the reactors are back in compliance.

The Washington Post reports another solar thermal power plant (this one 663 MW) has been approved in the US - US approves 5th solar plant on western public land.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has approved a big solar energy plant in the Mojave Desert, making it the fifth such project on western U.S. public lands to win federal authorization.

Salazar's approval Wednesday authorizes the Bureau of Land Management to offer Tessera Solar use of more than 4,600 acres for 30 years to build the Calico Solar Project.

The Interior Department says the 663.5-megawatt project could power 200,000 to 500,000 homes.

Houston-based Tessera originally sought more than 8,200 acres, but the BLM wanted to limit impacts on the endangered desert tortoise.

National Geographic has a series of articles on the shale gas boom in the US - A Dream Dashed by the Rush on Gas.

Both Hanger’s office and the gas industry maintain that if the process is done properly, there is no threat to drinking water when chemically treated water and sand are blasted underground to fracture shale to produce gas.

(Related: “Forcing Gas Out of Rock With Water”)

The hydraulic fracturing (fracking) fluid, about 4 million gallons (15 million liters) per well, is released into the shale layer at a depth of 4,000 to 8,500 feet (1,220 to 2,590 meters). (Related:Breaking Fuel From the Rock). That means that there is about a mile or more of rock between the shale and underground water sources used for drinking water. About 1 million Pennsylvania households, nearly 20 percent of residences in the state, draw their water from private wells that are relatively shallow. Wells in the western half of the state, for instance, would likely be drilled to depths of less than 150 feet (46 meters), according to the Pennsylvania Geological Survey.

The potential for contamination of drinking water aquifers is a major concern in the Keystone State, which has more people served by well water than any state but Michigan, according to a 2009 analysis year prepared for the state legislature. The chief bulwark against water pollution is a separating wall—a casing made of tons of steel and cement—built in each gas well not only to protect the environment, but also to ensure the valuable gas doesn’t escape.

Hanger says there hasn’t been a single confirmed case of frack fluid migrating from the shale layer deep underground to the shallow drinking water supplies in Pennsylvania. However, about 20 to 50 percent of the drilling liquid flows back to the surface, most of it right after the well is completed. And that’s when proven trouble can occur.

‘It’s Not Water of Any Kind’

This “produced water,” which includes the frack chemicals, is a super-salty brine, prone to bacterial growth, and potentially contaminated with heavy metals. “It smells like turpentine,” says Conrad Dan Volz, director of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health, who has been researching the environmental impact. “It’s not water of any kind.”

State regulations say the frack fluid has to be collected and disposed of as an industrial waste, or it can be treated and reused to drill more wells, a practice pioneered in Pennsylvania within the past year. (Related: “Forcing Gas Out of Rock With Water”) Hanger says the water reuse is in no small measure a result of the DEP’s tough stance on wastewater handling.

But in at least 130 cases documented since 2008 by the DEP, drilling wastewater has spilled into creeks and tributaries due to holding pond overflows, pump failures, and other errors. There have been at least two small fish kills. One occurred in October 2009, soon after Range started its program to reuse frack fluid: about 10,500 gallons (40,000 liters/250 barrels) leaked from a broken pipeline joint and killed about 170 creek chubs, blacknose dace, and other small fish, along with some salamanders and frogs in Brush Run, 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. Range says the fish killed collectively weighed about a pound. The company suspects vandalism, because bolts had been removed from the pipe connection. But no perpetrators have been tracked down, and the company was fined $140,000 for polluting a high-quality waterway. (Range since has switched to using unbolted high-density polyethylene pipeline to transfer its drilling fluid, Pitzarella says.)

In another case, involving East Resources* in north-central Pennsylvania, the state quarantined cattle exposed to wastewater that leaked from a containment pond and killed grass over 1,200 square feet on a farm. State agriculture officials said they acted to prevent contaminated beef from entering the food chain, since the water contained the heavy metal strontium, a substance especially toxic to children and one that lingers long in an animal’s system.

In a case that echoed the BP oil spill, although the results certainly weren’t as severe, an EOG Resources well blew out on June 3, with natural gas and frack fluid spewing for 16 hours from the gas well on hunting club land inside the Moshannon State Forest in central Pennsylvania.(Related: “Parks, Forests Eyed for the Fuel Beneath”) There should have been at least two pressure barriers or blowout preventers in the underground piping to prevent contaminated fluid from flowing to the surface, but only one barrier was in place, and it was damaged, the DEP’s investigation showed. EOG was hit with the harshest punishment to date by Pennsylvania’s shale regulators—a fine of $353,000 and temporary suspension from drilling.

The Dimock Case

But perhaps the most notorious Pennsylvania contamination case was in the northeastern part of the state, in rural Dimock Township, where natural gas was found in early 2009 to have contaminated the drinking water wells of 14 homes. Investigators were able to do a kind of “fingerprinting” to determine the source, and concluded the gas did not come from the Marcellus shale. But the state DEP contends that faulty well casing set into the ground by Cabot Oil & Gas as it drilled into the deep Marcellus allowed gas to migrate from more shallow geological formations into the groundwater. Dimock’s woes were recounted in the award-winning documentary film Gasland, forever linking the image of flammable drinking water to the Marcellus shale (even though the man who memorably set fire to his tap water in the film was in Colorado).

EcoGeek has a post on a new NREL study on the potential for wind power in the US - U.S. Could Generate 37 Million GWh of Wind Power Per Year.

For those in the wind power business, or those considering jumping in, last week brought some big news. A new study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) found that the U.S. could theoretically generate 37 million gigawatt-hours of wind power per year, triple the amount previously thought.

The last study of wind power potential, completed in 1993, came up with an energy potential of about 10.8 million GWh. According to NREL, the reason for the dramatic jump is better wind technology (taller and more powerful turbines) and better data used in the assessment. In case you're wondering, environmentally-protected areas were not included as potential sites.

The new number is over 12 times the amount of energy we consume each year. Americans consume 3 million GWh of electricity each year and in 2008 only 52,000 GWh came from wind.

The study offers great new maps of wind energy potential across the country, highlighting areas with high wind speeds, access to transmission lines, cheap land and other major factors for would-be wind farm developers. The maps, created by Truewind, have a resolution of 650 feet, less than the spacing between turbines, so developers could use them not just to located the best area for an entire farm, but for each machine.

The Colorado Independent has an article on pressure being brought to bear on opponents of hydraulic fracturing, who believe it contaminates ground water supplies - Colo. School of Mines professor says he was threatened with firing over hydraulic fracturing comments.

Dr. Geoffrey Thyne is no Ward Churchill. He’s a geologist and an academic with three decades of field work and experience as a research scientist in the oil and gas industry, including the last 13 years at Colorado School of Mines in Golden.

Thyne said in an interview that he was caught completely off-guard in late May when his bosses at the 135-year-old school threatened to fire him for comments he made to reporters on hydraulic fracturing — an increasingly controversial but equally common practice of injecting natural gas wells with high-pressure water, sand and chemicals to force open rock formations and free up gas.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, is co-sponsoring legislation that would remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the process, also known as “fracking,” that was put in place by the Bush administration in 2005. Oil and gas industry trade groups have mounted a massive — and expensive — campaign to fight DeGette’s bill and maintain the exemption, which no other extractive industry enjoys.

Thyne said he was threatened with termination as a research associate professor at Mines, a position he still holds through the end of the summer, because of pressure put on the state school by powerful players in the oil and gas industry who were upset with his position that federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing may ultimately be necessary if oil companies don’t find other solutions.

“I was shocked,” Thyne said. “It’s fine to call up and complain. It’s fine to call up and say, ‘Hey, we want an explanation of why you said this.’ I think that’s totally reasonable. What I found so interesting is no one’s ever called me, except my bosses, and they just come in and go, ‘Your ass is going to get fired if we can find a way to do it.’”

As it turns out, a position came open as a senior research scientist at the Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute at the University of Wyoming, and so Thyne is transitioning there by the end of the summer. But he clearly was rattled with the fallout from comments he made to both National Public Radio and Denver’s KUSA Channel 9 TV in late May.

“There’s some really powerful people that are making a lot of money off of this, and when they see any kind of opposition, their response is to pick up the phone and say, ‘Fire this guy,’” Thyne said. “I’m first surprised that a state institution can be influenced that way …”

Colorado School of Mines public relations officials did not return a call requesting comment Thursday. Late Thursday afternoon a spokeswoman provided an e-mail response (see related blog item).

Thyne contends there needs to be much more rigorous study of fracking to determine the extent to which it can contaminate groundwater supplies. Industry money currently being poured into the aggressive and highly defensive campaign to defeat DeGette’s legislation would be better spent building a credible scientific case for why the exemption was necessary in the first place, he adds.

TreeHugger reports that Texas is the leading state for wind power generation in the US, but Iowa is gaining on them - Iowa Moves Into Second Place, Behind Texas, In US Wind Power Capacity Race.

Texas still holds its lead in installed wind power capacity, with 7,118 megawatts, but according to the latest industry data, Iowa has edged pass California as the United States' number two wind power:

Iowa now has 2,791 megawatts installed versus California's 2,517 megawatts. Wind power now makes up 7.48% of Iowa's electricity mix. Taking up the rest of the top five positions are Minnesota in fourth place with 1,754 megawatts (7.1% of their electricity mix), and Washington with 1,447 megawatts.

The states with the fastest growth rate are Indiana (going from 0 to 131 MW in one year), followed by Michigan (48%), Utah (21%), New Hampshire (17%) and Wisconsin (6%).

The final tally for installed US wind power at the end of 2008 was 25,300 megawatts, an amount expected to generate 73 billion kWh in 2009—enough to power about 7 million average US homes.

AP reports that falling natural gas prices in the US are making residential consumers happy for the time being, but notes that unconventional (shale) gas drilling has fallen off a cliff in recent months - Homes that use natural gas for heat could save big.

The 60 million American homes that rely on natural gas for heat can expect substantially lower bills next winter thanks to a glut in supply and the weak economy.

Just as distributors start to lock in contracts for the coming winter, natural gas prices have fallen almost 75 percent. Not all of that will show up as savings on the heating bill, but it should still mean noticeable savings. Utilities also generate about a fifth of the nation's electricity with gas, and many of their customers should notice price breaks as well.

Electric utilities burn natural gas at power turbines, so homes that use electric heat could see big price breaks, too. And barring a scorching summer or a brutal hurricane season, analysts say prices could fall even further.

The reason: New technology this decade has unlocked massive reserves of natural gas in North America, and the sudden jump in supply has collided with a recession, the worst since World War II, that has sapped demand. The result has been a collapse even more dramatic than the drop in oil prices. ...

Many people switched to natural gas after a huge spike in the cost of heating oil last year. Heating oil is down this year as well, although not as much as natural gas.

The last supply glut in natural gas came to an end in 2002. Prices climbed, and producers began drilling more, finding new ways to pull natural gas from places previously considered unreachable.

For example, in the layered sedimentary rock known as shale, bountiful in a region stretching from Texas and Oklahoma into Appalachia, drillers learned how to free gas by forcing water into small boreholes and fracturing the rock.

Five straight years of record activity turned into 148,000 new wells, according to the American Gas Association. Then came the recession, and the drilling rush came crashing to a halt. Rigs are still being pulled from the ground at a record rate. Active rig use in North America is at the lowest level in five years.

The government's Energy Information Association says the volume of gas in storage around the country, a staggering 1.67 trillion cubic feet, is 35 percent more than it was last year. "Storage is full. There is no place for gas to go," said Ron Denhardt, vice president of natural gas services for Strategic Energy and Economic Research Inc.

And even as companies scale back their drilling, production is still running ahead of consumption. Businesses are cutting back on their natural gas use even more than homes. That means prices could go even lower.

Grist reports that enthusiasm for LNG imports in the US is dropping as fast as the price is - Is the Obama administration backing away from LNG terminals?.

ill the Obama administration back away from building liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals along the coasts of the U.S.? Obama’s appointee at the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission suggests that it will.

Though George W. Bush talked a lot about weaning the U.S. off foreign oil, he wanted a massive increase in imports of foreign natural gas. The Bush administration, aided by the 2005 energy bill that gave the feds sole authority over LNG terminal siting, pushed for dozens of new terminals to be constructed in coastal areas of the U.S., where massive tankers could unload their cargo from overseas.

Communities targeted for the terminals, many of them densely populated, have protested fiercely, citing serious concerns about safety and the prospect that terminals could be targets for terrorist attack. In vapor form, natural gas is extremely flammable, so accidents can lead to huge, dangerous fires and explosions. There are currently only four active LNG terminals on U.S. shorelines. At one point, some 30 additional terminals were being considered, but vigorous opposition has led to the cancellation of some projects and endless lawsuits over many others.

Among those caught up in litigation is the facility proposed for Bradwood Landing in Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River. FERC approved construction of the terminal in September 2008, over the complaints of local citizens and environmental activists. Oregon, Washington, a coalition of environmental groups, and the National Marine Fisheries Service all filed suit against FERC over the decision, alleging that the agency broke the law by approving the terminal before its environmental impacts were adequately assessed.

Enter the Obama administration. In March, the Justice Department said it would represent NMFS in its suit against the Bradwood terminal.

And the newly appointed chair of FERC, Jon Wellinghoff, told Grist in an interview that he thinks the Bradwood decision needs to be reassessed. That’s consistent with his vote against the project [PDF] last year, when he was one of four FERC commissioners.

“My view has been that we need to look at those [proposed LNG terminals] very carefully, and we need to consider all of the regional needs when determining whether or not there has been a finding of need for the facility,” said Wellinghoff. “That was largely why I voted against the Bradwood decision in Oregon, was because I didn’t believe that there had been an adequate determination of need for that facility to meet the needs of the region.”

Wellinghoff challenged the idea that the U.S. needs to expand its infrastructure to import more LNG. Instead, he predicted increased use of domestic natural gas reserves.

“We’ve had, since a lot of this push for LNG several years ago ... a vast expansion of the known resource reserves of natural gas in this country, based primarily on exploration in shales in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma and other regions of the country, that have allowed us to understand that we have much more natural gas resource reserves than we ever believed we had,” said Wellinghoff. “As such, we probably will be much more able to draw from domestic gas resources than we will be so concerned about foreign LNG sources.”

Of course, development of domestic shale is not without its own environmental and local concerns. Count on this to be an interesting topic to follow in the coming months.

But Wellinghoff also predicts that the U.S. won’t need big new sources of natural gas. “I think the potential is there to increase the efficient use of natural gas so rapidly that I don’t think we’re going to see significant increases in demand,” he said.

One problem I've long warned about related to peak oil is the surge of interest is that it will create in dirtier alternative fuels like coal to liquids plants. As a result, I haven't been surprised about the steady flow of news about planned CTL plants that is flowing from locations around the world, the latest from the US - Crow Tribe strikes deal for $7B coal project.

The Crow Tribe struck a deal Thursday with an Australian company toward building a $7 billion plant to convert coal into liquid fuels, which would be among the first such projects in the nation.

Capping months of negotiations, the Crow Legislature ratified a 50-year development agreement with Australian-American Energy Co., a subsidiary of Australian Energy Co.

The Many Stars coal-to-liquids plant initially would produce 50,000 barrels a day of diesel and other fuels. Construction would begin in several years and coal for the project would come from a mine yet to be developed by the tribe on the reservation, Crow leaders said.

The tribe's chairman, Carl Venne, said the coal-to-liquids project offered an unprecedented chance at improving the lives of the tribe's 12,000 members. The agreement calls for the Crow to receive up to 50 percent of profits from the plant after investors in the project recoup their costs.

"It means we will become self sufficient as a tribe," Venne said. "I won't need no more federal dollars. I won't need no more state dollars."

Total proceeds to the tribe could eventually top $1 billion annually — a breathtaking sum that dwarfs the Crow's current annual budget of about $26 million.

Representatives of the company and the tribe plan a public unveiling of the project at a news conference Friday. Expected to attend is Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who declined comment Thursday.

The Crow reservation sits atop some of the nation's largest coal reserves — an estimated 9 billion tons of recoverable resources. Yet only limited mining has occurred, and the tribe's economy remains hobbled by high rates of poverty and unemployment.

The development agreement comes as the coal industry faces rising criticism over its role as one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Hoping to defuse opposition, tribal leaders said the Many Stars plant would be built to capture 95 percent of the carbon dioxide it produces. That gas would be stored in underground geologic formations or sold to the oil industry, which pumps carbon dioxide into aging oil wells to squeeze additional production out of them.

Still, the fuel produced by such plants release carbon dioxide when burned, putting it roughly on par with conventional petroleum in terms of overall emissions, industry experts and government scientists have said.

Keith Johnson at the WSJ's Environmental Capital blog has a post on the potential for the US car fleet to shrink rapidly in the coming years - Oil Shock: Analyst Predicts $7 Gas, “Mass Exodus” of U.S. Cars.

Oil at $135? That was just the opening skirmish in the “peak oil” wars. The latest smart money? $200 oil in 2010, with gasoline at $7 a gallon. And that is going to turn Americans into car-shunning Europeans once and for all—poor Americans, at least.

That’s the latest gloomy forecast from Jeff Rubin at Canadian brokerage CIBC World Markets, who just a few months ago figured $200 oil would be a thing of the distant future—like 2012.

Mr. Rubin laughs off recent attempts to take the steam out of global oil markets. Saudi production promises of 200,000 barrels a day doesn’t dent the 4 million barrel-per-day decline from aging fields every year, for starters. And it will just be “gobbled up” by increasing domestic consumption in Saudi Arabia, like other oil-producing countries that subsidize fuel.

So what about China’s flirtation with market reality by unwinding some fuel subsidies? No luck in curbing demand or prices, either. Not only does China’s recent move translate into $3.25 a gallon gas—still a steal, relatively speaking—it’s given fresh legs to beleaguered Chinese refiners who’ve been operating in the red, thanks to Chinese price controls. So now they are producing even more gasoline and fueling even more cars than they were before. The upshot?

Over the next four years, we are likely to witness the greatest mass exodus of vehicles off America’s highways in history. By 2012, there should be some 10 million fewer vehicles on American roadways than there are today—a decline that dwarfs all previous adjustments including those during the two OPEC oil shocks.

And who will be parking their cars? The 57 million American households that have both cars and access to something resembling public transit. Gasoline at $7 begins to approach prices Europeans have paid for years, meaning that chunk of America “will start to act more and more like Europeans,” Mr. Rubin says. Not soccer moms in a minivan—soccer fans, searching for tokens:

Our analysis suggests that about half of the number of cars coming off the road in the next four years will be from low income households who have access to public transit. At their current driving habits, filling up the tank will have risen from about 7% of their income to 20%, an increase that will see many start taking the bus.

Gas prices already appear to be reshaping suburbia. But what Mr. Rubin is predicting is a far bigger shock to the American system. Europe has had decades to develop a society based on expensive energy. What will happen if Americans suddenly are forced to shoulder European-style energy prices — but without the European-style society to cope with them?

The "Casey Energy Speculator" newsletter, meanwhile, reports that the Chinese car fleet (and its thirst for oil) are rapidly growing - Where have all my commodities gone ?.

Record oil prices have failed to temper the enthusiasm of Chinese auto buyers. In 2006, 6.2 million cars were sold in China, enough for the Middle Kingdom to surpass Japan for #2 in total vehicle sales (the United States still sells twice as many). In the first five months of 2008, Chinese auto sales show no signs of decelerating, up 17.4% from the same period last year.

The rise in Chinese auto sales has been so dramatic that projections by China’s government for auto sales in 2020 were already exceeded by 2005.

Millions of tons of copper, nickel, aluminum have gone into China’s car frenzy, boosting the commodity prices of every raw material involved. But the most pressing consequence of China's great leap into the culture of happy motoring is its impact on crude oil demand.

Assuming that the 7.3 million new car owners in 2008 each drive 5,000 miles a year, and they achieve 40 miles per gallon, the result would be an additional 45.6 million barrels of crude demand, equivalent to 125,000 bbl/day. In other words, new Chinese drivers will devour 25-30% of the recently promised Saudi production increase in a single year.

To those predicting an imminent decline in world oil demand, we say: don't bet on it.

Reuters reports on the growing anticipation that solar power will reach grid parity with other forms of power generation in the next few years.

After decades on the fringe, solar power is closing in on America's mainstream as surging fossil fuel prices and mounting concern over climate change spur states, businesses and homeowners into a quickening embrace with alternative energy.

Panels bolted to roofs to convert sunlight into electricity are still too expensive in most regions to compete with cheaper, less environmentally friendly fuels like coal without generous subsidies. Solar's high costs have kept the resource out of reach for many residences and businesses,. But not for long, industry analysts and scientists say.

The tipping point at which the world's cleanest, most renewable resource is cost-competitive with other sources of energy on electricity grids could happen within two to five years in some U.S. regions and countries if the price of fossil fuels continues to rise at its current pace, they add.

"In the long run -- as in two to three years -- you should see competitiveness especially with the grid in a number of regions in the world," said Vishal Shah, an analyst who tracks the industry at U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Tom Werner, chief executive of SunPower Corp, the largest North American solar company by sales, sees such "grid parity" for solar power in the United States and elsewhere happening in about five years, or possibly as soon as 2010.

"That's actually more aggressive than what we would say previously, and that's because the cost of electricity is going up faster than we had ever modeled," Werner said an interview at the Reuters Global Energy Summit on June 3. "It is becoming more and more clear it is a real possibility, and we believe, a reality," he said.

Richard Feldt, chief executive of U.S. solar panel maker Evergreen Solar Inc, calls grid parity the industry's "Holy Grail" and sees it happening in about five years. "It's not far away," he said in an interview.

Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd, one of the largest of a growing number of Chinese solar companies, sees the same five-year timeline, thanks to increasing supplies of silicon that will help drive down costs. ...

If its subsidies continue, the United States could generate as much power from solar panels as two-and-a-half typical nuclear reactors in four years -- or about 2.55 gigawatts, according to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association's data. That association sees global nuclear capacity reaching 44 gigawatts in four years -- the equivalent to the power capacity of 44 nuclear reactors.

The Guardian has a report on Europe's largest solar PV power plant - at Moura in Portugal. The Portuguese push for clean energy is moving along with impressive speed.

From a distance the bizarre structures sprouting from the high Alentejo plain in eastern Portugal resemble a field of mechanical sunflowers. Each of the 2,520 giant solar panels is the size of a house and they are as technically sophisticated as a car. Their reflective heads tilt to the sky at a permanent 45 degrees as they track the sun through 240 degrees every day.

The world's largest solar photovoltaic farm, generating electricity straight from sunlight, is taking shape near Moura, a small town in a thinly populated and impoverished region which boasts the most sunshine per square metre a year in Europe.

When fully commissioned later this year, the £250m farm set on abandoned state-owned land will be twice the size of any other similar project in the world, covering an area nearly twice the size of London's Hyde park. It is expected to supply 45MW of electricity each year, enough to power 30,000 homes.

Portugal, without its own oil, coal or gas and with no expertise in nuclear power, is pitching to lead Europe's clean-tech revolution with some of the most ambitious targets and timetables for renewables. Its intention, the economics minister, Manuel Pinho, said, is to wean itself off oil and within a decade set up a low carbon economy in response to high oil prices and climate change.

"We have to reduce our dependence on oil and gas," said Pinho. "What seemed extravagant in 2004 when we decided to go for renewables now seems to have been a very good decision."

He expects Portugal to generate 31% of all its energy from clean sources by 2020. This means lifting its renewable electricity share from 20% in 2005 to 60% in 2020, compared with Britain's target of 15% of all energy by 2020. Having passed its target for 2010 it could soon top the EU renewables league.

In less than three years, Portugal has trebled its hydropower capacity, quadrupled its wind power, and is investing in flagship wave and photovoltaic plants. Encouraged by long-term guarantees of prices by the state, and not delayed by planning laws or government indecision, it has proved a success. Firms are expected to invest £10bn in renewables by 2012 and up to £100bn by 2020.

However, Portugal says it wants to develop a renewables industry to rival Denmark or Japan. When the government invited companies for tenders to supply wind, solar and wave power, it demanded they work with manufacturing companies to establish clusters of industries.

This is a great success, say regional governments. In northern Portugal, where the world's biggest wind farm, with more than 130 turbines, is now being strung across the mountainous Spanish border, a German firm employs more than 1,200 people building 600 40-metre-long fibreglass wind turbine blades a year.

The turbines are earmarked for Portuguese farms first, but orders are being taken from Britain and other countries. Half the workforce are women who once worked in the declining textile industry.

It is Portuguese plans for wave power that are prompting the most interest in Europe. The world's first commercial wave farm is being assembled near Porto. Three "sea snakes", developed by the Edinburgh-based company Pelamis, will shortly be towed out to sea and will start pumping modest amounts of electricity into the grid later this year.

It is the start of a potentially giant global industry with Portuguese firm Enersis planning to invest more than £1bn in a series of farms that together would power 450,000 homes.

Pinho dismisses nuclear power. "When you have a programme like this there is no need for nuclear power. Wind and water are our nuclear power. The relative price of renewables is now much lower, so the incentives are there to invest. My advice to countries like the UK is to move as fast as they can to renewables. With climate change and the increase in oil prices, renewables will become more and more important.

The New York Times has an interesting article on the rapidly increasing export of coal from the US (likely helped by the new-found opposition to building coal fired power from the banking sector as well as the general population) - "An Export in Solid Supply".

These days, people really are taking coals to Newcastle. That flow is part of a vast reorganization of the global coal trade that is making the United States a major exporter for the first time in years — and helping to drive up domestic prices of the one fossil fuel the nation has in abundance.

Coal has long been a cheap and plentiful fuel source for utilities and their customers, helping to keep American electric bills relatively low. But rising worldwide demand is turning American coal into another hot global commodity, with domestic buyers having to compete with buyers from countries like Germany and Japan.

Environmental concerns have forced some American utilities to cut back on plans for coal-burning power plants. Nonetheless, spot prices for two benchmark American grades of coal, from central Appalachia and the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, have been rising, with occasional dips, since last spring. They eased in recent days but are still up by 93 percent and 64 percent, respectively, in the last year, according to figures from Doyle Trading Consultants and Evolution Markets.

How high prices will go, and how quickly the increases will be passed along to electricity customers, remains to be seen. American utility companies buy almost all their coal on long-term contracts, locking in prices for several years. But as those contracts come up for renewal, price increases are likely, analysts said.

“Watch out, consumer,” said David M. Khani, a coal analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group. “You’re probably going to see accelerating electricity prices in 2009, 2010 and 2011.” ...

For coal producers, the new demand abroad is good news at a time when coal is under political attack at home. More than 50 proposed coal-fired power plants were delayed or canceled over the last year because of concerns over greenhouse gas emissions.

“This export boom right now is the difference between slow growth in our markets and hyper-expansion in our markets,” said Gregory H. Boyce, chairman and chief executive of Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal company. “You have two billion-plus people looking for a better standard of living. The world is energy-short and the U.S. coal sector is beginning to fill that gap.”

Many environmental groups see the rising global trade as an ominous development, however, since it promises to confound efforts to limit global emissions. World consumption of coal has increased in recent years by more than 4 percent annually, a major reason that emissions of carbon dioxide are going up, not down.

Grist has a "green take on Super Tuesday", looking at the contrast between the Democrat and Republican front runners.

Coming out of Super Tuesday's primaries and caucuses in 22 states, the Republicans are looking ever more likely to nominate their most eco-conscious candidate, John McCain, who was the big GOP winner of the day. But green issues don't seem to have played much if any role in the Republican voting, and McCain didn't reference anything environmental in his speech to supporters at the end of the night. In contrast, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- who are still running oh so close -- both made impassioned calls for environmental action in their speeches on Tuesday.

"I see an America where we stand up to the oil companies and the oil-producing countries, where we launch a clean energy revolution and finally confront the climate crisis," said Clinton, who also praised "businesses who are training people for green-collar jobs" and "the auto companies and the auto workers who want higher gas-mileage cars so we can compete with the rest of the world." Said Obama, "[W]e will harness the ingenuity of farmers and scientists and entrepreneurs to free this nation from the tyranny of oil once and for all and we will invest in solar and wind and biodiesel, clean energy, green energy that can fuel economic development for generations to come." And the race goes on ..

Crikey's Guy Rundle has also been following the primaries and was mighty impressed with Obama's latest speech.

So far, Obama's taken nine states, some, like Georgia, he could have reasonably banked on, but in some he's absolutely stormed in, like the 73% result in Kansas, and the 67% in Minnesota. But he's also gained a surprisingly strong showing in New York, taking almost 40% from Clinton -- this all matters because of the arcane way in which the delegates are being awarded on the Democratic side.

In fact MSNBC is now saying that delegates could be a 50/50 split, although with 6% of the votes counted in California, Clinton is leading about 2 to 1. But whatever result she gets, it's a win for Obama – and a guarantee that the next months are going to be an absolutely grueling campaign for every last delegate – including the 22 or so to be selected by the Democrats Abroad primary over the next few days. Clinton spoke about half an hour ago, and she sounded wooden and depleted – as she would, having actually taken fewer states than Obama. Obama's speaking now – the networks cut off the end of McCain's speech to get the start of Obama's, which is about as symbolic as it gets – and he sounds like he just cranked it up a notch.

It's a new speech -- not his stump, thank Christ -- and it's expert, effortlessly moving from the general, to the empowering ("This is not about what I'm doing, it is what you are doing – because you are tired of the failure, tired of the lies ..." etc) and then onto the specifics, the mother foreclosed on, the soldier going on another tour in a war that never should have been waged. God it's a good speech, like Bach perfectly played, every part fitting together, every note struck at exactly the right strength.

It feels like you're watching the moment in the race when the second runner hits the front and magically draws out the energy of the leader as they're passed. You can count off every technique outlined by Saul Alinsky, the Chicago activist who was Obama's inspiration – from the particular to the general, the pregnant pause, turning it round from speaker to audience, the parable that leads to the invocation, taking the story through to the call to action – "we are the people we have been waiting for to change the world. The time is unlike any other. Let's go to work!"

The mention of Alinsky reminded me of this MSNBC article from last year on Hillary's "hidden thesis" (the only time I've ever heard of him) - maybe Obama and Clinton aren't all that far apart in their inspirations. That said, both are hard to make out, as their sniping session a while back (about Hillary being an ex-WalMart board member and Obama being backed by a Chicago "slumlord" - and one soon to go on trial at that) demonstrated. Certainly neither seem to have any friends on the far left, who you would think would still admire Alinsky.

The senior thesis of Hillary D. Rodham, Wellesley College class of 1969, has been speculated about, spun, analyzed, debated, criticized and defended. But rarely has it been read, because for the eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency it was locked away.

As forbidden fruit, the writings of a 21-year-old college senior, examining the tactics of radical community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, have gained mythic status among her critics — a “Rosetta Stone,” in the words of one, that would allow readers to decode the thinking of the former first lady and 2008 presidential candidate. ...

Rodham’s thesis describes trying to pin him down on his personal philosophy: “Alinsky, cringing at the use of labels, ruefully admitted that he might be called an existentialist,” she wrote. Rodham tried to ask him about his moral relativism — particular ends, he said, often do justify the means — but Alinsky would only concede that “idealism can parallel self-interest.”

In her paper, she accepted Alinsky's view that the problem of the poor isn't so much a lack of money as a lack of power, as well as his view of federal anti-poverty programs as ineffective. (To Alinsky, the War on Poverty was a “prize piece of political pornography,” even though some of its funds flowed through his organizations.) “A cycle of dependency has been created,” she wrote, “which ensnares its victims into resignation and apathy.”

In formal academic language, Rodham offered a “perspective” or muted critique on Alinsky's methods, sometimes leaving unclear whether she was quoting his critics or stating her own opinion. She cited scholars who claimed that Alinsky's small gains actually delayed attainment of bigger goals for the poor and minorities.

In criticizing the “few material gains” that Alinsky engineered — such as pressing Kodak Co. to hire blacks in Rochester, or delaying the University of Chicago's expansion into the Woodlawn neighborhood — Rodham placed part of the blame on demography, the diminishing role of neighborhoods in American life. Another part she laid charitably to an Alinsky character trait: “One of the primary problems of the Alinsky model is that the removal of Alinsky dramatically alters its composition," she wrote. "Alinsky is a born organizer who is not easily duplicated, but, in addition to his skill, he is a man of exceptional charm."

In the end, she judged that Alinsky's “power/conflict model is rendered inapplicable by existing social conflicts” — overriding national issues such as racial tension and segregation. Alinsky had no success in forming an effective national movement, she said, referring dismissively to “the anachronistic nature of small autonomous conflict.”

Putting Alinsky's Rochester symphony threat into academic language, Rodham found that the conflict approach to power is limited. “Alinsky's conclusion that the ‘ventilation’ of hostilities is healthy in certain situations is valid, but across-the-board ‘social catharsis’ cannot be prescribed,” she wrote.

She noted, however, that he was trying to broaden his reach: In 1969, Alinsky was developing an institute in Chicago at his Industrial Arts Foundation, aimed at training organizers to galvanize a surprising target: the middle class. That was the job he offered to Hillary Rodham.

Though some student activists of the 1960s may have idolized Alinsky, he didn't particularly idolize them. At the time Hillary Rodham brought him to Wellesley in January 1969 to speak at a private dinner for a dozen students, he was expressing dissatisfaction with New Left protesters such as the Students for a Democratic Society. One of his criticisms, surprisingly, was their tactical mistake of rejecting middle-class values.

Rodham closed her thesis by emphasizing that she reserved a place for Alinsky in the pantheon of social action — seated next to Martin Luther King, the poet-humanist Walt Whitman, and Eugene Debs, the labor leader now best remembered as the five-time Socialist Party candidate for president.

“In spite of his being featured in the Sunday New York Times," she wrote of Alinsky, "and living a comfortable, expenses-paid life, he considers himself a revolutionary. In a very important way he is. If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution. Ironically, this is not a disjunctive projection if considered in the tradition of Western democratic theory. In the first chapter it was pointed out that Alinsky is regarded by many as the proponent of a dangerous socio/political philosophy. As such, he has been feared — just as Eugene Debs or Walt Whitman or Martin Luther King has been feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths — democracy.”

Sidebar: ALINSKY's RULES FOR RADICALS - "Personalize it"

Saul Alinsky's rules of power tactics, excerpted from his 1971 book "Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals"

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Whenever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Back to Guy Rundle at Crikey, who also has some comments about global warming policy and tornados.

"If you are Mitt Romney you can't say this is a good night."
"Well, if you're Mitt Romney you've entrenched your vote among conservatives ..."
"Nooooo - if you're Mitt Romney you can say you've got good hair – that's all you can say."
- MSNBC exchange last night.

It tore across the heart of the country, ripping up everything in its path – no, it wasn't the Mike Huckabee express, it was a brace of tornados that the rest of the country barely noticed until all the votes had been counted. When the Super Tuesday storm died down, the death toll of the real storm was 50.

I'm not the type to point to every weird weather episode as evidence of climate change – but an increasing number of Americans are, and that includes the insurance companies. Millions of homes across the west's tornado alley and on the Gulf coast are uninsurable, effectively destroying their value. If anything was likely to remind Americans of the last eight years of torpor and failure, it's this perfect storm, the economy meeting the environment, your sub-prime mortgage home you can't afford the payments on suddenly being unsellable because no one wants to buy a future pile of matchwood.

The increasing perception that the environment is getting up and walking around the joint in great big boots has undoubtedly been great for McCain, who's been the only Republican to really campaign on the issue - although of course he's talked about it a lot more in states with open primaries rather than in the hardcore GOP-only zones. Huckabee has also been leaning on the Biblical notion of stewardship of God's earth to carve a furrow between the evangelicals and a policy they regarded as communism not so long ago.

Only Mitt Romney is giving out that guffawing Chamber of Commerce rhetoric ("Hey – it's global warming! Why should we pay for it all?"), constructing the environment as an add-on, a position as 80s nostalgic as big floppy hair and an interesting Peter Carey novel. That isn't the only reason why Mitt tripped – he pretty much screwed up on everything, and Huckabee's relentless southern barnstorming wore the foundations away.

McCain has so far picked up 613 delegates, with Romney on 270 and Huckabee on 190. McCain seems to have been pretty sure it would fall out that way, which is why he spent so much time campaigning in Romney's home state Massachusetts, hoping to land the killer blow. Mitt won that 41 to 30%, but all the pundits have begun the deathwatch. There's not a chance he'd get the VP slot – there'd be a McCain-Noam Chomsky ticket before that happened. Indeed, McCain's in a hell of a dilemma VP-wise, since any choice that might blunt Obamappeal – Condoleeza Rice has been spoken of (though she has such a Bush taint that may be hype) – would simply drive the evangelicals further away. But a McCain-Huckabee ticket would put a man who believes angels guide bullets to their targets, one icy-path-shattered hip away from the nuclear button.

Really I was hoping Romney would get the nomination, because a Clinton/Obama v Romney stoush would be like a grudge match between a real person and a piece of whitebait on a string. If McCain can knock Romney out early, he can start attacking the Democrats and the race will come right in. Unless Huckabee scarfs up Romney's delegates in toto, and really lays a number on him from the Right.

For the Democrats, Obama's performance was very much in the tornado mode, as a glance at the results show. With the exception of her home state, Clinton's victories were all in the 50-60% range. Obama's numbers by contrast were huge, hitting high sixties and seventies in states as diverse as Georgia, Minnesota and Kansas.

The results clearly demonstrate that white Democrats will get behind him – though whether the swinging voters he needs in the mid-west will follow remains to be seen – and Camp Obama is also claiming that they have a lot more scope for fundraising over the next months, saying that Hillary Clinton has tapped out the $2000 maximum on her supporters, while Obama's crowd have been giving in hundred and fifties here and there. Indeed news has just come in that Clinton has put $5 mill of her own cash in (as a "loan") to her campaign, and staff are working for no salary (Bill, it should be noted, has earnt $40 million from speeches over the past few years. Working without pay is like running a garage sale for the Ceaucescus).

The Democrat race is going to go on and on – Hillary wasn't being cute when she tipped her hat to American Samoa in her speech last night. A plurality could easily come down to primaries in Puerto Rico or the currently underway Democrats Abroad primary – although if it gets that close the Convention will be a very ugly fight about credentials, voting irregularities etc etc. That's routine convention behaviour, and not enough to cause a serious rift in the party – unless Clinton, or realistically the Clintons, try to get the Florida and Michigan delegates seated.

Both states were stripped of their delegates for moving their primaries to earlier than Super Tuesday, and all candidates agreed not to campaign in those states. Then on the eve of a South Carolina primary she knew she was going to lose, Hillary started making noises about "ohhhhh it's terrible that all these people are going to be unrepresented" and then bent the rules by flying to Flordia for a "victory" party on the night of the dead primary.

If the Clintons made a real effort to seat these delegates, it will sour the entire run. If they manage to seat them, it would plunge the party into crisis. Are the Clintons that crazed that they would put the party through that. Why that'd be as crazy as ... as ... swapping your second term effectiveness for an executive chair BJ, or sending a 6000-page health care bill to Congress, scorning all tactical advice.

Mark Morford at the San Francisco Chronicle also turns out a few witty phrases from time to time, and he is also pondering the Clinton / Obama matchup - an Exxon's record profits - in "Dead soldiers, peak oil and mind-boggling profits; praise Jesus, the machine's still working".

Surprisingly moving Barack Obama music videos? The potential end of the writer's strike? Cute young deer being saved by helicopters? No no no no no. Here are your most deeply inspiring news stories of the month:

A flurry of pink slips fluttered over the job sector as corporate payrolls were sliced like sour pie. Foreclosures are skyrocketing and new home sales across the nation are plummeting faster than Britney Spears' serotonin levels. A nasty recession is either creeping or flooding in, depending on your perspective and how recently you purchased your home and/or tried to dump your Google stock.

Meanwhile, the largest corporation in the world, the one which has consistently raked in the largest and most appalling profits of any organization on Earth, a company so powerful and deeply influential to the machinations of our own nation, our government, the globe, so ingrained and unstoppable that no president, no administration, no nuclear warhead to its CEO's home planet stands a chance of slowing it down or altering its behavior in any significant way because there is simply far, far too much money involved in its nefarious endeavors, has recently posted the largest profit of any company in American history.

Yes, the Exxon Mobil corporation sucked in a staggering $11.7 billion in a single quarter (more than $40 billion for the year, a new record for an American company) thanks largely to record-breaking prices for a barrel of oil, which are of course only record-breaking because, well, the Bush administration has essentially engineered the economy and launched a bogus war and desiccated the American idea exactly so they would be.

Oh yes, two more trifling stories, buried beneath the nauseating Exxon headlines and the tales of looming economic struggle: More U.S. soldiers are dead in Iraq as a result of Bush's failed war, U.S. military spending in 2009 will reach its highest levels since WWII ($515 billion), insurgents have taken to strapping suicide bombs to mentally retarded women and nearly 100 more civilians are dead in another bombing in Baghdad because the U.S. troop surge is working so well. Oh wait.

Do you feel the righteousness? The inspiration? Can you sense the deep connection between these stories? Because the truth is, they merely add up to the heartwarming conclusion that, without a doubt, American capitalism is still firing on all cylinders. Praise!

Yes, the system is working just exactly as those in control of the nation right now wish it to be working, with the most dominant, ruthless corporations in the world (Exxon joined by Shell, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhilips et al) still making the most money in the most destabilizing and environmentally devastating manner possible, while poor uneducated kids die like chattel in unwinnable wars trying to secure a tiny bit more of the source of their profit.

And somewhere in between, the nation's overall health and well-being are sacrificed like dazed lambs to an ignorant god, with our government offering up only the most meager, desultory efforts to keep it functional so as to not induce all-out fire-and-pitchfork revolt.

Is that too simplistic? Too reductive? Not even close. Hell, you can distill it down even further. For if you understand, as most sentient creatures on the planet now do, that this "war" is merely a particularly bloody chunk of a particularly brutal, fraudulent national energy policy spearheaded by Dick Cheney and beloved by Saudi Arabia and Halliburton and most of Texas, then it is no stretch at all to say that we are sending American kids to their deaths exactly so Exxon can continue to make $3 billion in a single month (or: $100 million per day, $4 million per hour, or more than $1,000 every. Single. Second).

Or how about this for dark math: $40 billion for the year, 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers ... that's a cool $10 million in pure profit for every American soldier BushCo has thrown to the wolves of petroleum, just for 2007 alone. Even if you factor in the 20,000 wounded, paralyzed and brain damaged U.S. soldiers — not to mention the record number of military suicides — on a body-by-body basis, you've still got yourself one hell of a sweet profit margin. See Dick Cheney's vile, crooked little grin? Now you know where it comes from.

This, you might argue, is perhaps the bleakest way to look at American capitalism, as an instrument of war and death and gluttony that serves only the most cretinous corporate masters at the expense of, well, everyone else. This is the capitalism of the hard right, a particularly ruthless type that happily sacrifices quite literally everything — the environment, health, human life, God, national identity, the stability of future generations — for the sake of immediate and unchecked profit.

It is the kind of system, furthermore, that brings with it a huge, nauseating sense of shame for how we have approached the world, pouring a vague disgust over the nation like a cancerous sludge. This is perhaps BushCo's cruelest gift of all: tragically convincing us that this strain of capitalism, a furious weapon of greed and disgrace, inviting all manner of corruption and destruction as it brings out the absolute worst in the human animal, is the only flavor there really is.

But then again, no. Maybe there's something else, a flipside we've forgotten amid the insane oil profits and dead bodies and global mistrust. It's the awkward truism that American capitalism is potentially capable, despite its dark core of profit, despite its frequently poisoned heart, of tremendous creative opportunity and ingenuity. Like porn, like God, like wisdom and plutonium and very, very dark rum, it's all in how you use it.

Here, then, is perhaps the most dominant question surrounding the upcoming big transition, as the nation prepares over the next year to finally rid itself of the cancer of Bush: Are we still capable of reshaping the capitalist demon, injecting it, on a national scale, with something like conscience and compassion and responsibility, sans the need to sell your mother, rape Alaska, or bomb ancient cities and kill pathetic foreign dictators in a pitiable attempt to vindicate your dad? Is such a turnaround even possible anymore?

Because this nasty truth remains: Bush or no, Exxon and its nefarious, insanely powerful ilk are ramming full speed ahead, undertaking more incredibly brutal, land-raping techniques as you read these very words to get at the Earth's remaining supply of oil, sucking up tar sand and coal and anything else possible to maintain profit and power. They are, and will continue to be, utterly relentless and, at least for a number of years to come, quite unstoppable.

There is no eliminating the dark side of capitalism, the gluttony and the greed and the violent underbelly. There is only minimizing, shifting the emphasis, changing the pitch and angle of approach, trying to take what is, at its very heart, a flawed and self-destructive system, and making it into something proud and interesting and vibrant, something actually worth defending.

Can it be done? Is it still possible? No matter how many poetic Barack Obama speeches, no matter how many pragmatic Hillary Clinton promises, it's a question that seems far bigger than both of them. And the truth is, it's really the only question that matters.

Green Chip Stocks is disappointed with the energy bill that has just passed through the US Senate, delivering big gains to the already heavily subsidised big oil companies and nothing for solar and wind power.

Another bill with the best of intentions bit the dust this week (at least in its original form) while big oil added another notch on its belt, squeezing out every last drop of influence from partisan politics. In the energy bill a measure for repealing tax breaks for large oil and gas companies and directing that funding to the renewable energy sector trembled and tumbled as the opposition won by a single vote.

But no worries, this filibuster is weak in the knees and buckled by letting the CAFE Standards slide through. And what a God send that is!

I mean nothing - absolutely nothing - could prepare us for the reality of peak oil, the caustic tide of global warming or WWIII over oil like the CAFE Standards. Just imagine the ramifications of our national fleet getting 35 mpg by 2020.

I know what you're thinking...

Who needs solar, geothermal, or wind power if your truck can get 22.2 mpg? Never mind the average light duty vehicle gets 21.6 mpg right now.

Exactly right! Bollocks to all that stuff.

Hell, over in Paris, according to the International Energy Agency, the average fuel consumption is 32.1 mpg. But, by golly, we're Americans, we like our fries honky tonk style and we certainly don't need to learn from Europe.

That would be utterly foolish. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing big oil wasn't getting the tax breaks they deserve, and, ye gods, even worse, the car in my driveway was a diesel powered European Ford Focus that ticks off 46 miles per gallon.

Why would I drive that when the new energy bill says I won't have to get 35 mpg until 2020? Wow, talk about progress...

EarthTimes notes that the geothermal energy sector has done better than its clean energy cousins, getting a mighty $95 million dollars. That would pay for about 10 minutes of our oil war in Iraq - what where the Senators thinking !

Late yesterday evening, the Senate passed an energy bill that "will advance geothermal research and development for decades to come," according to the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA), the trade association for the industry.

The Senate passed bill includes the "Advanced Geothermal Energy Research and Development Act of 2007." These provisions are based upon compromise language between House and Senate bills that sought to revitalize geothermal research in light of recent reports by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) that show geothermal energy can be a major energy source in the future with continued federal support for market and technology advances.


The underlying bills were HR 2304, sponsored by Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) and S.1543 introduced by Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). Both had bipartisan co-sponsorship and support. The final provisions direct the Department of Energy to undertake a broad and aggressive research program to promote geothermal energy and authorize a total of $95 million annually for this new initiative.

Cryptogon sees a pattern - centralised energy systems will get government support, distributed energy systems ... not so much.

The point here is to make sure that individual clean power systems remain expensive and out of reach for most people. There’s going to be utility scale clean power, and you’re going to pay dearly for it. As for being able to call up your power company to tell them that their services will no longer be required, that’s probably always going to cost a fortune.

Via: Neutral Existence:

A new “scaled down” energy bill was passed through the senate last night and three of the most important items in the bill were taken out to appease oil funded republicans. Unfortunately our senators, democrats and republicans alike, failed our country and environment yet again by bowing to big oil and removing the most influential provisions and tax incentives this country has ever seen.

The tax incentives now set to expire in 2008 will end all federal tax credits on solar, wind and other alternative energy installations. No other tax incentive or provision has brought the solar industry closer to grid parity than this one and now it is gone. Grid parity is the point in which it will actually be cheaper to generate your own electricity on your roof than to buy from your local utility company. Now this idea is great for us, but bad for big business, (oil and coal) so of course, the lobbyist went to work on our republican senators and were apparently very affective at getting that tax break completely removed from the energy bill.

Second major blow to the renewable energy industry was the removal of the $22 billion dollar tax package designed to cut tax breaks for big oil companies and funnel the money towards the renewable energy industry. Of course this is bad for Big Oil considering how poor their financials are currently, (sarcasm: Big Oil showed record highs this year) so yet again the lobbyist went to work on our senators and “poof” the tax package is gone. Not only that, but Bush himself threatened to veto the entire bill if this tax package was not removed, showing yet again, a clear alliance with Big Oil and an unwillingness to do what is right.

Another major blow, was the removal of the alternative energy mandate which would have required all investor owned utility companies to get at least 15% of their electricity from alternative energy sources. Many utility companies complained that this would increase cost and again, “poof” another very influential and beneficial provision was removed from the energy bill.